Balancing Truth and Love the Christian Way

Truth and love intuitively go together, especially when seen through a Christian lense. In 1 John  4:8, we learn that our God is a God of love whilst in John 14:6, we are taught that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. We are called to abide in truth, and at the same time to abound in love. However, application is always hard. Truth and love do not always go as seamlessly together as  they would intuitively seem to. Oftentimes, we either unconsciously uphold one while compromising the other, or we consciously struggle to find that perfect balance between the two. 

Well, so did the apostle John. John was not always the ‘apostle of love’ we’ve come to identify him as. Though he was often with Jesus, who was the epitome of truth and love, he failed time and again to live up to Jesus’ standards of truth and love. This was the man who wanted to rain fire down from heaven on Samaritans who didn’t welcome Jesus while He was on His way to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem. John was self-centered, intolerant, insensitive, quick to judge and incapable of genuine love. Just when all seemed hopeless, John learned his greatest lesson from Jesus, and it was a lesson that changed him forever. In the midst of arguing with James and Peter about who was the greatest, Jesus rebuked them and made it unequivocally clear that, "If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all, and servant of all” (Mark 9:35 NASB). In concrete terms, Jesus was saying that instead of arguing or competing with one another and trying to exalt themselves, they needed to become servants of others. John’s subsequent admission to Jesus that they tried to stop some people who were casting out demons in Jesus’ name, but were not His followers demonstrates he had understood the lesson. To this, Jesus said, “He who is not against us is for us (Mark 9:40 NASB). 

With John’s last vestige of ego gone, so was the biggest obstacle to God’s work in his life. His transformation was tremendous and his lessons for us still echo today:

• Truth and Love are inseparable – We must walk in truth but also always remember that there is no greater truth than love

• Our zeal for truth must always be in constant balance with our love for one another

• Our love for one another especially those dearest to us should never be such that it compromises the truth

Like John, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that as believers, we’ve made it and we get it already. Yes, we are complete in Christ but we remain “unfinished” in the sense that God is still continually working in us to complete the good work He began. Our end goal should be transformation, even if it involves bruised egos, painful rebukes and long journeys. Like John, we are to be transformed into Christ-likeness – Christ who was both truth and love. As for love and truth, let us all live up to what is expected of us Christians, which is to hold fast to the truth while allowing Christ’s love to shine through us.