Losing your balance can be dangerous. Even deadly. It was for Karl Wallenda. You may have heard of Karl. Beginning at 6 years old, he walked on high-wires and rode cycles across tightropes high in the air. He and his dare-devil family, the Flying Wallendas, gained international fame for their exciting but dangerous shows. After scores of years and hundreds of successful, jaw-dropping performances, on March 22, 1978, the 73 year-old Wallenda attempted to walk across a high wire strung between the two towers of the Condado Plazo Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Part-way across the wire Wallenda lost his balance. He teetered on the wire for several heart-rending seconds. Then, tragically, via live TV, millions were horrified when he fell off the wire and plunged 10 stories down to his death. Becoming unbalanced can lead to catastrophe if you walk on a tight rope.
Many passages in the Bible teach that balance matters for God’s people. Let us focus especially on Ephesians 4:15 where the apostle Paul penned these words: "but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ." Anyone with even a superficial knowledge of the Bible knows that these two themes – truth and love – take up a major amount of ink and space in God’s word. Scripture frequently teaches us to love. Jesus taught that to love our neighbors as ourselves is second only to our duty to love God with all our heart, soul and mind (Matthew 22:37-40). John the apostle declared, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God ... He who does not love does not know God, for God is love" (1 John 4:7-8). The apostle Paul said that though we do all kinds of powerful religious things, but have not love, "it profits me nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). Jesus taught, "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35). This could go on and on, but balance demands we recall the other element in Paul’s statement above at Ephesians 4:15. That verse tells us how to speak – "in love" – but we are also told what to speak – "the truth." We don’t have to guess what "truth" he is referring to in that verse. It is "the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation" Paul spoke about earlier at Ephesians 1:13. It is the truth [that is] in Jesus" (Ephesians 4:21). In the inspired words of Galatians 2:5b it is "the truth of the gospel." At Colossians 1:5b it is identified as "the word of the truth of the gospel." Jesus spoke about this same truth when He declared in John 8:32, "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." The Lord laid it out plainly in John 17:17 where, as part of a prayer for His apostles the night before He died, He asked the Father, "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth." Surely this is the truth referred to in Proverbs 23:23 where we are admonished, "Buy the truth, and sell it not." The apostle Paul predicted in 2 Timothy 4:4 some "will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables." Truth and love – God speaks clearly about the imperative nature of both. Some Christians, churches, and preachers are so focused on truth they forget about love, and some are so in love with love, they forget about truth. The corrrect approach is to always speak the truth, but speak it in love. Otherwise we may become unbalanced and fall to our spiritual death.
-- Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN
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