Truthful Love

Truthful love. This phrase might conjure up images of scary confrontations in which you have to tell a friend something difficult about them or yourself. It’s easy to put off this sort of conversation as something that’s just too hard or not worth it. Fortunately, the Bible gives us a different idea of what truthful love means.

Today you’ve read that we should speak the truth in love. That certainly might mean that we need to have a difficult conversation with someone and tell them something that’s ultimately important for them to hear. If we do, we should absolutely do it in a gentle and loving way that honours our friend and our relationship with Jesus.

The rest of our passage helps us to understand the intention we should have for anything we say to each other: we should aim to help each other grown more like Jesus, and bring unity in Jesus.

What we say should be a benefit to whoever hears, especially in building them up in their faith. Likewise, we should be ready to hear loving truths from others so we can better live as followers of Jesus.

Questions: 

1. Why do you think being honest with other Christians in a loving way is important? 
2. Do you have a friend or family member who you can encourage in their faith and who can encourage you in yours? If not, is there a local church or youth group you can join? 
3. How could you regularly encourage other Christians you know?

Prayer:

Dear God, thank you for the love you’ve shown me by revealing who Jesus is and what he did for me. Please help me to share my faith with others and be able to encourage them, or even gently correct them, if it is helpful and loving for them. Help me to grow in my faith too. Amen.