Centred in Jesus: Love, Grace and Truth

Faith, hope and love — but what does love really mean?

I’ve been thinking again about Paul’s familiar words:

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
— 1 Corinthians 13:13

It is difficult to overstate the place of love in the Christian life. God is love. We love because He first loved us. Jesus commands us to love God, love our neighbour, love one another and even love our enemies. He tells His disciples:

“Love each other as I have loved you.”
— John 15:12

But what does that love actually look like?

Biblical love — agapē love — is much deeper than being nice, avoiding disagreement, affirming everything another person believes, or trying never to upset anyone. Paul tells us that “love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6).

So love and truth cannot ultimately be separated.

Jesus is “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). He came “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). He calls us to worship the Father “in the Spirit and in truth” (John 4:23–24).

And this is important: our goal is not merely to find the perfect balance between love and truth, as though Jesus were 50% loving and 50% truthful.

Our goal is Jesus Himself.

In Him, love, grace and truth are perfectly united.

So when someone says, “If I’m going to be lopsided, I’d rather be lopsided towards love than truth,” I understand the heart behind that. Loveless truth can do enormous damage. But why deliberately settle for either kind of lopsidedness?

If Jesus is truth, moving away from truth is not moving closer to Jesus.

And if God is love, becoming harsh, proud or loveless in our defence of truth is not moving closer to Jesus either.

The goal is not to choose the better side to lean towards. The goal is to become more centred in Christ.

Revelation 2–3: Jesus corrects both kinds of lopsidedness

The letters to the churches in Revelation 2–3 give us a powerful picture of this.

The church at Ephesus was discerning. They worked hard, persevered, tested those who claimed spiritual authority and rejected false apostles. Jesus even commended them for hating the practices of the Nicolaitans.

Yet He gave them this devastating correction:

“You have forsaken the love you had at first.”
— Revelation 2:4

They could identify error, but something central had been lost.

Yet Jesus does not solve that problem by telling the other churches that doctrine no longer matters.

Pergamum is rebuked for tolerating the teaching of Balaam and the Nicolaitans. Thyatira is actually commended for its love, faith, service and perseverance, yet Jesus rebukes the church because it tolerates the false teaching represented by “Jezebel.”

That is significant.

Jesus does not say, “You have love, so the false teaching doesn’t really matter.”

Nor does He tell Ephesus, “Your doctrine is correct, so the condition of your love doesn’t really matter.”

He cares about both.

This is why biblical love cannot mean indiscriminate acceptance. Sometimes love comforts. Sometimes love listens. Sometimes love forgives. Sometimes love patiently bears with weakness. But sometimes love warns, challenges or corrects.

At the same time, truth is never permission for arrogance, cruelty, accusation or self-righteousness.

Paul doesn’t merely tell us to speak truth. He calls us to be “speaking the truth in love” as we grow towards maturity in Christ (Ephesians 4:15).

Sometimes I need correction — and sometimes we misunderstand each other

I certainly haven’t mastered any of this myself.

There are times when I become lopsided. There are times when God uses His Word to correct my thinking or behaviour. Sometimes another Christian sees something I don’t see and I need enough humility to listen, pray about it and receive correction.

None of us has arrived.

But there are also times when people genuinely misunderstand one another.

Sometimes I may communicate something poorly and need to own that. But sometimes what I have said may be interpreted through a completely different lens from the one through which I intended it.

We all bring different personalities, communication styles, histories, assumptions and experiences into relationships.

Someone who has previously had Scripture used against them like a weapon may understandably react strongly when they hear correction, even when the present person isn’t trying to condemn them. Another person may have grown up in an environment where communication was very direct and may have no idea that their words sound harsh to someone else.

That is where humility and emotional intelligence matter.

Perhaps mature Christian communication requires us to be willing to ask both questions:

“Could I have expressed that more lovingly, graciously or clearly?”

and:

“Could I have misunderstood what that person was actually trying to communicate?”

Sometimes the answer to the first question will be yes.

Sometimes the answer to the second will be yes.

Sometimes both will be true.

Love gives us enough humility to examine ourselves and enough grace not to immediately assume the worst about somebody else.

Correction is not the same as condemnation

This distinction is especially important because Scripture tells us:

“There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
— Romans 8:1

The enemy is described as an accuser. Jesus, however, calls sinners towards repentance, restoration, freedom and life.

That does not mean Jesus never speaks hard truth. Read the Gospels and Revelation 2–3 and it becomes impossible to maintain that idea. Jesus could speak extraordinarily strong words when necessary.

