Before my father retired, I thought of him as the “three-dollar guy.” When I borrowed his truck, I noticed three-dollar bills crammed into a small space. When I asked him what they were for, he would say, “They’re there for someone in need.” My father dispensed small amounts of cash to anyone who looked hungry, and if time allowed, he would share the gospel. Because of the recipient’s high possibility of using the funds for drugs or alcohol, one person tried to discourage my dad from “throwing away his money.” But my father protested, “What if there’s one person who is in need?”

Talk can be loveless, empty, or without foundation. We throw words around hoping to encourage, but often we miss the mark. If someone says they are hungry and you hug them and say, “I’ll pray for you,” but do nothing afterward, your words are futile.

First John 3:18 says, “Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.” Words are the skeleton of our relationships. But actions and truth are the muscles and connective tissue that round out our interactions.

Interestingly, Scripture distinguishes between the terms “word” and “truth.” Both are parts of speech, but one holds more weight than the other. Why? Because truth demands evidence. It is only as good as the proof that upholds its foundation.

Before Jesus cured the multitude, he provided words of encouragement. In the book The Love of God, Andreas J. Köstenberger says, “For this reason, it is not surprising to find Jesus not only demonstrating this love in his life and death but also deliberately teaching his disciples and the crowds about God’s great love for the lost. And while culminating the Father’s love for the lost is the sending of the Son, it is not his only expression of love. Indeed, Jesus teaches that the facts that the sun continues to shine and the rain continues to fall despite the world’s sinfulness are a testimony of God’s love (Matt. 5:44-46).”

First Corinthians 13 demonstrates the connection between love and actions as follows: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind, is not jealous, does not brag, is not puffed up; it does not act unbecomingly, does not seek its own… Love never fails.” (see verses 1-8).

It is not coincidental that Jesus is called “The Truth” in John 14:6. He is our example of someone who did not love in word only, but in deed and in truth. Jesus’s words would fall to the ground and be trampled underfoot by false teachers if He only said, “I love you,” but did not go to the cross.

In The Love of God, Köstenberger continues, “Love for one another is not only the necessary reflection of love for Jesus but also the demonstration to the world that a person belongs to Jesus. Just as Jesus shows the world his love by obeying the Father completely, even to the point of dying on the cross, so believers show the world that they obey the Father completely by loving one another. Indeed, love is the premier mark of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.”

Love is work, and society has grown casual in its responses. Maybe it’s time to pause and consider how we can express our love for others in more tangible ways.