There's No App for Truthing in Love

Good to see you all here this morning. I do want to transition us. Before we read God's word, I want to offer a prayer. I sent an email out to the congregation on Monday regarding this. We have two former members of our church, Bobby and Annie Roberts, who were here. He was at RUF, our college ministry from 2011 to 2015, and she was here 2013 to 2017. They subsequently got married, have gone into seminary and ministry, been in Johnson City, Tennessee as an assistant pastor, and then planted a church in Jonesboro. Many of you know from my email, they lost a daughter in a tragic car wreck. The funeral was yesterday. Our hearts are grieving. Many here know and remember Bobby and Annie fondly. I just want to offer a prayer if you would join me in praying for them.

Father, we thank you, Lord, that you are in charge of all things, and though we don't always understand your ways, and this world feels hard and cruel, Lord, we know that you're good. Father, we cry out to you for our brother, for our sister, for their daughter, Mary. Father, we pray that the God of all comfort would comfort them. Lord, we ask and just lift them up. Really, we have no words or glue to put things back together. We just ask for your power to be displayed and your goodness to be displayed even in this, and we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

We're gonna read together as is our practice. Our scripture reading today is from Ephesians 4. I've selected a number of verses there. If you want to follow along in your bulletin or on the screen behind me, let's read Ephesians 4 of these various selections together now.

But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ. But that is not how you came to know Christ, assuming you heard about him and were taught by him as the truth is in Jesus to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God's likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth. Therefore, putting away lying, speaking the truth, each one to his neighbor because we are members of one another. Be angry and do not sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger. No foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need so that it gives grace to those who hear. Let all bitterness and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you along with all malice. — Ephesians 4:15, 20-26, 29, 31

It's the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Several years ago, National Geographic did a whole feature on telling lies, and it said the average person learns to tell lies between the ages of two and five. The average adult tells one to two lies every day. We learn lying, especially during two formative years—the terrible twos and high school. We're covering up behavior we don't want other people to know about. And that pattern goes for many people throughout life. We hide our insecurities. We fudge things that we don't want people to see. We try to make good walking through life.

I want to try out a few lies on you and see if these might characterize you in some way. How about this: "Oh, I'd love to come, but I have another commitment that night." You don't have another commitment that night. You just don't want to go.

You break promises. "Yes, roommate. I will come with you over spring break to visit your grandma in Indiana." Then you get the invitation to go to Jamaica with another group of friends. "No, roommate. We're not going. I don't want to see grandma."

"I just now got your message. I just now got your text." No. You got it yesterday. You just ignored it. You didn't want to answer it.

They get more complicated over time. Things like fudging a little on your expense reports for work. Fudging a little on your time sheet. Not disclosing just every last detail in the sale document for your home. Cheating on taxes. Even just a little gloss here or there.

Now, all those lies may not describe you, but I know the company that I keep. Sorry, y'all. And as Buddy the elf says, you sit on a throne of lies, and you smell like beef and cheese. Okay, maybe not the last part, but we're people who know how to lie. We're practiced in it. And whether it hurts other people or not, these are not truths.

You may think that in this passage today, and actually in scripture, I'm gonna tell you that this is about telling the truth at all times and at all costs. And there are movies about that.

Some of you have seen The Invention of Lying or Liar Liar, which kind of imagine a world where people tell the truth all the time, and it doesn't matter. They just let the chips fall. But this passage actually holds out for something much deeper. Now, of course, the ninth commandment calls us to not bear false witness. But truth telling in all contexts at all times isn't really what we're commanded to. We're actually called to something that's much deeper and more powerful and more beautiful and life giving.

If there's one thing we've learned from social media, there's a way to tell the truth that hurts. My wife loves cooking videos. I hate to out her for this, but she loves cooking videos. And people are just savage in response to cooking videos. Like, that's the worst thing I've ever seen. How can you call that a good meal? You should be ashamed of yourself. Mean, just ridiculous responses. There's a way to tell the truth in a way that hurts.

