Truth and Love
Yes, it’s Truth and Love, not Truth or Love. Yet often people choose one over the other. Truth without love is not genuine truth, and love without truth is not divine love. Truthfulness and love—both are attributes of God that cannot be separated.
Sadly, in this fallen world, we are not immune to the misguided tendency to witness a kind of “truth” without love or “love” without truth.
“Truth” without love can easily turn into what Martyn Lloyd-Jones called defective orthodoxy. Its hallmark is a zealousness for “truth” that delights in belittling others. And when an opportunity arises to strike, it seizes it without hesitation. The motive isn’t to help others know the truth that sets free, but to prove oneself more right than others. The Gospels are filled with accounts of such people (see Luke 15:29–30; 18:11–12). Even the church in Ephesus—served by Paul, Timothy, and John—was rebuked by the Lord for falling into this trap: able to test false apostles, yet abandoning their first love (Revelation 2:1–4).
On the other hand, love without the standard of truth can never be true divine love. God’s love, demonstrated through the sacrifice of His Son for the redemption of sinners, bears witness that He does not love apart from truth—whether truth as in truthfulness or righteousness. True freedom is impossible without truth (John 8:32). Cheap love always sells out this standard. It may appear loving, but in reality, it is a cowardly unwillingness to confront. These are the people-pleasers, playing it safe to gain protection and privileges from those they seek to please. This sycophantic ‘love’ is often a sign of fellowship with corrupt mafias!
Jonathan Edwards once developed the understanding of Christ as the Logos and the Holy Spirit as the flame of love. The Logos pertains to understanding—understanding of truth—while the Holy Spirit pertains to the warmth of affection, including love. In Trinitarian thought, the Logos is never without the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is never without the Logos. This means there is no understanding of truth without love, nor love without the understanding of truth.
Sometimes there is a kind of “understanding” without passion, or “passion” without right understanding. Quoting another theologian, Lloyd-Jones described this as either light without heat or heat without light—mere intellectual understanding without love and compassion, or fervent zeal, indiscriminate tolerance left and right, without any discernment of truth.
May the Lord have mercy on us, that we might become His servants, ignited by the flame of the Holy Spirit, to enter into the fullness of the knowledge of God’s truth in Christ.
Have a blessed weekend, everyone!