Manifesting The Truth In Love

“That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.” —Ephesians 4:14–16

I never knew until I became the father of children how much is involved in the words that occur in a well-known hymn, “No infant’s changing pleasure is like my wandering mind.” How children’s minds jump from one thing to another; how hard for them to concentrate! And many of God’s children are just the same. Very often when one is trying to open up some line of truth to believers, he is embarrassed by the questions that are asked showing that there is no concentration, no following up of the truth already before them, and as a result people are never truly established. It is in order to save us from this thing that God has set in His church those who are responsible to instruct and build up His saints, that they should not be like little children tossed to and fro, like leaves carried about by the wind, or, using the figure the apostle has in mind, like little sailboats on the water carried hither and thither, blown from their course, and tossed by every changing wind.

It is a blessed thing to see Christians who are builded up by the Spirit of God in accordance with the truth. But so many always seem to be running after some new thing, never seem to have any discrimination. Let me give you an absurd case. Years ago, as I sat in my office in Oakland, there came in through the bookroom a man whose very appearance betokened a heretic. He was tall and gaunt, had long flowing hair coming down over his shoulders and a long unkept beard. He came up to where I sat writing. I did not like to interrupted for I felt that he was going to waste my time with some religious oddity. He said, “I gather, sir, from the books I have seen in the window that you are a truth seeker and I thought I would come in and have a chat with you.”

“You are mistaken,” I said, “I am not a truth seeker at all.”

“Oh, you are not, may I ask why you are not?”

“Why, because, sir, I have found Him who is the way, the truth, and the life, and therefore my seeking is at an end. Once I was a truth seeker but now I am a truth finder for I know Christ.”

“Well, but are there not many things that you still need to know?”

“Oh yes, there are a great many things that I need to know, but I have found the great Teacher and I am not going around seeking truth any longer. He instructs me through His Word.”

“Well, as for me, I am always seeking, I go anywhere and everywhere that I think I can learn more.”

“Yes,” I said, “I was reading of you in my Bible the other day.”

“Of me?”

“Yes.”

“What did it say about me?”

“It said, ‘Ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.’”

“Why, that has no reference to me,” he said.

“Pardon me, but you said that you are always seeking and if a man is always seeking he is never finding. But, you see, those of us who know Christ have found Him and have been found of Him.”

Then he began to impart some of his weird gospel to me and said, “But you don’t know who I am.”

“No,” I said, “beyond what is written here, I do not know who you are.”

“I am one of the 144,000 of whom you read in Revelation.”

“What tribe, please?” I asked.

“Well, the Lord knows, I don’t,” he said.

“Then, you will have to excuse me for not taking your word for it and really believing that you are one of the 144,000.”

“But, have you not heard that the first resurrection has already taken place?” he asked. “I am in my resurrection body.”

“Is that it you have with you?”

“Why, yes, this is my resurrection body.”

“Oh, I am dreadfully disappointed,” I said. “I never thought it would look like that. I thought it was to be something beautiful.”

Maybe I was a little discourteous to the poor old gentleman but he was so indignant he turned and cursed me in the name of the Lord and tramped out knocking his shoes against the floor to shake off the dust as a witness against me. “Ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

That is an extreme case but what a lot of folks there are like him in some degree, just running from one thing to another and never getting anywhere. The apostle says, “Hold fast the form of sound words,” and you get sound words in the Book of God and nowhere else.

“That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men.” That is, men who have selfish purposes to serve, and want to make disciples in order to profit from them. “And cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” When men come to you with strange and new things, Christian, ask for a “Thus saith the Lord,” ask them to give chapter and verse in God’s blessed Book for the strange doctrines they bring you. If Christians would only do this, they would not be running after these modern religious fads. Here you have something that has stood the test of nineteen hundred years. It is God’s own blessed Word, and you can depend upon it. You can live upon it and as you feed upon the precious truth here revealed you will grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

But now, although we want to be very insistent upon a good confession, we need to be just as insistent upon a godly life and upon the manifestation of the Spirit of Christ, and so in the next verse we read, “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.” It is an important thing to stand for the fundamentals but as we seek to bear witness to the great fundamental truths, let us never forget that the greatest fundamental of all is love. “Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing (1 Corinthians 13:2–3). It is a very interesting fact that here in the original text, there is only one Greek word for the three English words, “speaking the truth.” In the original, it is a participle from the word, “truth,” and if we turn it into literal English we would have to render it in a rather awkward way. We would have to say “truthing.” “But truthing in love.” Perhaps a better rendering than “speaking the truth in love,” and more suited to our ears, would be, “manifesting the truth in love.” In other words, it is not just the testimony of the lips, declaring that certain things are divine truth but it is the life manifesting the truth. I have heard people say of certain ones, “Yes, yes, he seems to say things all right but I do not see much evidence of divine love in his life.” And then I have heard people sometimes bear witness of others in this way, “I believe in what Mr. So and So says because he lives it out from day to day.”

