Love is not easy! I know that isn’t a groundbreaking or earth shattering statement, but those who love others know it to be a true statement. It applies to your spouse, your children, and even other people. The idea of love has been so perverted by society that I’m not sure the vast majority of people even know what love is. But that’s not what I want to write about in this post. What I am going to write about here is the other side of the coin of love. We all know the side where we have butterflies in our stomach when we see the people we love. We know the side where things are going well. But there is another side of the love coin that is just as important, yet many times neglected.
As a father of four beautiful, wonderful children very few things bless me like coming home from work and having them come up and give me a hug. I enjoy them telling me that they missed me while I was at work. I love having them ask me to go play a Nerf war with them. And if that is all love was then love would be easy. But we know that isn’t the case. There are times when my beautiful, sweet children turn into little monsters, cause my blood pressure to rise, and make me want to pull my hair out. Sometimes it is not them, it truly is me. But other times it is them, they are making a mistake or worse they are deliberately doing something they know they shouldn’t do. It is at these times I am faced with a choice. Do I love them or do I pacify them? Do I do what is best for them in the long run or do I tell myself “they are simply kids being kids?” Sometimes they really are simply kids being kids. I think we as parents sometimes forget what it was like to be a small child. Other times we care too much what others will think about us or our children. But again, there are times when this is not the case. This is when we have to choose to demonstrate the difficult part of love. That difficult part of love is rebuking or disciplining our children. Many of us heard growing up from our parents when they were going to discipline us, “this will hurt me more than it will hurt you” (by the way, I still think that is a lie, but that is another post for another day). But I can say as a parent, it does hurt to have to discipline my children. I remember a time with our oldest, Andrew. We told him before dinner, if you eat everything on your plate, we have a surprise for you. Because he is just like his father (stubborn) he decided he didn’t want to do that. No amount of begging or pleading on my part would get this child to eat. Ice cream is a rare treat at our house, and Diana and I really wanted to give it to him. It didn’t matter how much we wanted him to eat so he could get the surprise, he simply wasn’t going to do it. After a while, Diana and I gave up. Then it happened, we told him what his surprise would have been. That is when the tears started flowing from him. It about broke me mentally and emotionally to watch my son cry over not getting ice cream. I was ripping my papa bear heart out, but because we love him, we couldn’t give him the ice cream. And that night we talked about choices we make and how choices have consequences. I’m you the parents who read this post could tell similar stories, but I want to go to another side of this as it relates to Christians.
We live in a pluralistic world, a relativistic world in which people want to believe anything and nothing all at the same time. They say as long as you believe firmly in what you believe or don’t believe, you are right. The world says what may be true for you, may not be true for me but neither of us is wrong. But God says that is wrong, that there is one way, one truth, and one life and that Jesus Christ (John 14:6). God says there is only one God (Ex. 20:3). So how do we lovingly deal with someone whether they are a Christian or not when a false teaching is presented? This is the difficult part of love. Many in our culture will say “leave it alone, it’s not that big of a deal.” Except it is a big deal, because in many cases a person’s eternal destiny is dependent on them having the truth. In 2 John, John tells the elect lady (whoever she was), “if there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.” If we don’t correct it (there is a right way and a wrong way to do that-more on that shortly), then we are just as guilty as they are. We may think we are loving them by not dealing with the issue, but we are really showing we have no care or concern for them. We may want to let them have their ice cream, even though they didn’t eat their dinner but we must realize that a lifetime of ice cream is not what they need. Sure the ice cream may taste better than their vegetables, and they will like you more if you let them just have the ice cream. But at the end of the day they will not be strong and healthy. And possibly one day they may come back to you and ask you, why did you let me do that, didn’t you know that wasn’t good for me? So how do we exercise this difficult side of love?
1-Speak the truth in love. That is Paul’s words of wisdom in Ephesians 4:15. Notice he didn’t say “just let it be.” He said “speak the truth.” But Paul also didn’t say be a jerk about it. I have been guilty many times in life of saying the right thing in the wrong way. The end result that I desired was not accomplished. My mentor always told me, “make sure your people know that you love them.” I am discovering through eight years of ministry, nearly 10 years of marriage, and a little over eight years of being a parents that he was right. 1 Peter 4:8 says, “love covers a multitude of sins.” As long as people know you love them, they are more willing to forgive you and overlook some of your faults. If you love someone, tell them the truth. There will be times when it is uncomfortable and even difficult, but doing it will demonstrate your love for them.
2-Use God’s Word. The source of all truth is God, not my opinion or anyone else’s. We must be careful that we don’t use the Bible as a club to beat someone over the head with. To protect against that refer to number one above. But because all Scripture is God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16-17) it is profitable to show us where we are wrong and how to correct it. There is a difference between sinning and having different personal preferences. If the Bible is silent on a particular subject then understand that God has given freedom in it. God has revealed what we need. Sometimes people do things different ways, but that doesn’t make it a sin or wrong. Over the last 20 years Christians have fought on many things including worship styles (contemporary vs. traditional hymns), technology in church, social media, church planting vs. established churches, etc. And I think we all need to be really honest, the Bible doesn’t condemn either side of our arguments, it is simply our personal preferences that we are giving the same weight as Scripture which is a sin on our part (Mt 15:9). What the Bible does condemn is our attitude towards our brother and sister during those arguments (again another post for another day). Our only authority as a Christian is what God’s Word says, and so when we must correct someone, we must use it (again see point one on how to do it).
3-Love the person more than wanting to win an argument. Many times as Christians we want to be “right” and we don’t care about the damage we do in the process. That is certainly condemned in Scripture (1 John 2, 3, and 4). If I love you, I’m going to lovingly and humbly show you the right thing according to the Bible. But I’m also going to make sure that I don’t lose a brother or sister over it. Sometimes people are going to walk away after being corrected, even if you do it the biblical way. That is on them. But we must be cautious not to push them away. I have been blessed to have people in my life at times that have gotten in my face and confronted me. I didn’t like it at the time, but later on I was able to go back to them and thank them for loving me enough to say something. That was because God used them to convict me. It was also because I knew they loved me and they weren’t trying to hurt me, but rather help me. And we have all had instances in which someone was right, but they were not right with how they went about it. The end result is we didn’t listen, we were turned off, and in many instances the relationship was broken.
Let us love one another enough to encourage one another, and when necessary rebuke in love.
By His grace and through His strength may we live for Him