What If Real Love Refuses To Affirm Everything

Love is one of the most used words in our culture and one of the most misunderstood. As we bring the Divine Design series to a close, we slow down and ask a harder question: can we genuinely love people we disagree with without either rejecting them or affirming everything they want? Dr. Timothy Mann challenges us to examine our reflex to dismiss someone whose struggle feels alien, and he calls us back to a Christian ethic rooted in Scripture and shaped by the grace of Jesus Christ.

We walk through what biblical love looks like when the topic is gender dysphoria, transgender identity, same-sex attraction, and sexual morality. That love promotes dignity because every person is made in the image of God. It works to extend empathy and compassion, not as permission to sin but as a willingness to understand and bear burdens. And it shares truth, because love “rejoices with the truth” and cannot celebrate what God calls wrong. We also talk about the danger of truth delivered with pride, harshness, or jokes that minimize real pain, and why a gentle answer matters more than winning a moment.

The conversation turns to patience and mission. God’s kindness leads to repentance, and our goal is not to rack up arguments or produce surface-level morality but to make disciples and proclaim the gospel. Dr. Mann offers direct encouragement for parents who feel outmatched by the pressure of schools, entertainment, and institutions, urging clear, early guidance marked by both courage and care. If you want a biblical framework for truth and love in a polarized age, this message will steady your feet.

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Transcript

Series Finale And Core Challenge

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You're listening to Foundations of Truth, the Bible-teaching ministry of Dr. Timothy Mann. Our mission is to help you build your life on the unshakable foundation of God's Word. Rooted in Scripture, anchored in the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Dr. Timothy Mann opens the Bible to bring clarity, conviction, and encouragement for everyday life. Today on Foundations of Truth, we come to the conclusion of our series, The Define Design with Dr. Timothy Mann. Throughout this study, we've seen that God has not left us to discover truth by trial and error. From the opening pages of the Bible, he has revealed his good design for humanity, for marriage, for our identity, and ultimately for our redemption through Jesus Christ. As this series concludes today, Dr. Mann points us toward the hope that God always offers to those who trust him and walk in his truth. Here now is Dr. Timothy

Refusing Dismissal And Choosing Empathy

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Mann.

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So let me ask you a question. Is it easy for you to simply dismiss someone out of hand because their struggle seems alien or strange to you? Is it easy for you to just dismiss someone out of hand because you disagree with the choices they've made or the identity they assume and the things they do? I mean, that you just, no second thought whatsoever, dismiss them out of hand. Because empathy, extending empathy, doesn't mean that you accept or affirm or encourage someone to embrace their desire to live contrary to God's creative design. But it does mean, however, that instead of rejecting a person outright, that we make an effort to seek to understand what they're dealing with and what their struggles are. That's what that means. We need to understand the fact that there's going to be people in our life who experience dysphoria of some kind. It's inevitable. There are people in your church. There are people in your family. There are people in your school. And so what are you going to do when someone you encounter admits to these struggles? Will you simply respond with your jaw hanging out on the floor? Will your facial expression turn someone away? Or will you extend a hand of compassion and make sure you ask questions and listen hard? Or what about your children? Can they even admit a struggle to you? I mean, look at what our eyebrows and our noses do when we meet someone who tells them much more about how we truly feel than do our words or our posts

Bearing Burdens And Protecting Dignity

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on social media. See, the Bible says that we're not only to get to know people, we're to bear their burdens, which means someone else's load also becomes my load. Someone else's struggle becomes my struggle. And if you cannot love your neighbor, the one who God puts in your path, if you do not empathize with them, if you do not have compassion on them, if you don't have, if you don't suffer with, if you don't feel it in your bowel, in your gut, you can't love your neighbor if you don't empathize with them. The reason the Samaritan got down in the ditch with the half-dead Jew who is prejudiced against the Samaritan, the only reason he got in the ditch with him, the Bible says in the Gospel of Luke, is he had compassion on him. He he empathized with him. What's our attitude? Our attitude is usually this. Well, he deserves to be into the ditch. He got himself into this mess. Let him figure a way to get out of it. And we don't offer to help. What do we do? Well, we just kick more dirt in on him or on her. See, love promotes dignity, and love works to empathize.