A young man was asked the question, “What have you found to be the best translation of the New Testament?” Without a moment’s hesitation he answered, “My mother’s.” His friend said, “Your mother’s! I didn’t know she was a scholar. Did she translate the New Testament?” “My mother was not a scholar, she could not read a word of Greek, but she translated the New Testament into her beautiful life and that made more of an impression on me than anything else I have ever known.” That is what you and I are called upon to do, to manifest the truth in our lives. The love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which was given unto us and now we are to be controlled by that Holy Spirit. We are to manifest the love of God in all our dealings with others. Even
“When truth compels us to contend,
What love with all our strife should blend.”

The Christian is never entitled to act in an unchristlike way, no matter what the provocation. We are ever to be “truthing in love,” and as we thus live in the power of the truth of God and are dominated by the love of Christ we are growing up into Him, daily becoming more like himself. Are people seeing more of Christ in you from day to day?

I remember years ago, a young preacher coming to the city of Toronto, where I was born and where I lived until I was ten years old, and though I was only about eight years old at the time, I recall being taken by my mother to hear this preacher for she insisted that I must go and hear the Gospel every Sunday night. She used to say, “It is far more important that my children hear the Gospel than that they have sleep or anything else. They must know Christ from childhood up.” Of course in Canada, our Gospel meeting used to begin at 6:30 o’clock and little folk could attend and still be home and in bed in good time. Before I was ten years old, I got to be quite a sermon taster, as the Scotch used to say. I loved to come home and get on a chair and take off the preachers, try to give the intonations of their deep Scotch voices or those from the north of Ireland, for all the preachers I ever heard in those days had the old country twang. I listened to this young Irish preacher, a fine, tall, handsome young man. A little group came home with us after the meeting to spend an hour or so in singing around the old-fashioned cabinet organ. Someone asked the question, “How did you like the young preacher from Ireland?” One replied, “It did me good to hear the old tongue again. It was just grand.” Another said, “I thought he had a splendid delivery, you could hear him so plainly.” Another, “He seemed to me to be most eloquent." Another,” “How well he knew his Bible. He opened up the truth in a beautiful way.” A lady sitting quietly was asked, “And what did you think of him?” “Well, you know,” she answered, “there was something about his behavior that appealed to me. He seemed the most like Jesus of any preacher I have ever listened to.” How one might wish to have that kind of recognition—to be like Him. Some of us, as we try to preach His Word, are made very conscious of the fact that we are so unlike Him. There is so much about us that would never have been seen in Him. Never a night but one has to bow the knee before God and acknowledge it, but as we walk with Him, as we seek to “truth” in love we grow up into Him and so we become more like Him as the days go.

It is a beautiful thing to grow old gracefully, to manifest more of Jesus from day to day. Our blessed Head is the One from whom we draw all our supplies for spiritual upbuilding, and we read, “From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.” It is just the figure of the human body and every part, every separate organ, every joint and sinew, every glad working for the upbuilding of the whole. That is the ideal picture of the Christian church and of Christian fellowship. Have you ever read “Hebich’s Tub?” It tells the story of a quaint Dutch preacher over in the East Indies. Many years ago, he was conducting religious services for a group of British army officers. He was characterized by a shrewd keen humor and pressed the truth home in the most amazing illustrations. He happened to know that there were certain little dissensions among the group and so on one occasion he took for his text, “That which every joint supplieth," and went on to read, "According to the effectual working in the measure of every part." He looked at his audience, and then with his eyes half shut he said, “Did you ever see a tub? What is it that makes a good tub? If you have a good bottom to it, is that a tub? No. If you have a good side, is that a tub? No. If you have good hoops around it, is that a good tub? No. But if you have good boards for the bottom and fitly joined together and then the good boards for the sides all fitly joined together, and then the good hoops and all of these things fitly joined together, you have a tub. And it is the same with the Christian church. You have got to have every believer in his place and all fitly joined together by the power of the Holy Spirit. You may have all joined together, but if there is a little pebble in between two of the staves, you do not have a tub that will hold water. If the staves have shrunk and drawn apart, it is useless, and if I am a Christian and have some selfishness in me, if through selfishness or envy, I do not have real Christian fellowship or if little things come in, I am useless. If the Colonel’s lady has some unkind feeling toward the Major’s lady and they come to church and join in prayer and in singing hymns and listen to the sermon, yet they are not fitly joined together, and you don’t have real Christian fellowship.” How many little things there are that come in to hinder and keep believers from functioning as they ought!

“Fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth.” You have to contribute your share and I have to contribute mine, all for the good of the whole. And then what? “According to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.” May God give every one of us a deeper sense of our individual responsibility to manifest the truth in love for the blessing of all.