Navigating the Digital Frontier: Speaking Truth in Love

In an age of pervasive communication, we have many occasions to sin and many new temptations to sin. And the Bible is full of exhortations about the words we speak. It knows that we are evil. It knows that our tongues or our fingers, as the case may be, are a source of amazing evil. [00:07:38]

The fact that we speak at all should cause us to pause and to consider every word that comes out of our mouth. The fact that we speak so often today should cause us to tremble. The fact that Scripture so often describes our words, our communication in such a negative light, should cause us to fear that we could so easily be used to do evil, and even when we mean to do good. [00:08:37]

James tells us to be slow to speak. He tells us that a person with an unbridled tongue is a person whose religion is absolutely worthless. The third chapter of his letter is dedicated almost entirely to the taming of the tongue, to putting boundaries on that part of the person that can be used for such good or for such evil. [00:09:08]

Every word we speak, every word we type displays the condition of the heart, and it must be brought under control. And yet we must still speak. God’s warnings are not meant to frighten us into silence, are they? It would be as great a sin not to speak as it is to speak rashly. [00:09:55]

And just as Ed has said, more people than ever are speaking, that also means that more people than ever are listening, more people than ever are hearing what’s said. The doors then are wide open. I was just a little while ago looking at some statistics for the website for Ligonier Ministries, and well it’s visited by millions of people every year, and we’re talking about really significant numbers. [00:10:18]

Christ told us to go into the world and to take the gospel with us. And one of the ways we can do this, one of the ways we can fulfill this commission is by going to those places we can’t otherwise reach through the Internet, through these digital communications. It’s an amazing ability and one we need to take advantage of as Christians. [00:11:03]

The message of this verse is that in all the ways we communicate, we are to truth in love. So if one of these words merits just a little bit of emphasis, then it has to be truth. After all, truth is the content. Love is the means. Love is the way we get to the truth. It’s the way we convince people of the truth in an effective way. [00:12:14]

So by speaking truth to one another, we cause the body of Christ to grow. And as the body grows, it builds itself up in love. It displays the love of Christ, the character of Christ, and it brings glory to God. And what a blessing it is, what a privilege that we can be part of something so incredible, a body that when working in unity glorifies God. [00:14:30]

For all the benefits of anonymity, it has serious drawbacks and ones that we’re really prone to take advantage of. Beyond the accountability by visibility, we find that we can say things, we can do things, we can become things that would really shame us in any other context. Christian, guard your heart. Being anonymous can be a great blessing, but it can also be a curse for you and for others. [00:18:16]

Simply by removing the anonymity of the web, we can guard our hearts. If you find that you’re pursuing anonymity, you’re hiding behind a name, you’re not letting people know who you are, question your heart and question your motives. It may be that you’re doing it for the absolute worst of reasons. View anonymity as a rare privilege, not something that’s constant when you’re out on the web. [00:19:18]

If we’re going to speak truth to one another, we first need to be students of the truth. The Bible tells us to strive for godliness, to strive for Christ, to put in an extraordinary effort in our pursuit of holiness. And the Biblical metaphor of the race, which is used so often in the Bible, it’s so helpful as we think about this. [00:21:09]

We today, living at the dawn of this century, have amazing new opportunities to communicate truth and love. We’re all grateful that when the printing press was invented, when it came into popular use, that Christians embraced it and used it and brought us so many great books. Most of all, they brought the Bible and sent it to all the world. [00:22:14]