Truth without love ruins the oneness, and love without truth gives the illusion of unity but actually stops the journey and the growth. The solution is grace. The experience of Jesus’s grace makes it possible to practice the two most important skills in marriage: forgiveness and repentance. Only if we are very good at forgiving and very good at repenting can truth and love be kept together. . . . Spouses either stay away from the truth . . . or else they attack one another [with it]. (Hardcover, pp. 163–64; paperback, p. 182)
UNITING TRUTH AND LOVE. When a couple learns the moves of grace—to both repent and forgive—it unites the other two powers—of truth and love—in such a way that it leads to personal growth for all. To repent is to admit the truth because you are confident that in love your spouse will forgive you. If you weren’t assured of your spouse’s love, you couldn’t admit the truth, you would merely justify and defend yourself. To forgive is to insist on truth (not making excuses for your spouse) because you love them too much to let them continue in their sin. In these and many other ways, repenting and forgiveness make truth and love interdependent, not contradictory.
Reflection: “Loving without telling the truth is not really love. Truth-telling without love is not really conveying the truth.” Defend these two statements.
Thought for prayer: In each other’s presence, thank God for times in which you have been able to extend grace to each other through repentance and forgiveness, and ask for increasing abilities and opportunities to do the same.