Speaking the Truth in Love

In Nomine Iesu
Ephesians 4:1-16
August 5, 2018
Proper 13B

Dear Saints of Our Savior~

When it comes to risk and danger, parents and children see things differently. Children—especially younger children—are kind of oblivious to risk and danger. They are blissfully unaware of all the ways that things can go bad in a hurry. Someone’s walking their pit bull down the street? Let’s go pet the doggie! Recent rains have turned the drainage ditch into a raging torrent? Let’s go right up to the edge for a closer look! Did that stranger just offer me candy? I think I’ve made a new friend!

This is why children need moms and dads. Parents possess the maturity that children lack by nature. Where risk and danger are concerned, parents are always calculating, always evaluating, always warning: hold my hand, wear your helmet, buckle your seat belt, stay away from strangers and strange dogs, and don’t eat that cookie until mom evaluates the allergens it contains.

At its core, today’s Epistle reading from Ephesians four is a call for Christian maturity. It’s an invitation to grow up—to stop living as mere children in the faith, but to step into a life of mature manhood and womanhood—to accurately assess danger and risk, and to carefully separate truth from error. This is what we are called to in our baptism. This is why our Lord gives us pastors. St. Paul’s expresses the hope and expectation that “we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ . . .”

St. Paul describes a Christian whose faith is living and growing—a Christian who walks the walk with maturity and conviction. The mature Christian lives each day in humility, gentleness and patience. In contrast to the immature Christian who can so easily be deceived, the mature Christian—the one who is growing up into the fullness of Christ—the mature Christian understands that his job description each day can be summarized in five simple words: speaking the truth in love. Those five words stand at the heart of what it means to live the Christian life.

How well do you speak the truth in love? By nature, we don’t know how to do it. In our culture today there are plenty of people speaking the truth in loveless ways. And there are plenty of people prattling on about love who have no concept of the truth. To speak the truth means, first of all, knowing what the truth is—the truth as God reveals it to us in the Scriptures. The truth has nothing to do with your feelings and everything to do with the Word of God. If you refuse to listen to the Scriptures—if you’re not hearing the Word of God—then the truth will always elude you. But with the Word of God, Jesus said, “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

Our culture is increasingly rejecting God’s truth in all sorts of ways. God’s truth about human life is that every life is precious and valuable—including the lives of the pre-born who are being knit together by God in their mothers’ wombs. But many reject God’s truth about human life and claim for themselves the so-called “right” to murder the pre-born through the silent massacre of abortion. Another truth from God is that sex and marriage belong together. God’s gift of sex is meant only to find expression within the marriage relationship—between a husband and wife. But God’s truth about sex is routinely rejected by those who allow their feelings to be their guide. God’s gift of marriage was also instituted as the lifelong union of one man and one woman—one male and one female. But even that basic, biological truth has now been rejected by increasing numbers of influential people.

But as Christians who aim to speak the truth in love, we need to be reminded that God’s truth does not change. God’s truth isn’t something we decide for ourselves. It doesn’t change when our culture changes. It doesn’t change even when our feelings tell us something different. Truth doesn’t evolve into something different. The truth comes from God. And God’s truth is that murder—including abortion—is wrong, that sexual relationships outside of marriage are wrong, that same-sex marriage is a rejection of God and His good gifts.

Beloved in the Lord, that’s the truth. God gives us His truth because He loves us and wants the best for us. Now, to know the truth and to defend the truth is a very good thing—but it’s not the only thing. We are called to speak the truth in love. And what a world of difference those two words make. If we didn’t have to speak the truth in love then our predicament might be like that of a character in a movie I saw several years ago. This man was forced to tell the truth at all times. As a lawyer arguing a court case, he found that speaking the truth didn’t always go over too well with the judge, the jury, or his client. He told his boss what he really thought of him in very truthful—very unflattering—terms. He told it like it was. He told the unvarnished, unfiltered, unedited truth to anybody and everybody.

But it cannot be that way for us. We are to speak the truth in love. Speaking the truth in love means saying things that would be easier left unsaid—but saying them anyway because only God’s truth has the power to set us free from sin and death. Speaking the truth in love means saying things that would be easier left unsaid—but saying them anyway because we can see the danger to which a brother or sister has been blinded. Speaking the truth can sometimes be easily done. But speaking the truth in love is always difficult. It is rarely appreciated—rarely applauded. Speaking the truth in love might put you on the receiving end of hatred or insults or anger or something worse.

But the alternative is to say nothing—to protect yourself and keep quiet. Now, I think there are some occasions when it’s okay to stay silent. There are some settings where the truth cannot be heard—where speaking the truth in love would probably be counter-productive. But if I don’t speak the truth in love to my family members—if I refuse to speak the truth in love to my church family here at Our Savior—if I keep quiet while a loved one dangles dangerously in spiritual peril, then I have done a loveless thing. It’s a sin of omission—a sin of which we’ve all been guilty.

But you have a Savior--a Savior who always spoke the truth in love. And He did it for you—as your substitute. When Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), He spoke the truth in love. And the truth was that this woman was leading a life of sin. Jesus told her to go and call her husband. When she replied that she had no husband, Jesus spoke the truth: “You are right that you have no husband. The fact is you have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband.” Yet what Jesus said, He said in love with gentleness. Her sin needed to be confronted so that she could know how much she needed the full and free forgiveness of Jesus.

Jesus always spoke the truth in love. Even on trial—when speaking the truth meant that His hands and feet would be impaled to a cross—that He would be executed as your sacred substitute. And because of the truth He spoke—because of the death He died—you now have life in Him. For every time you’ve failed to speak the truth in love, there is forgiveness for you. The doors of heaven are open for you and all believers.

Learning how to speak the truth in love begins here in the Divine Service. This is where we hear and speak the truth—in the confession of sins, in the absolution, as we confess the Creed, as we hear God’s Word preached and proclaimed and sung. This is the place where—by God’s grace—we learn to speak the truth in love, as our merciful God speaks the truth in love to us.

It’s what happens here that allows us to grow up and mature as children of God. The gifts of Jesus we receive here lead us to grow in faith and good works. We grow up in our ability to speak the truth in love to one another. Fed and nourished here in the Divine Service, we grow and mature so as to no longer be children tossed to and fro . . . and carried about by every wind of doctrine. But speaking the truth in love, we will in every way grow into Him who is the head, Christ Jesus our Lord.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.