It's the simple things that can trip us up. I used to work a part-time job installing and servicing commercial telephone systems. On more than one occasion my search for a complicated problem overshadowed an obvious simple problem. While looking for an electronic problem with a circuit board, I failed to consider a problem as simple as an unplugged line cord.
The simple issues in the Christian life can easily trip us up too. Anyone with a marginal understanding of the Bible knows that Christians are called to be loving, but do we really understand what that means?
"Now I ask you, lady, not as though I were writing to you a new commandment, but the one which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it ." (2 John 5-6)
Love is grounded in truth. Certainly love expresses itself emotionally but the truest indication of real love is obedience to the commandments of Christ. Love is defined as an obedient walk.
Not only is love grounded in faithfulness to the commandments of Christ, it is also solidly based upon the person of Christ. Immediately following a true definition of love, the Apostle John warns against a distortion of the truth about the Christ:
"For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh This is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward. Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. " (2 John 7-9)
The connection seems clear: genuine love is characterized by an obedient lifestyle to the commandments of Christ, based upon a true understanding of the Christ. To distort the truth about Christ is to erode the very foundation upon which love is built.
While truth and love are designed to be inseparable, there all too often is tension between the two. Those who hold rigidly to truth can easily be critical, judgmental and unloving while those who place a priority on love can easily be accepting of both truth and untruth. Love is designed to be grounded in truth, not an enemy of it.
Perhaps the important lesson and application for us today is that fostering a love for truth should cause us to "speak the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15). To love based on truth is to love enough to share truth.
May our love be firmly grounded in truth and may that foundation of truth produce a compassionate love that burdens us for truth in the lives of others.
Steve
The simple issues in the Christian life can easily trip us up too. Anyone with a marginal understanding of the Bible knows that Christians are called to be loving, but do we really understand what that means?
"Now I ask you, lady, not as though I were writing to you a new commandment, but the one which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it ." (2 John 5-6)
Love is grounded in truth. Certainly love expresses itself emotionally but the truest indication of real love is obedience to the commandments of Christ. Love is defined as an obedient walk.
Not only is love grounded in faithfulness to the commandments of Christ, it is also solidly based upon the person of Christ. Immediately following a true definition of love, the Apostle John warns against a distortion of the truth about the Christ:
"For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh This is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward. Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. " (2 John 7-9)
The connection seems clear: genuine love is characterized by an obedient lifestyle to the commandments of Christ, based upon a true understanding of the Christ. To distort the truth about Christ is to erode the very foundation upon which love is built.
While truth and love are designed to be inseparable, there all too often is tension between the two. Those who hold rigidly to truth can easily be critical, judgmental and unloving while those who place a priority on love can easily be accepting of both truth and untruth. Love is designed to be grounded in truth, not an enemy of it.
Perhaps the important lesson and application for us today is that fostering a love for truth should cause us to "speak the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15). To love based on truth is to love enough to share truth.
May our love be firmly grounded in truth and may that foundation of truth produce a compassionate love that burdens us for truth in the lives of others.
Steve
posted by steve @ 7:05 AM
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