Evaluating Our Paradigm of Truth and Love

Revisiting my writing on ἀληθευοντες δε ἐν αγαπη

The average Christian I encounter using the phrase “truth in love” tends to refer to the idea that is more or less summarized as the following: “a verbal expression of empirical/metaphysical facts with the purpose of expressing some sort of ultimate kindness or conceptual care.” This interpretation and application of the text of Ephesians 4:15 considers truth as a propositional destination to arrive at with certain beliefs, ideas, or opinions held with confidence. And if this truth is the key to salvation, to the eternal life and death itself, then the Christian as a messenger of God must declare these propositions with absolute zeal or ruthlessness in order to save as many people as possible. The message must be spread by any means necessary. This framing of truth and love usually means that someone can be a jerk about what they say or how they say it and can completely skirt any accountability of how their words might negatively impact another human being. And even if they share their ideas with a kind tone and gentle posture, the content and timing are often left undiscerned. The faithful messenger can interrupt someone’s day if they feel like it because “what could be more important?” The devout preacher can opt to be coercive or provocative, use shame & fear tactics, and leave behind a haunting condemnation with a person if that means there is a chance of salvation for the damned.

The logic goes something like this: “if I warn somebody who is about to step off a cliff, I have every right to shout, scream, or say something boldly to get their attention if it means saving their life!” This sentiment generally empowers Evangelicals to act as the demanding, unwavering moral authority with no accountability in how they interact with people of other religions or views. If one is rejected, they can chalk it up as “hard-heartedness”; if one encounters a negative reaction, they can view it as persecution.

(As an opinionated aside, this is a deeply problematic posture especially if one believes that the reality of salvation is empowered by the Holy Spirit. “Truth in love” has become an Evangelical rallying cry that seemingly leads people to ignore the reality that the Spirit who will guide us into all truth is already at work in the life of the people they are talking to; instead of seeking to humbly discern their role, the truth warrior steps into the spotlight to lead the charge to save a soul. With this perspective, evangelism becomes a rhetorical crusade and verbal conquest rather than a participatory, patient witness.)

The results of interpreting Ephesians 4:15 as a conservative, culture war manifesto are devastating. With this framework, the religious individual never has to back down, never has to genuinely listen and learn, never has to be patient, never has to rely on the Holy Spirit to guide them, never has to be present and enjoy the company of someone without an agenda, never has to admit they are wrong or have misspoken. There’s no accountability. Not only is this kind of framework dangerously individualistic and lacks any sort of checks and balances for how one engages with others, it also deeply misunderstands truth.

Last year I wrote a blog article on truth and love after spending a significant amount of time reflecting on and studying the phrase in Ephesians. What I discovered is that there is a very strong exegetical, textual, and theological case to be made for interpreting this phrase in a very different kind of way. “Speaking the truth in love” is a common phrasing in many interpretations but the actual text doesn’t directly include the word “speaking”; this is an academic insertion for the English translation. ἀληθευοντες δε ἐν αγαπη is better understood as “being truthful with love” or “proclaim truth by loving well.”¹ This understanding of the phrase first and foremost grounds truth as reality centered on Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Job 12:10, John 1:3, Acts 17:28, Col 1:16-17, Romans 11:26). If reality itself is “subjective” (subjected and revolving around Christ), then one CAN’T be truthful if they are devoid of love; virtue can’t be separated from fact. Truth is not a narrow set of goalposts that one must arrive at through a long list of very specific and rigid empirical, metaphysical claims. It is not a propositional destination. Truth is the reality of all things and all life that finds existence in the Triune God.

Truth as Reality not a Manifesto of Propositions

Truth, the “what is”, is reality itself, centered on a divine being who declares Himself to BE love! (1 John 4:8) Therefore, when someone online or in-person acts like a jerk, mistreats someone, or selfishly inserts their views on others who aren’t ready to hear them, they are straying from truth. No matter how precious and incredible the knowledge that is being passed on, if one shares their ideas or views with selfishness, arrogance, anger, contempt, or bitterness, they are no longer telling the truth.

In the empire systems of the West, we tend to separate product from production. We tend to compartmentalize the made-in-China or globally produced items from the sweatshops or global slavery. However, in reality, these things are connected. As MLK once said: “Before you finish eating your breakfast this morning, you’ve depended on half the world.” We live in an interconnected world. Systematic compartmentalization can be practically useful at times. But it can also be greatly misleading. Reality is not a drawer full of separated items. Again, we live an an interconnected world.

I would argue the same is true with ideas, especially in the realm of theology. The origins of an idea, worldview, or belief should not be stripped of its context. Not if the truth is to be known! Love is not a tool or a medium to traffic all ideas and words that one desires to share. To be truthful is to sacrificially love another, to seek their ultimate good. The moment a person chooses to share their beliefs out of self-centered motives, religious pride, or a contempt for “that person”, they have lost the truth.