Yet look at the Jesus who speaks them.

He is also the One who welcomes sinners, touches the unclean, eats with those whom respectable society rejects, weeps with the grieving, restores Peter after his failure and ultimately lays down His life for His enemies.

Jesus is neither permissive sentimentality nor cold religious judgment.

He is full of grace and truth.

So when correction is needed, the goal shouldn’t be winning an argument, proving our superiority or making another person feel small.

The goal should be love: restoration, maturity, freedom and becoming more like Christ.

And when we receive correction, we also need discernment. We can prayerfully test what has been said against Scripture rather than either automatically accepting every accusation or defensively rejecting every challenge.

The deeper answer: abide in Christ

But underneath all of this is something even more important.

How do we actually become people who increasingly live with this kind of love, grace, truth, wisdom, humility and discernment?

Jesus’ answer takes us deeper than simply “Try harder.”

He says:

“Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.”
— John 15:4

And then:

“Apart from me you can do nothing.”
— John 15:5

This is why abiding in Christ is foundational to genuine Christian growth.

A branch doesn’t produce grapes by gritting its teeth and trying harder to be fruitful. It bears fruit because it remains connected to the vine.

Jesus continues:

“If you remain in me and my words remain in you…”
— John 15:7

And:

“Now remain in my love.”
— John 15:9

There is something beautiful in that progression:

Remain in Christ.
Let His words remain in us.
Remain in His love.
Bear fruit.
Love one another as He has loved us.

This isn’t merely behaviour modification. It is life flowing from relationship with Christ.

James similarly says:

“Come near to God and he will come near to you.”
— James 4:8

We need more than correct doctrine, Christian activity or religious busyness. We need a rich relationship with God.

The fruit of abiding and walking by the Spirit

John 15 speaks about fruit, and Galatians 5 helps us recognise the character that the Spirit increasingly produces:

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
— Galatians 5:22–23

Notice that love comes first, but it doesn’t stand alone.

Christlike love increasingly expresses itself through patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

That matters enormously when we talk about truth.

I can say something factually correct while saying it impatiently.

I can defend biblical truth while being unnecessarily harsh.

I can correct somebody while secretly enjoying being right.

I can even use Scripture to win an argument rather than to serve another person.

The question therefore isn’t merely:

“Was I right?”

It can also be:

“Was I walking by the Spirit?”

Was there love? Patience? Kindness? Goodness? Gentleness? Self-control?

And equally, gentleness does not require us to pretend that something false is true. The same Spirit who produces gentleness inspired the Scriptures that call us to discern truth from error.

Again, we don’t need to choose.

We need Christ.

Gifts and impressive ministry are not substitutes for fruit

This also helps us understand Jesus’ sobering warning in Matthew 7.

Some people will say:

“Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?”

Yet Jesus responds:

“I never knew you.”
— Matthew 7:22–23

That should cause all of us to pause.

Jesus doesn’t tell us to judge spiritual maturity merely by how spectacular someone’s ministry appears.

Paul makes a similarly confronting point immediately before his great description of love in 1 Corinthians 13. He can speak about tongues, prophecy, knowledge and extraordinary faith and then say that without love, “I am nothing.”

Spiritual gifts matter. Ministry matters. Good works matter.

But none of them substitutes for knowing Christ, abiding in Christ and increasingly bearing His fruit.

Perhaps we sometimes become fascinated by the fruit hanging from somebody else’s branches while Jesus is asking whether the branch is actually remaining in the Vine.

Our minds also need transforming

Abiding involves allowing God’s Word to reshape how we think.

Paul tells us:

“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
— Romans 12:2

Scripture also speaks about having the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16) and taking captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Sometimes the thoughts requiring correction aren’t thoughts about somebody else.

They’re our thoughts about ourselves.

We can be extraordinarily harsh towards ourselves. We can replay failures, assume the worst, catastrophise, compare ourselves with others or accept accusing thoughts as though they were God’s voice.

Yet Jesus tells us to love our neighbour as ourselves.

Healthy Christian humility isn’t self-hatred. It recognises both truths:

I am a sinner completely dependent upon grace.

And:

I am deeply loved by God and, in Christ, there is no condemnation.

The Gospel humbles us without destroying us.

Grace doesn’t tell us that sin doesn’t matter. Grace tells us that Christ has done for us what we could never accomplish ourselves and now invites us into a transformed life with Him.

Grace produces obedience — it doesn’t compete with it

None of us gets to boast.

