The tension between standing on truth and extending love is one of the greatest challenges of the Christian life, and perhaps the greatest puzzle in addressing sexual issues.
Lori Wildenberg knows this well. Her adult daughter, Courtney, is same-sex attracted, unsure about her gender identity, and preparing to marry another woman. Lori felt as though she were standing at a crossroads of truth and love. If she affirmed her daughter’s sexual and identity choices, she would be ignoring what she believed the Bible teaches about sexuality and gender. But if she stood on God’s truth, she would be rejecting her daughter.
Situations like these aren’t the only ones causing Christians to feel as though they must choose between love and truth. What should a family, Christian school, or church do in response to unwed pregnancy or young couples living together? And what about divorce? The tension between grace and truth is not a new problem.
When we believe love wins without also holding firmly to the truth of the Bible, we compromise God’s holiness and fail to be distinctive as Christ-followers. On the other hand, clinging to biblical truth without also showing love and grace is just plain offensive. Francis Schaeffer got it right when he said, “There is nothing more ugly than a Christian orthodoxy without understanding or without compassion.”
Jesus was fully love and fully truth. He ate with sinners but never partook of their sin. Jesus’s life and ministry were completely consistent with and were the fulfillment of everything written in the Old Testament. His deep love for people never compromised truth, and His standard of holiness never made Him cruel or hard hearted.
This seemingly impossible integration of love and truth is imperative as we tackle real-life questions and interact with hurting people. How do you counsel a friend who is in an unhappy marriage but has no biblical grounds for divorce? Should your church be LGBTQ+ friendly in order to reach more people? What if your pastor admits to a struggle with pornography? In each of these scenarios, we may individually tend to pull more toward truth or love. How can we be like Jesus, perfectly integrated in His response to each situation He faced?
The good news is that through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is able to make us like Himself. He can help us live both truth and love through our very human lives. As I have gotten to know Lori, I see this reality in her relationship with her daughter. Every day Lori and Courtney are navigating real-life issues in their mother-daughter relationship. Will Lori call Courtney by a chosen male name as she once asked her to? Can Courtney have her fiancee over for a family dinner? Will Lori and her husband celebrate their daughter’s upcoming wedding?
Lori told me, “Living in the tension of grace and truth is the most difficult journey to navigate. I have realized grace and truth belong together. We cannot have one without the other.” Grace is best shown and truth is best spoken. When we demonstrate grace, truth is better received.
The character quality I see in Lori as she navigates the perplexing road of truth and grace with her daughter is humility. This is the essence of Jesus’s nature on earth. Our inability to effectively integrate God’s truth and love is ultimately rooted in our lack of humility. Pride is at the center of both our rejection of God’s holy standard and our judgmental application of that truth. In Phil. 2:3-8, Paul tells us to pursue the humility of Christ. He defines humility as doing nothing out of selfish ambition but valuing other people above ourselves.
Humility Toward God: God Knows Best
With all our sophisticated theology, our kind hearts, and our desire to make God more marketable, we have given ourselves permission to edit God Almighty. We water down the significance of male and female, warnings of eternal damnation, and God’s clear call for us to live with sexual integrity. Even with good motives (such as not wanting the Bible to be offensive), we can pridefully try to alter God’s plan. This is exactly what Peter did on several occasions. He was a good guy and loved Jesus. In one of those situations, Jesus told the disciples that He was going to suffer and die. This offended Peter, who “took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.’ But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matt. 16:22-23, ESV).
Like Peter, we may think that we are helping God with our adaptations, revisions, and reinterpretations. This is evidence in what I call sins of compassion. God’s love is limitless, but it does have boundaries. God’s compassion never cancels out His truth and holiness.
In humility, we need to accept that God created sexuality. He has been clear in expressing through His Word His design for sexuality and the consequences of our misuse of this great gift. Come. Let us bow before the Lord. Let us worship Him, affirming that all He says is right and true.
Humility Toward Others: Putting Others First
The Sermon on the Mount begins with the beatitudes: blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful, the peacemakers. Jesus goes on to tell us that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We will be different from the world not primarily because of what we believe but because of how we live. Specifically, because of how we love.
It’s not enough to hold on to and even live by biblical sexual morality. We are also called to the morality of loving others, even those who might consider us their enemies.
Pastor and author Caleb Kaltenbach wrote, “Christians don’t have the best track record in loving people who are different from us. Sometimes we do a better job of wounding others over our differences than we do in building them up.”
Caleb should know. He was raised by two lesbians and a gay father. He remembers marching in gay rights parades and detesting Christians because of how hateful they were toward his parents. Caleb, now pastoring a Christian church, noted that Christians often don’t feel permission to love those who believe differently. “We think that we are not supposed to love people who live in a way that is contrary to what God says....Paul said that while we were still sinners, God extended an offer of relationship toward us! We need to express that same kind of love—a love that doesn’t wait for people to be perfect or get everything in order before beginning a friendship with us.”
