What is the relationship between grace and truth?

But it is important we should know how He entered the world. We have seen already that thus light was shed on men. How was this? The Word, in order to accomplish these infinite things, "was made (ἐγένετο) flesh, and dwelt among us." It is here we learn in what condition of His person God was to be revealed and the work done; not what He was in nature, but what He became. The great fact of the incarnation is brought before us — "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father"). His aspect as thus tabernacling among the disciples was "full of grace and truth." Observe, that blessed as the light is, being God's moral nature, truth is more than this, and is introduced by grace. It is the revelation of God — yea, of the Father and the Son, and not merely the detecter of man. The Son had not come to execute the judgments of the law they knew, nor even to promulgate a new and higher law. His was an errand incomparably deeper, more worthy of God, and suitable to One "full of grace and truth." He wanted nothing; He came to give — yea, the very best, so to speak, that God has.

The law did not tell man what God was, or what man was; but it came and told man what he ought to be. That was all the law did. It was a perfect rule of life as it came. What was the God they were to love with all their heart? You might take Him as the Israelites did, the One who brought them out of the land of Egypt; but there was no other revelation of God except terror. If you are going to have righteousness, law detects your sin and says, you have done it - opens your eyes. When I come to what I get here, it is altogether opposite. It is God come as a man into the world of sinners. He comes veiled in humiliation. He so comes into the world of sinners in grace, that instead of saying, "You must behave yourself rightly," He comes Himself, not to judge, but to save. If I take the law, God never came out, and man could not get in. Now, what I get in the Person of Christ is that God did come out, and man is gone in. When I know Christ I know man has gone into the holiest of all in virtue of Christ's work. Grace comes abounding over all the sin, and truth comes too; not telling us what we ought to be, but what we are; and man does not like that. When I come and tell a man that truth came by Jesus Christ, he does not like it, for truth says, man is lost already. There was a Man down here after God's own heart - perfect holiness and perfect love, and when He came, every one was the opposite. No men are like Him. You never saw selfishness or self-seeking in Christ. I see perfect grace come out to poor sinners because they could not go in; and, on the other hand, perfect truth told about them and about Him too. It was no sending out a message to them, but He came to them. Here He was, walking up and down in this ruined world, seeking the confidence of man.

It was no transient vision, however momentous, as on the holy mount. It was a contemplation19 of His glory vouchsafed to His witnesses, not of an earthly conqueror, nor Messianic even, but glory20 as of an only-begotten from beside ( παρὰ ) a father.21 No sword girds His thigh, no riding to victory, no terrible things in righteousness: the incarnate Word dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. Such is He that was in and from the beginning, and thus known. He was the King undoubtedly, but not so portrayed here. He is infinitely more than King, even God, yet God on earth, man dwelling among men, full of grace and truth. So only could God be displayed, unless in judgment which had left no hope, but only destroyed to the bitter end at once and unreservedly. For infinitely different purposes had He come, as this passage itself declares in due season, perfectly knowing and feeling the universal evil of man. He tabernacled among us full of grace and truth. It was not a visit or a theophany, as in O.T. experiences. So He here manifested God, Who is love. But grace is more; it is love in the midst of evil, rising above it, going down under it, overcoming it with good.

And such was Jesus, sojourning on earth, full of truth withal; for otherwise grace was no more grace, but a base imitation, and most ruinous both for God and to man. Not such was Jesus, but full of grace and truth, and in this order, too. For grace brings in the truth and enables souls to receive truth and to bear it, themselves as sinners judged by it. He, and He only, was full of grace and truth. To make it known, to make God Himself thus known, He came. For as grace is the activity of Divine love in the midst of evil,22 so truth is the revelation of all things as they really are, from God Himself and His ways and counsels down to man and every thought and feeling as well as word and work of man — yea, of every invisible agency for good or evil throughout all time, and throughout all eternity. So He dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. See further, exposition below of John 14:6.

We may notice that the relations of Christ in verse 14 are twofold: first, Godward, "We have contemplated His glory, a glory as of an only-begotten with a father;" and secondly, manward, "full of grace and truth." The first were natural (that is, according to the divine nature). How could it be otherwise? He was, and is, the Father's only-begotten Son. But His position manwards was altogether wonderful, He dwelt among us — the fallen sons of men — in a character which, but for sin, could never have been known, full of grace and truth. Grace, which is divine love, asserting itself, and maintaining its ways, in the midst of all that is contrary to it; truth, that brings the real character of everything to light, by showing its relation to Himself. Grace and truth were never in the world before, they are spoken of as one in verse 17. "Grace and truth came [" subsists," New Translation] by Jesus Christ." It is interesting, the verb being in the singular, as though they formed but one thought in the mind of God. Grace and truth had their being, in the world, only through Christ. What belonged to man was "the lie." Look at Ephesians 4:25, "Wherefore putting away the lie, speak every man truth." The lie! that is what characterises man, that is his moral state. The new man is created in righteousness and holiness of truth; the converse of the old state is thus presented in the epistle, "The truth, which dwelleth in us, and shall be with us for ever." The Lord tells us that every man who hears His voice is "of the truth." The old man is of "the lie;" Satan its father, himself a liar from the beginning. The Spirit of God expresses it as a principle, as "the lie." And if Satan from the beginning was a liar, man, fallen under the power of his lie, has from the beginning falsified the character of God. Like the fallen angels, he did not keep his first estate — dependence upon God, whose love and delight in the wonderful creature He had just made in His own image and likeness, and His mind about him, paradise itself could in no way measure or unfold. (See Ps. 8; Eph. 1 end; Rev. 21) I have just hinted at the mind of God about man; the first expression of man's mind about God, came out in his departure from Him. His first recorded act betrayed the love of the lie, this shut him out of paradise — the last word about him announces the exclusion from the heavenly city of him who loves and makes a lie. Man believed Satan's lie, preferring it to God's truth, he thought that God was keeping something from him.

