Our Call to be A Church of Truth and Love
Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.
Warren Wiersbe
The process of looking for a church to call home can be difficult. There are so many churches to choose from in today’s world and it can be hard to tell them all apart. It can feel hopeless and overwhelming at times. It can also be a very emotional, particularly if your journey involves the Lord leading you out of another fellowship. Yet, even in the midst of the challenge, there is good news:
Jesus loves you. He is not frustrated or disappointed with you for looking for a new church or your first church. He trusts you with every bit of the freedom that He earned for you on the Cross. He will lead you to a church home He prepared for you.
Jesus also has many great churches in this world. There are faithful preachers and vibrant, Jesus loving congregations of all different styles in every area of the globe. The diversity of ways in which faithful Christians gather to worship Jesus is not a bad thing. It testifies to the scope of His creation and glory. No one group of believers has an exclusive claim to Jesus. It may take effort, but you will find one where you can thrive.
Why Calvary Living Hope?
The Lord called Calvary Living Hope to be a church of both love and grace and truth and holiness. These are the attributes that define us as a fellowship of believers.
They may seem obvious ones, however, it is all too easy for us flawed people to either drift to an extreme or overemphasize one part of the Gospel and ignore others. As identified in the quote above, the results are not pretty when we do so.
Those who major in truth alone may seem like they are championing holiness, but the lack of love makes that truth cold and demanding. Jesus is never this way with His people. Paul set out the same idea in 1 Corinthians 13:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3
If we claim to be preaching God’s truth and justice, but do so without God’s love and mercy, then we have lost sight of God’s real truth. Truth without love and knowledge for knowledge sake should never be our way in Jesus’ Kingdom.
This means that at Calvary Living Hope we always teach the Word and seek to build up Christians in their understanding, but we do so in humility and love hoping to build up the same in them. We minister gently and lowly, as Jesus described Himself.
We seek to also avoid the opposite extreme that values a feeling of love over the truth of God. We love the Word of God and hold fast to the clear biblical worldview set out for us in it. We trust that Jesus knew exactly what He meant when He declared:
I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6
Since Jesus is the truth, it is inconsistent to say that we love Him and love the world like He does, while also trying to avoid the truth.
The practical result is a church that does not shy away from even the most challenging Scriptures and that deals with the hardest things in life. But it does so humbly and gently through the lens of the love, grace, and mercy of our wonderful Savior. It is also a church that seeks to welcome everyone with open arms and love them like Jesus does, but does so in view of what Jesus says is best for every man in His Kingdom.
Jesus loves you perfectly and offers abundant grace and mercy to every lost sheep. Jesus also speaks truth to the world and calls us to follow Him. We seek to do the same as His followers.
That is what we pray defines Calvary Living Hope. We hope that you will come for a visit and see this philosophy at work.
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