“… Whom I love in the truth; and not I only, but also all they that have known the truth; For the truth’s sake, which dwelleth in us, and shall be with us forever.”
2 John 1-2
Although John talks about love more than any other writer in Scripture, he also emphasizes truth more than any other writer — using the word ‘truth’ twenty times in his Gospel, nine times in 1 John, five times in these opening verses of 1 John, and five more times in 3 John.
I find it interesting that it was the apostle of love whom the Lord tapped on the shoulder to also be the one who stressed truth. When you talk about love, it’s very easy to get mushy, to become sentimental, to begin to say, ‘I’ll just love that person rather than be honest with him.’ Such is not the case with John.
And his example is a needful one in a day when the economy has eclipsed integrity as our nation’s top priority, in an age where what is true for one person may or may not be true for another, in a culture which embraces Pilate’s question, ‘What is truth?’ (John 18:38), rather than Jesus’ declaration, ‘I am the truth,’ (John 14:6).
While I don’t want to be one who causes people to batten down the hatches whenever they see me coming, neither do I want to let the Church or my kids walk in ways I know will be destructive.
Our relationships with our kids, our spouses, our sisters, and our brothers in the Lord cannot survive without truth. That’s why Paul says we are to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), for you can’t truly have one without the other.
By His Spirit,
Pastor Bill