The Law, or Grace and Truth?

 

“For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).

 

We are, I think, afraid of Grace and Truth in Jesus Christ. We are, I think, afraid to acknowledge that we are dead to the Law and married to Jesus Christ (Romans 7:1 – 6).

 

We usually agree with Paul that, “But now apart from the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20).

 

But I’m not sure that we agree with Paul that, “…whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may be accountable to God” (Romans 3:19). I write this because the Law is often still preached and taught to those in Christ, those under grace. This does not appear to square with Galatians 4:1 – 7, which pictures us first as being under the tutorial Law but then being adopted (placed) as sons and entering a new realm of relationship with God and frankly a new Way of living.  

 

We don’t seem to actually believe that the Law is “the ministry of death” (2 Cor. 3:7), that the letter kills (2 Cor. 3:6), that it is the “ministry of condemnation” (2 Cor. 3:9), or that frankly it has no glory when compared to grace and truth (2 Cor. 3:10). If we truly believed what the Bible teaches about the Law we would stop teaching it and trust ourselves and our congregations to the grace and truth which is in Jesus Christ.

 

This does not mean that we should stop teaching the Old Testament, absolutely not, we need every page, every paragraph, every word of the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. But it does mean that we teach the Old Testament so as to see Jesus Christ – this is the way Jesus taught and revealed Himself through the Old Testament (see Luke 24), as well as how the Apostles taught the Old Testament.

 

This is, by the way, not antinomianism, that is, it is not lawlessness as some would charge and as most would fear (hence our fear of teaching what the Bible teaches about the Law). It is rather teaching what the Bible teaches about who Jesus Christ is in us and who we are in Him. It is teaching that we are to love as Jesus loves, that we are to lay down our lives as Jesus laid down His life - and as He desires to continue to lay down His life in us, His Body.

 

It is to teach that we are “partakers of the Divine Nature” rather than partakers of the Law. It is to teach that the Trinity dwells within us and desires to draw us into deep eternal koinonia – individually and as God’s People.

 

There is something in our religious nature that rejects the idea of being dead to the Law and married to Jesus Christ. We would rather remain under the Levitical system than walk with Melchizedek (see the NT book of Hebrews). We think it is safe, we’ll keep one foot in the Law and the other foot in the Gospel – the result is that while we may have crossed the Red Sea, our hearts and minds tend to remain in Egypt.

 

In the Gospel of John, the religious leaders apply unrelenting pressure on Jesus, they must hold onto the Law at all costs – they are even willing to murder. Is it possible that we also put pressure on grace and truth, becoming unwitting accomplices of the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees? How else can we explain the poverty of the professing church? How else can we explain that the typical professing Christian has no sense of his sonship? Her inheritance in Christ? No sense of loving as Jesus loves, going as Jesus goes, laying down his life as Jesus lays down His, being dead to sin and the world and alive to Jesus Christ, being crucified to the world by the Cross.

 

How else can we explain the lack of sharing the Gospel, that we neither speak to others of Jesus nor pray with others as Jesus?

 

Well, while there may be other contributors to the answers to these questions, I have little doubt that living under the Law and its perpetual condemnation is one of the core problems. The Law treats us as children at best, not as sons and daughters of the Living God. The Law can produce but condemnation and death – not the Life of Jesus Christ, not Grace and Truth.

 

Dear friends, the Nature of God living in us, through Jesus Christ, will accomplish far more than the Law. Why isn’t this self-evident? We see an initial Incarnation in John chapters 1 – 12, then we see an expanded Incarnation is chapters 13 – 21. Do we really think that the Law offers us something better than the Incarnation? “Except a grain of what falls into the ground it abides alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).

 

Are we living in the Law, or is the Incarnation living in us?

 

When people touch us, are they touching the Law of Moses, or are they touching the Incarnation of Jesus Christ in His Body?

The Word Became Flesh

 

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” (John 1:14a).

 

For the first thirteen chapters of John we see what the “Word became flesh” looks like with respect to our Lord Jesus Christ, but then this mysterious subject takes a turn that is so unexpected that to this day many of us deny it even though “it is written.” For in John 14 Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit will come to live within us and that He and the Father will also come to live within us (John 14:16 – 17, 23). In other words, the Word will not only tabernacle in the flesh of the Son of Mary, but He will also live within His People.

 

This radical transposition was demonstrated on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2) when the Holy Spirit filled the Temple of God, the People of God, and inaugurated an expanded Incarnation which finds its climax in the manifestation of the sons of God (Romans 8:19), the ultimate breaking forth of the New Jerusalem, the Bride (Revelation chapters 21 – 22), and the maturation of the Mature Man (Ephesians 4:13).