But Paul doesn't call us here merely to truthful speech. In fact, he actually makes up a word. Here's what it is: truthing in love. That's what he's calling us to. Now that's taking a noun like Google and turning it into a verb. So truthing in love. This is what we're called to in this passage. Because what's in view here is not just telling the facts, it's living lives that are so shaped by the truths of the gospel, of who we are in Christ and how we know him and therefore love one another that a type of truthing comes out of our lives to ourselves and to each other.

So I'm gonna take this sermon in two parts: an inward journey and an outward journey. Truthing ourselves, yourself in love, truthing other people in love.

Truthing to Self in Love

This is verses 20 through 24, and it begins right here:

That is not the way you learned Christ. — Ephesians 4:20

Now notice where Paul starts. He doesn't start with our mouths. He doesn't start with our words or our speech. He starts with our identity. Because Christians tell the truth in love—before we can tell the truth in love to one another, we have to be people who are taking this deep within ourselves and telling ourselves what is true.

Why do we need to learn to truth ourselves in love? Because we believe and tell lies all the time to ourselves. We don't naturally do this. People spend all day interpreting their world and talking to themselves. I read recently that in moments when you're not actively talking to someone else or actively engaged in some form of work, you are in those kind of white noise moments—between pumping gas, in the shower, washing your hands—around 4,000 words will go through your mind in the space of about five minutes. You've got this internal TED talk you're doing all the time.

Now here's my question for you: What's that TED talk about? For most people, the TED talks we are telling ourselves are filled with condemnation. They're filled with negative speech. Things like this: I'm a terrible parent. I'll never beat this addiction. I am so damaged. I'm only as good as my last accomplishment. No one really loves me. I am my failures. If people really knew me, they would run away. I'll never change.

See, I think the greatest lies that we tell are not the ones we tell to other people about their text messages or engagements. They're the lies we tell ourselves all the time. And I think you're really good at it because I hear the way that sometimes this comes out in conversations, and it's sort of self-condemning, and it has no part in the gospel. It has no part among God's people.

These lies don't come from nowhere. They come from internal to ourselves, from our sinful nature. They come from the messages of our culture. They come from the enemy himself. And there are things like this: You are your failures. You are your wounds. You are hopeless. You are evil. You're broken beyond repair. Your mom, dad, brother, friend were right. You aren't worth it. You are your sin.

But here's the thing: Unless we learn to tell ourselves the truth, we are gonna be no good at speaking the truth to one another in love. Unless we are able to learn to truth ourselves, we can't truth each other. Unless we begin believing what God says about us in Christ, we're not gonna be free to love other people. Unless we are people who are resting in God's verdict for us, we're just gonna rehearse the verdicts that we've heard all our lives.

Is there anybody with me this morning? Y'all know what I'm talking about. There's a lot of lies. That's a lot of lies to take in every day. Discouraging talk from the world around you, but discouraging talk that you're reciting to yourself. Discouraging things, all that untruth. And the first place, again, we need to begin truthing in love is right here, on the inside, telling ourselves what's real.

And this is where the gospel says something glorious to us this morning. Listen to these words in verses 21 through 24. I'm gonna read it again.

But that is not the way that you came to know Christ, assuming you heard about him and were taught by him as the truth is in Jesus to take off your former way of life, the old self that's corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, to put on the new self, the one created according to God's likeness and righteousness and purity of the truth. — Ephesians 4:21-24

Now this is glorious news, and I'm so grateful for the Carolina Hurricanes who won the Stanley Cup in order to give me a sermon illustration this morning. So no news here. Carolina Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup. But several weeks ago, 180,000 fans donned their favorite jerseys or t-shirts. I saw two of them here this morning. Right? And went in mass downtown and celebrated, and it was a celebration. It was nuts. I couldn't believe 108,000 people have that much canes wear, but showed up to celebrate the win.

