Grace & Truth

In college, I became good friends with a young lady, but I wanted to become more than good friends. So I asked her on a date. Unfortunately, I remember 2 things from that moment. I remember her laughing and I remember her saying, no. I then asked her a second time and she said, no. I asked her a third time and she said, no.

A person can only take “no” so many times, so I started questioning, how many times can I realistically ask this young lady to become more than friends before I just can't take “no's” any longer? So she turned me down 3 times, but now we're together! Now we're married! This may have a lot to do with what happened in the gap.

After the 3rd rejection, I recalled that Kristen was working part time for a friend of mine who was also the youth minister at the church I went to. I decided to go to this guy and get some advice. I told him the situation and that I wanted to be more than friends with Kristen. I was hoping that maybe he had some insider information that could help me out. He looked me dead in the eyes and said, “Tim, Kristen will go on to date and eventually marry someone who is tall, dark, and handsome. You are none of those things!”

I responded, “Robert, I already know that! Give me something that I can work with.”
He said, “Listen, you’re not going to get any taller, your skin complexion isn’t going to get any darker, and you’re not all that handsome., but let’s start there!”

He then preceded to give me some advice and through his advice I realized that I kind of let myself go. I ended up gaining a bunch of weight in college. I never got a haircut.

Because of this advice, I made a decision to do something about it. I went to supercuts and got a real haircut. I started dressing a little nicer. I went and got my car washed. I cleaned out the inside because I knew that I had to present myself as a little more attractive. Something had to happen, or I was gonna get that 4th no and that 5th no, and that 6th no, and eventually she would just stop talking to me.

But what I want to highlight is what my friend did for me. He gave me truth and grace. If he would have just given me truth. If he would have just said, listen man, you're not tall, dark and handsome. You got no chance. Forget about it, that would have crushed me.

On the flip side, if he would have just given me grace and said something like, “4th time's a charm my friend. Go ask her one more time.” You know what? That would have eventually crushed me as well. But he didn't do that. He gave me truth and grace.

Do you lean more one way that another? More on the Grace side where you avoid conflict at all cost? Or maybe you lean more on the truth side.

Andy Stanley is a pastor in the Atlanta area, you’ve likely heard of him. I love the way he puts it. Andy said, “The point is not to find a perfect balance between grace and truth, the goal is to be perfectly graceful and perfectly truthful.”

Today we are going to dive into a passage, that I believe if we really grasped it and applied it to our lives, we would see our communities, our cities, our country, and our world transformed. The passage is John 1:9-14

If you only remember one thing from this blog, remember this: We can launch grace and truth in our life by receiving Jesus as our only hope, by imitating God, and by giving grace and truth to others.

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood not of the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God. 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 9:1-14

#1: You can only launch grace and truth, by receiving Jesus

Here is the truth! The Jewish people were Jesus’ own people, but they were religious. Think of it this way. If you grew up in church and read your Bible on a regular basis then you’ve probably read this passage before, but have you ever connected the dots? It says Jesus’ own did not receive him.

The Jewish people, believed the Bible. They didn’t have the New Testament, because the New Testament is about Jesus, but they had the Old Testament scriptures and they believed them. The Old Testament takes up about two thirds of the Bible and the Jews had that. They believed it and applied it to their lives.

Think about it, these people had the same Bible you have, at least most of it and they still didn’t receive Him. Why? Why didn’t they receive Him? There are probably a lot of reasons, but the main reason they did not receive Jesus was because after they saw Jesus, they realized they wanted something different.

Jesus own people weren’t looking for Grace and Truth, they were looking for a political king and national power. Instead, they got a servant leader, who taught that the greatest thing to do is to love God and love others. When they realized that’s what Jesus was teaching, they rejected Him. In addition, the Jewish people weren’t the only ones who rejected Jesus, The Bible says that the world rejected Him.

If we read a little earlier in verse 9 of this same chapter, we see that everything was created through Jesus and that creation rejected Him. Everyone rejected Him, including each of us. Jesus came teaching what we all needed to hear, but we wanted something different, they wanted something different, and so He was killed.

The idea of Killing Jesus seems extreme, but it isn’t really that far fetched. We read the text and think, how in the world could they have done this? I know it is hard to hear, but there is part of me that honestly believes that if Jesus was born today, there is a possibility that we might have killed Him too. Why?

The reason is because we want something different than what Jesus is offering us. Many times, we think if I just received this I’d be happy, I’d be secure, I’d be complete, but what do we do when Jesus says, “No, I have something different for you.” How do you receive that? Many of us are only happy when things look the way we want them to, but we don’t handle it so well when Jesus has a different path or plan for our life than we want.

I want to share a story with you about something that happened to my dad. A few years ago he had to get a hip replacement. He was much too young to need this kind of surgery. It was painful and it was a very long and expensive journey. It is not a path he would have chosen, yet here he was.

The thing is, God had a plan for what he was walking through. After having such an extensive surgery, my dad had to slow down. He needed to rest to recover. He had to change his normal routine. During this time of recovery and slowing down, my dad was able to have some deep conversations with various people in our families and lives were changed through this process, because of those conversations.

