A great part of our Christian life should be spent praying and waiting so that the Lord can bring out the truth about our own condition, our relationship with God, our relationships with others and our place in God’s overall plan of salvation. Jesus declared himself that being led into all truth is a principle work of the Holy Ghost, and though it is promised that the truth will set us free, it is also equally certain that a good deal of personal truth about ourselves is usually difficult to swallow and hardly ever flattering. When confronted with the truth Man is wise if he leans on God’s forbearing arms.

Fortunately, the Lord does not require his people to deal with the plain, unvarnished truth without comfort and hope. God’s wonderful mercy, which keeps those who seek Christ’s righteousness from being crushed by despair and guilt, is always there to save us from truth’s uncompromising and otherwise deadly weight. God’s love is weighed out on a heavenly scale with the counterweights of truth and mercy balanced so precisely and perfectly that it creates a unique and fearless kind of love that can only come from an all knowing and perfect God.

We cannot ever duplicate pure love we can only hope to be obedient to its direction and sensitive to its operation in all that we do. For example, we could never find the delicate balance of truth and mercy that can enable us to unequivocally love our enemies. Mercy and truth can be so delicately and exactly balanced that it can not only save the repentant man from sin and death, but it can deliver him from every temptation and evil in his life and lead him to victory after victory so as to make his life pleasing to God. Psalm 85:10 says, “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Truth and mercy are love’s two pillars which Christians must rely on, and heartily seek, if they want to experience the peace that comes with entering into the righteousness of Christ.

Do not settle for cheap imitations. Regardless of accepted definitions of love which include “tough love” and “never having to say you are sorry”, and every imaginable bit of hogwash in between, the one and only true definition of love appears in 1 John 4:16  “God is love.”

Humanly speaking it is impossible for Man to love as God; we simply do not have the knowledge of the truth nor do we have the grace to be patient and merciful as necessary. And since God is love then an important part of repenting and conceding to God is admitting that we have fallen short of God (love). Only by accepting the truth that we are sinners and incapable of love, and accepting his mercy, that his Son died in our place, can we enter into the love God has prepared for us. Every born-again Christian has personally experienced that wonderful miracle of God’s truth and mercy that was so perfectly balanced out to save them. Unfortunately, many Christians lose sight of the continuing importance of the truth and mercy that combined to bring them salvation. Quickly they cast off truth and mercy in favor of religious systems, self righteousness, or legalism. The Church at Corinth and the believers of Galatia are two Biblical examples of born-again Christians who were in danger of falling prey to religion and legalism.

The Christian ought to be on the alert so he is certain to establish the desire for truth and mercy as pillars of his daily faith. It is no coincidence that truth and mercy, the two counterbalances of God’s love, appear side by side in 15 places in the Psalms and three places in Proverbs. And those are just the places it expressly uses the words “truth and mercy”. In a dozen or more places it uses similar phrases or words to express the same thing.

An example of the partnership of truth and mercy in the Psalms is in the simple, but beautiful and profound, Psalm 117. Just 33 words long, the Psalm declares that we should praise God for his love. “O Praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise him all ye people. For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever. Praise ye the Lord.” Only God can balance the heavy gold of pure truth with the light and silky forgiving touch of his perfect mercy in just the right proportion so Man can be saved from his fallen condition. “By mercy and truth iniquity is purged”, says Proverbs 16:6. This is the wonderful touch of deliverance by the Master’s soothing touch. This balance of truth and mercy is God’s exclusive, “peculiar”, heavenly kind of love that no man can duplicate, but Christians can allow it to flow through them if they have yielded to Christ and are walking, not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. (Romans 8)

Do not be deceived by the gospel of the world. Humanists and lovers of the flesh would have us believe that Love is God. Whatever the antichrist spirit defines as “love” is able to fill the bill as God they say, but no matter how “loving” such philosophies and religions sound they are spiritual nonsense. Those who believe such things might just as well be worshipping the dumb idols of ancient Philistine.

God is love. Everything God thinks, says, initiates, and does is love, no matter what Man’s definition or opinion may be; and God is the only living being who can be merciful without compromising an inch on the truth. God does not have to go out and get some love, or find love, or learn love. Let’s not be ridiculous. Love is because God is. Whatever God is, defines what love is. Because God is love and love is whatever God is like. God combines truth with mercy in a wholly unique way, which only he is able to do. It is a combination of his temperate, wise, knowledgeable, kind, forgiving and perfectly holy nature. That’s why nothing or no one in the universe can produce or reproduce it on its own, only God has the attributes and power to do so. We must get it from God and have it housed in us by the power of the Holy Ghost and the blood of the Lamb.

Truth and mercy. Mercy and truth. The two measures of God’s love that he balances in an infallible and masterful way to add-up, if you will, to unselfish love. Agape, as my generation of Christians were wont to announce about love, meaning God’s love as opposed to man’s love. As if there were two kinds of love, or that man could love rightly on his own. As if there was any other kind of love than God’s? Without truth there is no love. Without mercy, there is no love. Without the two in balance there is no salvation, no deliverance, no maturity – ultimately, where could there be any victory in Christ. Though the moon, sun, stars and earth may pass away, as the Scriptures assure us they shall – God’s truth and mercy, in perfect balance, will endure forever.

List of Truth and Mercy together in a single scripture:

Psalms: 25:10, 31:6-7, 40:10-11, 57:3&10, 61:7, 69:13, 85:10, 86:15, 89:14, 98:3, 100:5, 108:4, 117, 138:2.   Proverbs: 3:3, 16:6, 20:28.