Can you gossip about someone you truly love and seek their highest good?
No. Gossip and false witness are incompatible with genuine agape love that seeks another’s highest good. Love fulfills the Law, so grace never grants freedom to gossip; instead, it changes the believer’s desires, making such harm contrary to true love for one’s neighbor.
Les explains from Romans 13:8 that the one who loves another has fulfilled the Law, because love is always the answer for what the Law demands. He applies this by asking whether a person can steal from someone they really love, or bear false witness—gossip—about someone they really love and are seeking their highest good. The answer is no way. In the same manner, if true agape love were functioning, the present-day surge of sexual immorality and adultery would die on the vine, since there is no true love in that kind of sexual satisfaction; it leaves people miserable, and triangles cause only unhappiness, grief, and sorrow. Coveting also disappears, because you do not wish you had something that belongs to someone you love. Thus love is the fulfilling of the whole Law. Les clarifies that Paul’s teaching that believers are not under Law but under Grace does not mean they are free to steal or gossip. It means the Law no longer hangs over them as a threatening punishment if they break it. Once a person comes into salvation through faith and under God’s Grace, the whole system of want-to changes.
Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.