The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Speak the Truth in Love

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

What is the relationship between truth and love? Today, Jeff dives into the books of Corinthians and Ephesians and shares what Paul teaches on how to love and the importance of love. Jeff explains what true love looks like and what it results in. Snippet from the Show “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail]. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit ascensionpress.com/thejeffcavinsshow for full shownotes!

Welcome to the Jeff Kaven Show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together and living as activated disciples. This is show 324. Speak the Truth in Love. Well, here we are again, my friend, joining together to talk about the beautiful things in the kingdom of God. with Jesus and studying the Word of God, growing in virtue every single one of us. And wow, I want to talk to you today about something that I really do believe will make a difference in your life. I think it's going to make a difference not only in your family life, but your life at work among your friends, siblings, the whole shebang. It's going to be a truth that might just open up doors for you like you never knew before. And it's going to be something

that was very central to the early church and all the things that they were facing and all the problems that they had. Speak the truth in love. We're going to look at the relationship between truth and love and what happens when you take truth away from love. And I'm going to talk specifically about some of the issues that are going on in our culture today. And we'll get right down to it. I think it's going to make a big difference. If you want the show notes for today, it's going to be some good ones. You can get the show notes by simply texting my name, Jeff Kaven's, one word, Jeff Kavans, and you can text it to the number 3377. Two, threes, and three-sevens. How biblical. Okay, so I want to talk, first of all, a little bit about the ancient church and what the ancient church went through. Because I think sometimes when we read the New Testament and we think about the Acts of the Apostles, and we see ascension and Pentecost and, of course, the stoning of Stephen and the growth of the church from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria to the uttermost

parts of the world. I think we get sort of a romantic notion about the growth and how exciting this must have been. And certainly there is that aspect of the early church growth. It was an adventure. It was exciting, challenging, rewarding, certainly. But when you really look at what Paul was dealing with, it's a lot of work to build this church. And I think you may say the very same thing about your family. It's a lot of work to build a family. It's a lot of work to build a marriage, a good friendship, a best friend or a team at work. Working together is very, very hard at times. And I know that, yeah, there's relationships that are magical and it just comes together. But for most people, making things work with a lot of people is hard work,

but it is worth it because the fruit is family. The fruit is security. The fruit is identity. And there's so many things that can come out of this. Now, many people look at the letter of Paul to the Corinthians as kind of a gold standard for the condition of the early church when they were beginning to grow. And that early church in Corinth could be described basically as a Las Vegas slash New York. It was a big, busy city that had a lot of sin. And, you know, they call Vegas Sin City. Well, Corinth was the sin city of the ancient culture there. And in fact, they had a term they would they would use that it really expressed the influence of Corinth, and that was to be Corinthianized.

To be Corinthianized means to really partake in this base activity and everything that the Roman empire saw as good. So when we read First Corinthians, we see that Paul really divides his letter up between a number of things that he has to deal with, and perhaps you deal with these at work, or you deal with them at your church or in your family. So let me give you the division of that real quick. And then we'll go a little bit deeper into what the solution was. And I've got something here a little bit later that is, I think, going to be very rewarding

for you. Now, Corinthians is divided up this way. It's really divided up by problems that Paul has to deal with, which was his norm, it was pattern, establishing churches, and then going back and making corrections and teaching them and so forth, sometimes going back a couple of times. Well, in Corinth, Paul started to see all kinds of things cropping up in this new fledgling movement, these Nazarenes who were considered a sect of Judaism. In chapters 1 through 4, he talks about division.

And division began to develop in this early church. You know, people have this attitude of, well, I'm of Paul. I'm of Cephas. I'm of Apollos. I'm of Jesus. And Paul says, no, no, no, no. you're not thinking right here. We're the body of Christ. There's one body, and we are known by the head who is Jesus. We are one body. We are not divided up. And there are different aspects to the

body, but there is one head and one purpose. And so this became a problem for Paul in the early church, and for some people today, it's a problem because they'll say, well, I'm of so-and-so, I'm of bishop so-and-so, I'm of teacher so-and-so, I'm of cardinal so-and-so. And Paul would say to you today, no, that is not the way we think. We are one body and we are under the head, which is Jesus Christ. So problems with divisions. How do we handle those? Well, I'm going to get to that in just a few minutes.

I'm going to get to the secret sauce of how you actually deal with all of these problems cropping up in the church slash your family. So number one, divisions in chapters 1 through 4 in chapter 5 through 7, sexual issues began to develop. And some of the activity in this early church was such that Paul had to say, we don't even see this among the Corinthians, among the pagans, the things you guys are doing. And he begins to talk to them about the nature of the body. And just because the belly is hungry and you fill it doesn't mean that you are involved in licentuous behavior

just because you feel that way, because you have an urge. And he talks about how that we've been purchased by Christ and the body is for the Lord, not for temple prostitutes and just anybody, which was pretty common in the Roman Empire. You know, kind of a very loose life they were known for. And Paul's got his work cut out for him by speaking to the Corinthians and saying, no, your body has a message. There is a theology to your body, and I'm going to teach you that. So chapters 5 through 7, we have a problem with sexual promiscuity.