Why Love Must Share Truth

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Well thirdly, love shares truth. Love shares truth. First Corinthians chapter 14. Oh, it's a beautiful chapter 13 is beautiful. It sounds beautiful. It's good to be read at weddings. It's all high-sounding and flowery and beautiful. It's all about love. You might even have a verse up in your home somewhere. But the reality is this when you start looking at yourself as you read 1 Corinthians chapter 13, I failed the test. You do too. Because we don't measure up to what 1 Corinthians 13 says about love. And one of the things it says about love is this. We could put it this way: love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices with the truth. So what does love do? Love shares truth. Now, here is perhaps the most delicate aspect of loving our neighbor, our practicing homosexual neighbor, our transgender neighbor, while not sending signals that we approve of someone living in a gender opposite of their sex, or no sex at all, or in a sexually immoral way opposite from God's design. But here's the reality: the Bible's definition of love runs contrary to the world's definition. Because according to the world, loving someone means giving them license to pursue whatever they believe will bring them happiness or fulfillment. That's the love of the world's definition. The Bible says that love requires truth. Love requires truth. Love does not mean, uh listen to me, especially if you have kids or grandkids at home still, love does not mean looking someone in the eye and affirming every desire they experience. Love means looking someone in the eyes and communicating the truth of Scripture. That's what love is. We're to do so humbly, we're to do so gently, but we're to do so nonetheless. It's very important to bear in mind that what Christians call loving will not often be considered loving by the world. So we must never assess whether we're truly loving by the world's response or by an individual's response to our message of love. Love and truth are never determined by whether they're popular, because often what is loving and true is very unpopular. And you know this to be the case increasingly today. Speaking truth out of love is called hate speech. But the Bible says the Bible says that love cannot exist without truth, and love cannot rejoice at wrongdoing. It cannot rejoice in iniquity. So if we accept the authority of the Bible, if we accept the authority of God's word, and that's really what it comes down to, isn't it? We've talked about that already. What it really comes down to is if you do accept the authority of the Bible, that's the final word. Everything over your life, in my life, whether I like it, whether I'm comfortable with it, whether it makes me happy, whether it makes me comfortable, it doesn't matter. Is this the final say? And if we accept, listen, if we accept the authority of the Bible, then we must understand that affirming people in a path that is contrary to Scripture, contrary to what the scriptures teach, that's never loving. It's never loving. If I affirm homosexual activity, I am actually doing an unloving thing. If I affirm transgenderism, I'm actually doing an unloving thing. If I affirm any kind, any kind of deliberate rebellion against the Creator's design, I am doing an unloving thing. If I affirm any kind of action that is against God's will, that's revealed in his word, I am acting unloving. I'm just simply, I'm withholding truth because I value my own reputation or my own friendships or my own comfort more than I value the eternal happiness and the eternal future of the person made in God's image. I want it to be easier on me and my comfort. Hell won't be very comfortable for that person. At the same time, speaking truth is not necessarily loving. Speaking truth is not necessarily loving.

Speaking Truth Gently Without Pride

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Did you know this? There's a way of speaking biblical truth that is the opposite of loving. And that would be truth speaking that's motivated by self-righteousness. Truth speaking that is motivated by pride, or truth speaking that is motivated by a desire to win an argument and to be right. Want to be loving as I speak truth, that's wonderful. But only if we speak truth lovingly. I mean, sometimes, sometimes I want to give a harsh answer. Sometimes I want to give a harsh answer to somebody right in front of me I disagree with. And you might want to do the same thing. But the Bible says, in Proverbs chapter 15, verse 1, a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. How many of you know that to be true in your own life? A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. Love shares truth, but no arrogance. No arrogance, no dismissal, no harsh words, no trite sayings that gloss over deeply personal feelings and experiences. No jokes. See, communicating truth in love requires relationship. If we really care about someone, we must tell them the truth. We have to love the truth so much that we care about truth more than we care about how the world thinks of us. And we have to love people so much that we care about their souls more than we care about their approval. And so you know what this means? This means that pursuit of the truth and love may cost us friendships. It may cost us relationships. People rejected Jesus for speaking the truth in love, and so we should expect the same. What does love do? How do I love my neighbor? I promote dignity, love promotes dignity. They're a human made in the image of God. Love works to have empathy and compassion, and love shares truth.

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Patience As A Mark Of Godliness