Now why did they do that? Because they won. And when they won, we won. Right? Now here's the funny thing. None of you played in that game. Any of those games. I know. I've looked around this room. There are no hurricanes players in our congregation. Not one of you. And yet, how many of you have a t-shirt or a jersey? Come on. Let's see the hands. How many of you love them? You love your t-shirt or jersey. Yeah. James Sutton, I think he wouldn't gonna take it off for weeks.

Now here's why we love that, why we love those jerseys. Because when their victory is our victory. And 180,000 people went downtown to say, yay us. You know, this is what it means to be a Christian. When we get up each morning and we remember who Jesus is, his life, his death, his resurrection, and we put on the jersey, like, yes. It's as if his victory was our victory. Because it is. It's not the same even as the Canes. It really is our victory. We are putting on Jesus.

Everybody, I think everybody should want to be a Christian. I know it's a crazy statement to make in 2026. But if people knew, to be a Christian is not just believing in some historic facts about Jesus. It's not just a hope for the future. It's an everyday reality I get to put on and you get to put on. This is the new you. You get to put on Christ. Put on his victory. Put on who he is and walk around in it and have your head held high and know what is true about you.

Your deepest identity—I wish I could tell everybody this. Your deepest identity, if you're a Christian, this is what's glorious about being a Christian, isn't your best day. It isn't even your worst day. It's Jesus. It's Jesus. No. It's not that you as a person cease to exist. It's that you actually are becoming in him the true person that God designed from all eternity that you would be. You're becoming more yourself as you put on Jesus and walk around in that every day. You're becoming the person God created. It is glorious to be a Christian.

Speaking Truth to Yourself

So here, I'm urging you this morning to learn to speak a new talk to yourself. The British preacher Martin Lloyd Jones said it this way: most of your unhappiness is because you listen to yourself instead of you talk to yourself. Talk to yourself. Truth yourself with the gospel every day. Every morning before your feet hit the floor, put on the Jesus jersey and say, this is who I really am. In him, this is who I really, really am. And he's making something of me as I put this on every day.

The gospel doesn't just change how we're supposed to talk. It changes who we are on the inside so that we can speak differently to ourselves, and now point to one another. Truthing in love to self, truthing in love to one another.

Truthing in Community

So if the first passage deals with our identity—putting off the old, putting on the new—the second teaches us how that identity gets practiced, where we do that, and how we do that. So listen to the context of this. Listen to the community context of this command.

Therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor because we are members of one another. — Ephesians 4:25

This is where membership in the church came from. This right here. Members of one another, part of one another.

Each of you was born into a human family that had a particular bent toward the truth. Toward the truth. And so some of you who grew up in truth without love families—and I don't mean there wasn't any love, but I mean the way that we talked was we said everything that came to our minds. It came out of our mouths. We could be harsh or mean. People didn't repair things or ask for forgiveness. We just sort of let it fly.

Families like this have a slogan: I'm just telling it like it is. Right? I'm just being honest. It's your problem if you can't handle it. Truth without love isn't truth. It's just cruelty. And a lot of times, it's really just about the self.

Others of you grew up in love—and I use "luv" for this one—love without truth families. Right? Who never said what needed to be said, accommodated everything to the point of enabling. So there was an aunt so-and-so in your family who was rude, and nobody ever said anything. A couple of you have that aunt. I can tell. I heard some giggles. Right? You know what I'm talking about. These families always talk about one another, never to each other. Right? Destructive behavior was never confronted.

Look. Love without truth isn't love. It's fawning. It's enabling. It's accommodating. So which family did you grow up in? Because whichever one you grew up in shaped you—and that's probably the same mistake that you're making right now.

John Newton put it perfectly: "Our temptation is either to say what we ought not to say or to refuse to say what we should. One is arrogance, the other is cowardice."

So where in the world do you learn a new way? Where do you learn to move beyond the family of origin and learn a new way with regard to truthing in love? You notice that Paul is not writing to a group of individuals. He's writing to a church in Ephesus—a family of God just like this one. The church is the place where we can be refamilied if we're willing.