Grace is God's gracious manner even with a creature that is fallen. Truth represents things as they are. Truth tells me what God is, what I am, what sin is. To us it would seem impossible to maintain at its full height all that God is in absolute holiness, to expose all that the sinner is in sin, and yet show grace. The two things are seen together in Jesus Christ. Even in His life and service both were expressed.

There is a twofold action in all the divine dealings with us, namely, an action of truth, and an action of grace. The former discovers the evil, the latter puts it away; that unfolds what man is, this what God is; that brings out into the light the hidden workings of evil in the heart of man, this brings out, in contrast, the rich and exhaustless springs of grace in the heart of God. Now, both are needful: truth, for the maintenance of God's glory; grace, for the establishment of our blessing; that, for the vindication of the divine character and attributes, this for the perfect repose of the sinner's heart and conscience.

375 The truth is not what ought to be, but what is - the reality of all relationships as they are, and the revelation of Him who, if there are any, must be the centre of them. Now that could not be told without grace, for man was a ruined sinner, and God is love. And how tell, moreover, that all relationship was gone - for judgment is not a relationship, but the consequence of the breach of one - as the truth of any existing one, but in the revelation of that grace which formed one on this very ground by divine power? Hence we read "of his own will begat he us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures"; that incorruptible seed of the word. Hence Christ is the truth. For since, grace, God Himself, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, even, are revealed as they are; what man is in perfection, in relationship with God; what man's alienation from God; what obedience, what disobedience, what holiness, what sin, what God, what man, what heaven, what earth; nothing but finds itself placed where it is in reference to God, and with the fullest revelation of Himself, while His counsels even are brought out, and of which Christ is the centre. Hence grace is the acting power in and alone capable of revealing truth; for Christ's being here is grace; His working effectual grace.

Two things are the result. Grace (what greater grace? It is love itself that is revealed, and towards sinners) and truth, that are not declared, but come, in Jesus Christ The true relation of all things with God is shown, and their departure from it. This is the groundwork of truth. Everything takes its true place, its true character, in every respect; and the centre to which all refers is God. What God is, what perfect man, what sinful man, what the world, what its prince, Christ's presence brings all out. Grace then and truth are come. The second thing is, that the only Son in the bosom of the Father reveals God, and reveals Him consequently as known by Himself in that position. And this is largely connected with the character and revelation of grace in John: first, fulness, with which we are in communication, and from which we have all received; then relationship.

But there are yet other important instructions in these verses. The Person of Jesus, the Word made flesh, dwelling among us, was full of grace and truth. Of this fulness we have all received: not truth upon truth (truth is simple, and puts everything exactly in its place, morally and in its nature); but we have received that which we needed — grace upon grace, the favour of God abundantly, divine blessings (the fruit of His love) heaped one upon another. Truth shines — everything is perfectly manifested; grace is given.

Then downwards He is the Light of men specifically and specially. Both thus are true when by grace He is our Life; only we cannot say esmen pros (we are with), but zomen to (we live to) we can; and hence, as is Philippians 2:15-16, the same place comes out for us. Then we have life, object, reception from His fulness, and privilege of taking the relationship in which He stands. The first nature is ignorance or opposition; hence a new one in receiving Christ, but this in relationship with the Father. Note, too, light is of "every man," reception "as many as," and they "born of God," not of man's will. Truth is more than light, quod nota. Light is simply that which God is in His nature, which, manifesting everything, is avoided by him who does evil, though and because it is perfect in itself. But truth cannot be separated from grace; it is the entering in of grace, so as to show what everything is indeed, but as grace because it reveals God in goodness, or it would not be the truth. Light does not say "the Father and the Son"; it just shows good and evil with divine authority, but the great truth is, "The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour." No doubt it tells us the truth about our sins, but it tells it me in grace by Jesus coming into the world about them, by the presence of Jesus in grace. It reveals the Father sending the Son in grace, and the blessed perfectness of Jesus in grace here, though our state therewith, but in goodness and attractive power towards us, whatever the result. It does not require - that Law did, which therefore was not truth. It tells, and cannot tell, with Christ in the world, without telling of grace, though, as I said, it tells us the truth about ourselves. If the grace were not there, the truth would not. Blessed truth!

"God is light" and "God is love." These are but two aspects of what is essential unity, and in reality inseparable from one another. In Christ, God manifest, they are "grace and truth." In contrast with law, when God was hidden in the holiest, "grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." Here the real unity of these two things is apparent: for "grace" there cannot be where sin is untruly dealt with; while "truth" that came by the Son of God incarnate could as little be divorced from the love that brought Him down.

Yet there is an order in which these two are presented to us, and this order is not unimportant to us. How differently it would appear if we read "truth and grace" instead of "grace and truth!" for grace it is which (in the presentation of these to our hearts) comes necessarily first, and thus is "truth in the inward parts" established; while yet, so little can truth be divorced from grace that, until truth be established there, the proper enjoyment of grace there cannot be.