I plead with you, brothers and sisters, become like me, for I became like you. You did me no wrong. As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you, and even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself. Where, then, is your blessing of me now? I can testify that, if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth? Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may have zeal for them. It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good, and to be so always, not just when I am with you. My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed about you!

–Galatians 4.12-20 (NIV)

We live in an age where it is generally frowned upon to speak the truth in love to somebody. Instead, we are encouraged to adopt a laissez-faire attitude toward others. After all, if there are competing truths in the world as post-modernity falsely asserts, who are we to “impose” our values on someone else?

That is not what God tells us to do in the Bible, however.

Take today’s passage for example. Here we see Paul speaking the truth in love to the Galatians. Is he chastising them because he is simply a petty little dictator or because he just has a foul personality? Get real. He is chastising them because he sees that they are losing their way–the way of the cross–and he does not want that to happen to them!

Paul opens today’s passage by telling the Galatians to become like him (in believing the real Gospel instead of pursuing the false one that the Judaizers had been trying to foist on them). As we saw yesterday, the real Gospel is tremendously liberating and Paul does not want the Galatians to revert back into the tried and failed self-help model of redemption.

He reminds the Galatians of how happy they were to care for him when he was sick, how readily they received his message of Jesus Christ and him crucified, and how they would have done anything they could to help him. But now something has changed. Apparently the Judaizers had succeeded in turning at least some of the Galatians away from the real Gospel so that they were pursuing the false gospel of self-help and works-righteousness. In doing so, the Judaizers had also apparently succeeded in turning some of the Galatians against Paul as well.

Anybody who has ever tried to share the Gospel (or speak any kind of truth in love) with someone else and been told to take a hike can relate to Paul here. It doesn’t feel good, no matter how we might try and sugarcoat it.

So how do we know Paul isn’t just some nasty little man who likes to rag on people and impose his values on them? He tells us himself at the end of this passage. He tells the Galatians of his great love for them, of his great desire for them to have Christ formed in them so that they will be able to enjoy real life. He is perplexed at why they would choose soy burgers when they could have filet mignon! In other words, Paul is talking to them through the lens of the Gospel of Jesus. He is speaking God’s truth to them and wants them to enjoy the benefits of living under that Truth. Yet he also acknowledges that speaking the truth in love to them is risky because it might serve to tick them off even more at him.

But we know Paul was doing the right thing in expressing his concern and love to the Galatians. In Matthew 18.15-22, Jesus himself gives us a model for conflict resolution. First, he tells us, if someone offends you, go directly to that person and talk to him about it privately. Beautiful (terribly difficult to do, but beautiful). Jesus then tells us what to do if the offending person will not listen and turn away from offending us.

Yet how often do we avoid doing what Jesus tells us to do and what Paul does here with the Galatians? Instead, how often do we take the easy way out and gripe and complain about the offending person to someone else? It seems that we will do almost anything to avoid telling the offender that she has offended us!

And what does this accomplish? Nothing. The two parties do not try to work things out and consequently there is no hope of real reconciliation and restoration. Sometimes, in fact, the offending party doesn’t even know he has offended us! And what do we do? We sulk and engage in evil speaking about the offender, which is not only sinful behavior on our part but also serves no better purpose than to increase our alienation toward the offender.

Make no mistake. Confronting those who offend us (and being willing to allow those we offend to confront us in a loving manner) is a terribly, terribly difficult thing to do. But just as Paul did with the Galatians, it is the one and only RIGHT thing to do if we really love them and if our goal is reconciliation and restoration. Yes, it is risky and it is hard. Yes, we might initially make things worse. But if, like Paul, we are explicit in telling the offender of our ultimate desire for his good (using only the standard of God’s truth and not our own fallible and changing standards) or to find reconciliation with that person, if we are explicit, like Paul, in stating our great love for the offender, then we at least have a real chance by God’s grace to mend fences and/or help those who are falling away from God’s truth.

Of course, whenever we speak the truth in love to someone else, we are always mindful of Jesus’ parable about the log in our own eye and the speck in the other’s eye. Doing so is the best insurance that we actually will speak the truth in love to someone instead of simply trying to tear that person down to make us feel better or superior to him.

This is what it means to follow Jesus and following him is never easy because he makes us deal with our faults and foibles in healthy ways that we too often avoid because we find them uncomfortable. But it is for our own good and he promises to be with us in our efforts if we seek to obey him.

If you really want to be a peacemaker, the kind that Jesus tells us is blessed by God, then take a chance and follow Jesus. Ask him to give you the grace and courage to speak the truth in love to someone the next time you are offended. It’s costly but the rewards you will reap are infinitely more satisfying at the end of the day because you will be blessed by God for being his peacemaker.