We are to speak the truth to one another in love.  This means speaking the truth to someone else for their good and for their benefit which glorifies God.  Sometimes however, even with the intent of teaching properly, we teach falsehood.  One such sad example is:

Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies.  (1 Corinthians 8:1a)

The above “quotation” is a partial thought, a fragment of an argument taken out of its context.  From this incomplete thought Christians have wrongly taught that there is a contest between love and knowledge, and when given a choice, Christians should always err on the side of pursuing “love” (which they assume to be affection, peace, and sensitivity to not offend the feelings of others) and leave truth unspoken, embracing willful ignorance over knowledge.

There is no such tension or contest between love and knowledge.  Paul informs us that “we all have knowledge” about the subject he is introducing.  However, knowledge by itself, absent of the motive of love, is insufficient for anything except making a person proud. 

But knowledge combined with love edifies.  Edification means “to build up someone verbally” using knowledge, instruction, reproof, encouragement, or hymns.

In other words, knowledge spoken in love is always for the goal of edifying a fellow saint.  Knowledge kept to oneself results only in pride.  Such a proud person might think to himself, “I have more knowledge than that person, so that makes me better than them.”  A loving person will say, “My neighbor needs to hear this knowledge to help him grow in the Lord and I would be unloving to withhold that knowledge from them.”

In context, 1 Corinthians 8 is all about eating food sacrificed to idols.  Christians who lack knowledge (who are weak in understanding of the Word) assume they cannot eat meat that was possibly once sacrificed to idols--they starved due to their lack of knowledge.  Yet believers who are strong in knowledge know idols are dumb rocks, and so long as one is not actively participating in an idol’s worship ceremony (which involved eating the sacrificial meat in the idol’s presence at its temple) then eating the meat left over from such a service is perfectly acceptable, for God is the only God and has blessed this bounty.  If one had this knowledge in Rome, he ate; if one lacked this knowledge in Rome, he starved. (For more about the subject of eating meat, you are invited to read the article entitled: These Essentials: Abstain from Idols, Blood, Strangled Meat, Sex--Understanding the Prohibitions of Acts 15.)

Recall 1 Corinthians 13:1-8.  “Good” deeds done without love are those deeds where the person was not motivated by a desire to give benefit to others but by their desire to get acclaim for themselves through their seemingly high-minded and very visible actions.  Love, and loving deeds, are not motivated by self-interest (1 Corinthians 13:5).  Love is motivated by the desire to edify others (1 Corinthians 14:26).

What is the outcome then, brethren? When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.  (1 Corinthians 14:26)

Knowledge is in the employ of love.  Knowledge does not fight with love, knowledge works under the direction of love.  Knowledge edifies in love when it speaks the truth for the purpose of edifying others. 

Love without deeds is simply impossible.  Love is never ineffectual, it never fails (1 Corinthians 13:8).  Love is never present without the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6).  Knowledge without love is knowledge left unspoken, it does not edify because it is not communicated.  Knowledge without love is only good for boosting the ego of its silent owner.

Love will never allow a fellow Christian to starve, physically or spiritually, merely for lack of knowledge. 

Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.  (1 Peter 1:22-23)

As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.  (Ephesians 4:14-16)