[Power of the Word] Full of Grace and Truth
Daniel Brady
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. --John 1:14
It has been about three weeks since my last Power of the Word entry. For that I apologize and again beg your patience. Truth be told, there are some other personal projects I have been focusing on, and due to the time I’ve been spending on them, I’ve been unable to focus on The Power of the Word.
That being said, let me briefly remind you of what I was discussing previously and then pick up where I left off. We are still in the earliest stages of a study of the Life of Christ. I began the series by affirming the Deity of Jesus Christ, looking at how it is established in the Bible. One of the verses I focused on was John 1:1, which tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Having established the Deity of Christ, I turned our attention to the Incarnation, focusing on John 1:14, which tells us that “the Word became flesh.” After revealing this truth to us, John tells us that he and his contemporaries beheld Christ’s glory. This raises the question; What was the nature of the glory they beheld? In my last entry, I suggested to you that this glory was itself the very fact of the Incarnation. That the Almighty God of the universe would become a man, for the express purpose of dying on a cross to pay for our sins is the most glorious truth in all the Bible.
But now we face another question: How was this glory made manifest? What was it about Christ that let those around Him know that He was God in the flesh? John answers this question by telling us that Christ was “full of grace and truth.”
Sometimes we miss the significance of this statement. However, it was this truth that set Jesus apart from the Scribes and Pharisees with whom He collided so many times throughout His ministry. Unlike our Lord, they were not full of grace and truth.
You know, there are times when God’s timing is impeccable. I say this because, in focusing on some of the other things I’ve had to work on recently, I’ve been reading a certain book, the first chapter of which makes the point that, in order to be transformed into the image of Christ, our lives must be characterized by grace and truth.
The author of this book goes on to explain that when grace is present without truth, it yields license to sin. Conversely, when truth is present without grace, it yields legalism. Both situations result in bondage to sin.
It is tempting o delve into a discussion about how the absence of either of these ingredients from one’s life leads to a life of sin. I get the feeling that such a discussion would be good material for a book, and perhaps such a book needs to be written (this is not the theme of the book I am reading, just a foundational premise for the rest of the book).
However, I will point out that the Scribes and Pharisees were full of truth (the Law of Moses), but were woefully lacking in grace. Hence, they are infamously known for their legalism. Christ, on the other hand, was wholly full of grace and wholly full of truth. This enabled Him to live a perfect life of obedience to God. In addition, He perfectly demonstrated both grace and truth in His dealings with others. This is no more clearly seen than in what He said to the woman who had been caught in adultery: “I do not condemn you. Now go and sin no more” (cf. John 8:11).
Believe it or not, it was this perfect blend of grace a truth, which was so radically different from what people had seen in the Pharisees, that caused His followers to recognize Him as the Incarnate Word.