This kind of empirical view of truth is a flawed concept of modernity. We can’t separate character from platform, we can’t compartmentalize love from fact. Truth won’t found, understood, or proclaimed by those who don’t embody the fullness of love.

Truth in love must be understood in a radically different way if Evangelicalism is to regain any sort of meaningful relevance to the world around it. Truth-love (a union of the character of God and reality of the world centered on that perfect righteousness, love, and power) has the possibility to completely reorient our idea of what it means to inhabit our chaotic world or how to share the presence of Christ’s love to people around us. However, the more we use this passage out of context as a banner for our own ego, our own evangelistic quotas, our own fleshly desire for colonialist conquest and dominance, we will continue to dilute and the message of Jesus and cause people to stumble away from the good news of Truth, Love, and Life. Instead of viewing ourselves as culture warriors of empirical facts and metaphysical claims, followers of Jesus should seek to be hospitable inhabitants of a new world breaking through that is grounded on Love itself.

Hospitality as the Fruit of Truth-Love

Furthermore, when we reconsider and reimagine truth-love outside of the American culture wars, there is a vital Christian practice that may be regained in our context: hospitality. The New Testament writers and early church communities considered hospitality to be a core part of what it meant to embody and practice the Christian faith. Hospitality was not just about hosting rad dinner parties or spectacular social events. In the ancient world, hospitality was practiced in private and in public, in religious spaces and in homes, in personal relationships and in foreign policy. And this wasn’t a uniquely Jewish or Christian practice; rather, “hospitality is a universal phenomenon, practiced to varying degrees by all the world’s cultures.”² This sort of hospitality was not a compartmentalized practice, categorically performed in certain aspects of life but not others. Hospitality, as understood in the ancient word and embraced by early Christianity, was a way of embodying and displaying the love of Christ. It was a way of treating strangers as friends, uniting with people around a table and a good meal. For the early Christians, hospitality was an opportunity for fellowship and an anticipation of the new heavens and new earth where Christ welcomes in the eternal age with a great banquet (Revelation 19:6-9).

From my experience, hospitality is somewhat of a lost virtue in many Evangelical spaces. The practice is alive and well in the religious South and Bible belt region of America as a heritage of good manners and neighborly tradition that has been passed down. But I rarely hear it discussed as a core spiritual practice. Maybe the loss of hospitality churches can explain our misunderstanding of ἀληθευοντες δε ἐν αγαπη. Or perhaps our flawed interpretations are the cause of the fading spiritual practice of hospitality. This is a question for scholars and historians to speak to. But I do wonder how the practice of hospitality in personal relationships could be transformative to discipleship. I wonder how differently we might view people, conversations, and disagreements if hospitality was renewed to be a central practice in the local church.

The Rabbi’s Table

Jesus engaged in hospitality, not as a host, but as a dinner guest. He received hospitality from others and yet also participated in it by doing so. The rabbi from Nazareth would eat and associate himself with the most scandalous people of the day. The gospel accounts’ context and portrait of table fellowship strikes me as having so much to say to contemporary debates around relationships with people, how we disagree with others, and the connection between association and endorsement of people’s lifestyles and choices. Jesus dined with “sinners.” This was a total shock to the pharisees and the religious cultural system they led.³ I wonder how this very simple yet profound act that Jesus regularly engaged in might impact our imagination. I wonder how it could guide us to have a more faithful embodiment of the reality of love, especially with those we disagree with.

The Evangelical emphasis is so centered on verbal exchanges and discourse of ideas. But in our current context, words are valued less and less. Social media posts and platformed speeches are drifting into less and less significance. More than anything, people want to see the love of God tangibly and radically lived out. Perhaps, we need to radically reorient our understanding of truthful, loving witness around this lost spiritual practice of early church. A practice that centers in our homes and around our tables but extends to all our relationships and conversations. This simple, ancient practice is the cultivation of welcoming everyone to one table as a new kind of family. It’s a practice that anticipates the forever feast of the Lamb that is to come. It’s a loving rehearsal of reality that we engage in within our homes, in our communities, in our relationships, in our care and service to others, and in our listening and learning from people we disagree with.

1. My exegetical study of this phrase consulted the greek phrase in question using several technical resources. Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary, 464-466; BDAG, 43. An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, Liddell, 34. Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, Wallace, 372. While there’s good reason to argue that this phrase could be referring to our speech reflecting truth tempered with love for another person or even that this application could be a part of a broader point Paul is making, there is just as strong if not better exegetical cases to be made for some of the other interpretations. ↩︎
2. John T. Fitzgerald, “Hospitality,” in Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 522. ↩︎
3. Powell, M. A. 2013. “Table Fellowship.” In Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Second Edition, edited by Joel B. Green, Jeannine K. Brown, and Nicholas Perrin. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic. ↩︎