Speak the truth, or love?

For you, what is more important: speak the truth, or love?

If your answer was: tell the truth, you were wrong, because to speak the truth without love is brutality.

If your answer was: love, you were wrong too, because love without being true is hypocrisy.

The only answer that demonstrates maturity is: both. Someone mature is someone who can speak the truth in love, softly. Paul in Ephesians 4.15-16 is saying otherwise that he wrote to the churches in Galatia:

Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore him in a spirit of gentleness; and Take heed to thyself lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself up.

Gal 6.1-3

The spirit of mildness should always be present when someone is speaking the truth to another, especially if this is true about the sin of this other person.

Truth and unity have always been in dispute in the Christian church. The reason is simple: immaturity. Only children can not handle the truth balance / unit. Paul, in the text below, shows how a Christian can be healthy as you experience growth in love and truth. One without the other is spiritual sickness sign. It can not even be personal growth - or collective - without us being maturely dealing with truth and love.

   But speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body fitly and compacted by that which every joint, according to the proper cooperation of each part, makes its own increase for edifying of itself in love.

   Eph 4.15-16

 But speaking the truth in love,

There is no way love exists,  without the truth, and there is no way exists the truth, without love. The first word of this verse is ἀληθεύοντες (alētheúontes) which literally means "telling the truth". It can also mean "to be true", and especially in this passage means "walking in the truth." The question we might ask is, what truth? In the time we live in, the relativization of truth makes this verse a basis for any heresy.

I do not believe in the relativity of truth, because it is well described in the Word and is associated with a person and his message. Christ and the Gospel are the truth. And it is worth remembering that the Gospel is present in both the New in the Old Testament.

However, we must walk on the Gospel and Christ in love. Ezra's experience shows someone who lived this recommendation even before it exists:

For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.

Ed 7:10

Speaking the truth in love is Christian sign of maturity. Some people love, but can not speak the truth. And there are those who like to tell the truth, but can not speak it in a loving way. So, you only live this orientation of verse 15 in a state of Christian maturity.

As Warren wrote Wiersbe, "truth without love is brutality, but without true love is hypocrisy" .⁠1 In order to avoid hypocrisy or gross, we need to grow, mature, at all ", who is the head, Christ."

grow up in all things into Him who is the head, Christ,

Christ is the head and all that is done in the body. He gives us the direction for growth. Without your guidance, we would run around the tail, like a small dog without leaving the place. It is the light of his words we find the way out of immaturity and let the brutality and hypocrisy. What God expects of us is the presence of both the truth about love in our lives. But none of this would be possible without our Christ as head, as a guiding and feeder of this body.

from whom the whole body fitly and compacted by that which every joint, according to the proper cooperation of every part, maketh increase its own for the edifying of itself in love.

Further evidence of maturity in the life of a Christian is when it is in cooperation with other Christians. Eph 4:16 explains that members of a local body - a local church - belong to one another, affect each other, and need each other. No little person in the Body of Christ. Paul had already said in Ephesians 4.2:

with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love,

f 4.2

Anyone who fails to live it, ceases to live the will of God. And it, sins. As such a person is considered insignificant or incapacitated, such considerations are a lie of his mind for his own soul. Just as there are no parts in a human body that are considered insignificant enough to consider removing them from our body, there is also no insignificant part in the Body of Christ. Everyone in the body have a purpose in God's eyes, and grow as they are fed, just as it is in the human body. This growth happens as in the spiritual food is given faithfully to these members. Who does not eat the Word, will always remain a spiritual baby, a beloved baby, but not to feed, will always remain dependent on others, lacking the other, useless, hypocritical and gross. The only solution - or cure - for this is the correct administration of the Word in the life of this member baby who never grew.

Hence we understand that spiritual unity is not something manufactured with techniques or strategies. For more useful to the community that are family communities, family groups, cells, small groups, Bible study centers, and many models there are family meetings among Christians, none of this can give true spiritual unity. Only the spiritual food, only the Truth can unite truth. The absence of God's truth only creates hypocrisy. And Christians must flee from it. And so, speaking the truth in love, we live together, we build and equip each other, so that we can all grow and be more like Cristo.⁠2

Christ the head, the church receives strength to grow. From it comes the ability to grow and build up. The words "well adjusted and consolidated" (συναρμολογούμενον καὶ συμβιβαζόμενον - synarmologoúmenon kaì symbibazómenon). The correct identification of these words lead us to the understanding of something that is in harmony or adaptation and something compact or sólido.⁠3 Church growth should take it to a flush compaction and full joy, celebration.

We need to be well-adjusted and consolidated. This only gives the participation of all, with everyone aware of their place in the body, their gifts, their duties, their vocations. It is in love that this process happens. Peter wrote it in a brilliant way in his second epistle:

therefore, you, gathering all diligence, add to your faith virtue with virtue, knowledge; with knowledge, self-control with self-control, perseverance perseverance, godliness; with godliness, brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness, love. For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither inactive nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whom these things are not present is blind, seeing only what is near, forgotten the cleansing from his old sins. Therefore, my brothers, with increasing diligence to make your calling and election; because by doing so, do not stumble at any time. For in this way it will be richly supplied the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

2 Peter 1.5-11

According to the text, we must be "fruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." That is, our lives should bear fruit naturally; fruits of repentance, goodness of fruits, forgiveness, meekness fruits, fruits of a new life, fruit of the Holy Spirit of God in our lives.

Each part of the body of Christ works for the growth of other parties. No one is useless in the Body of Christ, much less forgotten. Christ uses everyone, unless a part of that whole is sick, weak, lacking restoration.

The ideal is to be in the body it all together, cooperating, loving, forgiving, and doing the work that He, the Head, left us to do. The Body of Christ is a living organism that grows or falls ill. Paul is here guiding the church the way growth occurs healthily.

The human body metaphor serves to emphasize the unity (in love) should always be present in Igreja.⁠4 Every disunity is like an open wound in the body where viruses and foreign bacteria enter the body in it. All disagreement or disunity is an open door to Satan, evil spirits and evil, as well as being an open door to false teachers as well. A healthy body that protects from evil is a body that grows in love, telling the truth always in love.

It is vital that "grow up" in Christ if we want to be a valid expression of Jesus to the world today. And this growth can only be given through the love of each part of each member, each by his neighbor. Without love, we do not grow. Without love, you do not crescer.⁠5

Returning to the text to the Galatians, quoted above, we understand that there is, for the Christian, how to speak the truth without love. Doing this is immaturity, lack of preparation and sin. Such a person should not even speak because it is trying to correct a sin by committing another:

Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore him in a spirit of gentleness; and Take heed to thyself lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself up.

Gal 6.1-3

Speak without love is try to be more than the other. As Paul says, if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, himself is wrong. It is precisely because we recognize that we are no one without the grace of God we seek to speak with love to that (a) that hurt us.

The law of Christ, that is, the will of God, is also that we take each other to endure each other in love. And when someone finds your brother or sister in sin, that (a) look for a spirit of gentleness, keeping to the same mistake, acting at all thinking the other growth which, in fact, is the growth of itself .

Posted on October 28, 2014 by Wilson Porte