Choose Life: Readings For Radical DisciplesSample

Truth or Grace? 

Why is it so easy for us humans to lean towards extremes? We easily allow ourselves to get polarized into left or right wing, conservative or liberal, principled or pastoral, and so on. We see it all the time with people or even entire groups being labeled as “harsh” or “soft” on the issues of the day. 

Yet when it comes to the Master, John states clearly that Jesus was full of both grace and truth- not one or the other but both and the other – not so “gracious” as to avoid the difficult issue, nor so “truthful” as to kick people when they were down. Jesus rebuked a Samaritan woman for her many relationships and yet he did it in such a gracious way that she invited the whole village out to “come and meet the man who told me everything I ever did” (John 4:29). What a strange reaction to someone who spoke the truth! Except that she saw the he spoke the truth with love (Ephesians 4:15).

A few chapters later, a woman caught in the act of adultery was brought to Jesus. He said to those intent on killing her, “If any of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). It’s a phrase loved and quoted out of the context by many, but when they do so they often miss the bit that follows, when Jesus again to the woman, and said, “Now go and leave your life of sin” (8:11).

Jesus grasped and modeled to us how grace can open the door for truth to then come in. He was full of grace and truth. Can you think of a situation in which you erred too far one way or the other that needs rectifying? Go and make amends, and be full of both today!

Lord, I choose to live with heaps of grace and truth. Amen!