Thinking in Christ — Issue 28: Love That Tells the Truth

Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection. (Col 3:14)

The age has a counsel for personal relationships, and it sounds like wisdom. Listen actively, so that you understand the other person fully before you judge. Question your assumptions. Practice empathy, and put yourself in the other person's place. Manage conflicts by examining every perspective. Manage your emotions, so that no feeling drives a decision. Seek evidence for claims, balance trust with skepticism, and protect your boundaries. Respect the other person's autonomy, honor diverse perspectives, and keep growing. On this telling, the healthy relationship is the relationship well managed.

Therefore this issue must ask what the management itself assumes. It assumes two minds able to hear each other neutrally, weigh each other fairly, and adjust themselves by their own effort. But if the heart deceives the will (Jer 17:9, paraphrased), then listening is not neutral, empathy is not innocent, and the manager is himself one of the parties in need of judgment. A relationship cannot be saved by a better method for talking about it, because the trouble in the relationship is not only miscommunication. The trouble is sin, and sin is not managed. It is confessed, forgiven, and turned from, or it remains.

Consider first the anchor, and what it binds. Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection. (Col 3:14) Love is not one skill among the ten. It is the bond over all of them. And the verses before it name what love wears: Put on therefore, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, humility, and perseverance; (Col 3:12) bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, if any man has a complaint against any; even as Christ forgave you, so you also do. (Col 3:13) Notice the order. The clothing is put on because the wearer is chosen, holy, and beloved. Bearing comes before the complaint is settled. Forgiving comes as Christ forgave, not as the evidence warrants. A relationship held together by love does not wait for the other person to become credible before it bears with him. It bears because it has first been borne with.

Because of this, listening must be named for what it is. So, then, my beloved brothers, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger; (Jas 1:19) for the anger of man doesn't produce the righteousness of God. (Jas 1:20) Swift hearing is commanded, and the command is good. Yet swift hearing is not the same as the age's active listening, which listens in order to understand the other person's perspective and then to decide what to do with it. Scripture's hearing listens in order to obey. He who gives answer before he hears, That is folly and shame to him. (Prov 18:13) The folly is not merely that the answer is uninformed. The folly is that the speaker has already made himself the judge, and has spoken a verdict before the case was heard. A man can listen for a long time and still listen as a judge, collecting the other person's words as evidence for a conclusion he has already chosen. That is why no mind is neutral (Rom 12:2, paraphrased). A mind conformed to the world hears to win, to protect itself, or to keep the relationship comfortable. A mind renewed by the Word hears to know what is true, and to speak only what builds up in truth. Every thought must be taken captive to obey Christ (2 Cor 10:5, paraphrased), including the thought that the listening is now complete and fair.

Likewise, empathy must be told the truth about itself. To feel with another person is a real mercy, and Scripture commands compassion. But empathy on its own cannot tell the difference between a wound and a rebellion, between a sorrow to be comforted and a sin to be named. A man who only feels with his brother will comfort him in the very direction that destroys him. He will call a justified rebuke unkind, because it hurt. He will call a flattering agreement loving, because it soothed. The command is to speak the truth in love (Eph 4:15, paraphrased), and to grow up into Christ, who is the head. Truth without love wounds for the sake of being right. Love without truth comforts for the sake of being liked. Both are betrayals of the brother.

For this reason, conflict is not first a problem of perspectives to be managed. It is a problem of sin to be faced, and Scripture gives it a road rather than a technique. "If your brother sins against you, go, show him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained back your brother. (Matt 18:15) The goal is not a better conversation. The goal is a brother gained back. The road is private first, because love does not recruit an audience before it seeks a brother. And the road does not stop at feelings. It names a fault. A conflict handled by weighing perspectives will end where both parties feel heard and nothing is repented of. A conflict handled by this road ends where the sin is named, confessed, and forgiven, or where the refusal to hear is itself named. A brother offended is more difficult than a fortified city; and disputes are like the bars of a castle. (Prov 18:19)

At the same time, emotions must be given their true place. They are not the enemy of clear thinking, and they are not its master. Anger that is slow is not anger denied. It is anger brought under the Word before it speaks. The age teaches emotional management, as though the feeling were the problem and the skill were the cure. Scripture teaches something harder: the heart is the problem, and the feeling is its witness. A man who manages his anger well can still nurse a bitter root while speaking calmly. Confession to one another has a place here (Jas 5:16, paraphrased), but confession is not a communication exercise. It is the naming of sin before God and before the brother wronged, and it ends in prayer and turning, not in a better exchange of perspectives.

This is where trust and evidence must also be put in their order. Evidence can corroborate a claim. It can show that a promise was kept, or that a word was false. But evidence cannot found a relationship, and it cannot found faith. God's testimony about His Son stands first (1 John 5:9-10, paraphrased). A relationship built on verified trust will collapse the first time the evidence runs out. A relationship built in Christ rests on a love given before it was earned. We love Him, because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19) That is the order. Love received first, love given second. The man who has not received this love will demand from his brother what only God can give, and the brother will fail him, because no brother can bear the weight of being God to another man.

Here, then, the age's final counsel must be refused outright. It says: honor individual autonomy. Respect each person's right to think and decide for himself, and let differences enrich the relationship. But autonomy is denied in every definition (Rom 6, paraphrased). The mind is a slave to sin or to God. There is no third master, and there is no neutral ground on which two autonomous persons meet and negotiate their love. To honor a brother's autonomy as independence from God is not respect. It is abandonment. It leaves him to a master who is already destroying him, and calls the leaving love. True love does the opposite. It does not leave the brother to himself. It speaks to him, bears with him, forgives him, and submits with him to the same Lord. The relationship is not two freedoms respecting each other. It is two sinners under one command, held by one bond, forgiven by one Christ.

This is where the testimony reaches its center. Apart from Christ, the understanding is darkened and the life of God is alien to the man who manages his relationships (Eph 4:18, paraphrased). He can learn every skill the age offers, and he will still use each skill to protect himself. In Christ, the man is not improved by his relationships. He is remade, and his relationships become the place where the remaking shows. He listens because he has been heard by a God he did not deserve to be heard by. He forgives because he has been forgiven, not because the evidence finally justified forgiveness. The contrast is never between the skillful communicator and the unskillful one. It is between the man in Christ and the man apart from Christ, and the same Word judges both.

So let the final word reverse the age's counsel. Do not manage the relationship, balance trust against skepticism, and honor autonomy until the connection feels healthy. Begin where the anchor begins. Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection. (Col 3:14) Let that love be the love first received, then given. Listen slowly, because the verdict is not yours to rush. Speak truth, because flattery is not love. Name the fault privately, because the brother is worth gaining back. Confess your own sin, because your heart is not a neutral judge. Forgive as Christ forgave, because forgiveness is not earned by evidence. And refuse autonomy, because no man is his own, and no relationship held by two masters can stand.

Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection. (Col 3:14) The bond is not a skill you master. It is a love you receive, and a Lord you obey together.