“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
— Romans 3:23

And:

“It is by grace you have been saved, through faith… not by works, so that no one can boast.”
— Ephesians 2:8–9

But we shouldn’t stop reading there.

The very next verse says:

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works.”
— Ephesians 2:10

James likewise reminds us that faith without works is dead.

We aren’t saved by our good works.

We are saved by grace through faith for a transformed life in Christ.

Obedience isn’t the price we pay for salvation. It is part of the fruit that increasingly grows from living faith and abiding in Jesus.

Even here, therefore, the answer isn’t legalism on one side or cheap grace on the other.

It is Christ.

Come to Christ. Abide in Christ. Become more like Christ.

Perhaps that is where all of this ultimately lands.

Come to Christ.
Draw near to Christ.
Abide in Christ.
Let His Word remain in us.
Remain in His love.
Walk by His Spirit.
Allow Him to renew our minds.
Love one another as He has loved us.

We will still get things wrong.

Sometimes I will need correction.

Sometimes you will need correction.

Sometimes we will misunderstand each other.

Sometimes we will speak truth without enough grace.

Sometimes, in an attempt to be loving, we may avoid a truth that actually needs to be spoken.

And when that happens, the answer isn’t condemnation.

It is to return to the Vine.

We confess. We forgive. We learn. We grow. We listen. We allow Scripture to correct us. We extend grace to one another. And we keep drawing nearer to Jesus.

Because apart from Him we can do nothing.

We love because He first loved us.

We know truth because He is the Truth.

We receive grace because He is full of grace and truth.

And the closer we grow to Jesus, the more our love should become truthful, our truth loving, our correction gracious, our discernment humble, and our lives increasingly shaped by the fruit of His Spirit.

The goal isn’t merely to become better balanced.

The goal is to become more centred in Jesus.

---

Key Bible Passages

Love, grace and truth

• 1 Corinthians 13:1–13 — The supremacy and character of love
• 1 Corinthians 13:6 — Love rejoices with the truth
• John 1:14–17 — Jesus, full of grace and truth
• John 14:6 — Jesus is the way, the truth and the life
• John 4:23–24 — Worship in Spirit and truth
• 1 John 4:7–21 — God is love; we love because He first loved us
• Matthew 22:37–40 — Love God and love your neighbour
• Ephesians 4:15 — Speaking the truth in love

Abiding in Christ

• John 15:1–17 — The Vine and the branches; remain in Christ, His Word and His love
• John 15:4–5 — No branch can bear fruit by itself; apart from Christ we can do nothing
• John 15:7 — Remain in Christ and let His words remain in us
• John 15:9–12 — Remain in Christ’s love and love one another as He has loved us
• James 4:8 — Draw near to God and He will draw near to you
• Luke 12:13–21 — The danger of earthly riches without being rich toward God

Walking by the Spirit and bearing fruit

• Galatians 5:13–26 — Serve one another humbly in love; walk by the Spirit; fruit of the Spirit
• Galatians 5:22–23 — Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control
• Romans 12:1–2 — Transformation through the renewing of the mind
• 1 Corinthians 2:16 — The mind of Christ
• 2 Corinthians 10:5 — Taking thoughts captive to obey Christ

Truth, discernment and correction

• Revelation 2:1–7 — Ephesus: truth and discernment, but first love forsaken
• Revelation 2:12–17 — Pergamum and tolerated false teaching
• Revelation 2:18–29 — Thyatira: love and faith commended, false teaching nevertheless confronted
• Galatians 6:1–2 — Restore someone gently and carry one another’s burdens
• 2 Timothy 2:24–26 — Correction with kindness and gentleness

Grace, salvation and a transformed life

• Romans 3:22–24 — All have sinned and are justified freely by grace
• Romans 6:1–14 — Grace does not mean continuing in sin
• Romans 8:1 — No condemnation for those in Christ Jesus
• Ephesians 2:8–10 — Saved by grace through faith and created for good works
• James 2:14–26 — Faith without works is dead
• Philippians 2:12–13 — God works in us to will and to act according to His good purpose

Gifts, fruit and knowing Christ

• Matthew 7:15–23 — Fruit, supernatural works and Jesus’ warning, “I never knew you”
• 1 Corinthians 12:4–31 — Diverse gifts within one Body
• 1 Corinthians 13:1–13 — Even extraordinary gifts without love amount to nothing
• Romans 12:3–8 — Different gifts given by grace
• John 13:34–35 — Jesus’ disciples recognised by their love for one another