Truth & Love
It’s hard to keep going as a Christian, isn’t it. Only this weekend a couple of you shared some of the significant challenges you’re facing. Often we don’t talk about them, which can sometimes make us feel as though we are the only ones struggling.
Friends, you aren’t! It is not easy living as a Christian, and it never has been.
In our Bible reading plan this morning we read from Revelation 2: the first of Jesus’ seven letters to the churches. He says to the church in Ephesus: ‘You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary’ (v 3).
Jesus commends them for keeping going. They were suffering, facing opposition – yet they held fast to the truth (vs 2, 6) and didn’t give up serving their Lord Jesus. How hard it is to keep going when things are difficult! How easy it is to let go of truth when facing opposition! Yet they kept going.
But Jesus continued: ‘You have forsaken the love you had at first,’ he said (v 4). In all that perseverance in service and commitment to the truth, they had grown cold, they had stopped loving.
In my pastoral letter to you last year I quoted these words from a book on Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus:
Truth becomes hard if it is not softened by love; love becomes soft if it is not strengthened by truth… There is no other route than this to a fully mature Christian unity.
John Stott, The Message of Ephesians (BST), p. 172
And then I wrote this:
I long for Christ Church to be place full of softened truth and strengthened love, a place where all are welcome and where Jesus may be found, a place full of people committed to radical holiness and boundless compassion. It is so hard to get right that I know I (and all of us) will get it wrong at times. Our own brokenness will get in the way sometimes, or even often – but that mustn’t stop us trying. We must persevere.
Sometimes we will need to be nudged (or shoved!) in the direction of love, sometimes in the direction of truth – like a pilot charting a ship through choppy waters.
Jesus ends most of the letters to the churches with a variation on these words (v 7): ‘Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’Â May we hear Jesus’ warning to the church in Ephesus; may we be faithful in love-softened truth, while abounding in truth-strengthened love.
Whether you find yourself in choppy waters or a calm sea today – may you be full of truth and love.
Revd Ben Green – Vicar