The Article follows our Lord and St. James in condemning vain and rash swearing,^[1] which is condemned also by the third commandment.  In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord quoted from the Law against profaning the Name of God by swearing falsely and on the honouring of promises made on oath.^[2]  But do the words, ‘Swear not at all’, disallow swearing of every kind, or do they apply only to this manner of confirming assertions made in common conversation?  The considerations to be taken into account for answering this question favour the view that Jesus was thinking only of the careless, trivial use of God’s Name.  Every religious Jew held the divine Name in the highest esteem; even when reading his Scriptures he refrained from saying the divine personal Name, Yahweh, and substituted the Hebrew word Adonai, ‘the Lord’.  With such reverence for the Name of God in mind, its flippant utterance filled a faithful Jew with horror.  The forms of swearing mentioned in St. Matthew 5:34-35, ‘by heaven’, ‘by earth’, or ‘by Jerusalem’, may relate to attempts by the rabbis to devise permissible oaths.  But Jesus insisted that the issue could not be evaded in such a manner; God was still included in such oaths, for heaven is His throne, earth His footstool, and Jerusalem His city.^[3]  And Since any oath worth making must be by the greatest,^[4] there is no point in swearing by a creature, by one’s life or body.^[5]

A study of the occasions in the Gospels where the Name of God occurs in the sayings of Jesus will reveal a model of moderation and fitness; His use of the term is always justified by the importance of the context.  The peculiar formula of emphasis which He employed, ‘Amen, amen, I say unto you’, is significant in this connection.  When He was put on oath by the High Priest regarding His Messiahship, He answered with a simple affirmation.^[6]  The solemn affirmations of St. Paul are a form of oath too, when he calls on God or Christ as witnesses to the truth of his declarations about matters which were very close to his heart – his affection for his converts and his ancestral People, Israel; the sincerity of his evangelism, and his anxiety to refute any misrepresentation of him that would hinder the success of his work.^[7]  The taking of an oath is also associated with God and commended as ‘a guarantee that ends any dispute’ in the Epistle to the Hebrews.^[8]  The Bible, therefore, fully justifies the taking of oaths in support of statements made, provided it is done according to Jeremiah’s principle ‘in justice, judgment and truth’.^[9]

Since attestation by oath is allowed in Scripture, Christians may help in the administration of the law by testifying in civil courts.  In early times, while the Roman Empire was still pagan, it could not be done, as it would have meant acknowledgement of heathen deities or the genius of the Emperor; believers’ disputes were to be settled among themselves.^[10]  But under Christian government they ‘may swear as the Magistrate requireth, in a cause of faith and chanty.’