Grace and Truth

Jn.1:14 - And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

Like Siamese twins that share the same heart, grace and truth are inseparable and exist together in God and as the verse specifies they dwell in their fullness in the Lord Jesus. Without grace truth is death and without truth grace is hollow. And so where is the correct mixture? That my friends is a continuing balance that requires much prayer and attending to the Scriptures. Jesus was filled with both.

How is grace presented in the context of truth and how is truth presented in the context of grace? There exists between them both a tension and yet a kinship that substantiates them both. The doctrine of God’s grace is truth and the truth of God is filled with grace. It is a challenge to be both John the Baptist and Barnabas without compromising one element of God’s message at the expense of the other. It is the balance that only the Spirit can walk inside of us and through a consecrated tongue.

And our flesh can find enjoyment of an out of balance presentation of either of these truths. The flesh loves a sloppy grace that requires nothing and offers a continuing of our own selfish and hedonistic lifestyle. (Rom.6:1-2) And of course the flesh enjoys using truth to clobber and destroy people without any buffer of grace. The flesh will gleefully accost a person who smokes while turning a blind eye to its own pride. It will enjoin doctrinal purity with meanness and tell itself “well done”.

This is the chameleon like aspect of our flesh, it can appear religious and yet be of the same substance that drives a drunkard to the gutter. And taking inventory of our own flesh and the part it plays in any and every aspect of our lives requires a painful honesty and openness before our Father. And if you bow before the Father and ask Him to reveal any flesh that has surreptitiously become an active part of your walk, and if the Father says there isn’t any, that isn’t the Father of lights it is the father lies. Paul had to die daily and can we do any less?

There is no salvation besides the grace of God found in the Lord Jesus Christ, but the condition for regeneration is repentant faith. God will not pour out His grace upon an uninterested and unconcerned sinner, and although surrendering completely is a process, He will not bestow His grace upon anyone who refuses to even begin that process. Today we are telling people that God has reserved a place in heaven for them simply based upon a repeated prayer and with no chance to disciple them and see the fruit of that first engrafted seed. It surely comes from the American competitive spirit and the numbers game which is designed to elicit the applause of men. Grace is inactive and a religious lie without truth.

But truth also contains the magnificent offer of God’s grace within it. As a matter of fact, even the understanding of God’s truth must be through the grace of God. Now this is a very treacherous obstacle course when we speak the truth of God’s Word while striving to have it seasoned with grace. When we speak the truth of God to a lost person we seem to make sure we are speaking the grace of God, but when we are speaking corrective truth to someone who has strayed from the Word our flesh envisions us as a reincarnation of John the Baptist. At times like that we don’t want the beatitudes, no, give us the turning over of the money changers. We reject the weeping over Jerusalem model, we emulate the “you brood of vipers” model and claim that we are just imitating Jesus. Oh yea, you want to do what Jesus did? OK, listen up, you may just want to audit that class.

First, sell all that you have or better yet leave it all - TODAY. OK, that is step one, are you there yet? Wait a minute, we cannot go any further until you complete Jesus 101, so go ahead and leave everything. Well all the miracles, all the weeping, all the humility, all the rejection, all the giving of oneself totally and completely to God’s work will have to wait, you are stuck at phase one. See, I thought you might want to reconsider acting as if you enjoy all the earthly authority of Jesus without the same sacrifice.

So now we are back to being a sinner saved wholly by the grace of God. The difference, you ask? Now we will still speak what Jesus spoke, but in utter humility and filled with God’s grace, which He was filled with. So what happens when you hear someone teaching things that go against the Word of God? You speak with conviction and clarity what the Word teaches and you forcefully correct them, in love. In love? How do you do that and with what tone do you use? You see, we don’t even know how to really do that because we’ve been so concerned with truth we’ve neglected the grace side. The first step is to again focus on honoring God in both ways and in that become more dependant on the directives of the Spirit than we have apparently been. And when we see error, instead of quickly picking up a club, let us ask and hear how the Holy Spirit would have us proceed. Your method and His may just be different from time to time.

And those of you who see nothing wrong with the modern and ever widening parameters of grace without any hint of surrender, you must also take time to seek the Word of Truth to see if your opinions or anyone else’s are valid against the Scriptures. And just because some movements are growing disproportionately does not mean they have God’s approval, you have a responsibility to separate men’s personalities from the Scriptures. Are there legitimate questions being asked and is God’s truth being compromised by attractive packages? And if the Bibles clearly teaches that there will be a falling away and that in the last days teachers will scratch the lustful ears of people, where is this falling away and who are these preachers that will please people? Look around and hold up God’s truth to these new movements and see if it matches, not just so you can change camps, but so you can please the heavenly Father.

There you have it, grace and truth. Both are in their complete fullness in the Person of Christ and so in essence we are not looking for the correct balance, we are looking for…

Him.