Full of Grace and Truth

 

You will say in that day: "I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me.  Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation." With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.  --Isaiah 12:1-3

Christmas has come and gone.  By now you have most likely thrown away all of the wrapping paper and ribbons, which looked so festive when they adorned the gifts under the Christmas tree.  Now they are destined for a land fill somewhere, a remnant of Christmases past.  Perhaps you are spending this weekend taking down the Christmas tree, carefully removing and boxing the surviving ornaments, storing them away for next year.

In removing all the clutter and returning the family room back to normal you may see something that gives you pause.  Something you swept up off the floor--maybe a piece of the nativity set that somehow got separated from the rest--something small, but it makes you stop and smile.  You may remember the Christmas Eve service at church, or maybe a line from an old carol you hold dear.  A Bible verse may cross your mind, something you read to the children from the gospel accounts of Luke, or maybe Matthew, where the birth of Jesus is recounted in detail.

Matthew and Luke tell us the most about the events leading up to and surrounding the birth of the Christ child.  Mark doesn't mention it at all, introducing the Savior as a full grown man.  Then there's the gospel of John.  John's account of the Nativity is summed up in the first chapter.  Verse 9 speaks of Jesus's purpose: "The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world."  Verse 10 speaks of his anonymity: "He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him."  Verse 11 speaks of his rejection: "He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him."  Verse 12 speaks of his disciples: "But to all who did receive him, he gave the right to become children of God."

The whole of Jesus's ministry is summed up in verse 14: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."  The Word of God, whom Solomon referred to as Wisdom, the One who spoke the world into existence left the glory of heaven and walked among us.  God did not decide one day to just walk a mile in our sandals.  Rather, He became one of of us.  The creator of life spent nine months in utero.  The divine and eternal took on the flesh and blood of a mortal man.

Professor Chad Bird put it this way:

God becomes no bigger than a dot to save a cosmos. He doesn't just send a child to do a man's job. He sends an embryo to do a God's job. Jesus did not come down to earth to walk a mile in our shoes. He chose to live for the rest of eternity in our skin. The incarnation was not an internship. If there was ever any doubt about God's commitment to humanity, the incarnation removed that doubt. For the joy set before him, Jesus entered the womb, suffered through puberty, fought the good fight, endured the cross, exploded the tomb. For what joy? For the joy of calling you brother and sister, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. For the joy of your salvation. It all began inside a virgin, when God became a man forever. And thus he is our brother, our kinsman redeemer, the God who would move heaven and earth to save us.

 Jesus's incarnation is the intersection of grace and truth.  

My wife gave me a book for Christmas called Breakfast With Bonhoeffer by Jon Walker.  In it, Walker compares the marriage of grace and truth to a husband and wife who have different ways of loading a dishwasher.  His wife is a structuralist, believing there is one and only one way to properly clean the dishes.  Jon, by contrast says he is improvisation.  His approach to cleaning dishes is more free-form, "that is, if it's in the machine somewhere, somehow, then surely it will get clean."  Walker notes that this marriage of legalism and grace is fraught with potential pitfalls.

Jesus came from the Father "full of grace and truth" on his mission to bring us into the Kingdom (John 1:14 NIV).  God's truth and grace work hand-in-hand, just like a couple who are polar opposites can work together when loading the dishwasher.  The danger as we follow Jesus into the Kingdom is that we can slip off the narrow path, on one side sliding into a ditch of burdensome religion--what we commonly call legalism--and on the other side sliding into a ditch where there is a presumptive disregard for the bloody cost of God's grace, something Bonhoeffer refers to as cheap grace. (Walker, page 52)

The Christian life is often compared to walking a narrow path.  The challenge is to keep our way between the ditches.  Too many times we follow "blind guides" referred to in Luke 6:39. On the one hand are fundamentalists who fastidiously follow all the rules,  On the other hand are the hyper-grace types who have no idea of the price Jesus paid for our salvation.  Both are in danger of falling into a ditch.

Both of these ditches look a little bit like following Jesus, and so we can trudge through the mud, thinking we're still hot on the heels of Jesus.  But both these ditches carry us away from the intimate relationship God desires that we have with Jesus Christ.  Both of these paths attempt to do the impossible: the first tries to separate grace from truth and the second tries to separate truth from grace.  Either way, it only creates a monumental mess. Bonhoeffer says either extreme will leave us perpetually immature, the one following rules instead of learning to be dependent upon Jesus and the other following impulse instead of learning to be obedient to God's Word.  The idea that we can disconnect from Jesus or that some part of our life can be disconnected from Jesus is a delusion straight from the pit of hell. (Walker, page 53.)

 The prophet Micah asked God what might cover man's sin.  Did he want sacrifices? If so, what kind, and how much?  Would one bull or ram sacrifice be enough, or would it require more?  If it required more, how much more?  A hundred animals? A thousand? The sacrifice of Micah's first-born son?  God's answer is one of my favorite verses in all of Scripture: "He has told you, O man, what is good: and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness (or mercy), and to walk humbly with your God? (Michah 6:8, emphasis added).

Jesus came to speak God's truth.  God is holy.  Man is sinful, separated from God.  Jesus also came to show us what grace looks like.  God requires punishment for our sins, but Jesus was willing to take that punishment for us.  Being the recipient of God's grace through the blood of Jesus does not give us license to sin.  A total surrender to Jesus should make us want to be holy.  

While you are busy boxing and storing the Christmas decorations, do not reflect so much on the baby, who came naked into this world through Mary.  Remember that this same man died naked on the cross, bearing our sins upon him, so that we may be the recipient of God's grace.