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 Love without truth by William Dicks Philippians 1:9 And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; Love that is not based on truth does not have the ability to discern between that which is evil and that which is excellent. This is why love without the truth is of little value. Truthless love will cause us to become lenient when it comes to the truth of the gospel, and we will accept most anything that claims to be "Christian" with no concern with proper discernment of the truth, by which we can verify whether a person's beliefs are Biblical Christianity or contrary to "the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 1:3). Someone once said "You must limit your fellowship, or limit your message." This means that if your love is indiscriminate (unless of course your intent is evangelism - I am talking of the love that says, "As long as you love Jesus, it doesn't matter what you believe!"), you will need to give up on the essentials of the gospel. The question, "Is the content of my faith important, or just the person I believe in, ie Jesus Christ?" must be answered. It is my contention that they are of equal importance. The only difference is that the person is worshipped and not the content, but that is a whole new discussion. The content of my faith (that which I believe to be true about God and Christianity) cannot be divorced from the person I have put my faith in. That which I believe about the person I have put my faith in (Jesus Christ), I did not get by grabbing out of the air, but rather from the content of my faith; the truth as revealed in the Bible. Here is an example form the many soaps on television. Mary meets John, who has a very shady past, and indeed also has a shady present. John turns on the charm and does not reveal any of his background to Mary, which leaves Mary thinking she has hit the jackpot with the most wonderful man alive. What she believes about John is that he is kind, caring, a pillar in his community, a law abiding citizen, a hard worker, etc. Some time later Mary and John are about to be married, but through the right circumstances, John is driven into a corner and he is forced to reveal everything to Mary. She looks at him and says, "You're not the person I thought you were. I feel so betrayed. You've played me like a fool! How could you do that to me?" At this point she feels humiliated and betrayed. Imagine another situation. A situation pertaining to you! It is the end of time. The judgment seat of Christ.All your life you believed that the content of your faith was not important, as long as you "loved" Jesus! As you stand in the line to be judged, you see multitudes being sent to hell. Many of them people you knew and thought that they would surely make it to heaven. They had all these weird beliefs, but that was fine. They "loved" Jesus. You turn to Jesus and say, "You're not the person I thought You were! I thought that You accepted everyone without exception, as long as they were sincere and claimed to believe in You, no matter what the details were!" Jesus then says to you, "Well, you were sincerely wrong! I declared Myself clearly in the Bible. I made My purposes clear. Why do you think I said so much in the Bible about Me and My purposes through 66 books and numerous authors? Just so that people could believe what they wanted to about Me? No! Then I would've written a short memo just to say "Hi" and that I existed. I gave you the Scriptures so that you would have an accurate description of Me and My purposes, and so that you would know what to believe about Me." You can read more about the subject of "Truth" on the Teaching the Truth page at the link that says, "Should we hold on to the truth, or turn into mush?" Copyright © 2000, 2004 [Teaching
the Truth]. All rights reserved. Revised: May 05, 2004 . |