Better is open rebuke than hidden love. (Proverbs 27:5)
The Word of God informs and satisfies the Christian intellect. It contains truth with substance, and not fireworks to tickle the speculative mind. God is unlike insecure human authors, who hope to feign greatness through ambiguity. The divine revelation is on the whole so clear and direct that man has no excuse to deny its inspiration, or to avoid the demand for true worship by hiding behind a doctrine of human finitude or divine incomprehensibility. The honest and humble Christian says, “Yes, I know him. Yes, I understand him. Yes, I will believe him and follow him.”
Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15, ESV). This is a most profound and excellent theology. Love is not an emotion, but a disposition to keep the divine commandments in our relationships to God, to men and women, and to the creation. This means that you will worship God alone, and you will trust in Jesus Christ to save your soul. It means that you will not steal from someone, or slander someone; rather, you will possess a disposition that cares about the welfare of others, and express this concern in the corresponding words and actions. You will behave this way not because you feel like it, and not in proportion to the intensity of your emotions, but because God commands it, and you will do it in proportion to the measure of your increasing faith and obedience.
A person’s welfare includes his physical and psychological comfort. Christians help their neighbors with these needs, but so do animals and sinners, although they are moved by inferior and even sinister impulses. When it comes to the more important matter of instruction about God and the way of salvation, animals and sinners are useless. Animals lick themselves or fall asleep, and non-Christians point all over the place, to every direction but the right one. Therefore, it is up to the Christians to admonish one another and to correct the non-Christians.
However, Christians often fail to speak up. There are a number of reasons for this. Perhaps they are afraid of rejection, or that they would lose the affection of friends and relatives. This is a possibility, but it is also a selfish reason. Perhaps they fear that they would injure other people’s feelings. This is also a possibility, but it is irrelevant. The need to rebuke a person suggests that he is in the wrong, that he is believing or doing something that dishonors God and that damages himself and others. Thus the matter is more important than his feelings. And if the fundamental problem is corrected, it is likely that his feelings will conform to his new understanding and disposition. To love someone, then, is to rebuke him when he is at fault. It is to declare God’s standard, and to straighten that which is crooked.
Since love entails open rebuke, to withhold rebuke betrays a lack of love. Some people do not love God or men, but they love the image of themselves as gentle and kind. They would rather allow God’s honor to be tarnished, and their friends to perish, than to sacrifice their image. The reluctance to rebuke, therefore, is not love, but fear and selfishness. Indeed, if you rebuke wrongdoing, others will criticize you for your boldness, and call you harsh and judgmental, and the criticisms will mostly come from those who call themselves Christians, but this is because your behavior exposes their own love of self, and that their highest motivation is not love for God, but self-preservation. Thus those who refuse to rebuke, but who rebuke those who do, should themselves be rebuked. Nevertheless, if they count their friendly image more precious than Jesus Christ, then that is their reward. As for you, follow the example of the holy prophets, and proclaim the high standard of the Lord, so that by this perhaps some will be led to repentance and salvation, or greater obedience.
The Bible teaches us to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), and this has been construed to mean “speak the truth in soft tones and with gentle words.” This suggests a terrible misunderstanding of what love means. Love is much more profound than effeminate mannerisms. In fact, the text does not refer to the way in which we are to speak the truth, but the motivation behind it. When Romans 1:18 says that sinners suppress the truth about God “in unrighteousness” (KJV), it does not mean that they suppress it in an unrighteous manner (as if one could suppress it in a righteous manner!), but that because they are unrighteous, they suppress the truth. Likewise, when Paul says to speak the truth in love, he means that we speak the truth because we love one another. Recall that, in the Bible, love refers to a disposition that results in the corresponding words and actions. Thus because a person loves, he will speak the truth to instruct and to rebuke others. The words and tones will often be soft and gentle, but will sometimes be harsh and scathing, as the prophets and apostles both exemplified and commanded.
We reserve a most important rebuke for non-Christians. We cannot claim to care about them but not rebuke them for their unbelief and rejection of Jesus Christ. Let us not allow our relationships and other people’s feelings to become idols in our hearts, so that we become like the non-Christians in suppressing the truth about God in unrighteousness, because of our idolatry, fear, and selfishness. And let us also rebuke those who claim to be Christians, but who oppose the love that the Word of God commands. They hinder the progress of the gospel, and of truth and holiness.
The Bible says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy” (Proverbs 27:6, ESV). When I bluntly tell the truth to a person, I am the best friend that he has ever had, because I show him the way of life, when even his closest comrades conceal it or distract him from it. Jesus Christ is our best friend not because he never hurts our feelings or because he never rebukes us, but because he always speaks the truth, the truth that leads to genuine worship and everlasting life.