Again, humility is a bridge to practice the kind of love Jesus demonstrated. True humility, as Jesus modeled, requires great strength and confidence. We can strive to humble ourselves by remembering four things right out of Philippians 2.
1. You and Me......We’re the Same
Humbly consider others more important than yourself.
The world often views Christians as unloving and judgmental partly because we are. We believe we have truth that other people lack. Applied to the sexual arena, I become proud when I feel morally or spiritually superior to others.
It’s easy to adopt an us-versus-them mindset. In truth, there is no distinction between “us” and “them” apart from Jesus Christ. Humility and love can result only when we remember that it is 100 percent by God’s grace that we even have a relationship with Him. We have no right to judge, condemn, or look down on anyone. The truth is, we are all in need of grace.
Jesus told us, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged” (Matt. 7:1). Right after this statement, He explained that we must first take the log out of our own eye before we can see clearly to take the speck of dust out of our brother’s eye. We are subject to the same standard of holiness and need to walk with great humility as we share God’s love with others.
2. Let Go of Your Agenda
Look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others.
Do you recognize that we have an agenda in every relationship and personal encounter? Most of the time we are not even aware of our self-centered perspective, even as it dictates how we feel and interferes with how we love.
A mom discovers that her teenage daughter is sending sexual pictures to her boyfriend. Mom is grieved at her daughter’s lost innocence. She is angry at the boyfriend. She is ashamed of her failures as a parent. Even though she deeply loves her daughter, her response to her daughter’s actions will mostly likely be rooted in these powerful emotions that are ultimately about her, not her daughter’s well-being.
Our personal agendas will almost always keep us from loving others well. We get aggravated and impatient when the other person doesn’t give us what we expect.
I asked Lori what she would say to Christians who, like her, feel they are at a crossroads of truth and love. She said, “Keep building your relationship bridge and never give up. The issue isn’t really about sexual choices; rather, it’s about one’s relationship with the Lord and past wounding. As a general guideline, I would say show love always and ask God to whom and when He would have you speak truth.”
Let your agenda be to truly know someone, and always prepared to point to Jesus Christ as the reason for the hope within you. Allow the Holy Spirit to guide you in both truth and love.
3. Don’t Defend Your Reputation
Jesus made Himself nothing.
It’s impossible to be defensive and loving at the same time. We become mean spirited not because we passionately want to defend God but because we ourselves feel threatened. Instead of loving the world, we want the world to love and accept us. We think we can present a theology and lifestyle that reasonable people will admire and embrace. We hope that if we perfectly integrate truth and grace, people will appreciate us. Nothing in the Bible suggests this as a goal or even a possibility.
Affirming God’s truth about sexuality will pit us against the world, despite our efforts to be humble and loving. The values of the sexual revolution and of the Christian faith are and will always be in opposition to each other. The true test of our love and humility will be in how we respond when this conflict inevitably happens.
4. Be a Servant
Jesus became a servant and became obedient, even to death.
Author Russel Moore challenged us with how we should be servants, loving those who seem to oppose us in the sexual revolution:
“The loudest voices against....the hounding and intimidation of gay and lesbian persons around the world should be from the wing of the church most committed to a biblical Christian sexual ethic. The people most concerned about working to end gay and lesbian homelessness, for kids who’ve been thrown out of their homes by parents who’ve rejected them, ought to be those who believe the full counsel of God on these matters. The people most willing to love and receive strippers and porn stars and prostitutes who need to be seen for more than the use of their parts, ought to be the church of Jesus Christ.”
Imagine if we took Moore’s advice to heart. What if people knew Christians as the greatest servants and the people most willing to sacrifice for others? God doesn’t want you to choose between standing on His truth and being a gracious person. The world will see the gospel when we are people with both a high view of truth and tender hearts toward all people. God is both truth and love. Jesus displayed both as He ministered on earth. The Holy Spirit is able to work both of them fully into our lives and character.
Adapted from Rethinking Sexuality: God’s Design and Why It Matters by Dr. Juli Slattery. Used by permission of Multnomah, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.
For Further Study
📖 Read:
🔍 Reflect:
- Where in my life am I being challenged to hold both grace and truth?
- Do I lean more toward avoiding hard truths or speaking them without love?
- How can I become a safe, Spirit-led person who represents Christ in both my convictions and my compassion?
🙏 Pray:
Lord, teach me to walk in the fullness of Your Spirit—embodying both grace and truth. Help me to speak with kindness, stand with courage, and love with humility. May others see Your heart in both my words and my actions. Amen.
