Kill or Love?(continued from Part 1)
The nature of Love is magnificent.
Love knows how to speak the truth. Love
bears all things, including the tension of
doctrinal differences. Love believes all things,
believes that you, as well as I, will respond
obediently to God. Love hopes that all that is of
God will prevail.
Love is long-suffering, love is kind and is not
viral. It doesn't envy, disparage, or question
another's grasp of Scripture. It does
not flaunt what it knows and is not puffed up
with intellectual pride and book knowledge.
It does not behave poorly, is not looking
to win doctrinal arguments, is not easily
provoked to anger, does not think evil of
what someone else believes. Love does not rant.
I hear some of you screaming, "Stop! the
truth is at stake, what soft, emotional
rubbish you are putting forth!" Does this
seem like a "Pollyanna in Paradise"
kind of thinking? Will it end up in a big,
sloppy doctrinal mess? If people who know
the truth won't defend it, then who will?
Ah, the question is really,"Do we think
that God will not?"
Will the "infidels" prevail because we
do not argue for the truth? How little we
trust Him! Do we not believe in the power
of the love of God to protect the truth?
If not, then we have seriously misunderstood
the way the Kingdom of God operates. We have
still have much to learn about the power of the
Love of Christ. Do we still think that God's
love is like some scrawny Caspar Milktoast?
His Love is a blazing refiner's fire! Christ,
the Truth, the Great Lover who gave Himself
to purchase our souls, wants to melt love
and truth together within our inward parts.
Truth is not something we protect. It is
something that we become.
Jesus Himself is the Living Truth. Is He
not capable of defending Himself? Yet
that defense may not look like you might
expect it to. When Pilate asked Jesus,
"What is truth?" There is no record of
Jesus replying in words. It was just one
look from Christ, the embodiment of Truth,
that gave Pilate his answer. "I find no
fault in Him AT ALL" (John 18:38).
Pilate knew, he could see it. Love looked
at him and conveyed the Truth. And what a
look it must have been. Dear Lord!
Our job as followers of Jesus is to let
Him fill us with Himself until we are
bulging with Love's brand of Truth.
There are all kinds of "truth" out there,
but I am urging myself to apply for
God's brand of truth. I
don't want to carry the truth
around in a book, I want it to live in me!
I have a little dog who has a great
philosophy, "Storing food outside your
body is crazy, it could go bad or be
stolen or eaten by others. Better to
store food where it belongs: inside
your body. I and what nourishes me
are one." :)
This has deep spiritual application.
My little dog knows a bit about
incarnational truth. Better to assimilate
the truth completely into my spirit, soul,
mind and body, and not carry
it around in notebooks, or external
hard drives, where it can be stolen or
lost; damaged, or misinterpreted.
The disciple Stephen had a great store
of truth integrated in him. Not cold,
hard truth, but the warm truth born out of
LOVE! When the stones hit Stephen, love
came out and the truth hit young Saul
of Tarsus like a velvet covered brick.
The lies that held young Saul chained in darkness.
began to snap not through doctrine, but by
truth burning ever so brightly with and by
love's luminosity.
Human constructs and arguments blow apart when
confronted with real truth. I would hate to find
that I spent my whole life defending what
I thought to be the truth but came to find out
was merely an imaginary mental construct.
I am certain that I do not have to fight for
the truth with human cunning. God is Truth and
nothing can overthrow that. My call is to love.
My call is to take in the Truth who is Jesus in
such a way that it overtakes me and shines out
of me on God's own terms. There is more I want
to say but today Truth calls me here:
Love them all and let God sort them out.
Christianity,
faith,
church history
bible
truth
love,
the crusades,
heresy,
doctrinal controversies,
cessationism
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