Susan and I do a lot of premarital counseling. And one of the things that she loves to say—this is from Pete Scazzero, a pastor in New York City for many years—he has this quote about your family of origin: "You know, Jesus may be in your heart, but grandpa is in your bones." And what does that mean? That means you're so shaped by the family you grew up in, and you have to consciously unlearn that in a new environment. You need to be refamilied. When we're doing premarital counseling, we're counseling a couple on how to refamily. But this is so much more important for a church. Are we a refamilying church?

You know, truthing in love is something you can't learn about alone. And you also can't learn about it by dipping your toe into the church two or three times a month. You can't just come on a Sunday morning and experience this. You need to be plunged deep into the life of a community that's regular and intentional around speaking the truth in love—truthing in love. This is not something that you can opt in and opt out of. To be refamilied means you put your whole self in, like the Hokey Pokey. You put your whole self in to the Christian community, and you begin to participate in this, and you begin to be formed and shaped by this. There's no app for this. This is hard.

How to Learn Truthing in Love

So if that's where you learn truthing in love, how do you learn it? I've got several things here. I've got three checks and one ramp.

Number one: check your tone. This is verse 31.

Let all bitterness, anger, and wrath, shouting, and slander be removed from you along with all malice. — Ephesians 4:31

Do you notice how Paul warns us? All those words leading up to malice are very specific. The word malice at the end is sort of a catch-all phrase—a summary word that encompasses everything that came before. And what is he saying? It's all about tone of voice.

You know, there is a way to speak truth with a tone. You know it, right? People have told you true things in ways that got a little shiv at the end—right in the back. Right? You didn't see it coming. You get knifed right there because it's truth with a little cut. Sarcasm. There's a type of upspeak that turns what really wasn't a question into a question. You know, "Weren't you supposed to...?" And it's shaming. Tone is everything. Check your tone.

Number two: check your motives. This is verse 29.

No corrupting talk should come out of your mouths. — Ephesians 4:29

Now, that word corrupting means rotten. You might think of that as cussing or cursing—we're in the South. But that's actually not what's in view there. The word corrupting is a word for rotting, like a rotting banana on your counter in the kitchen. A rotting piece of fruit. And what's in view here is that there's a way your words can rot a relationship, can rot other people.

Maybe you're ready to tell the truth. You've got the right tone of voice, but do you have the right motive? Is it to rot, or is it to heal? Is it to bring wholeness to a person, or is it to simply pour something ugly over them? Now some of you need that caution. Check your motivations.

But others of you need to hear this: Don't overthink it, because it's wrong to have bad motives and mixed motives. But some of you will use that as an excuse to say, "Oh, I don't have perfect motives, so I'm never going to say anything."

Look. Truth moment here. Only Jesus ever had perfect motives.

If you're waiting till the day that you have perfect moments, it'll be in the new heavens and the new earth. So don't discount speaking until you have everything perfect.

Third, check your timing. Notice Paul says, right here in verse 26, about not letting the sun go down on your anger. There's something about timing in that. Now some people have taken that too woodenly, in my opinion, like couples who get into an argument, and they'll stay up all night to resolve this. I'm sorry. I don't think that's literal. I just think it means soon. Okay? Not have to do this at 4AM. Nobody can think at 4AM. But there is something here about timing. Doing this soon. Choosing your moment. Being discerning. Can this person hear this right now? Are they exhausted from work right now? Can this wait till tomorrow? Maybe this is not the best time.

So do so soon, do so carefully, but here's one thing that doesn't mean. It doesn't mean never. And I just want to say that to you. Some of you are like, yeah. I'm in the never category. That's a very comfortable place for me. There's a right place and a right time, but it's never never.

Becoming a Truthing Community

Here's what God has in mind. We don't merely tell the truth. We become truthing people. We truth ourselves. We truth one another. We truth and love. Here's my question. Don't you want to be a part of a community that lives this way? That's this encouraging to one another, this loving to one another?

