Speaking the Truth in Love
By Pastor Matt Black
25
November 2007
Lord's Day morning
Ephesians
4:15
Introduction: This morning I’m going to give to you the key to a deeper walk with Christ. This key is very simple. Truth may be hard to live, but it is easy to understand. And this key is found in Ephesians 4. Let’s stand as we read this God breathed key to growing in Christ. In these verses we find that a deep, satisfying walk with Christ is very basic. Saturate yourself with truth surrounded by a deep love for God, and you will always come out with satisfying spiritual growth with Christ as the Head of your life. Truth + Love = Growth. And we’ve got to hold tightly to this simple principle, because there are many enemies of the truth waiting to corrupt your minds “from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3). They want to add all kinds of things to spiritual growth, but truly it is so very simple. Ground your self in the Truth + add the Love of God and that always = Growth.
That is exactly what we find in Ephesians 4:14-15. Let’s read these verses: “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; 15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ”.
[Prayer for guidance]
The Goal is Growth in Christ!
I. Let me Introduce this goal of Growing in Christ.
Here we come to this exciting goal for your life. It’s exciting because it is possible. You can be established in Christ, “grow[ing] up into him in all things”, held up by truth and love as you are one with Him. You’ve got to decide here and now that your spiritual childhood is over. Are you tired of spiritual instability in your life? You can do away with it right now. Don’t wait another moment.
God has given verbal gifting to the evangelists and pastors in the churches in order to fully equip the saints. As saints grow, they will serve. They will evangelize and edify. They want to see people become like Christ. They want to see lost people become baby Christians, and they want to see baby Christians become established in Christ. As verse 13 says, we want to see “the fulness of Christ” in our lives, and we want to do all we can to see Christ formed in one another.
Before we Paul tells us how to grow, he gives us a warning in verse 14. And here it is. He says “be no more children”. Children tie their walk with God to men. False teachers have themselves as the focal point of their ministry, but true teachers have God alone as the focal point of the ministry. You will not establish your relationship with God by looking to men.
A. The quickest way to spiritual disillusionment is by founding your life on a man. Don’t get me wrong. God uses men. But you are not ultimately to trust in a man. If a man is constantly pointing to God and not to himself, then he is trustworthy. You see, there are two things that are absolute universals: men will always fail you, and God will never fail you. So don’t found your life on men.
Life is full of disappointment and some heart break when we look upon the world of men. This morning let us be thinking of Jesus' tears. How he wept over Jerusalem and at the death scene of Lazarus. The great God, who can governor ALL, wept!! Men fail, men are expendable, and all men will come to an end.
Don’t found your life on men or you’ll be tossed here and there. That’s what happens to spiritual children.
Watch out for men who claim to know the Bible, but use trickery or entertainment to build a crowd. Don’t be like children and buy into that!
· Children are gullible.
· They are easily manipulated.
· They are easily moved.
Be Bereans! Walk circumspectly! Be mature, and study your Bibles. “Let God be true and every man a liar” (Romans 3:4). Listen, don’t you want the presence of God this morning? Found your life on God alone.
B. The quickest way to spiritual depth is by founding your life on the Word of God. Sound doctrine is essential to growth. Instead of being like a child controlled by the latest new teaching, or the latest new so-called Christian guru, tossed about whenever your life changes or the theological fashions change, or when the latest guru best selling Christian book promises to solve all your problems—Instead of depending on the shifting “sleight of men”, you need to found your life on the God of truth. That is what verse 15 says. As you already well know, truth never changes.
So here’s the goal again. We are to “grow up into Christ in all things” and in this Christ is to be the Master, the Lord, the “head” over our lives. That is the goal: union with Christ resulting in your life being directed by Christ.
I want that! But how do we get there?
II. Let’s look at the Path to the Goal of Growing up into Christ as our head. I want a closer union, and I want Christ to direct every aspect of my life. How do I get there?
There are two pilliars, or two legs that you cannot separate. Just as you walk with two legs, and one depends on the other, so there are two legs to your sanctification. God calls you to be holy as He is holy, but two things are mentioned in this verse to have it: Truth and Love. Let’s look at truth first.
The word “speaking the truth” is one word in the phrase the Holy Spirit wrote. Jesus said I am the alethia, the truth. This is the same word, but it is a verb. We are to be truthing in love. The very life of Jesus is to be flowing through our life and our lips. We are to be truthing in love.
