Grace and Truth as the Work of God in our Hearts

 



What is truth? Many people have explored that question. Pilate posed that very question to Jesus. "What is truth," Pilate asked when the Lord claimed to be the witness to the truth (John 18:37-38). Pilate is in good company. Many others like Plato, Socrates, Augustine, and many more have explored the complexities of truth. 

The Gospel of John delves into our historical quest for truth. It is in the first chapter where John first connects truth to the nature of who Jesus is as God in the flesh. The presumed beloved disciple offered an interesting twist on truth when he wrote that Jesus came "full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). He further argued that grace and truth actually "came into being" taking our understanding of truth to a whole new level. Sometimes truth is difficult to comprehend, especially when it is understood within a context like grace. To deal with its complexity we often relegate truth to a way of believing that aligns us with God's understanding of truth. We conclude "speaking the truth", then, is a noble cause even if it isolates someone else to their own broken state without hope for a solution. 

However, to fully grasp the nature of Jesus who is full of grace and truth, we must understand grace and truth not as opposing attributes but rather as character traits that work in tandem to accomplish the same purpose-that is, to magnify Jesus who is the One by whom we are set free. John suggested this very idea when he wrote, "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made Him known" (John 1:18). To know the Father is to know Him in the fullness of the grace and truth of Jesus, the Son.

We lose the power of knowing Jesus when we attempt to seek the truth apart from the grace of God. The grace of God will always lead us to the truth about ourselves. And the truth of God will always point us back to the healing that only God's grace provides. Truth without grace will leave us with self-condemnation. Grace without truth will always leave us in a state of self-righteousness. 

Jesus rarely held back from certain groups of people when it came to speaking truth. But He never spoke truth without pointing the truth back to Himself as the appearing of grace (Titus 2:11). To a group of Jews who had believed Jesus at one time He said, "you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32). But then he indicted this group of Jews with some piercing words:

  • "You have no room for my word..." (v. 37)
  • "You belong to your father, the devil,... (v. 44)
  • "You do not belong to God." (v. 47)

These words seem harsh but we stand in the same place when we separate grace and truth. The Greek word for truth (Gk: aletheia) refers us to the reality of our hearts. So, an honest assessment of our reality becomes harsh when we abandon grace. Previously, Jesus pointed this group of skeptics to the path that could lead them to the freedom of grace when He said, "if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples" (v. 31). Depend on me. Come to me. Trust in me. Quit looking to Abraham. Stop depending on your study of the Scriptures (John 5:39). Look to the Son of God who alone can set you free. An assessment of their hearts was harsh, but His evaluation of their condition started within the context of grace. We are left with a harsh reality when we stubbornly hold to anything else in our life other than the One who sets us free.

Grace can be messy at times because our hearts are messy. It is truth that opens the door for grace to clean up our mess and heal the wounds that caused the mess in the first place. I am convinced that any one of those Jews could have ended up like the seeker Nicodemus (John 3:1-16; 19:38-39) or the once secret follower Joseph of Arimathea (John 19:38-39). We too can be relevant for our Lord at the most significant moments in history when we allow ourselves to wrestle with the truth of our messy lives from an honest heart that opens the door for the healing word of grace.   



 



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