Well, how's it going to talk about that? Well, that's part of the secret sauce coming up. And then chapters 8 through 10, Paul talks about meat that has been dedicated to idols. This was a problem for many people in the early church because what they would do is they would go and they would bring an offering to the Temple of Aphrodite, for example. and they would bring this meat and the meat was then offered to this goddess and then they would give back part of the meat

to be prepared to eat there at the temple and then afterwards they would go into the back and that's where they would interact with cult prostitutes. Yeah, it's pretty wild. And then the meat that was left over, they would put on sale there at the temple. So you could go to a temple and you could buy some meat for dinner

but that meat had previously been, had been dedicated to these idols. And so some of the people would be, they would be offended. It would cause them to stumble. It was a stumbling block to see people who were mature in the faith eating that meat that had been previously dedicated to idols. And so they come to Paul and they're upset about it. And Paul says to them, look, we know that these are not real gods. We know that, okay?

They're stones. They're nothing. They can't talk. can't interact. They have no answers for your problems today. And so he said, we know that. And so we eat this meat. We don't have a problem with that at all. He feels strong enough to just say, we're going to have steak tonight. But he says, if it's going to cause someone to stumble, we're not going to eat it. In other words, we'll do what we need to do to maintain the peace and the unity and not cause the young ones in the faith to stumble. Now, you could argue and say,

no, I've got every right to. Well, yeah, you do. You got every right to eat that meat that's been bought at the Aphrodite meat market. Yeah, you do. You've got every right and there's nothing wrong with it at all unless it causes your brother to stumble. What's the secret sauce there? We'll get to that. In chapters 11 through 14, Paul's going to talk about worship, the body of Christ, the gifts of the spirit and he's going to talk about the special sauce. So in chapter 11 and chapter 11 he talks about worship. In chapter 12, he talks about the gifts in the body of Christ. And then skip to chapter 14. He continues on with gifts, but right in the middle of chapter 11 and 14, 11, 12, and 14, in chapter 13, you've got the secret sauce. And the secret sauce,

is love. How do we deal with problems like division and sexual issues and meet dedicated to idols and improper worship and ignoring the poor and then having these agape feasts where everyone's celebrating and drinking and eating and the poor they can't participate? How do you deal with this? Love. Love is the operative word here in 1st Corinthians and you can see it in chapter 13. Chapter 13 is, it goes like this. Let me read it to you. Paul says, if I speak in the tongues of men and angels but have not love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.

And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. I'm nothing. Now he's saying this in the midst of, guys, we've had problems with divisions, sexual issues, meet dedicated to idols, the way you're worshipping, you're leaving out the poor and so forth, and some people are misusing gifts.

So what do we do? Well, you need to walk in love. He goes on in 1st Corinthians and says, if I give away all I have and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Then he says this, and you probably have heard it at one or two weddings.

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not jealous or boastful. It is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice it wrong, but rejoices in the right. Now, just take that little bit of 1st Corinthians 13 for a moment.

And I want you to think about not only the divisions in the early church and the sexual promiscuity and problems with meat dedicated to idols or bothered by the fact that someone got coffee at Starbucks, whatever it might be, or the way we're worshipping or leaving out the poor. There's all of that. But what about your family? What about your marriage? What about the relationship you have with your children?

It is in that context today in your life that love is patient. love is kind and love is not jealous or boastful and it's not arrogant or rude to children love does not insist on its own way husband it is not irritable or resentful wife now i can interchange these so don't write me and say why did you mention that with women it could be for anybody in the family and it does not rejoice it wrong but it rejoices in the right that's love You know, when we talk about love, we're talking about a number of different kinds of love mentioned in the Bible. We have eros, which is this, it can be erotic for sure, but this passionate love.

You can have eros in a stamp collection. You are passionate about stamp collecting. Storgay, a mother's love for her child, filial, brotherly love. And then there's agape, which is God's kind of love that has your eternal destiny in mind and is willing to sacrifice its own life for another. So he says that these are the things that love is not. But then he goes on and says love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they'll cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect. but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. Then he says something important. He says, when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child.

