Truth in Love #6
Posted on FaceBook Aug 11, 2020
HELLO, KINGDOM!
Truth in Love Part 6
We’ve covered Love and we’ve covered truth. Now it’s time to cover them together. We touched on it in Part 1, way back on June 18, as Jesus addressed the scribes and Pharisees concerning the adulteress. The world around us is in chaos. The pandemic has spawned hatred. Early on people were thinking of themselves and hoarding essentials at an incomprehensible level. Experts, leaders, people in general are pointing fingers at each other, trying to place blame.
Some pastors are defying government directives, claiming the government can’t tell the church what to do. Some church members are defying government directives, while others are at odds with their pastors who are honoring government directives regarding social distancing and wearing of masks or have shut their doors altogether. As if that weren’t enough, racial tensions have gone through the roof. Protests turn into riots. Properties are destroyed, lives are lost, countless people (participants, innocent bystanders, police, firefighters, etc.) are injured. And again, people are pointing fingers at one another, blaming all but themselves. AND, on top of all that, it’s an election year here in the US. Politicians are pointing fingers at one another, using the chaos to further their own agenda, holding people’s livelihood ransom. There’s a lot of finger pointing going on, in every direction, save one. Not many are pointing up.
One thing is glaringly absent in all this. Very few, if any, are offering solutions, compromise, or any form of effort to resolve any of the issues. Everyone appears bent on making their own pain felt and using that to brow beat everyone else. Nobody seems to have an answer. And there is no source of relief in sight. BUT THERE IS. Scriptures show us that Jesus is the Answer, the Solution, and the Source. Unfortunately, many Christians are distracted and caught up in the worldly issues. There are some Pastors, Christ-Centered servants of God, who are preaching Kingdom responses and solutions. Jesus gives us the two greatest commandments: to love God and to love our neighbor (Matthew 22:35-40, Mark 12:28-34, Luke 10:27). 1 John 4:20-21 says, “If someone says, ‘ I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.” Matthew 5:44 says, “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,”.
We are thus commanded to love all people, just as Christ loved the righteous and the sinner; He hated the sin. But the love is not quite the love of the Hippie movement of the 60’s and 70’s. Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:32, “And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.” In showing love to one another, we must speak reflecting that love, as Paul writes a few verses earlier (29), “let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” James tells us in James 3:1-12 that we must control our tongue, which is impossible for man, but not with God’s help. Earlier in Ephesians 4, Paul tells us to no longer be children but to speak in truth that we may grow up in Christ for the edifying of the community in love (Ephesians 4: 14-16).
Lastly Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:23-26: “But avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they generate strife. and a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.”
God may not have caused the pandemic to occur, but He may have allowed churches to be shuttered and stay-at-home orders to be issued so that we would use the isolation time to draw closer to Him, to develop a more personal relationship with Him. The closer we draw to Him the more Christ-like we become. Had more of us done that, the reactions may not have been as volatile when the Floyd incident occurred. As Christians, we must stop reacting of the world, but act as Kingdom minded Christians, speaking the truth (God’s Word) in love, with tenderness, not confrontational. We must rise up in One Voice to share God’s Word and Love!
Be Blessed!