Have you ever met a person full of grace and truth? Like you, I have never met anyone that fits that description here on earth. But I do know of Someone who is full of grace and truth; His name is Jesus. Given are goal to be like Christ, grace and truth should be an integral part of our lives. But it could only be said of Jesus that He was full of grace and truth. Full could be quantified here as 100%. Jesus is 100% grace and 100% truth. One thing you will notice about Christ is that He never showed grace at the expense of truth. He loved the sinner but hated the sin.
God should not be understood like a pie-chart where all his attributes occupy a percentage of the whole, comprising the God-pie. God is not part love, part holy, part anything. God is love; God is holy; God is. Since God is infinite, He is infinitely love and infinitely holy, for example. This doesn’t suggest that God is layered like a cake with His infinite attributes stacked on top of one another where holiness is at the top of the heap. Nor can it be said that God is the sum total of His parts for God is infinitely whole in all of His being without measure. He is infinitely all that He says He is in His Word. Since God is an infinite Being and incorporeal, it is vastly impossible to conceptualize the I AM in our finiteness. God through Jesus Christ provides us with an image within human range that we can identify and relate.
Jesus was 100% deity and 100% humanity: the God-man. It has been argued that Jesus wasn’t completely human because He did not possess a sin nature like all other men. Adam and Eve were considered human before their transgression. In reality Jesus was more human than fallen man because He did not have a depraved nature. He was the human potential that God had designed for mankind. Such a hypostatic union of man and God is nothing short of amazing, mysterious, and miraculous.
In John 1:17 we see the couplet grace and truth again,
For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
Paul had concluded that the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good (Rom 7:12). God gave the Law to Moses. This Law was holy like God, just in its demands and designed for our good. But the Law was never said to be full of grace and truth, only Jesus Christ. The Law was divinely designed with built-in limitations making it powerless in certain areas; Jesus had no restrictions as such.
- The Law was powerless to show grace only sin and condemnation.
- The Law was powerless to offer life only death for disobedience.
- The Law was powerless to empower others to live right only instruct.
Jesus could give grace, eternal life, and the ability to live a life pleasing to God. He showed an undeserved kindness (grace) and honesty and uprightness (truth) never witnessed before. It is impossible to relate to a sinless person full of grace and truth since we have never seen one. We have seen people free from the penalty of sin walking in the fullness of the Spirit, producing the fruit of the Spirit, but we have never witnessed a person full of grace and truth. This can only be said of Jesus Christ. Christ-likeness means that grace and truth should be included in our Christian walk, showing undeserved kindness and walking honestly and upright according to the truth. It is only through the elbow grease of reading, studying and applying can we emulate grace and truth through the enabling of the Holy Spirit of God. It's a joint venture of our spirit and the Spirit.
As people attempt to be grace and truth to one another and to the world, sin is allowed to creep into the situation; grace and truth become polarized and factions are created. In this situation one group becomes a grace group and very tolerant of sin while another group becomes a truth group where sin is not tolerated. Tensions naturally develop. Read what Randy Alcorn had to say about this very thing.
When you stand for truth, you are held in contempt by some non-Christians (and even some Christians). When you try to demonstrate grace, you’re held in contempt by some Christians (and even some non –Christians). When you try to live by grace and truth, in some eyes you’ll be too radical; in other eyes, not radical enough. So we have to make a choice. Are we going to spend our lives trying to please the grace-haters or the truth-haters? Or are we going to seek to please the only One whose judgment seat we will stand before – Jesus, who is full of grace and truth (LifeWorks, Spring 2011, The Grace and Truth Paradox, LifeWay, p. 15-16)?
How can we bridge the carnal gap and relieve the tension between the grace group and the truth group? How do we strike that balance in our own lives? If we are all truth without grace we have a tendency to become self-righteous and unforgiving, If we are all grace without truth we compromise the truth for grace sake; "you be holy as I am holy" takes a backseat to political correctness and safeguarding a person's self-esteem. Sin is not the issue; it's all about acceptance, tolerance, and being non-judgmental. Human or natural love is mistaken for agape or supernatural love. Again, Jesus never displayed grace and the expense of truth for that would cut against the very grain of His nature – the truth (Jn 14:6). Grace and truth are inseparable and not incompatible like Jesus' humanity and deity.