You need help with this? How about I give you an on ramp? You know, you get on the interstate. You don't just drive through the grass. Well, you go up the ramp. So here's a ramp. Doctor John Cox, who has come to our church many times, has done marriage and parenting courses for our congregation, he gives several on ramps for a conversation. Things like this:

Can I offer you some feedback?
Would you like to hear that?
Would you be willing to hear what it's been like to be with you for the last few days?
Are you in a place where I could tell you what I'm experiencing with you?
Can I hold up a mirror?

Now all of those questions are asked before you give any content, and that's a judo move right there. That is next level judo. Because that person, it puts them in a place to say, if they're still like, no. I don't really want any feedback, it tells them they're kind of arrogant. They don't want to hear anything from you or anybody else. It sort of puts the ball in their court to say, oh, I guess I do sort of want to hear feedback, or I'm going to look like a big jerk. But that's an on ramp to try out those phrases.

Here's something fascinating. Paul is saying here, churches don't grow because of great preachers. Churches grow because of great congregations. Truth in love.

Four Questions for This Week

Four questions I want you to think about this week:

What lie am I believing about myself that the gospel corrects?
Who in my life has earned the right to tell me the truth? Who would I hear truth from?
Who am I avoiding because love requires a difficult conversation?
Before I speak, will my words be good and build up and fit the occasion and give grace?

Now we're going to run through those slides again as I keep the sermon going for you to take notes. Every time we truth and love, we are exercising the ministry of Jesus with one another, his ongoing ministry with one another. It's a glorious thing. Jesus loves us too much to leave us in a place of being static and stagnant. One of the gifts of being a part of a church that truths and love is it's part of God's plan for shaping us to be more like Jesus together. It's a good thing.

Pinocchio Got It Wrong

Let me say this by way of conclusion. You know, Pinocchio got it all wrong. You know the story of Pinocchio. There's a woodcarver named Geppetto. Doesn't have any kids of his own, so he carves a wooden marionette puppet, and he wishes on a star that one day the puppet would become a real boy. And that night, of course, the blue fairy comes down and with her magic wand waves it over Pinocchio, and he becomes a living puppet. And he's given Jiminy Cricket, his conscience, as his guide. And then he's given this horrible test. You know, here's what it is. If you will be truthful, and brave, and unselfish, you might become a real boy. And she just sets him on his way.

And here's what happens. He falls in with a bad crowd. He ends up turning partially into a donkey at Pleasure Island. He kind of narrowly escapes that. Actually, in the original book, Pinocchio kills Jiminy Cricket with a hammer very early on.

So the story is a morality tale with a simple message. Be good, and you will be real.

Every time he tells a lie, what happens? The nose grows. The nose just keeps growing. And that's the way that the Pinocchio story is an anti-gospel story. It gets it all wrong because Pinocchio only becomes a real boy by getting it all right. Ouch. So glad the gospel flips that upside down for us.

God has no conditions on grace. Jesus doesn't wait for us to become truth tellers for him to love us, for us to become real. He became like us. He entered into a world of lies. Deceptions were made about him. He was entrapped. He was lied about over and over again. He carried our deceptions. He died for our falsehoods, and he made us alive in him.

Pinocchio becomes real by saving himself. We become real because Jesus makes us real. He makes us alive in him. He saves us despite our lack of honesty. He tells us the truth about ourselves. Yeah. You're a bigger liar than you know, but you are more prized and cherished by the God of the universe than you can ever imagine. He makes us real.

And only as we are made real, as we live out of this, put on the Jesus jersey every day, can we learn to speak differently. Brothers and sisters, don't be like Pinocchio. Be real in him. Truth one another. Truth yourself.

In the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Prayer

Father, we thank you. We thank you that you did not leave us like Pinocchio. You did not leave us with a test that none of us could ever attempt to even measure up to. Father, we thank you that Jesus did all that was required for us to make us real in you.

Lord, help us every day to put on Jesus, to walk around in the true self that we are in him. Lord, teach us what it means to speak the truth to ourselves and speak the truth in love to one another. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.