Learning the Language of Love – Part Two
Little children, let’s not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. I John 3: 18
The language of love is a sign language.
Jesus, “the Word,” was full of “grace and truth.” Every grace act and every truthful utterance is spoken in the language of love.
Grace is God’s kindness and favor shown to people who don’t deserve it. Are you willing to do kind deeds and bestow favor on persons you know don’t deserve it?
Kind words are the music of the soul. They have a power which seems to be beyond nature, as if they were some angel’s song that found its way to earth. No person has ever been helped or corrected by sarcasm — crushed yes, if the sarcasm is clever enough, but never drawn nearer God.
One of the greatest things you can do for your Heavenly Father is be kind to some of His other children.
I John 3: 17 precedes our text with this explanation of showing kindness and favor: “Whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?”
The active language of love demands we share our substance.
Visual grace needs to be complimented by verbal grace. Do you know how to speak the language of love with grace? So many people don’t know how to pay a compliment without including in it a barb. Others don’t know how to comment without having a cut in it. I speak to many hundreds of people a week and find few know how to be gracious.
Jesus was the “Word … full of grace and truth.” The Bible tells us to “speak the truth in love.” Sometimes this mandates silence. Love prompts us to remain silent at times.
Linus asks Lucy: “Why are you always so anxious to criticize me?”
Lucy: “I just think I have a knack for seeing other people’s faults.”
Linus: “What about your own faults?”
Lucy: “I have a knack for overlooking them…”
We speak the language of love when we reverse that and overlook the faults of others while working on our own.
Often the spoken word is intended to deceive while contrary action is planned. Jeremiah 9: 8 describes this: “Their tongue is an arrow shot out: It speaks deceit; One speaks peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth, But in his heart he sets his ambush.” Speak the truth in love.
“I love you,” can be one of the most encouraging and motivating expressions uttered.
“I love you,” can be one of the most deceptive and damnable lies spoken. As a lie it is a plea and ploy to lower the drawbridge of our heart to allow a traitor entrance.
“A flattering mouth works ruin” (Proverbs 26: 28).
Most problems in life are caused by the tongue. There is no easier way to sin than with speech. The tongue is in a moist place where you can slip easily.