I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So, he concludes, faith. Hope, love, abide. These three, but the greatest of these is love. It's love. Now, I want to go a little bit deeper with you in this right after the break, and I'm going to give you the secret to the secret sauce in how to love and what love means in the midst of all of these problems that the early church

faced and the problems that you may be facing in your life today. You're listening to the Jeff Kaven's show. Okay, so I'm going to come talk to you about morality. Oh, there's a real conversation starter. Oh, I was just an ex-munk. Oh, he can relate to me. So in my work, I'm a professor, and I'm a translator. I take ideas, I digest them, I communicate them. I've read the text, thousands of pages of Thomas Aquinas, texts in other languages. That's my job to digest. And I just wanted to go into the treasure trove, pull out the things that I had discovered, cut them out from all the scholarly stuff, don't get caught up in all of the, you know, details, right? The people of God deserve to have this kind of content. The truths of Catholic morality are meant

to transform your life. And so I wrote this book precisely to show that these truths are not just truths that we memorize, but they're truth that we live. So to find out more about this universal call to holiness that is the vocation of all Christians, Check out my new book, Made by God, made for God, at ascensionpress.com slash Catholic morality. Talking about love today, and we've been looking at 1st Corinthians chapter 13, smack in the middle. Smack in the middle of Paul talking about divisions in the early church, sexual promiscuity, problems with people being offended by others that are strong in the faith, eating meat, dedicated to idols, problems in worship, okay? So it's in the midst of it that he talks about about love. Now, switch gears for just a moment because I find oftentimes that if you look at

what Paul said in one epistle and then you look at another letter of his, you get a little bit a little bit more of a wide angle look at what Paul is talking about on a subject. For example, love. So we know what he said in 1 Corinthians 13. Let's switch now to Ephesians chapter 4. I want to look at Ephesians chapter 4, but I want to say this first before looking at it, and that is this. One of the greatest quotes of St. John Paul, the great, one of the greatest quotes of his, was this. He said one time, family become who you are. Family become who you are. Now that is a very powerful, powerful statement because we as Christians are a family. We are taken up in the life of the Trinity. We have fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, meal. We have everything that a family

has. And what John Paul II was saying is, well, become who you are. You're a family. Become it. Act like it. Live it. Now that we know what to believe, we are called on by Paul once he tells us this is what we know that what we should believe. We know what love is not. We know what love is. Well, let's put it into practice. In fact, the letter to the Ephesians is really divided up in this way. Chapter 1 through 3 is orthodoxy. It's what we believe. And then chapters 4, 5, and 6. the second half is orthopraxy. It's the way we live. So we walk worthy of the calling. And he says in chapter four verses one through three, listen to what he said. He said, I therefore a prisoner for the Lord beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all lowliness and meekness with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. Now, I like that what he says there.

He talks about we need to renounce the tyranny of our own agenda, don't we? We pick up his agenda. We pick up God's agenda. And in fact, I love this quote from St. John Chrysostom, the golden throat, they used to call him, quite an orator. It was St. John Chrysostom who said, you need a wideness of soul. to endure difficulties. You need a wideness of soul to endure difficulties. Isn't that powerful?

A wideness of soul. If you're going to deal with difficulties and problems in your family, well, my friend, you need to widen your soul. You need to become bigger in your soul. You need to walk in love and not insist on your own way. And you need to renounce the tyranny of your own agenda. because your own agenda is tyrannical. You need to renounce that and pick up Jesus' agenda.

Now, Paul says in verse 2 there of chapter 4, forbear one another. He says in chapter 4 in verse 4 that you have been called, that word is Inclusio. You have been, it'll be in the show notes, by the way. You have been called Inclusio. Remember Ecclesia, the word Ecclesia, and some of our studies, before. Eclesia, the called out ones, the church. Well, Inclusio, you have been called. Inclusio is we are called together. So we are the, oh, this is so good. You know what? I'm just might wait until you pull over. Get yourself a pen. Now, don't do it. I'll put in the show notes. Okay. So this is really good.

You have been called Inclusio. Remember Ecclesia, called out. So we are called together and called out. We're called together, Inclusio, and called out, Ecclesia. That's what we are called to do, but we can't do it unless we walk in love. Now, Paul says something very powerful here in chapter four of Ephesians. He says, speak the truth in love. speak the truth in love it's the language of the body of christ isn't it we speak the truth in love paul reminds them of where they came from and we have a responsibility to get our act together in our

families i would just say this from paul get your act together from john paul the second family become who you are renounce the tyranny of your own agenda and pick up christ's agenda love one another listen the solution to the problem you might be facing right now in your family today even if i recorded this today and you're listening to it in two years from now it's still the same we need to get our act together right we need to love one another and paul says speak the truth in love now this was the theme of the final encyclical of pope benedict the 16th caritas in veritate Now, in that, listen to what he says. You're going to love this, and I'm going to put it in the notes for you.

