“the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”
What about truth? Pick up any Bible concordance and look up reference to truth, and you get an idea of how much weight God puts on truth. It seems that in Israel’s time, as in ours, clever lawyers and articulate politicians were able to manipulate the truth to line their own pockets, usually at the expense of the poor – and God hated it then as he does now. When truth is twisted, justice is denied.
There are two great truths in the Bible and they come together in the person of Jesus Christ. The first is that God tells us our condition is one of sin. We are sick from sin and cannot change ourselves, and our sin condemns us. Our modern day pride, wrapped up in our sophistication and relative wealth, means that we compare ourselves to others and quite often come to a favourable conclusion in our own eyes. We cannot see our real condition.
When we read in the Gospels the great encounters that Jesus had with individuals, we see that he spoke to the heart of the matter concerning sin. Never judgemental nor condemning, Jesus still had a refreshing attitude of getting to the core of our condition, by telling us the truth about ourselves. “Sin no more” he says to the woman who was about to be stoned, and he says it to each of us. We are all sinners, if only we could face the truth about ourselves.
The second truth we deny as much as the first, is that God loves us. It seems especially difficult for us to accept as believers because somehow we really do know how far things have gone astray. We prefer our own works, our own methods, just in case there might be a catch. What if at the end, God doesn’t come through for me, then at least I’ll be able to rely on my own efforts we tell ourselves. We still measure God’s love in terms of our performance.
Many years ago I stayed with a nurse who treated addicts. She told the story of a young boy, a heroin addict who had been subject to horrible family abuse. She used to clean the boy up, and then watch as he would simply fall back into his habit again; the pain, he would tell her, wouldn’t go away. As a result of her love, along the way, he developed a simple faith in Jesus Christ and every day he would journal his prayers. The local church could never accept him on account of his addiction, yet she was convinced beyond all doubt of his being saved. When he eventually died of his addiction, she read his journal and saw an intimacy with Christ that many believers never experience. He had grasped he was never going to be good enough, but through his desperation pursued Jesus as his only hope, something many in the local church couldn’t do. We prefer our shoddy standards to the truth of God’s love.
The truth we are told of here in John 1:17, is that the law is supplanted by Grace. God loved us and was never going to desert us; we were never going to make it on our own, so he’s done all the work for us. The greatest news in history is that Grace has replaced the law in the person of Jesus Christ and in him there is no condemnation at all. The addict, the liar, the hypocrite we all have a second chance at Grace because of his work.
May we see the truth in that this week; firstly that we so desperately need him, and then that we are free because of his love.
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