I would go as far as to say that our family tree was transformed, because of a path my dad walked that he never would of chosen, because God allowed for his routine to be disrupted and changed, so that people in my family would experience grace and truth.

Some of you may be reading this and you are thinking, “I like Jesus. I would never kill Him. I love God, I love going to church, I obey the rules, it’s not a problem for me! I am a good person.”

Let me ask you something, a tough question….will being a good person save you? We do all of these things, we love God and others, we obey the rules. We do these things, not so that God will love us, but we do them because He first loved us.

When we start to understand how broken we are & how loved we are, then our hearts begin to melt. We can’t help but to love God and love others. If we aren’t clear on why we love and obey God, we tend to fall into this trap of doing the right thing, of doing good things, of being good people…. not because we were already loved, but instead because we are trying to win God’s love and this is the wrong way of looking at it.

We have now determined that we don’t receive God by being good, and we don’t receive God by being bad. We also don’t receive God by default. Yet the scripture tells us in verse 12, “But to all who did receive Him, that's Jesus, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.”

Notice it doesn’t say everyone, it says all who received Jesus. How do we become children of God. How do we receive Jesus? Receiving Jesus comes through our belief in him.

Its important to remember that: you can only become a child of God on the basis of what Jesus has done for you.

You can’t receive Jesus because of your good works or anything that you’ve done. It is only on the basis of what Christ did for you. He came for you and you can only become a child of God by believing in him.

You may be wondering why I am discussing receiving Jesus when the topic is grace and truth. The reason is that you can not move forward in implementing the daily discipline of grace and truth until you receive Jesus.

#2: You can only launch grace and truth by imitating God.

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Ephesians 5:1-2

How do we know how to imitate God? Think about it this way. I want you to take a moment and ask yourself what is the most important thing in your life? Is it your spouse, your child’s birth, graduating from college, that job you landed?

These are definitely important things, but the Bible says that the word, Jesus, became flesh and dwelt among us. This is the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity.

Jesus came in human flesh and showed us how to live. He gave his life to pay for our sin. He lived a life that showed us how to exhibit truth and grace. He was the best example and so we imitate him and the way that he lived his life.

You may be asking yourself what is grace and what is truth? Grace is a free unmerited favor of God and truth is that which is in accordance with reality. We could probably spend all day working through what grace and truth are, but let’s start with these two working definitions.

Jesus brought us grace by paying our debt of sin. Where there is sin, there is a price that must be paid and Jesus paid that debt. We didn’t deserve it and we could never repay it. All of those broken things we’ve done, all those broken things we’re going to do, they’ve all been paid for once we place our faith in Jesus. Jesus paid once for the sins of all those who believe in him.

Jesus designed us, he knows our reality, how we tick, how we operate. Jesus has given us commandments. He has told us to love God and love others. The commands he has given us were not given to restrict our lives, they are to enable our lives. Now we realize that grace and truth is a gift we can give to others as Christ gave this gift to us also.

Something to remember is that sometimes we have a tendency to lean more towards grace or more towards truth. When we do this, it just doesn’t work. It creates problems. We can easily become like the religious people of Jesus’ day. We put really high standards on the sins other people struggle with, but in reverse we put really low standards on the things we struggle with.

Scripture shows us that all sins separate us from God. When we come to this understanding it radically changes our lives. If you struggle with being judgmental, coming to a true understanding of how grace and truth works, will wreck that part of you. The truth is that we all drop the ball sometimes. When we understand grace and truth, we don’t stay there. We understand that because of the grace and truth that Jesus has shown us, we can pick the ball up again and make strategies to not drop it again.

#3 You can only launch grace and truth in your life, by giving grace and truth to others.

Jesus gave us a great example of showing both grace and truth in John chapter 7. The woman caught in the act of adultery was thrown at his feet and the people wanted to stone her. At that time, that was the punishment for the crime after all. Jesus showed her perfect grace when he stopped them from stoning her, but that isn’t where the story ends. What did he say to her? He told her to go and sin no more. He showed her 100 percent truth and 100 percent grace.

We have to do the same thing with people we love. We have to show 100% grace and 100% truth. You may not know exactly how to do this though. I am going to give you a good way to start these types of conversations.

You could say something like this… “ I may be way off in what I am about to say and you may want to jump across the table and punch me. That might even be fair, because I might be wrong, but have you ever thought about ____________?”

Amazing things happen when we have those conversations. That is what changed my situation in pursuing my wife. My friend was honest with me. That kind of honestly is one of the greatest gifts we can give.

Who have you shown only grace to? If you can think of someone, make an effort to go make it right. Who have you only shown truth to? If you can think of someone, make an effort to go make it right.

Sometimes we use truth like a sledgehammer and a lot of people get hurt. Sometimes we need to go back and show a little grace also. Not just a little grace, we need to be perfectly graceful and perfectly truthful in everything.

We need more grace and more truth. Sometimes, Grace can be hard to give and truth can be hard to receive. Let’s make it a daily discipline to live a life of truth and grace. If we can learn to do this, our city, our nation, and our world will be transformed.

Let’s launch grace and truth by receiving Jesus, imitating God, and giving grace and truth to others.