This week and next we will talk about grace and spend the third and fourth week on truth with the purpose of finding a remedy for the breach. Naturally you should be reading Randy Alcorn's The Grace and Truth Paradox in LifeWorks along with my two cents.
As far as grace is concerned, we could go to the cross to illustrate grace for there is no greater or finer example. But I would like to take a more unfamiliar path to get a glimpse of grace, not at its first instance, as with God providing a covering for Adam and Eve, but at the first appearance of the word translated grace in light of God’s uncompromising holiness. To do this we need to pay a visit to the civilization just prior to the great flood in Noah’s day. If we are ever going to grasp this concept of grace, we have to first get a handle on the holiness of God and what a threat God's holiness is to unregenerate man, and the unbelievable relief grace brings to an impossible situation.
As far as grace is concerned, we could go to the cross to illustrate grace for there is no greater or finer example. But I would like to take a more unfamiliar path to get a glimpse of grace, not at its first instance, as with God providing a covering for Adam and Eve, but at the first appearance of the word translated grace in light of God’s uncompromising holiness. To do this we need to pay a visit to the civilization just prior to the great flood in Noah’s day. If we are ever going to grasp this concept of grace, we have to first get a handle on the holiness of God and what a threat God's holiness is to unregenerate man, and the unbelievable relief grace brings to an impossible situation.
You recall the universal definition of grace, unmerited favor. But do you remember from a past lesson the first appearance of the word translated grace in the Bible? I gave it away by mentioning the Flood earlier; it is found in Genesis 6:8. The placement of this word for the first time could not have been better! In this setting we see the richness of grace centuries before the amazing grace of God incarnate took center stage in human history by the name of Jesus Christ.
But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
The Hebrew (chen, H2580) in the KJV occurs 69 times and is predominantly translated grace (38) or favour (26). Moses employed the Hebrew word chen 27 times in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, or the Jewish Torah (the five books of Moses). Picture in your mind God looking at all the earth, and all that He can see is a sphere engulfed in spiritual darkness and wickedness rampant like a plague (Gen 6:5-6, 11-12).
Gen 6:5 Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Gen 6:6 And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
Gen 6:11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
Gen 6:12 So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.
All life on the surface of the planet earth would be slated for destruction (Gen 6:7, 13),
Gen 6:7 So the LORD said, "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air …”
Gen 6:13 And God said to Noah, "The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
except for a single candle burning brightly in a spiritually pitch-black world by the name of Noah (Gen 6:9).
Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God.
Noah was described as a just man living in an unjust world filled with violence, Gen 6:11. Noah was perfect or blameless or without fault in his generations (note plural [12] and implies duration, consistency, loyalty, faithfulness which is an impressive and emulative testimony living in a world engrossed in total depravity). Noah walked with God in a world that walked away from God. Contrast this to the current generation (singular) of the flood in Gen 7:1,
Then the LORD said to Noah, “Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation [singular].
Here was grace realized – Make yourself an ark (Gen 6:14). Noah was 600 years old when the floodwaters covered the earth (Gen 7:6). This would put Noah age at 480 years (12 generations) when he was informed to build the ark based on Gen 6:3, NASB,
Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”
Project Ark was scheduled for completion in 120 years. During this time Noah would be preaching righteousness and building an ark.
Preaching
And did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly (2 Pet 2:5).
Building
By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith (Heb 11:7).
Noah’s preaching on a right standing with God and the greatest object of condemnation the ark fell on deaf ears. Let me give another way of paraphrasing 1 Cor 1:18 for your consideration.
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
This was true in Paul's day.
This was true in Paul's day.
For the preaching of the ark is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us [Noah and his family] which are saved it is the power of God.