So you don't have to spill ink in the car. Listen to this. This is so good. Only in truth does love shine forth. Now, what we're looking at here, let me back up, speaking the truth in love. That's what we're talking about. Speaking the truth in love. Truth and love, they go together, they go together.

speaking the truth in love. You can't just speak the truth. You can't just love. You have to speak the truth in love. They go together. So here's what Pope Benedict said. He said, only in truth does love shine forth. Only in truth can love be authentically lived.

Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to love. Oh, that's so good. man if I wasn't doing a podcast right now I'd just kick back and think about that truth is the light that gives meaning and value to love without truth love degenerates without truth love degenerates into sentimentality love becomes an empty shell to be filled in an arbitrary way now I've been meditating on this for a couple of weeks now. This is so powerful. He says, you take away truth. Love becomes an empty shell to be filled in an arbitrary way. In other words, in any way you want. You can define your own love. The big thing people say now is, I have my truth. Well, okay, I have my truth, they say. And they say, well, I have my own love as well. But if you separate love from truth, then you're kind of forced to come up with something to fit into that empty shell called love because truth certainly is not there and you have your own truth and you have your own love and it usually ends in disaster he goes on and says in a culture without truth this is the fatal risk facing love it falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions and the word love

Love is abused and distorted to the point where it comes to mean the opposite. Truth frees love from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content. In the truth, charity reflects the personal yet public dimensions of faith in the God of the Bible. Wow. Wow. Wow. Now, what I take from this, which I want to share, with you is this truth here that Pope Benedict brings out when he says that if you take truth away from love and you try to solve any of these problems that the Corinthians were going through, division, sexual immorality, people being offended by meat that was dedicated to idols, problems in worship, problems in division among us. If you just try to solve that, or the problems

in your family, by the way, with just love. It's going to turn into sentimentality and you're going to have this empty shell called love and there's no truth, no content there. It's just going to be, can't we all get along and it's going to spiral? But if you can take love and match it with truth, they work together and that's where you get the great results. That's when you experience. life. But watch what happens here. And you can see this in our culture today, where people take

the truth from love, leaving an empty shell called love, and they arbitrarily fill that shell with whatever they define as love. And then you come in with truth and say, that isn't love. That isn't love. That could be selfishness. That could be sentimentality. That could that could be just your own fleshy desires now they might get upset with you in that for sure but but that's what happens when you you take truth away is that people they design their own love and they design their own truth and that is hard to argue against isn't it it's hard to argue against it and that's why even in the arguing of the point you have to speak the truth in love and so we always convey the truth in love. We always keep the two together. It's not just I speak truth

in a loving way. That's not really what we're talking about. I speak truth in love. I speak the truth of God in the love of God. And I can't take either one of these away. I can't do it. If I take love away from the truth, I can become a tyrant. And if I take truth away from love, it's sentimentality. It's an empty shell. And I can define love any way I want and I can define myself and you have to go along with it. That's the mess we're in. So you can see the power of Paul's message when he's trying to overcome all of these problems in the early church. Speak the truth in love. Another way that you can say this is trothing. Truthing is covenant faithfulness and loyalty. There is a way for us to truth. We are trothing with love. So truth is actually more, I think it's more actually, it's more accurately

translated truthing. Truth is something one does, not just simply a concept, but we're doing the truth. We're doing the truth in in love. So that is a very powerful message. And I want to encourage you, I want to encourage you this week to take a look at the problems and the divisions and the things you argue about with people. I want you to kind of write that down, maybe three or four of them, or in some cases, 10 or 11 of them, and then read 1st Corinthians chapter 13 and then read Ephesians 4. That's your assignment. Read 1 Corinthians 13, Ephesians 4 and pray and ask, Lord, how can I communicate to the people that are walking in a way differently than what we're called a walk in? How can I communicate? How can I bring meaning to the

discussion. How can I speak the truth in love? And I really do believe that there's something here that might just help you in your family or at work or with your best friend. You've been arguing and you're tired of it. Well, my friends speak the truth in love. Paul had a mess on his hands. He dealt with it. Maybe you have a mess on your hands. You can deal with it as well. Okay. So remember, if you want the show notes, just text my name, Jeff Kavens, to the number 33777. We'll get you the show notes. And let me pray for you before we go. Can I?

I like to pray for you in the situation that you're facing today. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. Lord Jesus, I thank you for my friend. We meet so often and we talk about your word and the ways of the kingdom. I lift them up to you right now. and I ask you, Lord, in the situation that they're facing at home in their marriage, in relationships, at work, in their parish, the divisions, the problems that are argued about from our culture, Lord, may you give my friend the wisdom to walk in this and to speak the truth

in love and that everything we speak will, and everything we do will go through the filter of 1 Corinthians 13 and we will speak with wisdom we'll speak with love the truth we thank you for this lord and i ask you to bring about a great victory in my my friend's life in jesus name amen amen the father and the son and the holy spirit god bless you my friend love you i really do and i look forward to talking to you next time Thank you.