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And fourthly, love has patience. Love has patience. See, compassion or empathy means entering into someone else's pain. It means entering into someone else's pain with the confidence that the gentleness and the kindness of God, and not the self-righteous, haughty correction of people, is what leads to repentance. That's actually what the gentleness and kindness of God does. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 4, and I can have a hard time with this. And here's why. 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 4 says, Love is patient and kind. See where I had some trouble? Love is patient and kind. It goes on to say, love does not envy and boast. Love is not rude or arrogant. So love is patient. As a Jesus follower, as someone who's surely born again, a Jesus follower who's experiences some measure of gender dysphoria may never be completely freed of their gender dysphoria. Or maybe they will by God's grace. But the militant transgender activist or homosexual activist who accuses those who disagree with them of a theology, a bigotry, or worse, may never change their mind and place themselves under Christ's loving lordship. Or maybe they will by God's grace. Maybe that child who has been in a homosexual relationship for so long may never abandon that. Or maybe they will by God's grace. See, that's the beauty of Christianity. We have a patient God. We have a patient God. And all too often God's people act as if we believe that smugness and superiority and angry moral pronouncements are what draws people to the gospel. Well, it's not that God never gets angry, but in God's economy, kindness and forbearance and patience are his instruments. God is rich. Praise his name. God is rich in kindness and forbearance and patience. And God's kindness and goodness is actually meant to lead you to repentance, according to Romans chapter 2, verse 4. His goodness leads you to repentance. Do you realize how patient God was with you when you lived in rebellion against him? And for some of you, it was direct rebellion against him. For that matter, do you realize how patient God still is with you as you fail to love and obey his son every day, despite knowing who he is and what he's done for you? Do you know how patient he is with you? Aren't you thankful for that in spite of what you know? Look, no one should be more shocked that you have been born again than you. Nobody should be more surprised about that than you. No one should be more amazed that you have God's grace than you are. And listen, though people's rebellion against God might differ in degree, it does not differ in type. Any rebellion is enough to separate us from God, and no rebellion is horrendous enough to put us out of the saving reach of God. And no one is more patient than our God. And if he is patient, so we must be too because love is what? You know what that means? That means when you are not patient toward your spouse, that means you're unloving. When you're not patient with your children, that means you're unloving. When you're impatient with that fellow church member, you're not loving. When you're not patient with that person who disagrees with you politically, well, you get the idea. Because love, look, you've got to be patient with me if you're gonna love me, right? I mean, think about that. Love is what? Patient. And it's what? Rude? No. It's kind. When you do not behave with kindness towards someone who doesn't like you, who's against you, maybe even hates you. You're unloving. Love is patient. When I'm impatient, I'm not loving. Because love is what? Patient. We must be patient as we experience those who are encountering and experiencing the anguish of same-sex attraction or dysphoria of any kind. We must be patient as we engage with those who are angry at the Christian's gospel, at the good news about God's design for gender and sexuality.

