faith for faith

What is speaking the truth in love? It is a question that I seem to ask to myself incessantly, for there are many who take offense to many of the things that I write and speak, and there are many who claim that I do not write and speak in love. It is a question that judges me whenever I hear of the offenses and the hostilities that some of my writings raise, and it is one that causes to me to examine every topic that I address and every word that I use to address them. It is a question that haunts my soul and my very purpose for existence, and one that causes me to question the very path that I have walked thus far. And being such a reoccurring question, I have addressed it before in my soul and in my writings and will likely address it for the rest of my life.

What then is speaking the truth in love? If you were to take a random survey of people in our country, you would likely receive a host of different answers. If you were to ask the question of a person of a postmodern persuasion, you would likely get an answer similar to, “Speaking the truth in love is not speaking at all, for truth is relative to the individual, and to force one’s opinion of truth upon another is offensive and intolerant and therefore unloving.” If you were to ask it of another, you might get the answer, “Speaking the truth in love is sharing what is true in such a way that it presents one’s view of truth as an opinion thereby making compliance to it optional and thus making it inoffensive.” If you were to ask it of one who professes to be a Christian, you might get an answer like, “Speaking the truth in love is sharing the truth of God’s Word in a way that is not judgmental and that withholds matters that might offend a person and turn them away from a church or the Faith.”

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Having just completed my one-hundredth post here at blog.xpistou.com, I thought that it might do well for me to revisit my reasons for writing on this site day after day. I have written a post prior to this one entitled, “Why I Write,” and hence the name of this present post, “Why I Write Reborn.” Though I did address the same question in said prior post, it was by no mean exhaustive nor adequate. I hope that this post will better answer the question, Why do I write?

I Write To Glorify God
If you were to press me and ask what verse in all of Scripture drives my life day in and day out, I would tell you 1 Corinthians 10:31. In this well known verse, the apostle Paul writes, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all the glory of God.” In it, Paul uses the most common activities of men, viz. eating and drinking, to demonstrate that every action that we take, no matter how minute or how menial, should be an act of worship to God.

My goal, therefore, is that this blog will be an act of worship to God. I know very well that, because I am a sinful man, this site falls well short of this goal often, but nevertheless God’s glory is the bar that I set. This means by necessity that I write some things that I might should not have written and that I am inaccurate and wrong in some of the statements that I make, and for these things I must constantly turn to God by repentance. Though I do falter often in this regard, I continue to write because I am compelled to do so.

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Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God (Matt. 5:9).

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword (Matt. 10:34).

Believe it or not, I actually do think before I put my pen to paper. I think that people might actually read what I write and that they might actually have some sort of reaction to it. I do think that when I write, I write, to the best of my understanding, what is true according to Scripture and think that truth will set people free when it is brought forth in the power of the Spirit (cf. John 8). And I admittedly default to a Lutheran stance on the subjects of truth and peace and say just as Luther himself said, “Peace if possible; truth at all costs.”

But I do wrestle mightily with the desire for peace. I genuinely believe that the Church of Christ is supposed to be a united body with Christ as her head, and it grieves me deeply to see the innumerable divisions in her. I wonder why these divisions exist and why a Universal and United church has never existed apart from compulsion by fear.

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At certain times, there are a few things that I like to go to for encouragement when things that I say or write in truth and love are not received as truth or as in love. One is 1 Peter 4:12-19; another is Nobody Loves Me by Derek Webb. Luke 4:24 is also a great encouragement as is the entire life of Christ as revealed in the Gospels. Being that I could not write a post on the subject as well as Derek Webb composed a song on it, I will step aside and let the better speak:

Well I can always tell a liar, and I always know a thief
Well I know I’m like my family, because brother I’m the chief
Well I’m a dangerous crusader cause I need to tell the truth
So I’m turning over tables in my own living room

But I might nail indictments up on every door in town
Cause its not right or safe to let your conscience down
So I don’t care if

Nobody loves me
Nobody loves me
Nobody loves me…but You

Cause the truth is never sexy, so it’s not an easy sell
You can dress her like the culture, she’ll shock ‘em just as well

And she don’t need an apology for being who she is
And she don’t need your help making enemies
So I don’t care if…

So I’ll do whatever it takes
To fit us into this wedding gown
I’ll use words that rattle your nerves
words like ‘sin’ and ‘faith alone’ now…

Nobody loves me
Nobody loves me
Nobody loves me…but You.

~Nobody Loves Me by Derek Webb

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love (Ephesians 4:15,16).

In a society where tolerance is a virtue and offending a person is a crime, telling the truth at times can be tough. And, like it or not, our society’s “morality” has influenced the church’s reaction to the truth. How can we know this? Take this passage from Ephesians 4, for example. Ninety-nine percent of the time when this verse is quoted it is quoted because someone ruffled someone else’s feathers. The expression, “in love,” is taken to mean, “without offense,” in spite of the teachings of this passage. Knowing this passage and understanding its implications are essential to understanding how we are to love one another in the Church.

1. Understand the Goal of the Truth
Paul’s instruction to speak the truth in love is not a call to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. The instruction has a very particular end, namely, to grow up the Church in every way into Christ who is the head. In other words, the instruction does not have an individual objective but a corporate one–unity of the Church under the Lordship of Christ. Therefore, our objective for speaking the truth in love should always be Church-centered. The reverse is true as well; if we are Church-centered people, we should speak the truth in love.

2. Dare to Speak the Truth
Like a physician who would be deemed negligent and hateful for withholding a bitter cure for a terminal disease from an infected person, so should we be deemed negligent and hateful when we refuse to speak the truth. The only remedy that we possess for the heterodoxy and sacrilege that has infiltrated our churches is to persistently apply the truth of God’s Word. We must dare to speak the truth, because when we do, we will be singled out dissenters and as haters of the unity of the Church. People will talk behind our backs, and people who we once thought were our friends will turn against us. But we must persist, because unity that is based upon falsehood and heterodoxy is a not unity from Christ, but it is the appearance of unity from the devil.

3. Dare to Love
Every instance of speaking the truth should be imbued with love. If we do not weep for those to whom we speak the truth, we have no business speaking it. The truth is never a tool for personal gain, and it is never ended by an “I told you so.” Before we ever open our mouths, we need to make sure that, one, our ultimate goal is the sanctification of the Church and, two, that we actually know the truth. These two things coupled with the power of the Holy Spirit are sufficient to cure all the ailments of the Church.