Explaining God - as Father

If the human race is going to gain any knowledge about who God is and what He wants us to do, it must come from God Himself. Left to themselves, people produce concepts of God based on themselves. Their gods are images of themselves.

John 1:14 – Trinity and Incarnation belong together. The doctrine of the Trinity declares that the man Jesus is truly divine; that of the Incarnation declares that the divine Jesus is truly human. Together they proclaim the full reality of the Savior whom the New Testament sets forth, the Son who came from the Father’s side at the Father’s will to become the sinner’s substitute on the cross. God sent His Son to save us and the fact that His Son is co-eternal and co-equal (see John 1:1-2), not a created being, shows the great length God will run to throw His forgiving arms around you.

John 1:15 – John the Baptist used a riddle, as it were, to get people to think. John's riddle is, "He who came after me actually came before me." People wondered what he meant by that.

I believe the apostle includes this quotation because that is how he first discovered who Jesus was. Here John the Apostle is telling us that he saw for the first time who Jesus was when he heard John the Baptist (whose disciple he was for awhile), say, "This one who came after me is the one who was before me." Putting that all together, John caught on to the fact that this Jesus of Nazareth, this Stranger of Galilee, was a human tent in which was hidden a remarkable glory, a glory full of grace and truth.

John 1:16 – Jesus is full of glory, full of grace, full of truth, full of deity. That means we have available an unending daily supply of grace. Grace is the generosity of love reaching out toward us, giving itself to us. To those who come to Christ, God's promise is that every day we can take a new supply of his love. We can know that we are loved. We know we are cherished, protected, and blessed. We are strengthened, kept, and supported by his love; grace upon grace, day after day. The experience of grace should be continuous and progressive in the life of God’s people.

John 1:17 - Notice the reappearance in Verse 17 of the words "grace and truth," and the contrast which John draws between them and the Law and Moses. The Law makes demands. It is hard, cold, unyielding, without mercy.

John says that the Law was given by Moses. Moses did not originate it, but he gave it. Moses may disappear, but the Law remains -- cold, unyielding, demanding, without mercy.

But, John says, "Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." Take away Jesus and you take away grace and truth; he is the channel of them. What John is saying in this section is that law is demand, but grace and truth are supply. Grace and truth are given to meet that demand.

Many people think that law and grace are contradictory, that they are opposing principles. But in the sense in which they were originally intended they are not. Law and grace supplement one another. Law makes its demands, rightfully and justly, and no one can meet them, but grace and truth is given in order to meet that demand. In Exodus 20 there is the remarkable account of the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai; the Law, which came with smoke, thunder, earthquake, fire, fear and trembling. But in the very next section we read the detailed plans for the building of the tabernacle -- God's provision to meet the demands of the Law. That tabernacle is a picture of Jesus, the meeting place where God's demands are fully met in terms of the sacrifice of blood, of a life poured out. Thus John saw in the coming of Jesus the fulfillment of that tabernacle.

John 1:18 – Jesus has revealed, explained (exegeted) God. The only begotten God who dwells at the heart of reality (who lives in the bosom of the Father), has made God known. (The verb is "exegeted" him.) Jesus has explained him and made known that the heart of God is a Father's heart. God is a Father. In John 14:9, Jesus told Philip, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’”

When we come to God through Jesus Christ we discover a loving Father; around us are a Father's forgiving arms; a Father's wisdom guides our way; a Father's power protects us and guards us.

Are you living in the fullness of God’s grace and truth today? What is the basis of your knowledge about God? What is the basis of your relationship with God? 

Grace and Truth (John 1:14)

Have you ever heard someone say, “If you are going to err, err on the side of grace?” What the person who says that to you is trying to communicate is that he or she believes that grace trumps truth. This is the primary characteristic of the spirit of the age in which we live. Many people are falling prey to the false notion that grace only has some sort of loose connection to truth if it has any connection to it at all. Any who dares to love truth in our day is quickly branded as an unloving Pharisee by the proponents of grace over truth.

Let me explain exactly how this is working itself out in our day. God’s Word tells us that in the last days there is going to be an apostate, harlot church that will be a deceptive counterfeit of the real thing. This harlot church will be the result of an ecumenical movement that gathers various false religions under the umbrella of what many regard as evangelical Christianity.

How can false teaching get confused with truth? How can the leaders of the harlot church get people to believe that an ungodly alliance with false religions and false teachers is OK? This will be accomplished by pushing and stretching the boundaries set by the truth of God’s Word to include and incorporate false teaching and false teachers under the banner of grace. Many mega-church pastors and church growth gurus are telling us that we must not erect boundaries with truth but stretch boundaries with grace. Instead of being divided over truth we ought to be united in grace they tell us.

