Truth and Love

This year our church is reading through the New Testament, one book at a time. We will generally start a new book as part of our Sunday night service. I will usually give some background, contextual and historical information to help bring greater fruitfulness to our reading. After the service I will hand out a plan which maps the chapter(s) we will be reading each day. For our Wednesday night service, I preach from the book we are currently reading. This has proven to be a fruitful and arduous task for me as a preacher because it requires me to expand my ‘comfort zone’ and force myself into a text from that week’s reading.

Last week, we began to look into the three epistles of John and I stumbled upon an interesting account of the latter part of the Apostle’s life. An early church writer named Jerome tells the story of the Apostle being carried into church because he could no longer walk. The church members would often ask him to speak and when he did, he would mostly repeat the same thing, “Little children, love one another.” The parishioners thought he was going senile until he explained, “…this is the Lord’s command and if this only is done, it is enough.”

It appears from most sources that the Apostle did his writing when he was well into his eighties and could no longer travel. It occurred to me that here is a man who walked with Jesus for three years in person and then an additional six decades by the Spirit. Through the process of sanctification, he became more and more like his savior with each passing year and we have the privilege of looking into the wisdom that occupies the mind of this old(er) disciple.

When you read through his first epistle you will notice two veins of thought; truth and love. You also see this focus throughout his gospel, as if he is highlighting it in the life of Jesus. From the accounts given to us of John, it isn't hard to believe he was a man zealous for truth. For instance, we have the time when he wanted to go “Sodom and Gomorrah’ on the Samaritans because they refused to receive Jesus into their city. Jesus rebuked him by telling him that he did not come to destroy people but to save them. I’m sure it was after that episode that they started calling him and his brother the “son’s of thunder.”

We can see from this account that the young disciple was very zealous for the truth and willing to kill anyone that would choose to reject it. Then we read that this was also the same John who was audacious enough to request a place at the side of the throne of Jesus, much to the repugnance of the other disciples and he seems largely unfazed by his own pejorative overtones toward them. Looking at these stories of his younger years, I understand and see his zeal for the truth but fail to see any love for the people Jesus is trying to reach or even His own brethren.

But now, six decades later, we see a different man. His zeal for truth is still as strong as ever as he slices through false teaching and the wolves that disperse it. However, now there is a whole new element woven into the fabric of this mans life. His zeal for truth has been balanced with a love for people. Instead of killing people, he is doing all he can to love and save them. He wants to guard the truth and he wants to guard the love. In fact, he took it so far as to say that if you don’t know love, then you don’t know God. He placed love at the apex of revelation.

There are many people zealous for truth but lacking love and there are many people so filled with love that they pay little attention to truth. Here in the life of John we find a beautiful combination of the two working side by side in the same man. Growing in God should involve growing in love; a love for His truth and a love for the people He wants to save.