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“Biblical love is both truth and affection put together and kept together.”

A thought by James MacDonald (2015-06-18) from his book, Lord, Change My Attitude: Before It's Too Late (p. 149). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

Did you realize that?  Did you know that Biblical love is both truth and affection put together?

James says, “An imbalance of biblical love has often infected the church. On one hand is radical fundamentalism that emphasizes all truth and is legalistic and screaming, ‘This is what the Word says, boy!’ That’s not what Jesus did. On the other hand, we have a liberal Christianity that says, ‘Bag the Bible; we have Jesus! We have His heart for the hurting, and we’re going out to make a difference in this world.’ Jesus didn’t do that either.”

He goes on, “Neither one of those is what Christ intended. It appears we need a balance between these two: truth and acts of mercy; acts of mercy and truth. Anything less is not biblical love. For instance, Jerry isn’t sure how to show love yet speak truth. He described his dilemma: ‘My friend has a drinking problem. I can tell it by his breath. I can see it in his eyes. I know it by his actions. I know that he is hurting himself and his family. So what do I do? If I go and speak truth to him, he might reject me. So I’m just going to love him and care for him. But that’s not really right either, because if I just leave him and I know that he is hurting himself, something inside me tells me that’s not loving.’”  And that is true.

James then says, “I’m going to tell you: It’s not about balancing truth and love. We can’t replace criticism with a tightrope walk between truth and love. We need a paradigm shift. Do you know what a paradigm shift is? A paradigm shift occurs when you have been looking at something one way for such a long time that you think that’s the only way it is. All of a sudden, you walk around the other side of the issue, and you’re like, ‘Agh! It’s totally not like what I thought it was! It’s completely different.’”  

 “We need to make that complete shift in how we look at truth and love. We’re not supposed to be balancing love and truth as though they are separate things. What 1 Corinthians 13 is teaching— and you won’t hear this very often at a wedding— is that truth is part of love and that you’re not really loving if speaking truth is not part of the equation. All truth and no love is brutality. The rest of 1 Corinthians 13 can be summarized in the following statements: On the majors— action. On the minors— acceptance. In all things— love.”

It is not an either or, it is both.   That’s how Jesus loves and how He wants us to love.


Don’t you see how this would make a difference in our world, in our church and in our family?
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