Reflect:
John 1:14
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
There is a cute story told of a family who brought their newborn daughter home from the hospital for the first time. The mom was a little concerned how the baby’s 4-year-old sister—who had been the only child to that point—would handle this new addition to the family. So mom and dad instructed “big sister” that she could be around the baby only when they were there, and that she had to be very loving and very gentle. It wasn’t long after that mom walked by the baby’s room only to discover the sister hovering over the crib. Mom was alarmed, so she snuck up behind the little girl to see what was going on, and noticed she was gently stroking the baby’s hair with her hand and whispering, “Baby, can you tell me what God is like…I’ve forgotten.”
That’s one of the deepest cries of the human heart—to know what God is like.
Bible teacher R.C. Sproul was once asked, “What, in your opinion, is the greatest need in the world today?” His answer was that people needed “to discover the identity of God.” He was then asked, “What is the greatest spiritual need in the lives of church people?” His answer was much the same: “To discover the true identity of God. If believers really understood the character and the personality of God, it would revolutionize their lives.”
The good news is, God has made himself knowable. He is not some unapproachable deity way out there in a galaxy far, far away. He is the God who is there, who is near, and who will reveal himself to those who long to know him.
Jesus, the one who knew the heart and nature of God better than anyone, taught us in the opening line of the Lord’s prayer to approach God as “Our Father in heaven”, which literally means, “Our Father, who is as close as the air we breathe.” Moses exclaimed in Deuteronomy 4:7. “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him?”
What does God want us to know? He is near and he is knowable, that’s what. Furthermore, he has made himself knowable in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. And what do we know of God through Jesus? Primarily that God is the perfect blend of grace and truth!
Grace and truth is what Jesus perfectly modeled. Remember Jesus’s interaction in John 8 with the woman caught in the act of adultery who was about to be stoned? After embarrassing her executioners into inaction, he gently asked this guilty woman, “Where are your accusers? Has no one judged you guilty?”
She replied, “No one, Sir.”
At that, Jesus offered these grace-truth words that would utterly right this sinner’s upside-down life: “Then I don’t either. Go now and leave your life of sin.”
Behind this amazing display of grace and truth, as Walter Trobisch said, what we find is that Jesus “accepts us as we are but when he accepts us, we cannot remain as we are.” Jesus brings our sin to the surface, and when we acknowledge it by confession and repentance, totally, graciously and forever forgives it. The adulteress went away forgiven, with a new clean heart and a brand new chance at life. Only grace and truth can do that for sinners.
Perhaps that is why prostitutes, publicans, and other sinners responded to Jesus so readily. At some level, they recognized their sin. That was why forgiveness was so appealing to them—and still is! What does the world need more than anything right now? What does your sinful next door neighbor so desperately need? The same thing you need: A whole lot of truth and a big dose of grace!
And when you meet Jesus, you meet God. And when you meet God, you get a whole lot of truth and a big dose of grace—and it completely revolutionizes your life.
“Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God; the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger.” ~C.S. Lewis
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