 The creed of these deceivers is away with truth and in with grace. They see the truth as standing in the way of enlarging the kingdom of God. So they appeal to widening the entry point under the banner of grace. Now, since these heroes of the ecumenical movement see truth as standing in the way of enlarging God’s kingdom and grace as the solution, what do you think they are going to label those who love the truth, won’t compromise the truth, and battle for the truth?

 Lovers of truth will be labeled, “Pharisees,” by these modern day false teachers. These false teachers have wrongly interpreted the problem of the Pharisees as being too rigid with truth. They believe that the Pharisees were big on truth and small on grace. The truth is the Pharisees were small on both!

The problem of the Pharisees was not that they were too concerned with truth, but that they had invented their own truth. Jesus condemned them for replacing and modifying the clear truth of Scripture with their own traditions (Matthew 15:1-9). They were the chief theological false teachers of their day (Matthew 16:6-12).

One thing these modern day deceivers are not are Pharisees. They hate truth loving Christians Pharisees because they wrongly believe that Pharisees love truth. They view truth as the enemy of grace and cannot see that grace and truth are joined together by God and what God has joined together, let no man separate. These deceivers are described in God’s Word as those who turn God’s grace into licentiousness. “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 4). They use God’s grace as an excuse to disobey God’s truth and commit spiritual adultery with the world and with false religions.

The truth-perverting Pharisees used their appearance of love for the truth as a means to exclude all but the most religious of Jews from the kingdom of God. Jesus told them that they shut off the kingdom from people and did not enter themselves (Matthew 23:13). The grace-perverting church growth gurus use their appearance of love for grace as a means to include people who have not received the love of the truth so as to be saved in the kingdom of God and lead both themselves and others through the wide gate that leads to destruction.

Jesus was full of grace and truth (John 1:14). Grace and truth can never be pitted against one another or else Jesus was a walking contradiction. There was no contradiction in Jesus just as there are no contradictions in God’s Word. Jesus full of grace never once compromised the truth. Have no doubt about it – if Jesus were here in the flesh today these grace-perverting church leaders would label Him as a Pharisee too concerned with truth. Their false notion of what grace is would cause them to mislabel the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Lord Jesus would no more put up with the licentiousness of these modern day grace-perverting church leaders than he did with the legalism of the truth-perverting Pharisees. Just as the legalistic Pharisees thought Jesus had no truth because of His grace, these licentious false teachers would think He has no grace because of His truth.

Heresies are a result of elevating one side of a paradox and downplaying the other. Those who pit grace against truth or truth against grace are in serious error concerning the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is full of grace and truth!

The Problem with Truth

There are at least two problems with truth for those who despise, disdain, and reject it and one problem with truth for those who love, receive, and proclaim it: for those who despise, disdain, and reject truth, it is too clear and too convicting. For those who love, receive, and proclaim truth, it is costly. "But when they heard this, they were cut to the quick and intended to kill them" (Acts 5:33).

"When they heard this"; there was no ambiguity or uncertainty about what the apostles were saying. The Council heard and understood. The problem with truth is its clarity. Jesus said, “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed” (John 3:19-20).

Truth is clear – too clear. People do not reject truth for intellectual reasons but for moral reasons. Truth reveals and condemns sin. Therefore, “everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.”

This is why men would rather have ambiguity, mystery, and uncertainty - all attempts to overcome the clarity of the light that shines from truth - so that they will not be seen as either anti-intellectual or immoral.

"They were cut to the quick"; the Council was exposed by the light of the truth and it was very painful to them. Men are not cut to the quick through ambiguous, mysterious, and uncertain concealings but by clear and convicting revealings. Light (truth) reveals and darkness (falsehood) conceals, therefore only truth can convict.

Rather than plainly preaching God’s Word in a way that unleashes the power and truth of it, many of today’s church leaders try to “package” the message to make it subtler and more appealing to the world in order to remove its offense – its conviction. The most compelling question on the lips of these many false prophets who have gone out into the world and speak as from the world is not “What’s true?” but rather “What works?” Evangelicals these days care less about theology than they do about methodology. Truth has been replaced by pragmatism and earnestly contending for the faith once for all handed down to the saints has been replaced by earnestly contending for cultural relevance. That is why pagans and unbelievers and servants of the devil can sit through church services these days without ever being cut to the quick. They are never under the conviction of the truth because the truth has fallen in the streets.

"And intended to kill them" - the Council heard and understood what the apostles were preaching because truth is clear and they also were cut to the quick because truth is convicting. Since the truth was clear and convicting and the Council did not want to come to the light unless their deeds were exposed, they were going to attempt to overcome the light by extinguishing its primary source at the moment - they intended to kill the apostles. Truth causes problems for those who love, receive, and proclaim it - they are persecuted for the sake of righteousness/truth.

Truth is clear, truth is convicting, and truth is costly.