Real Love is Untamed
Real love cannot be confined to social niceness and political correctness. It is too large and powerful to be confined to social norms and the culture of the day.
Real love speaks truth, the truth that the other person needs to hear, in as loving of a way as possible without watering down that truth. Real love cares about the beloved too much to compromise any truth towards them.
Real love is also WISE in when and how it communicates and acts. Love is submitted to God as the source of love.
As Jesus Himself said, “I say exactly what Father God tells me to say, and only in the exact way He tells me to say it.” (John 12:49, John 5:19 ) Compromise on truth or wisdom, and love gets degraded from all it was meant to be and the full goodness-impact of transformation it is capable of being as a force of redemption.
Every single time Jesus spoke he was perfect love speaking pure truth. That included confronting evil and it included comforted the brokenhearted. Society freaked out by that much truth and love that they were utterly unprepared to hear. Many were amazed. Some were shocked. Many also got offended. Some got murderous. Some were grateful. Their reaction all reflected the state of their heart, in reaction to consummate truth and love.
He told truth that the Pharisees most needed to be confronted with in their religious pride: “you are hypocritical reptilians whose Father is the devil. Your kind, your forefathers, killed the prophets for accurately representing Father God, and you are trying to kill me today for the same thing, proving that you are following in their footsteps as children of the devil, not Abraham and His God.” (paraphrase from several instances)
He told the Rich Young Ruler what he most needed to hear in his idol of money: “go, sell all your possessions, giving them to the poor, and then you will have true riches — lasting treasure in heaven.”
But most did not want truth, they just wanted to play at the idea of being pro-truth. In reality, they were only about self-validation, outside of what God actually. Peter accurately spoke the Words of the Holy Spirit to a deceiver, trying to look good to the church people while covering up his schemes: (Acts 5:3,4)
But Peter said, “Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost and to keep back part of the price of the land? While it remained, was it not thine own? And after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? Why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.”
You probably know the story and know that Ananias literally dropped dead on the spot. Peter spoke the EXACT TRUTH that was disruptive, fearful and deadly to hear. People don’t want their pet sins revealed with truth, they are love-compromised and seek social validation from mere humans instead of seeking approval from God.
When you are evil, truth is a weapon that might destroy you! There is NO PLACE for any wicked thing in the Kingdom of God. In heaven, love reigns supreme and deception is absent. But love spoke into a broken, hypocritical world will SHATTER the proud even as it builds up the brokenhearted. That love is the Person of Jesus of Nazareth.
Where is this post going?
I say the above to say that if you are not getting extreme reactions from people (and I know the Bible says “inasmuch as it is possible with you, be at peace with all men” so I’m not talking about being a willful jerk of course) you may be pulling punches with the Truth God has entrusted to you — yes, you, the you that is in your own specific time/place on purpose to say on His behalf as His servant and ambassador.
You may have fallen prey to political correctness with its untruth. You may be lured away from your calling into a casket called social niceness. Ask God about your heart and listen to what he says? Many people REFUSE to do exactly that because they know they are faithless at core, and don’t want to hear judgment, exposure, condemnation. But they NEED to hear that in the context of an opportunity to repent!
Truth and love simply DON’T LET you be the same as you were before you encountered them. They change you. They are transformative and disruptive. They divide people. People who want to coast through life in surface pleasantries are DISQUALIFIED for participation in real love and truth. Loving Truth from God through us, always reveals the inner reality, exposing it — whether their heart serves satan while pretending to serve God on the deceptive surface.
As the Son of God, Jesus, the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6) is also the Lion of Judah (Revelation 5:5), and also a Dread Warrior(Jeremiah 20:11). There is EVERYTHING DISRUPTIVE about who Jesus is. Who he is personally for you, depends on if you have accepted His offer of salvation or not. Jesus is fully aware that light and darkness cannot coexist. Jesus, the Anointed One, who came to make a way out of condemnation and into peace through the very sacrifice of His own sinless body, said (in another moment of loving truth):
“whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father in heaven. Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘A man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.…”
— Matthew 10:33–35
God is holiness. God has standards SO GOOD that none of us can hope to qualify. We all need to receive and be clothed with the Righteousness of Jesus, Himself. The Truth and Judgment that Jesus also is, is confronting and confrontational in the extreme. We cannot encounter Jesus and remain the same. Our hearts will either soften (submit) or harden (resist).
Though his own body as the means, Jesus purchased peace with God to a sinful humanity. We need to be in the Family of God, and only God’s Son, Jesus, can invite us into his eternal family and kingdom. We must humbly submit and align ourselves with Jesus, asking God to forgive, change, enliven and save us.
God wants everyone to be saved, and wants no one to go to hell, and yet, God respects our free choice to either accept or reject him. Jesus is the peace of God, the life of God, and the extended righteousness of God.
When you receive Jesus as savior and Lord, the Bible says we are then place “into Christ Jesus.” God now looks on you , and feels about you exactly as He looks and feels about Jesus. You are welcomed, celebrated, wanted, cherished, honored, understood — you are truly redeemed.
The peace that Jesus offers only comes through HEART SUBMISSION to the Truth that He is the ONLY way to the Father. Reject Jesus and you have rejected peace with God.
The truth that Jesus is not here to wink at sin or play games about your eternity IS confrontational! You are before the awesome God and eternal judge of men’s souls!
Evil is severely threatened by this truth — and it should be, because its reign gets one day shorter with each passing day. May God help us operate in HIS level of divine truth and divine love by the Holy Spirit, upsetting many, disrupting all, and redeeming some.