This was true in Noah's day.
The world sees the things of God as foolish but to us who are saved we see it all together differently. The world that Noah knew was 120 years from oblivion. But If there is one lesson out of Noah’s story that should strike fear in every heart that believes that doing something contrary to God’s holiness because (1) “Everybody is doing it; it can’t be wrong,” or (2) “God would not send all these people to hell.” Let’s look at one more passage in Genesis 7:23-24 to put this fallacious thinking to rest.
Gen 7:23 So He destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground: both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive.
Gen 7:24 And the waters prevailed on the earth one hundred and fifty days.
The Bible never indicates any particular reason for rejecting Noah’s message other than
every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually (Gen 6:5; cf. Gen 8:21, the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth). The world before the great flood was characterized by corruption and violence (Gen 6:11, 13).
What was Noah’s response to God’s grace? Moses records in Genesis,
Thus Noah did; according to all that God commanded him, so he did (6:22).
The writer of Hebrews gives us insight into Noah’s obedience to the divine warning given in Gen 6:13-21.
By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen , moved with godly fear (emphasis added), prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith (11:7).
The fear of faith does not paralyze but promotes action in the form of obedience to the divine command.
Here is a sobering thought which addresses the notion that God will not send a large number of people to hell. Conservative estimates of global populations in the antediluvian civilization may have reached 4 billion; some conservative world population estimates climb as high as 7 billion or higher at the time of the flood. The former estimate means for every 500 million deaths one survived, or the latter, for every 875 million deaths one survived. Make no mistake about it; God will bring death to the defiant and disobedient. Those wanting nothing to do with God regardless of the reason can expect no less than the inevitability of personal destruction.
1 Pet 3:20, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water [4 men and 4 women].
Do you recall this statement on the Sermon on the Mount,
Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it (Mat 7:13-14)?
Jesus had no intention of making an understatement or an exaggeration of narrow and wide but a tragic reality; reflecting on only eight people making it out alive electrifies the statement, there are few who find it. Liberal interpretation of the Genesis account, particularly Genesis 1-11, had watered down the seriousness of sin in Jesus’ day as well as in contemporary times.
Noah had to have been the laughing stock of the world; there is no telling how many people visited the Noah’s Museum of Madness during a span of 120 years. Like a good joke, gossip spreads like wildfire; curiosity compels the nose to probe doesn’t it! But intellectual curiosity doesn’t change anyone.
How people saw the ark in the days of Noah is how people throughout history to the present day view the cross (cf. 1 Cor 1:18, For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.).
The ark of gopherwood was Noah’s vessel of grace; the wooden Roman crucifix was our pod of grace, our ark of safety, figuratively speaking. But like Noah’s day, the ark or the cross was a symbol of the ridiculous or the absurd because both represented a message in their day that was considered foolish; consider the fact that Noah was a preacher of righteousness for 120 years without a single convert! You heard the saying,”If you can’t beat ‘em; join ‘em.” Noah was wise to stay the course. We saw this already in 1 Pet 3:20 with only 8 people making it out alive.
The early believers testified to the truth about
Christ and lived by His grace. Truth was the food
they ate and the message they spoke. Grace was
the air they breathed and the life they lived. The
world around the first-century Christians had
never seen anything like them. It still hasn’t.
-- Randy Alcorn, Ibid., 9.
Postscript
Grace should never be removed out of view of God's uncompromising holiness. Were it not for the unmerited favor of God, His holiness would have consumed us all. God will judge sin regardless of the number. How well do the billions of people in Noah's day realize the truth that apart from holiness no one shall see the Lord once the door of grace was closed forever.
For those that perish the foolish message of the ark in Noah's day is the same foolish message of the cross in our day. Salvation is of grace, but unless unregenerate man enters through the door (Jn 10:9), grace spurned is judgment turned. Next week we will return to the Old Testament and see a 360-view of grace in the book of First Chronicles, God willing. <><
