October 27, 2024 Ephesians 4 Truth in Love

“TRUTHING IN LOVE” Ephesians 4:15-16 Last week Paul defined what “Maturity” looks like & in verse 15 he now implores, “we must grow”. How does a body of believers grow into maturity? We must “speak the truth in love.” TRUTH: Greek alethia, is “what is in accordance with what really happened” = truth. “really real” That there is in fact one singular perfect reality, & it belongs to God. That “truth”, “the way things really are” is what Jesus reveals to us & what Jesus is. Jesus describes His words as “spirit & life” (John 6:63) When He broke onto the scene & began teaching, His words invaded our “real world” with a reality that was deeper & more real than had ever been known. When people would hear Him, they would generally conclude that they would be fools to disregard Him. In speaking of Him they used phrases such as “the Prince of Life”, “the Lord of Glory”, “abundant life”, “the inexhaustible riches of Christ.” “Whoever hears these words of mine & does them is like those intelligent people who build their houses upon rock” standing firm against every pressure of life (Matt. 7:24-25). Dallas Willard challenges us by saying, “How life-giving it would be if our understanding of the gospel allowed us simply to reply, “I will do them! I will find out how. I will devote my life to it! This is the best life strategy I ever heard of!” & go off to our fellowship & its teachers, into our daily life, “to learn how to live in his kingdom as Jesus indicated was best” (Willard, Divine Conspiracy). Jesus is Truth. TRUTHING: In the Greek, there is no reference to speech in this phrase that is often translated “speaking the truth”. The best translation is “truthing.” Which is way larger & much deeper than just speaking. It’s aligning the entirety of life up with what Jesus reveals to be “really real” & acknowledging Jesus is the only one who truly knows what is most real & committing ourselves to lining our thoughts up with His thoughts, our words with His Words, our actions with His actions - even when it doesn’t make sense to us; when the world rails against it. Truthing is “all of life, in Christ.” “Truthing” can be tricky. Paul is talking about how the “body of Christ” (the church) is to relate to one another. We must commit to operating in “the truth”, yet “raw, unseasoned truth” can hit like a sledgehammer or strike like a bolt of lightning & miss its intended mark. Once Jesus was traveling with his disciples & a Samaritan village refused to receive Him, so in righteous indignation, James & John asked Jesus if they should call down fire from heaven to consume them? This shows why Jesus nicknamed them “The Sons of Thunder”. They were filled to the brim with the zeal of truth but lacked a certain something. Jesus rebuked them. John grew incredibly in that thing that he was missing in his early years & as maturity settled into place in his life, he became known as the Apostle of Love -highlighting the theme of love in his gospel & epistles. He certainly did not lose his zeal for truth, but he learned to keep it wedded to a proper Christ-like love. This brings us back to Paul who holds those two together in wonderful harmony. “TRUTHING IN LOVE” is the phrase Paul uses. “Truth” & “Love” are essential & inseparable. Last week we asked, “how do we ‘not’ be babies & toddlers in a boat on a raging sea, tossed to & fro, blown about by every wind of doctrine?” “we must pursue & operate in that which is true according to the whole counsel of scripture.” How do we do this in such a way as not to become sledgehammer wielding righteous crusaders ready to “call down fire from heaven” as the young “Sons of Thunder” attempted to do? It’s that our “truthing” must happen “in love.” Love is what both wraps & permeates that which is true. There is a proper tension to this that “The Body” must work on as it looks to the Head for help. Truth becomes hard if not softened by Love. Love becomes soft if not strengthened by Truth. This sounds hard. Isn’t there an “easy way?” Nope. Growing to “full maturity” is a long, slow process of “truthing in love” which we can do because Jesus has provided for it. By giving us His Spirit. "The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you & will be in you" (John 14:17). "But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come" (John 16:13). Jesus calls His Holy Spirit “The Spirit of Truth”, who will guide us. “Truthing in Love, we must grow up, in every way, into Him who is The Head, into Christ as we’re guided by The Spirit (of Truth whose first fruit is Love).”