If Christ has more control over your life, then you are walking in the truth.
Illustration: Contact Lenses—The other day I went to my second office at the Eye Doctor’s in Oak Lawn, and the nurse put my new contact lenses in….
Now if you don’t have Jesus Christ as your Saviour, your vision is all messed up. You can’t see straight. The Bible says you are blind and dead in trespasses and sins.
But if you know Christ, then you know truth because Jesus Christ is the Personification of truth.
1. The Personification of Truth: Jesus Christ IS the truth. He did not say, “I am the Way, the Opinion, and the Life”. No, he said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” If you want to know truth, you’ve got to know Jesus.
Some teachers teach the truth, some seek the truth. Others find the truth. But Jesus is the Truth. So if you are to find truth, you will not find outside of Jesus Christ. The Bible is the written revelation of Jesus Christ. This book is the only way you will know Christ.
And it is not that you know Christ in a superficial way. Many people in hell will have known Christ superficially. Christ says concerning the Day of Judgment: “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? 23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:22-23).
The old children’s song says it best, “If you’re saved and you know it, then your life will surely show it!”
2. The Simplicity of Truth. The mark of a true Christians is that he speaks the simple, unvarnished truth. We don’t need to trick and scheme. We don’t use exaggeration, deceit, white lies, or deception. “Christians are to speak the simple truth, and nothing but the truth. Every statement which they make should be unvarnished truth; every promise which they make should be true; every representation which they make of the sentiments of others should be simple truth. Truth is the representation of things as they are; and there is no virtue that is more valuable in a Christian than the love of simple truth” [Comments from Barnes notes on Ephesians 4:15].
3. The Incarnation of Truth: John 1:1 and 3 tell us that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…all things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made” and verse 14 tells us that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,)full of grace and truth.” Truth was incarnated. Truth was made a man. Truth lived a perfect life before us. We know what truth looks like. Follow Jesus and you’ll be walking in truth! He left us an example so that we should “follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21).
4. The Revelation of Truth. Truth—as opposed to relativism—there is absolute truth! The truth must come from somewhere. Truth is established by Jesus Christ. Whatever He says goes. It is truth. He is the truth! A lie is something that goes against the Word of Jesus. Simply put, the standard of truth is the Bible, the Word of God. Jesus prayed for us to the Father in John 17:17, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” Psalm 119:11, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.” Psalm 119:105, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.”
The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God, and it divides “asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). Taking in the Word is a sometimes painful process. In Revelation 10:9-10, John the Revelator was told to take the Word of God and to “eat it up”, and he was told that it would “make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.”
In order to speak truth, you must have a standard. If you’ve got wind and waves and various winds of false doctrine, you must have something to tell you what those waves and winds of false teaching are. Psalm 119:89, “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.”
5. The Saturation of the Truth: There must be a Blamelessness (virtue) “speaking” or possessing the truth; confidence, assurance, Sincerity, without guile, in earnestness, without hypocrisy, truly, as a child. We are to be thoroughly saturated in truth, and it will be seen in our character. Don’t go to the counsel of the ungodly Psalm 1 says, but make your delight in the law of the Lord and in His Word “meditate day and night” (Psalm 1:2). If you are not growing, then your life is probably saturated in other things.
Illustration: There is an old rule, you are what you eat. If you eat bad stuff, you will get bad stuff. If you put dirt into jello pudding, you are going to have dirt flavored jello. It’ll never be strawberry, because you put dirt in it and dirt doesn’t taste like strawberries. Saturate your life with the Word, and you will get great spiritual growth.
B. In Love
1. Definition of Love: This is AGAPE love. It is the great sacrificial love that gives and gives and gives. It is that love described in 1 Corinthians 13. It is not a feeling but an ACTION. It is to have utmost concern for God and for your fellow man. In everything we say and are, we are to love our neighbor as our selves. We are to be concerned for their concerns. And we are especially to have a love for the brethren.
2. Transparency of Love. Love is transparent and vulnerable. It serves others without thought of self preservation. The Savior demonstrated this love by becoming sin for us who knew no sin!
The verse again says that we are to be “speaking the truth in love”. Literally “truthing in love”. This is the way to “grow up into Christ in all thing” or in all aspects of your life.
