​Despite its diminutive size, the shortest book in the Bible – the Third Epistle of John – carries a powerful message.  On the surface, the epistle is a short exhortation from the apostle to the believer Gaius encouraging him to give hospitality to another believer, Demetrius (who may have carried this letter as an introduction), because a powerful local church leader, Diotrephes, was forcibly denying hospitality to members from outside his congregation.

This is perhaps all that we might expect to see in a “book” that is only 14 verses long, but John seems to have used the opportunity of this letter to convey a simple but profound truth regarding the interaction between the Christian qualities of love and truth – which are mentioned in combination, directly or indirectly, ten times in the letter’s 14 verses.

Beginning in the first verse, John salutes Gaius as someone “whom I love in the truth” (3 John 1:1), setting the theme of his message. In verse 3, and then again in verse 4, John juxtaposes joy with truth, and we should remember that joy is associated with love in many biblical passages – so that the pairing of joy and truth can be seen as an indirect expression of love and truth. In the following verses there are other indirect correlations between the qualities of love and truth, such as verse 8 where hospitality and truth are related.

John then uses the unhospitable Diotrephes as a negative example of the failed connection between love and truth by writing: “Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will not welcome us. So when I come, I will call attention to what he is doing, spreading malicious nonsense about us” (3 John 1:9-10a). While it is easy to read over the connection here, we should read the statement in the context of John’s stress on love and truth throughout the letter.  Diotrephes’ failed love – his love of self and self-aggrandizement – is paired with his failed truth – his spreading of malicious lies.
   
This pattern is repeated when John then writes “…he even refuses to welcome other believers. He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church” (3 John 1:10b), showing Diotrophes’ failure of love has a direct connection to his subsequent failure of truth in twisting doctrine so that true members of the faith are expelled.

Next, John says, “Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good” (3 John 1:11a), and then gives two corresponding examples using the faithful Demetrius who is to be imitated.  In this case, John says, “Demetrius is well spoken of by everyone—and even by the truth itself” and “We also speak well of him, and you know that our testimony is true” (3 John 1:12).  In other words, Demetrius is clearly liked and loved as a result of his behavior – his love – and the result is his right relationship with the truth.

So, in the course of his short letter, John repeatedly shows that we cannot express – or fail to express – love without it affecting the truth in our lives.  Conversely, he tells us, we cannot express – or fail to express – the truth without it relating to the love we show.  This is a principle that extends far beyond the particular circumstances in which this little letter was written – one that applies to all of us in every aspect of our lives.  John tells us that love and truth are interconnected:  we cannot weaken or strengthen one without the other being weakened or strengthened also.

“ … speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ” (Ephesians 4:15).

It’s easy to miss the substance of what Paul writes in this verse both because it is such a well-known scripture, and because most major English versions of the Bible  translate it in essentially the same way. The idea of “speaking the truth in love” has thus taken on a kind of life of its own – a kind of  poster scripture for the idea of spiritual “tough love,” which is based in concern, but doesn’t hold back on the truth.

To some extent, this idea is contained within what Paul writes in Ephesians 4, but it is only a small part of it at best. If we look more closely at verse 15 and consider it in context, we see the verse carries far more meaning – both specifically and in a broader general sense. Looking at the context of “speaking the truth in love” is not as obvious as it may sound in regular Bible reading because the context actually begins quite a few verses earlier.  But we need not guess what the context is. If we patiently read backwards from verse 15 we will come upon the specific  subject Paul was discussing, and we find that subject in verses 11-12:
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“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up”

If that doesn’t immediately connect in our minds with “speaking the truth in love,” notice the very next verse (Ephesians 4:13):

“until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ”

Do you see it?  Verses 11 and 12 say Christ gave the various offices of the Church to prepare and equip his people for service – until we come to maturity in him (vs. 13), which is exactly the reason Paul gives in verse 15 for speaking the truth in love.

But let’s look at that expression a little more closely.  The Greek Paul wrote is “alētheuontes  de en agapē” which is literally “being true, yet in love.”  The first word there – a form of alētheuō – can mean to speak the truth, teach the truth, or live the truth.   This is important because the second meaning – to teach the truth – is obviously involved in the context of Ephesians 4.  Paul is talking about the various types of preachers and teachers in the Church, and he doesn’t just mean they should not lie, but that they should teach the truth – that’s how the Church then grows into the stature of Christ (vs. 15). 
 
Notice that the third meaning of alētheuō is that of living the truth.  This may apply in this verse also. Clearly, it is only as we live the truth, not just profess it, that we grow towards the stature of Christ.  That is why the Revised version, in Ephesians 4:15,  gives an alternate translation of “speaking the truth”  as “to deal truly,” and the Douay Rheims version translates it “doing the truth in charity.”   The Amplified Version expands on this aspect of the verse by paraphrasing:  “let our lives lovingly express truth [in all things, speaking truly, dealing truly, living truly]” (AMPC).

So when we look closely at Ephesians 4:15, the focus of the verse in context is one of the responsibility for those who handle the word of God to teach the truth, and the responsibility all of us have to make truth a part of our lives of love.  The emphasis is not on our telling others the truth they need to hear – as in the “tough love” kind of truth we give – but on the true love kind of truth we live.

Bible Gateway's Jonathan Petersen recently interviewed award-winning author Nancy Pearcey about her latest book, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes (David C. Cook, 2015).

Nancy Pearcey has been described as “America’s pre-eminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual” (The Economist), and the book exposes the failures of a number of modern world-views while strengthening an approach of faith.  We are happy to reproduce the interview, with permission, on our website today.  You can read the interview here. 

From The Grace and Truth Paradox, by Randy Alcorn. Multnomah Books, 2003. 

 
“Truth is quick to post warning signs and guardrails at the top of the cliff.  Yet it fails to empower people to drive safely – and neglects to help them when they crash. 
      Grace is quick to post ambulances and paramedics at the bottom of the cliff.  But without truth, it fails to post warning signs and build guardrails.  In so doing, it encourages the very self-destruction it attempts to heal.
       Truth without grace crushes people and ceases to be truth.  Grace without truth deceives people and ceases to be grace.
   Truth without grace degenerates into judgmental legalism.  Grace without truth degenerates into deceitful tolerance. 
      Christ’s heart is equally grieved by grace-suppression and truth-suppression, by grace-twisting and truth-twisting. 
       Grace and truth are both necessary.  Neither is sufficient.
       We need to examine ourselves and correct ourselves.  We who are truth-oriented need to go out of our way to affirm grace.  We who are grace-oriented need to go out of our way to affirm truth."