Preach The Truth In Love

There’s a perilous balance in preaching. If you stray too far to one side or the other, you’ll fall off a cliff, hurting yourself and taking other people down with you.

Imagine a horizontal line. On the far left of that line is the word “love.” On the far right is “truth.” All pastors naturally land somewhere on this spectrum in their preaching. Some lean toward truth, and others more toward love. 

Both are good, but the danger comes when we are too far to one end or the other. Great preaching is a beautiful push and pull of both truth and love. These are not mutually exclusive, but they live in a tension that holds the other in check. We need to preach the truth in love.

All Truth Preaching

If your preaching is all truth and no love, you’re a bully. 

This kind of preaching quickly plunges into spiritual abuse. I love your passion for standing strong for biblical truth. However, when there is no hint of love in your words for the people you are speaking to, you lose people fast. They can only take so many hits.

Perhaps the most ironic thing about “all truth” preaching is that it fails to obey the truth of God’s law.

As Paul writes in Galatians 5:14, “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

A lack of love for people makes you a spiritual bully, not a pastor. God is not pleased with this kind of preaching because it does not align with his heart.

All Love Preaching

On the other end of the spectrum, if your preaching is all love and no truth, you’re a coward. 

Preaching love without truth spirals fast off the cliff into heresy.

I love your compassion for people. I’m thankful that you want to help everyone. However, when you ignore biblical truth because you don’t want to hurt feelings or ruffle feathers, you’re a coward, not a pastor. 

You are doing exactly what Paul warned against and seeking to please people rather than God. 

Paul writes in Galatians 1:10, “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

You can’t sugarcoat everything. All love preachers begin to stop using words like “sin” and will do all kinds of hermeneutical gymnastics to get away from teaching anything that the Bible says that might be controversial to our culture.

God is not pleased with this kind of preaching either because it does not align with the truth of his Word.

How Did Jesus Preach?

Now that I’ve upset many people by picking on both sides, let me ask you this: Where would Jesus land on this spectrum?

What does the Bible tell us?

John 1:14 says,  “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Jesus was full of grace and truth, or you could say he was full of truth and love. 

Jesus is in the middle. 

He didn’t shy away from telling it like it is. He spoke the truth. But he also had mercy, grace, and compassion for all who would receive it. This is one of the reasons that Jesus’ preaching is so powerful. He definitely ruffled some feathers, and some people turned away because they didn’t want to hear the truth that he was telling them, but he also cared deeply about people and loved them more than they could ever know. 

We see this need for a balance of truth and love throughout the Bible.

2 Timothy 2:24-26 says:

24 And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, 25 correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will. 

Or look at Colossians 1:3-6:

3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, 6 which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth

We also see it in Ephesians 4:11-16:

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

A great example is in 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8:

For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain. 2 But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. 3 For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, 4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. 5 For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness. 6 Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. 7 But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. 8 So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. 

This is truth and love!

Preach Truth In Love

So this is my plea to all preachers, and I need this reminder myself. Preach the truth in love!

We should condemn sin with tears in our eyes. And we better not avoid warning of the peril of sin out of “love.” Nothing could be more unloving than to love a friend down a path to their destruction.

Preaching truth minus love makes you a bully.

Preaching love minus truth makes you a coward.

Preaching truth in love makes us all more like Christ.

The enemy would love nothing more than for us to fall to one side or the other. It’s easy to slip into your natural inclination. 

May we, out of the overflow of our relationship with the Lord, fight to rightly hand the word of truth with the love and grace of Christ.

John said it best in 2 John 3, “Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father’s Son, in truth and love.”