 

Paul, whose life was once orientated and dedicated to the Temple in Jerusalem, came to see the Greater and Eternal Temple in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:19 – 22) and preached what he heard from St. Stephen, that God does not live in temples made with hands (Acts 7:48; 17:24). Peter also saw the expanded and ever-growing Incarnation when he wrote that we are “being built up as a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5). And of course the Apostle John writes, “Greater is He who is in you, than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

 

Now if a hallmark of the Incarnation is “grace and truth” (John 1:14, 16, 17), then a hallmark of our lives must be “grace and truth.” We must not have grace without truth, for that is subjective promiscuity. Neither should we have truth without grace, for that is dead legalism and pedantry – that is scribal Christianity.

 

Not only must we have grace and truth, just as Jesus Christ we must “realize,” manifest, and demonstrate grace and truth (John 1:17), and in Christ we are called to manifest, explain, and display the Father (John 1:18; 14:7 – 9).

 

The enemy desires to blind us to our birthright, our inheritance, and our calling. If the enemy cannot keep us from the Kingdom, he will attempt to keep us from realizing the fulness of the Gospel and our calling as the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. While we may have been delivered through the Red Sea, our hearts and minds and identity are often found back in Egypt.

 

Jesus has given us His glory because we are His brothers and sisters (John 17:22; Romans 8:29; Hebrews 2:10 – 13). It is surely a cosmic tragedy that we refuse to accept His glory, our calling in Him, and our identity as the saints of God in Christ. The world awaits deliverance through the Body of Christ, creation groans and travails for our unveiling (Romans 8:20 – 23), and yet our hearts and minds remain in Egypt, in the house of bondage. What does it matter if we gather on Sundays if our hearts and minds are elsewhere?

 

I fear that just as ancient galleys chained slaves to oars, that we are chained to pews; we row and we row, but we row in the waters of perpetual sin consciousness – a characteristic of the Old Covenant (Hebrews chapters 7 – 10), and we make myriad excuses for why we do not soar with eagles in our inheritance, our birthright, and our calling in our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Dear, dear friends, both the world and the professing church need to see the reality of John 1:14 – 18 in us…not just as individuals, for no one person can contain the glory of God, but rather in us as the Body of Jesus Christ, the Bride, the true and everlasting Temple of God.

 

 

The Word Became Flesh

 

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John testified about Him and cried out saying, “This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.” For of His fulness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him [made Him known].” John 1:14 – 18.

 

We have seen the Word in the Beginning; now we see the Word in time and space. We have seen the Word invisible, now we see the Word visible. In verses 10 – 13 we see the Incarnation and the ministry of the Word, now in verses 14 – 18 we see the Incarnation and ministry of the Word expressed once again.

 

Verse 10, “He was in the world…” Verse 14, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us…”

 

In verses 10 and 11 we see that the Word was not received; in verses 12, 13, 14, and 16 we see that the Word was perceived and received.

 

The Church Fathers saw the “eternal generation of the Son” in Proverbs 8:24 and John 1:14 and 18. That is, the Son is the Only Begotten of God, but this begottenness is eternal in its Divine Nature and it is beyond our understanding. Note that in John 1:18 the Word is styled “the Only Begotten God.” While some ancient manuscripts have “the Only Begotten Son,” the better reading is likely “the Only Begotten God.” In any case, both renderings are faithful to the Word and the Biblical message.

 

In verse 12 we see people “receiving” the Word. In verse 14 we see people “seeing” His glory, a glory “full of grace and truth.” In verse 16 we see people “receiving” His fulness and “grace upon grace.” Then in verse 17 there is a contrast between the Law given through Moses and the grace and truth that were communicated to us through Jesus Christ.

 

May we ask ourselves whether we are “seeing His glory”? Throughout the Gospel of John the glory of the Word, Jesus Christ, is revealed again and again in various forms and settings. His glory is revealed in Cana, it is revealed with the woman at the well, it is revealed in the loaves and fishes, it is revealed in the raising of Lazarus, it is revealed in the Upper Room, it is revealed on Calvary, and it is revealed in the Resurrection. His glory is revealed in His teachings about worship in Spirit and in Truth, it is revealed when He speaks of Himself as the Bread of Life, the Water of Life, the Light of Life, and the Way, the Truth and the Life.  May I ask, “Are we seeing His glory”?

 

In John 17 Jesus Christ will say that He has given us His glory. If we are not seeing His glory how will we know what it is that He is giving us? Consider that in 2 Corinthians 3:17 – 18 we are taught that our transformation comes about as were are “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord” and are “being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”

 

(Note the juxtaposition of Jesus Christ and Moses in both John 1:17 and in 2 Corinthians Chapter 3).

 

Are we beholding the glory of the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, in our daily lives? Is His glory transforming us into His image?