John 1:17

Richard Brear

"How are you", the standard question when arriving at church. Is your response:

a) "Fine thank you, how are you?" or

b) "I don't want to be here and I don't think you really care how I am."

In church we are often good at being graceful, but not often very good at being truthful. As we will see grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17), not either one without the other but both together.

God Is Light

1 John 1:5 "God is light; in him there is no darkness at all."

God is all lit-up, flood lit from the inside out. No part of him is mirky or uncertain; he contains no falsehood at all, only truth and integrity from every angle. The Bible says we should be like this as well. "...if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin" 1 John 1:7. We should make ourselves visible, not pretending that we've got everything sorted but being open and honest about our lives, with the good things and the bad. God promises that doing this will change our lives.

Grace Requires Truth

1 John 1:7 "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin."

There's an important if-then principal here: If we walk in the light, then Jesus cleans away all our sin. Can you see that truth is required before God's grace takes action? We have to acknowledge that we've messed up before He can operate on our lives, before he can "forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). This applies to getting saved in the first place, but also to the rest of our lives. Being purified from all unrighteousness is an on going process which I suspect will continue for the rest of our lives, so we need to keep on confessing our mistakes, being truthful and God promises to forgive us and to purify us. We need to keep walking in the light, confessing the truth, because then God will continue to dig out our bad bits, making us more like him.

As church, being truthful has a huge affect on our community. We (the church) should be a hospital for sinners. Imagine a hospital where all of the patients pretended that they weren't ill. No one would get the care they required. We need to corporately accept our brokenness. The Bible promises that if we do this, "we have fellowship with one another" 1 John 1:7. We share life with one another. Being truthful gives our fellow christians the opportunity to extend to us the grace God has shown them and encourages them to be truthful with us. It's going to be messy, but it's going to be real.

So don't be deceived. We have all fallen short of God's standard and we need to actively acknowledge this in our relationship with him and with each other.

Truth Needs Grace

Left with just the truth of who we are, we would have a problem. We've personally offended God and the Bible says we deserve to die: "the wages of sin is death" Romans 6:23. But God has met our need; Jesus died on the cross for us. Romans 6:23 continues "but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." He has promised to meet our truthfulness and repentance with his grace, and God always keeps his promises.

People, however, are not so faithful and loving as God. When we make ourselves vulnerable to the people around us our truth may be met with judgement and condemnation. Matthew 7:6 says "Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces." We should, where possible, be careful that we are truthful with people who are capable of being graceful to us. The reverse is also true: we must be graceful, as God is graceful, when people are truthful with us.

Motivation and Purpose

Walking in the light is an uncomfortable thing to do. Our first reaction to our own brokenness is to try to hide it. Look at Adam in the garden of Eden. When they sinned for the first time their immediate reaction was to make clothes to cover themselves up, then when God came along they hid from him (Genesis 3). We need to do the opposite, sharing our brokenness so that God can heal us. It will be uncomfortable, but the rewards are huge.

Our truthfulness must be tempered by love and wisdom. We must be truthful for the right reasons and with the right purpose: because we want God to heal us and those around us and because we want to give God glory for the good things he's done.

Grace and Truth Together

Grace and truth together will transform our lives and communities. So be truthful and graceful. Live by the truth, because then Gods grace can operate on your life. Be graceful to other people, as God has been graceful to you and our churches will become a place for broken people to get right with God.