But speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:
Ephesians 4:15 KJV
The only thing deeper than truth is love. Love and truth are the most misunderstood, most controversial, most misinterpreted yet the most needful. There can be differences between anything and everything because of truth. In the same vein, there can be similarities between anything and everything because of love. Both are the web that ties and chains all things as unending and complex as the universe itself. Both are the most unknown, yet the most searched for.
There is a difference between speaking the truth in love and loving to speak the truth. People normally offend others with their words and justify themselves by saying, “but that’s the truth”. The truth is never meant to hurt but heal. Disappointment hurts but Hope restores. That’s the Truth. There is difference between the Truth, and the emotions in which the truth is expressed. Hear me well! So if something is true and you say it in a rude way, you have communicated the truth in death. Don’t use the truth to hurt. Stop expressing the Truth in envy, bitterness, anger, jealousy etc. The only right way to communicate truth is in love.
Speaking the truth in love is not the extreme too, where the truth is sugarcoated and made to lose its essence. That dilutes the truth into lies. You cannot love someone more than God. Godly sorrow leads to repentance. What we are saying is, communicate the truth with your mouth from a heart of love. There’s a place of pure genuine integrity where the truth expresses itself perfectly in Love. That place is Abba’s heart. In fact, that’s where all people are; in Abba’s heart.
Love is the Ultimate truth. It is the beginning and the end. It is both the source and the focus of truth. Therefore, truth outside of love ceases to be truth. Just like everything else in the natural order, truth has boundaries, not limitations. The boundary of truth is love. Love is what protects the cell structure of truth. Love is truth. If there was no love, there wouldn’t be a need for truth.
When someone who speaks the Truth in Love speaks, everyone always loves to listen. Not because there is a showoff of wisdom, but because there is this Love we can all connect to. That is what Abba Father created all things to be. Everything that has breath gives life. Life is not only given in sexual reproduction, but in other forms of production and reproduction, especially in our words.
The Wise Man says;
What you say can preserve life or destroy it; so you must accept the consequences of your words.
Proverbs 18:21 GNB
Whenever you hear something doctrinal and it puts you in fear and shame or it grips you like a force of bondage, then you didn’t hear the truth. The Truth ALWAYS liberates you. It sets you free from your own thinking; your own limits; your own restraint.
When you hang around people who are broken, our compassion makes us feel and understand what they think, but that doesn’t mean that we should take up their mindset. Compassion becomes perversion when we reduce our convictions to embrace the crooked. Christianity is not a calling into isolation, where we isolate ourselves entirely from people due to their negativities; poor, broken, rude, hot-tempered, gay, bully, or naughty. Christianity is not compromise of convictions either.
If no isolation at one extreme, then no compromise at other extreme either. People hang out with the poor and then develop a negative attitude against the rich. Pastors accept everyone for who they are, even homosexuals, and then develop a theology that supports homosexuality. How are you bringing light when you become darkness?
Hanging out with people who don’t believe in godly values doesn’t mean we have to take up their conviction. It is wrong to avoid gays because you’re the help from God they need. But it is equally wrong when we try to defend their stance as though it is right. That is NOT compassion. That is compromise.
You don’t have to change your convictions to love a homosexual. You’re not even helping the homosexual when you change your convictions. Jesus had great compassion for the lady who committed adultery and was about to be stoned. Jesus didn’t condemn her. Neither did He support her. Love is NOT Incompassionate compromise. Love is uncompromising Compassion.
The Truth always operates in Love. Truth spoken outside Love breeds fear. Fear breeds slaves and self-righteous hubris. Truth spoken in Love breeds freedom and hope. Freedom breeds joy and peace.
Love takes no pleasure in evil but rejoices over the truth. 1 Corinthians 13:6 ICB
Just as I have spoken the Truth in Love to you, may your every word produce and preserve life all around you. I love you ♥
