1Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. 2Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. 3Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. 4For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future.
5There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
6one God and Father of all,
who is over all, in all, and living through all.
11Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
14Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. 15Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.
25So stop telling lies. Let us tell our neighbors the truth, for we are all parts of the same body. 26And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.”d Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry,
(Ephesians 4:1-6; 11-16; 25-26)
29Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them.
30And do not bring sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, he has identified you as his own,e guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption.
31Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. 32Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.
1Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children. 2Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved usa and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.
(Ephesians 4:29-5:2)
Pastor John Townley, Leader of the Free Methodist Church UK, came to bring us our message this week, titled “Love-Driven Truth”. It was a word of encouragement for our church, because the best love and the greatest truth all come through a relationship with Jesus.
The Apostle John, in his biography of Jesus, described Jesus as being “full of grace and truth”. We need to be people of love and people of truth as Christians.
We are all painting pictures with our tongues by the words we speak. Some people, such as writers and comedians, make a living out of their words because they paint articulate poetic pictures with their tongues. Stand-up comedy, like that of Michael McIntyre and Peter Kay, is laughter-driven truth. In that context, their exaggerations are not a problem, because they skew the picture of reality for laughs and paint a picture using poetic licence.
In real life, however, we should not paint a false picture, because false truths can be hurtful to those around us.
And when it comes to speaking the truth, we must always ensure to speak the truth to one another in love.
When we detach love from truth, we end up with a lesser love, an incomplete love. In society today, love is affirmation. It affirms people in their sin.
Affirmation has a place in the toolkit of love; it is like a pump, good at inflating, but useless at mending. But before inflation, a flat tyre needs other tools like sandpaper and a patch to fix it.
God wants love and truth to be coupled together, for the health of our friendships, relationships and marriages. It’s at the heart of healthy relationships. When absent, we are left short-changed.
In society today, it’s fashionable to self-identify as a gender that hasn’t been gifted by God. Self-identification is wrong when it doesn’t comport with objective biological sex. If we tolerate self-identification that doesn’t match the truth, we aren’t being loving. People who feel something that isn’t the reality need pastoral care. Pastoral care doesn’t dictate the truth, but the truth of God dictates pastoral care.
We end up doing what’s right in our own eyes when we cast off God’s Truth. Tolerance doesn’t become a fruit of a tolerant society, but a tolerant society breeds intolerance against God’s Truth. We end up with people hating Christians because of belief in an absolute truth, an eternal hope, the eternal unchanging Truth of God. God is absolute Truth and He is the only hope for a unified society.
Gods way is higher than mere tolerance, it’s a self-sacrificial love, with everyone created in the Image of God, with a value. It acknowledges that we are all sinners in need of God’s forgiveness. We don’t force people into our faith, but instead we evangelise with love, both spoken words and actions.
When explaining God’s Word to people in a pastoral setting and calling out sin in a gentle, loving manner, this can be life-transforming. In contrast, exposing certain sins in public has the appearance of selfish pride. It’s far better to speak sensitive truth when a friendship is built with a person:
6Wounds from a sincere friend
are better than many kisses from an enemy.
(Proverbs 27:6)
Friends love each other enough to point out blind spots; it brings transformation and wholeness in life. Love is kind, and so weighs its words carefully. It doesn’t condemn, but confronts in a beautiful way.
For example, if you need the dishwasher to be emptied, you do not want to get in somebody’s face and shout “the dishwasher needs emptying”.
Instead, you could cook someone a meal and politely ask for assistance with the dishwasher whilst cooking. Love is an action, a verb.
Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy. In society today, this message is so important. Love-driven truth is attractive, yet truth-driven truth with an absence of love is repugnant.
Love-driven truth is counter-cultural. Most people don’t (and can’t) do it these days. Displaying love-driven truth is a sign of our maturity as believers in Christ.
Do you need Jesus? Without Jesus, we are messed up. If we measure ourselves by own standards, we don’t even make it! When we measure ourselves by God’s standards, we fall short even more.
9But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.
(1 John 1:9)
If we admit we are messed up, there is forgiveness for us.
Living at peace with yourself is the most important thing because you take yourself wherever you go. Only peace with God can provide true inner peace.