The Goal Is Disciples Not Arguments

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Ladies and gentlemen, we're not here to win arguments. You understand that? We're not here to win arguments. We're here to make disciples of Jesus. We're not here to convince people to stop sinning in a certain kind of way. We're here to share the gospel with lost people. Listen, that person who is living a transgender identity, even if they, in their own recognition, know that it brings no satisfaction and no happiness, ultimately, if they seek to go back to the way God designed them and they still have not trusted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, well, they're going to hell. Even if that person you know and care about abandons a homosexual lifestyle and starts to live a heterosexual lifestyle, if they've not surrendered themselves to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, they're lost. They're going to hell. Even if you convince that young woman to not have an abortion and save that child's life, unless that woman comes to faith in Jesus Christ, she's not going to raise that baby in the love of the Lord and the nurture and the admonition of God. She's lost. And so the goal is not to get somebody to stop sinning and become moral, because moral people, good people, as we would call them, go to hell. We look at our culture and we're so upset and we're so angry about the moral decline of our culture. And yes, righteous people should abhor evil. Saved people should abhor wickedness. God's people who are saved by God's grace through faith in Christ should hate sin. The problem is the culture is not going to change if we don't take the gospel, the real gospel, and point them to Jesus. The culture is not going to change by getting the guy who's in the White House out and getting our pick in. You hear that? The culture will only change if God, in his mercy and grace, once again will pour revival out upon his church and God's people will repent. God's people will get their act together. God's people will start living like Jesus has called us to live, and we'll take the good news to a lost and dying world. God will bring restoration to a land when God is the God who rules the land, when he's truly king in our hearts, and he's going to do it one way or the other. You should know that. He'll be glorified one way or the other. It may be through ruin or it may be through great revival. Either way, he will glorify himself. He will make his name great. But we're not about winning arguments. We're not about trying to get people to stop sinning in a certain way. We're about making disciples. We're about sharing the gospel with lost people. You surely do believe that trusting Jesus is the only way to heaven, right? Then why are we chasing after other things? Why don't we put our energy and our effort, and I'm not saying you shouldn't be engaged in the culture. I'm not saying you shouldn't vote. I'm not saying you shouldn't advocate for godly positions. All of those things are good and have their place, and yes, we should. But when's the last time that you actually explained the gospel to a lost person and called on them to do something about it, to follow Jesus. And so it's important for us to learn that the purpose of love and compassion and kindness and patience isn't simply to get a hearing in the culture. A lot of folks are trying to do that. They think, well, we'll just be nice. Lost people will like us and come to Jesus. Patience and kindness and compassion is not about just getting a hearing in the culture, even far less about making us popular in the culture. As Christians, we're to demonstrate these virtues, not because they're methods of gaining popularity, but because the Bible actually commands them as reflecting the character of God and tells us that they are pleasing to God in our lives. We cannot be sure, we cannot ever be sure that our kindness and patience will win a hearing for the gospel. We can pretty much always be certain that our self-righteousness and our impatience will lose a hearing for the gospel. It's a guarantee. We're to love our neighbor, every neighbor, every neighbor. And I know that's not easy. It's not easy for me. But let me suggest this to you. Before you challenge Now listen, listen to me carefully. I'm saying this because I would love to see God's people do the right thing. Before you challenge another person about their life, challenge that person you see in the mirror. Challenge that person you see in the mirror about their life. And for their love for God and their love for others. You get that challenge going, and then you can begin to talk to other people. Love does not mean that we sacrifice truth on the altar of popularity. Love does does not mean sacrificing conviction. In fact, love demands that we don't. But love does mean deliberately, prayerfully, thoughtfully, extending dignity, empathy, patience, and truth to everyone, equally and indiscriminately. In the past, I've failed to do this in my thoughts, in my words, and my actions sometimes. Many of us have likely failed in that way. And for that sin, I need forgiveness. And I thank God in the gospel I haven't. But if we claim the name of Jesus Christ, then we need to live like him and we need to love like him. He loved us when we were not loving him. He loved us when we were apathetic toward him. He loved us when we were rebelling against him, when we wanted to go our own way. In fact, did go our own way. He demonstrated his love toward us. And while we were Sinners, Jesus died for us. Are you following Jesus? Is he your Lord? I'm not asking is he the Lord. I'm asking is he your Lord? Is he the director of your life? That would include his love coming out through you, loving those who love you, or even those who like you. Well, that's fairly easy. I say fairly easy, not always easy. We have affection for them, but this is not necessarily about affection. It's not about fond feelings. Loving your neighbor can be hard. Loving your enemy is even harder. And my flesh does not want to do either. But Jesus said we must do both. And we can do both by God's grace and with his help if we want to be obedient to him. Listen, the brokenness in this world is real. It's not something to deny, and the deception of Satan is real. And that's not something to toy with. The choices you make and the actions you take can affect you, can have impact on you and for you for the rest of your life.

Parenting With Courage And Clarity

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So for the young people, for the kids, for parents, if you have parents, if you kid if you have kids at home still, you need to talk to them with truth. Listen, you need to tell them don't just experiment with something. Don't just experiment with drugs or alcohol or homosexuality or even heterosexuality. Don't just experiment with something because here's what happens you get caught and you get in bondage, and then you can't break out except for a miracle of God. And parents, you need to be in such a way that your kids, when they have questions, when they have concerns, when you see them taking a bad road, you need to have enough, well, intestinal fortitude. You need to have enough guts to tell them the truth and to love them. Your number one job is not to be their best friend. Your job is to be their parent, to be their mother, to be their father. Listen, you can't play around with this stuff because you wake up one day and suddenly you have a 40-year-old who's in a lifestyle that you say, I have no idea how they got there. They were raised in church. I mean you might have took them to church, or maybe you didn't. Maybe you're late in the game, maybe your kids are older. What I'm telling you is this don't wait. Don't put it off. Speak truth. Guide them. Love them. Direct them. And perhaps by God's mercy and God's grace, when they're old, they won't depart from it. Don't just think it's going to work itself out because everything is against them. Everything. The school systems, the entertainment industry, the political institutions, the culture, the world, and sadly now a bunch of churches that say they're churches. It's not the youth pastor's job to raise your children. It's not your pastor's job. You are going to stand before the Lord one day. You can't do anything about the past, but you can do something moving forward. Love promotes dignity. Love works hard to have empathy and compassion. Love shares truth, and love has patience.

Gospel Hope And Final Encouragement

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Jesus saves, and there's hope in the gospel.

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And there's a better day coming. Thank you for joining us for this concluding message in the Divine Design series on Foundations of Truth. Our prayer is that these studies have strengthened your confidence in God's perfect design and reminded you that true hope, lasting peace, and genuine freedom are found only through Jesus Christ. If you'd like to hear this series again, learn more about the ministry, or help support this Bible teaching outreach, please visit foundationsoftruth.net. That's foundationsoftruth.net for Dr. Timothy Mann of Dallas Freaks. Thanks for listening. And we invite you to join us again next time for another edition of Foundations of Truth.