Rabbi Schneider - Are You Obligated to Tell the Truth?
I'm gonna be sharing a scripture with you today that I bet many of us have never really thought much about before. I'm going to the book of Galatians chapter 4 verse 16. I'm quoting the words of Paul to the church at Galatia. Listen to what he said, "So if I become your enemy by telling you the truth", in other words, Paul was experiencing animosity and rejection because he told the saints in this church, the truth. But the reality is is that there is a price to pay beloved one for telling the truth.
And a lot of times we think we're loving to people by not saying anything that we think might offend them, but in reality, sometimes not telling them the truth, even though we know it's gonna probably offend them and make them mad, that's the least loving thing that we could do. For example, many people don't share their love for Jesus, with people. They don't share the gospel with people because they don't wanna offend somebody that they don't wanna be rejected by. But is that really the loving thing to do? No, the loving thing to do is if Jesus is who he said he was, which we know that he is, the most loving thing that we could do is share the good news.
That's what the gospel means, the good news. And oftentimes when people that we know or people that we come in contact with, need to hear a word of loving correction. The most loving thing we could do is tell them the truth. Even though we know that truth often offends, but think of it this way. If people are gonna make positive change in their life, most often the change will need to take place through confrontation. Either the Holy Spirit confronts our heart, He convicts us, He challenges us and thereby even if we get mad, it changes us if we're open. The same thing with a word from a trusted friend that may tell us something.
For example, my wife may say something to me, but even if I get mad at the end of the day, her challenge to me, her truthful comment to me, even though it challenged my thinking process for my behavior and made me upset at first, at the end of the day, God used that to move me deeper down the road of sanctification and holiness. So too, we have to understand that we cannot allow the fact that telling the truth may cause somebody to reject us or to get mad if we really wanna be loving and see positive change in their life. So Paul was telling the truth to these saints in Galatia. He said, as a result of that, they had kind of turned on him. So Paul said once again, "so if I become your enemy, because I told you the truth".
Beloved, I wanna close today once again by saying, there's a price to pay for lovingly telling the truth. I'm not talking about telling the truth offensively. I'm talking about telling the truth with compassion and love. There's a price to pay because not everyone's gonna receive the truth. But the question is, will you and I be obedient to Jesus and speak the truth to ourselves, to the Lord, but then to those people in our life, both near and far, who God has put us in relationship with? Beloved we're in the earth to tell the truth. Jesus said, I am the way the truth and the life. Love without truth is not really love and truth without love is not really truth. Let's be truth tellers. And let's tell the truth in love.