The verses here are some of the easiest to understand, but the hardest in the Bible to preach. When a preacher gets up to give the Word of God, he is to do so without hypocrisy. To preach anything but what he is actually experiencing is a lie. He is to preach the truth with a heart on fire in love for God. Truth without love is the religion of hypocrites that our Lord condemned in Matthew 15:7-9, “Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, 8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. 9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”
Truth preached without a revived heart does damage. We need to “speak the truth in love”. As I said before, this phrase “speaking the truth” is all one word in the Greek New Testament. It is the verb form of the word “truth”. It is more than just speaking, but literally “truthing in love”. And this verse is not speaking of preachers but of every Christian. All Christians are to be possessed by the truth of God, not in a superficial, cold, religious way, but touched by the truth of God in the deepest part of your heart. This was the thrust of David’s confession in Psalm 51:6. Where did David go wrong? “Behold”, he said, “thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.” He says, “You know, I began to go wrong when truth was on my tongue but not in the inward, hidden part of men”. David couldn’t continue in sin like the Pharisees who didn’t know God.
In the hidden part of our life that no one sees, we are to have a love for the God of truth! That is how we grow in that intimate union with Christ, our Head, Lord, and Master of our thoughts and life. He is to dominate. That is the teaching of Ephesians 4:15, but let’s break it down and dig into it.
3. The Precision and Carefulness of Love: We are to love others and care for others as ourselves. Listen to these verses from 1 John. Go ahead and turn over there.
a. 1 John 3:14, “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.”
b. 1 John 3:17, “But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?”
c. 1 John 4:20, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?”
d. 1 John 4:21, “And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.”
4. The Crescendo of Love. Agape Love is the very crown of Christian maturity. If you love as God loved, then you are like Christ. Now if the love of God is removed from our lives, now listen, all Christian virtue becomes corrupt. That's a very important truth. If the love of God is not in our lives, then all the Christian truths or doctrines, virtue is not a good word, the truths of the doctrine become corrupt.
James Montgomery Boyce points this out in his commentary, and he gave some examples. Let me give you just two.
a. Joy: Joy is one of the Christian truths that we walk in. But joy without love is just hedonism and pagan pleasure seeking in this pagan world. Without the love of God and a love for holiness in your life you become a person that just pursues pleasure for the sake of pleasure just like the Hedonist does.
b. Sanctification: the person that's not born again and does not have the love of God shed abroad in his heart, if he tries to sanctify himself all you have is self-righteousness. He's doing it for self. He sets himself apart for self glory, self acclaim. Truth without love, a person who preaches or teaches or tries to walk in truth without love becomes dead religion. But if you have the love of God and seek holiness, you will have a holy life that is not a “holier than thou” attitude.
III. The Goal itself: Growth! Grow up into Christ: Grow: We sing these songs like “Higher Ground” and “Deeper in the Love of Jesus”. This is what is being taught here. We are to be increasing. We see two signs of this growth these verses: Union and Direction.
1. Union: we are to “grow up into Him in ALL things”. Jesus said in John 15, “Abide in Me”. Paul is saying the same thing in a different way. He says we are to “grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ”.
2. Direction: “grow up into him in ALL THINGS, the head, even Christ”. Who runs your life? Who tells you what to do, where to go, what to eat, how to dress, what to say? Does Christ have the lordship, mastery of your life? Is he the pilot and boss of your life?
IF you are growing Christ is Lord of ALL THINGS. You are growing to a point where you can say “I am crucified with Christ” Where you can say truly that Jesus has mastery over your life!!
Closing: Let me close with a very practical application. How about your tongue? Does it reveal a cold heart? You may know the truth, but do you love the truth? And do you love people enough to live and speak in love? Are you watching your tone of voice? Your heart always speaks louder than your words! Are you truthing in love? Whenever we speak, it is to be the truth. And truthful words come from a truthful life.
There is a weapon that is more powerful than any other weapon known to man. And it has been in existence since the creation of mankind; it has been known to start wars, ruin friendships, spars national revolutions. It has ruined more reputations, wrecked more homes, split more churches, driven more men out of the ministry and caused more hatred than any other weapon in the world. Are you using it to edify?
Finally, let me challenge you to read the Word of God. In your bulletin, there is a handout for daily Bible Reading.