What Is Truth Even For?
When Christian doctrine is truly lived out as intended by God, it couples two major themes together that have a symbiotic relationship. Unfortunately, one can often and easily get overlooked by us. When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was in Matthew 22, He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Love God and love others. It seems so simple! But many professing Christians, myself included, have trouble putting these two together. There are a number of ways we can apply them individually, and it takes a lifetime of being sanctified by the Holy Spirit to even come close to understanding it all, but the simplest way I look at it is this: Loving God means giving Him our lives. Trusting Christ alone for salvation. Submitting to His Word and will, which is all encompassing in this life. Loving people, on the other hand, seems like a separate thing with its own list of actions, and it does indeed have many practical applications that are worth a conversation, but one thing that can be easily understood by scripture is that the two cannot be separated. They are two sides of the coin that God Himself minted. Simply put, if we don’t love people, we aren’t actually loving God.
Learning the beautiful doctrines about who God is and what the Bible actually teaches is an integral part of the Christian life. Many bail on the theology stuff because they either don’t have the stomach for it, or maybe they had a run in with somebody who had a lot of Biblical knowledge, but only enough to be dangerous. We know from 1st Corinthians that knowledge puffs up, so there are definitely pitfalls on all sides. Good theology is necessary, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the heart has been changed. The point is, and I preach this to myself here: True Biblical teaching is absolutely vital to survive this Christian life, but if knowledge is the goal and not love, the one who holds the knowledge will most assuredly either shipwreck their own faith, the faith of others, or both in the long run. If the goal of studying God’s Word and being able to rightly divide truth from error as we’re told in 2nd Timothy is not to show the love of Christ to everyone we come in contact with, we fill our brains in vain.
Truth is great, but it’s for people. Not to lord over people. Not to have a “gotcha” moment with people. Never to make us look good. The truth of scripture exists for our submission and to make Jesus Christ beautiful in the eyes of sinners and believers. Love is not embracing sin, so sometimes love looks like confronting sin and fighting for what is good and true as defined by God - but never arrogantly. We have absolutely nothing to be arrogant about. Ever. God is clear that one of the things He hates is haughtiness (Proverbs 21). And Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, writes an entire thesis on love in 1st Corinthians 13 illustrating that he could have all the talents and spiritual gifts in the universe, but if he doesn’t have love, he’s absolutely nothing.
I’m so guilty of this. May we, as believers in Christ, love God by passionately pursing and submitting to the truth found in scripture alone. Never deviating from or going beyond what is written. May we, because of that submission, obey what it says and do the impossible thing of loving others by the power of the Holy Spirit. Continually dying to selfish ambition and lifting up others in humility. May we realize that loving God and loving others exist together in an eternal, inseparable bond - forged together by Yahweh Himself for our joy and His glory.
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“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” 1 John 4:20
