Full of grace and truth

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. And from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." -John 1:14, 16-17

Grace and truth. Truth and grace. One without the other is fatal. Jesus brought both. Jesus is life.

Grace...a long time ago, I memorized a definition for grace that went something along the lines of, "God giving me a free gift I don't deserve" and I like it. I have never done anything to earn His favor, yet God keeps giving good gifts because He is a loving Father and I am His daughter.

Somehow, though, grace can easily turn into license to behave in any way we want. The idea of "cheap grace" is dangerous. It can lead us to miss the point of following Jesus at all. The gospel I understood growing up was "accept Jesus into your heart...now you know you're going to heaven, so you don't have to lie awake worrying about going to hell...so go on living life, go to church, just don't do anything really bad." Maybe I was ignorant in my, ahem, younger days, but I see this kind of feel-good "Christianity" a lot...it appeals to our consumeristic worldview. It gives us a get out of hell free card, and gives us religion without rules. If I've asked Jesus into my heart, He won't keep me from heaven just because I want to enjoy life while I can. YET, this kind of "grace" also keeps us from truly living. Cheap grace keeps us trapped in the sinful nature that Jesus came to save us from. He knows how life is meant to be lived, who we were meant to be, and empowers us to be that by His Spirit. He desires to transform us into the kind of people that love and give freely, shining light into a darkened world. Cheap grace leaves us looking a lot like the rest of the world, with no true hope to offer.

However, God's favor given as part of a love relationship, is meaningless without truth. If I don't realize what I truly deserve, and who I truly am, what God offers has little value. If I think that I am a pretty good person and that I am entitled to God's love, then why do I need grace? Jesus dying on the cross is of little meaning if I don't need a savior. So, moving on...

Truth...what is truth, Pilate asks. Jesus goes as far to say, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Truth is not always pleasant. It can be painful. It sheds light on reality. Jesus came into a world of sinners to show us how short we fall. Up to this point, the goal of Judaism was to follow the law religiously, to keep up an appearance of holiness. Jesus rebuked the religious teachers of the day, calling them "whitewashed tombstones." In Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount shows the true nature of God's desires for His people; God desires not just right outward actions, but a heart that deeply loves God and others and acts out of that love. When we look at ourselves in this light, we realize that even the good we do often has selfish motives and how much we serve ourselves first. It is possible to do everything right, but be an ugly person inside. Seeing ourselves in light of Jesus' teachings, this becomes apparent.

Yet, if all Jesus showed us was truth, we would not be able to handle it. One of my favorite novels, The Picture of Dorian Gray, has a good illustration of this. Dorian begins as a handsome, innocent young man, untainted by the ways of the world. His friend, painter Basil Hallward, paints a portrait of Dorian. He eventually sells his soul so that the portrait will age instead of him. As he embraces a hedonistic lifestyle, he remains unchanged. However, in the final scene, Dorian sees the mess of himself in the portrait and plunges a knife into his heart. In the same way, if Jesus only showed us the depth of our sinful nature without offering Himself as our mediator, we would be completely hopeless.

Both grace and truth alone leave us still a broken humanity. But God does not leave us to suffer the fate of either one. Instead He shows us his overflowing love by giving us His Son, full of grace AND truth. He alone is our redemption and hope through the valleys of life.