Love and Truth

As followers of Christ, we are to be a people who show love and who proclaim the truth. Many of us are pretty good at doing each of these separately, but when it comes to exhibiting both in tandem we fall woefully short. We either become so focused on contending for doctrine that we forget to be considerate of others or we become so concerned with being loving (which we often wrongly translate to mean “accepting” or “not offending”) that we remain silent when God’s standards have been trampled upon. To do either is to fall off the tightrope strung between two extremes of error. 

Yet the difficulty of maintaining this balanced posture does not excuse us from doing so.

I, for one, have failed miserably in this area in the past and am still wrestling with what it practically looks like to love authentically and to speak the truth concurrently. Perhaps this is why, while reading Romans 12, I was particularly drawn to verses 9 and 10:

 “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.” Romans 12:9-10 (ESV)

The instruction to “abhor what is evil” and to “hold fast to what is good” is bookended by exhortations to love. This brings to mind 1 Corinthians 13:1-2, which explains that speaking eloquently or accurately means nothing if it is not done out of a heart of love. Clearly, love is crucial.

The verses in Romans, however, do not speak of just any kind of love. The Greek word for love in the phrase “Let love be genuine” is agape, the kind of love exhibited by God toward us. We know that God’s love for us is not contingent upon our merit but upon His character. And being indwelled by the Holy Spirit, we now have the ability to show this unrelenting, unconditional love to others as we have been commanded by Christ to do (Jn. 13:34-35).

Yet the second statement referencing love uses the word philadelphia, which refers to kindness, or as the verse itself expounds, “brotherly affection.” I think it is telling that Paul uses both types of love here. In doing so, he’s basically saying, “Love others in the way God has loved you—oh, and be nice while you’re at it!”

But it is also telling that in the middle of his instructions about love, he pointedly states, “Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” “Abhor” is the Greek word apostugeo, which, according to Strong’s Concordance, can be defined, “to detest utterly.” That’s some pretty strong language. Similarly, “hold fast” is the word kollas, translated in Strong’s as “cleave” and meaning “to glue” or “to stick.” So we are to utterly detest evil and to be stuck like glue to what is good.    

In all of this, Paul is writing to believers in Rome—to the Church—so his appeal is directed to church life. His “one anothers” refer to fellow believers, and his directions to abhor evil and cling to good are to be carried out not only in individual believers’ lives but within the church community. 

In case you hadn’t noticed, Christians are not immune to deception. We can and do still succumb to evil in a host of different ways. Thus, it is critical that we help one another along in this journey with Jesus, that we hold one another accountable to the teaching of God’s Word, and that we do not abandon each other when failure ensues and things get messy.

Romans 12:9-10 gives us an important blueprint, I believe, for how we are to relate to one another in the church. From these verses we learn that we must begin with genuine agape. We must truly love others with a selfless love that seeks the good of the other person. With this foundation in place, we must speak biblical truth, calling evil and good what they are and “contend[ing] for the true gospel” (Platt and Merida 2014, 21). And in doing this, our manner must be characterized by brotherly affection. In other words, we must always, always, always be kind.

Citation: Platt, David and Tony Merida. Christ-Centered Exposition: Exalting Jesus in Galatians. Nashville: Holman Reference, 2014.