How to Speak the Truth in Love

As Christians, we are Jesus’ hands and feet. Jesus’ mouthpiece. The presentation of Jesus’ heart to the world. The uncompromising truth of God’s holiness walking lockstep with Jesus’ sacrifice and compassion for the world.

The church should be the most compassionate place on earth. And yet, the church has a problem. It’s made up of people like you and me. People who aren’t completely sanctified and holy yet. Out of our incompleteness and inadequacies, do we misrepresent Jesus to the world?

There’s one thing in particular where I think the church needs to grow up and become mature. Understanding people where they’re at. Not justifying or excusing where they’re at (like the media does). But understanding.

We need to understand sin is not the problem. Yes, it creates problems and devastation in our lives. But sin is just the outward, low hanging fruit everyone can see. Mistaking sin as the problem turns Christianity into sin management instead of inner transformation.

Understanding what’s really going on takes insight and discernment. The motivation causing our sin is the real problem – medicating the wounding and believing lies.

All sin is based on lies. Telling the world how bad their sin is just turns them off to Jesus because they see us hypocritically doing the same things. Instead, we should be telling them God’s truth, which contradicts the lies they’ve been taught.

If you’ve ever said, “I just don’t see how someone can _____,” you’ve just identified yourself (in that moment at least) as a pharisee. Doh! I know, that’s harsh. Guilty as charged, I’ve said this. Let’s go back to God and repent.

If we “just don’t see how someone can _____,” it means we don’t understand. Rather than condemning the person, let’s ask God for his heart for them. Because he does understand how they can do that thing. He understands the wounding of their heart. And if we as the church are going to be at all effective in ministering God’s healing to them, we need to understand also.

As Christians, we too often make one of two errors. Either we don’t speak the truth, or we don’t say it with love. The Apostle Paul says it best:

Let’s no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, let’s grow up to become in every respect the mature body Christ. (Ephesians 4:14-15, my paraphrase of the NIV)

If we as the church can learn to do these two things, in balance together, we’ll change the world.

(1) Learning to Speak Truth

Especially now, in this crazed cancel culture we find ourselves engulfed in, the world is acting out its spiritual infancy. Tossed back and forth by the waves of the latest media outrage, the world is blown here and there by the cunning and craftiness of dark forces in their deceitful scheming, who manipulate our emotions to secure their own power.

As Christians, we offer the world the truth of God. We truly are a city shining on a hill, a light in the darkness, shining like the stars in the heavens in a warped and crooked generation (Matthew 5:14, Philippians 2:15).

If we don’t speak the truth, no one will.

We are the ones with the word of life, the truth of God. We need to tell the world the truth they don’t want to hear but desperately need:

• God created the world. We did not make ourselves. Christians must tell the truth about creation, exposing the lie of evolution.
• Sex was created by God, for marriage between a man and a woman, as a beautiful thing to model our relationship with him, intimate and solely committed for life. (That’s why there’s no marriage in heaven, see Matthew 22:30, because we have the real thing.) Outside of heterosexual marriage, it’s a completely different picture, which is why it’s wrong. Christians must expose the lie of the sexual revolution, as well as the lies of the homosexual and transgender agendas.
• All life is sacred. Christians must expose the lie of the abortion agenda, a multi-billion dollar industry profiting off the desperation of women in crisis and the death of their children.
• God created all people, Jesus died for all people, and God wants his people to live in unity under his truth (John 17:20-23). Christians must expose the lies of racism, in all its forms and wherever it is found.

(Aside: I am not Catholic. But there is no Christian group on the planet that has stood for truth against the abortion and homosexual/transgender agendas like the Catholic church has. And they have paid a high price for it. The media hates them more than any other Christian group. To the degree our society still has a godly influence, it’s largely because we’re living in the plume of righteousness the Catholic church has stood for.)

It’s hard to stand for truth when people don’t want to hear it. They get mad and respond in anger, hatred, and ungodliness. What’s a Christian to do? That brings us to point #2.

(2) Learning to Love

Yes, we must stand for truth and oppose sinful behavior. But as Christians, we grow up in the mature body of Christ when we speak the truth in love. If we forget the “in love” part, we are still acting as infants, immature in our spirituality.

Our message against sin to the world can’t be, “Don’t sin because God hates sinners!” Unfortunately, some Christians scream this at the top of their lungs. And it’s just not true. God doesn’t hate sinners, he died for them out of love (Romans 5:8). God hates sin, because it’s self-destructive and it hurts the people he loves.

Our message of truth must be from a heart of compassion, not legalism. That’s why God so often gives people ministries to sinful lifestyles they’ve been set free from: (1), you have authority over what you’ve been set free from, but also, (2), you understand. Because you’ve been there and you’ve lived it.

But I believe we can still empathize with the heart-woundings of people, to a greater degree than we do now at least, even if we haven’t experienced it, by understanding and doing these three things:

1. Realize you don’t get it. If you haven’t experienced it, there is a degree to which you will never completely understand, because you don’t know how it feels. Acknowledge there’s something you’re missing, and you don’t know everything.
2. Ask the Holy Spirit for his heart, his empathy and compassion. Sympathy, just feeling sorry for someone, is worthless, because it’s degrading of the other person, putting them below you. Empathy, understanding how they feel, is everything. That’s where true, godly, compassion comes from.
3. Read their stories. Find a book from someone who’s either come through it or who works with people in recovery and healing. For example, if you “just don’t understand how someone can get an abortion” (which we hear all the time in churches), then read Forbidden Grief by Dr. Theresa Burke (not an affiliate link).

Your Turn

What do you think? How have you learned to speak truth? How have you learned to love? Have you swung to one side or the other? How did you find balance?

Or are you struggling with this? If so, kudos to you! It’s by continuing to struggle with these things that we move closer and closer to being like Jesus.

Please tell us your story and thoughts in the comments. And please share if this post would bless others.