Speaking the Truth in Love

 Read Ephesians 4

 

The Redbuds are budding, the sun is shining more each day, and it’s baseball season.  What more could we want?  How about some counsel for the Apostle Paul.

 

Let’s look at some words that you know, but let’s understand them fully.  What words?

 

Speaking the truth in love.

 

These words and this thought are good thoughts and perhaps should be applied beyond their original context, but let’s understand this context first.

Paul writes to the church in Ephesus.  He was not liked much in the community as his teaching cut into the business and profits of the makers of idols.  Ephesus had a fantastic temple to the goddess Diana or as she was known in Greek, Artemis.

 

Paul’s preaching here on his second and third missionary journeys accomplished much for the Lord but stirred up those who did not believe and were losing business when their false gods were labeled as false gods.

 

So, Paul is writing to a church that he knows well from whatever abode he has as a prisoner in Rome.  Paul begins encouraging this church by reminding them how blessed they are in Christ.

 

In Christ we have been given every spiritual blessing.

 

We are chosen to be holy and blameless.

 

In Christ we are God’s adopted children.

 

In his blood we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins.

Our hope is in him.

 

We are sealed by him in the Holy Spirit.  We are his.

 

We are made alive in Christ.

 

We are raised up with Christ into the heavenly realm.

 

In Christ, we are God’s handiwork—his workmanship—prepared in advance to do good things.

 

We are joined together in Christ.

 

In him, Jew and Gentile alike become one body and share his promises.

In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.

 

We are called to be strong in him and in his mighty power.

 

Paul is writing to a church that he knows well.  He knows their struggles and the ungodly surroundings in which he planted this church.  So he does his best to remind them of the blessings that they have received in Christ Jesus.

 

But, he can’t leave them there.  There is counsel to follow on how to live being so blessed in an environment that opposes you.  So before the counsel begins, Paul includes a prayer.

 

 For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being,  so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith… Amen.

 

Paul precedes his counsel with prayer, but here comes the counsel. The first challenge is very general.  Live a life worthy of the calling that you have received.

 

Then he adds some specifics.  Be humble, gentle, patient, and bear with one another.  Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit.

 

We are people of one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father who is all, and through all, and in all.

 

Don’t you get it?  We are one family—God’s family—in Christ.  We have different gifts but we are one.  Elsewhere Paul discussed gifts in the body and how one part of the body can’t say it’s better than another or that another is not needed.

 

But as he writes to the Ephesians, unity in the body is central to his message.  And so we come to this very familiar passage.

 

Then we will 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, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.  From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

 

Speaking the truth in love is about our own growth.  We talked before about speaking the truth to each other.  That is essential to the Christian life.  It is essential to following Jesus, but Jesus said that we who follow him will be known by our love.

 

So we who have professed Jesus as Lord must speak the truth in a spirit of love.  We don’t sugar coat anything but we are not motivated by anything but love.

 

Hey, Tom, you’ve been picking your clothes out by yourself lately haven’t you?

 

I guess that was in a spirit of love, or not.

 

We must speak the truth to each other and do it in a spirit of love.  What this means is that we can speak truthfully to each other even with subjects that are difficult to talk about.  We can do this because we are becoming mature in Christ.

 

It’s easy to say, you had better quit smoking.  Those things will kill you.  That’s a true statement but there’s not much love attached.  Perhaps we first address how important the person is to us and that we don’t want to lose them.

 

I am sometimes referred to as the mean guy when a family with four unemployed adults in the household comes to see me about helping with the water bill.  Sometimes we help and sometimes we don’t but once I say that somebody in the house needs to get a job, then I get labeled the mean guy.

Sometimes, I tell people that they don’t need the most modern smartphone when they can’t pay their electric bill or make their $700 a month car payment.  Maybe, you should trade down until you get an income that will support these things.

 

People start looking for the exit from my office and the church building quickly when I bring up the word budget.  But how can we truly practice love if we won’t address the obvious in people’s situations?

 

Among Christians, we must not permit an Elephant in the Room.  We can’t say we are going to help and ignore the problems.  Speaking the truth in love is about our maturity.  We can talk about real things openly and truthfully in a spirit of love.

 

When we can speak the truth with a spirit of love, we know that we are growing in his grace.  When we speak the truth without the spirit of love, we are often condescending or mean.

 

Too often we back off from the truth because we do not want to be accused of being judgmental, but we must understand that the judgment with which we are counseled to abstain is a condemning judgment.  We are being equipped to jump into the middle of difficult issues and problems.  We can really sort things out instead of dancing around issues out of fear.  Fear gets no purchase when we speak the truth in love.

 

Speaking the truth in love is a measure of how far we have come.

 

Paul continues the chapter with not living in our old ways, taking off the old self, and putting on the new self.  It’s all good counsel for all of us, but it’s hard to follow.  One indicator of whether we are living as this new creation is whether we can speak the truth in love.

 

If we haven’t gotten there already, let’s work on speaking the truth in love.  It’s about our growth and maturity in the body of Christ.

 

Now, you won’t find this in this letter, or maybe anywhere else, but consider this provocation.  If we speak the truth to one another as we are counseled to do and if we speak the truth in love, then we had better be prepared to hear the truth.  We don’t speak the truth in condemnation but in love, but we must be ready to hear the truth and let the Spirit and God’s holy word work on us after we have listened to those speaking to us in love.

 

We need to hear the truth in love from other believers and from God’s holy word.  We must allow God’s word to judge the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts.

Amen.