Several years ago I encountered a spiritual truth which continues to shape my thinking today. In the first chapter of the Book of John and verses 14 and 17 there’s a short, three-word phrase: “grace and truth.” It’s a phrase John uses to describe the person of Jesus Christ. In fact, verse 14 describes Jesus as “full of grace and truth.” (NIV/NAS) I’ve searched many different translations for the phrase “truth and grace” and I can’t find it in the entire Bible. (At biblestudytools.com I can search over 30 different English translations) In today’s blog post I want to share with why I believe this truth is so important.
Followers of Jesus are people of the truth. We love the truth because the truth has set us free (John 8:32); we love the truth because we were blind but now we see (John 9:25). The “truth” means different things to different people. I’m not speaking in the New Age sense which leaves the definition of truth up to the individual. Let me explain what I mean. For some people, “truth” is a direct reference to the written Word of God. These kinds of people are strong on the Word, in both declaring it and defending it. For other people, they connect truth with the person of Jesus. I think it’s important to always remember, Truth is a person!
For people who lean towards “truth” being a reference to the written Word of God there’s sometimes a tendency to depersonalize truth. Here’s how I see this happening. When seeking to share the truth with people, the sharing becomes more of a debate or argument. Instead of introducing the person to Jesus, they put all of their effort into trying to convince them of the truth of the truth. I think this happens because in North America so much emphasis is placed upon education and knowledge. For those of us who are seeking to introduce others to Jesus, we aim for the head, when we should be aiming for heart. This approach, which is to lead with TRUTH (Remember, “truth and grace” is the phrase not found in the Bible), sometimes results in using the Bible as a hammer; where the truth is used to break someone down and to crack their resistance to the gospel.
What I saw several years ago in John 1:14 and 17 was a different approach. Instead of leading with TRUTH FIRST, Jesus, our example, led with grace. Jesus lived GRACE FIRST. Instead of using truth as a hammer, he offered a helping hand to hurting and broken people. I want to explore what it means to live GRACE FIRST in the next few blog posts, but this has been a good start in looking at what it means to represent Jesus Christ in our world with “grace and truth.”
To be continued...
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