How often have I written about speaking the truth in love in the past year? I’ve been repeatedly prompted by discussions, posts, or rants about Christians who want to unwaveringly take a hard line and confront with truth because of the wishy-washy believers who taut we can love unconditionally to reflect God’s character. I have repeatedly and from many angles emphasized that truth without love and love without truth are not expressions of God’s will. And it can’t be our truth or our love. To follow his directive to speak the truth in love, we need to speak his truth in his love. As I was driving one day, I heard what I’d been trying to express. The song is several years old, and I’ve heard and sung it many times, yet it washed over me.

It’s not one or the other: hard truth and ridiculous grace. Fully known and loved by you.

To be fully known and loved by God, we welcome and engage his hard truth and ridiculous grace. And it’s difficult. We want to filter both and only accept what is comfortable, convenient, or fathomable. Not unlike what we do when we live out God’s truth and love. We want to filter both and only express what is comfortable, convenient, and fathomable. But just as filtering shortchanges being fully known and loved by God—not because we limit his capacity to know and love us but we limit our capacity to receive and accept them—filtering shortchanges living out loud what it is to be fully known and loved by God and inviting others to do the same. Speaking the truth in love and living God’s hard truth and ridiculous grace out loud is dependent on our relationship with God. Our posture of faith matters not only in what we receive but in what we give.

Let’s do everything we can to give well.