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I was speaking at a church camp this last weekend on the familiar topic (for me at least) of why the one-another speech of the Christian community is so vital to our spiritual health, as individuals and as churches.

I was warming to my theme, and explaining that as we speak the word to each other in love in a whole range of ways—encouraging, exhorting, teaching, admonishing, comforting, reminding, and so on—we “let the word of Christ dwell among us richly” to our immense benefit.

And then in a delightful instance of one-another speech, someone asked an insightful question: How does speaking the truth in love to each other relate to all the other ways we can love and serve one another? Is speaking the only or even the prime way we love one another? Can we love one another without speaking the truth to each other?

As I started to waffle out an answer, I realised that I had been dealing with this question in various forms for years.

Is word ministry the only ministry or the best ministry? What about the place of compassion and good deeds? Is ‘trellis’ work less valuable or important than ‘vine’ work? Surely some of us are good at speaking and ‘ministry’ stuff, and some of us are good at getting in and loving others practically. Why don’t we just let people play to their strengths?

Christian love and Christian words—how do they fit together?

Perhaps the most obvious answer to the question is the one that I started to give on the weekend.

The joyful obligation to love one another is surely bigger and broader than just speaking biblical words to each other. Love is expressed in a multitude of kind and beneficial actions. The many ‘one-another’ commands in the New Testament give numerous examples, such as serving, forgiving, accepting, bearing with, and generally ‘doing good’ to one another.

In fact, it’s very possible to be so focused on words as to fail to love others.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 Jn 3:16-18)

This is an important lesson. Words are sometimes easier than action (#IStandWithUkraine). Are kind words that don’t lead to loving action really love at all? No, says John.

So perhaps ‘speaking the truth’ in love is a subset of loving action. There are lots of ways to love one another, and sharing a biblical word with someone is just one of them. To be sure, it’s an important one, and one we should all strive to practise—because it is a command for us to obey just like all the others. But it’s no more or less important than all the other ways to love.

Is that the way to think about it?

I don’t think so. And in the process of rambling around in my answer to the question I’d been asked, I managed to remember and express why.

Christian love is love in the truth. Let us not love in words but in deed and in truth, says John. Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth, says Paul (1 Cor 13:6). And it is this truth that we are to speak to one another in love in Ephesians 4:15.

Love is a kind of knowledge. Love is not a sentiment or a feeling, although it is often felt. Love is not just action, although it is often expressed in action. Love is a certain kind of knowledge of what is true and good—a knowledge that longs for and seeks that truth and goodness, not only for ourselves but for others. (If that sounds a familiar idea to some readers, it’s because I wrote about these ideas a few months ago in this article …)

The question is: If love is a kind of knowledge, where does this kno