Essential and Required
June 10, 2022
Love rejoices in the truth. 1 Corinthians 13:6
It’s easy to assume that love and truth often oppose each other, that you can’t have them both in the same conversation or action. That’s why we make continual jokes about such conversations as a wife asking her husband, “Do these jeans make me look fat?” We recognize the possible inherent difficulties in asking or answering such a question in an equally truthful and loving way.
But the reality is, you cannot have a right relationship without both. Truth and love are not enemies or opposites. They are both essential requirements. They not only CAN co-exist, they must. The most loving person the world has ever known was also the most honest and forthright person to ever walk the planet. As Paul David Tripp says, “It was not just that the love of Jesus never contradicted His candor, and His candor never inhibited His love. No, there was something more profound going on. His commitment to truth speaking was propelled by His love.”
Tripp continues, “The biblical call to love will never force you to trim, deny, or bend the truth, and the biblical call to truth will never ask you to abandon God’s call to love your neighbor.” As you study the life and ministry of Jesus, you will see a thread that is wide and bold through all His conversations. He never allows a temporary goal of agreement or even winning someone to a “decision” (example of the rich young ruler in Luke 18:18-30) to cause Him to abandon truth in the name of love. When He spoke hard words, they were always motivated by love. He knew that real love cannot withhold necessary truth.
When we speak truth and love like Jesus, we are never cold and indifferent. Hard words come wrapped in layers of love and are not meanspirited. We don’t twist and bend the truth to fit the situation or to control another person.
Again quoting Tripp: “Truth isn’t mean and love isn’t dishonest. They are two sides of the same righteous agenda that longs for the spiritual welfare of another. Truth not spoken in love ceases to be truth because it gets bent and twisted by other human agendas, and love that abandons the truth ceases to be love because it forsakes what is best for the person when it has been corrupted by other motives.”
This is the life and privilege to which we are invited. We get to be truly honest and honestly love. Jesus empowers us and graces us to do it as we follow Him.
- Lord Jesus, Your truth, and love has saved me and daily empowers me to live a life of satisfaction and joy. Please grow me to bring that impact to others. Amen.