Paul here is wrapping up a section on unity. It’s actually a continuation of the earlier discussion of spiritual warfare, because the unity of the church is both one of our strongest weapons against and the greatest targets of the spiritual forces of darkness Paul warned about.
The big idea here is that God has placed every person here at Seed Church and every person He’s going to put here in the future, so that we come together with all of these diverse gifts in order to function properly. Just like our body is designed to work when all the parts are functioning properly.
The most well known part of these verses is “speak the truth in love.” This is often said just before someone speaks something that may or may not be truth, but almost certainly is not in love. The word in Greek itself is actually a verb form of the word that means truth. So the language here its more like “truthing”. We should be truthing in love – this goes fast beyond the words we speak.
This discussion of truth may remind us of the conversation between Jesus and Pontius Pilate, when the latter famously asked “what is truth?” Jesus himself, though embodies the truth – as he said to Pilate, “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Elsewhere he asserts “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”
We reject, or should reject, the world’s notion that truth is relative, and that we seek “my truth.” We are given other believers, teachers, who are there to help us towards the truth. The challenges of truth, though, are twofold: we don’t know it, and we don’t believe it.
Our response to the first of those must be to immerse ourselves in the truth of the scriptures. As John MacArthur wrote “Make sure Satan has to climb over a lot of scripture to get to you.” And it is important to do this both corporately and individually. This is a team sport. And it is vital that we know the truth of God in order to have a relationship with Him. As Amy Hartley writes, “The modern church is producing passionate people with empty heads who love the Jesus they don’t know very well.”
But we also have to believe it. How do we even pin that down? Feelings can be a good indicator. Feelings are not a good indicator of truth, but they are often a good indicator of what we actually believe. Often what they tell us we believe in is ourselves. It is very difficult to give up control, even to God.
Augustine wrote “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” This is what we want, but there is a part of us that does not believe this, that fights against it and will leave us ineffective. This is why we must constantly go back to the scriptures to bolster our belief. As the father with a dying child said to Jesus – “I believe; help my unbelief!”
How then do I live that out? It starts with how we see those around us. God is love, and so we should look at everyone around us as someone God loves. This is the truth that is in love. To remove the love from this is to remove the truth itself.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul warns that any speech or worship without love is functionally meaningless. No one can hear your truth unless it is soaked, immersed in love. And he also tells us what that love looks like: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Here in Ephesians, this truth-in-love concept leads directly to the metaphor of the church as a body, with every part having a distinct function, the diversity of its members all necessary for the body to function at intended.
We are fortunate to go to a church where people are doing this, in many ways, in service, in prayer, in giving. Be encouraged by this.
We are to embody truth in love. We need to know it, believe it, proclaim it and express it in our service.
-Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, November 1, 2020