In his gospel, John introduces the coming of Jesus with these words: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”[i] Jesus always deals with us in truth but does so in a gracious way.

Jesus tells us that we are sinners—those who have offended God—and he says it because it’s true. Hearing this may be, and certainly was in Jesus’ day, offensive to some. But in his relationships with others, Jesus always spoke to them on the basis of truth. When Jesus met the woman at the well in Samaria, he confronted her with the truth of her failed marriages and current “live-in” situation.[ii] When he dealt with the woman caught in adultery who was about to be stoned by a group of hypocritical men, he identified her actions as sinful.[iii] However, in contrast to the religious leaders of his day, Jesus tells us the truth in a way that is filled with grace.  For sinners, Christ graciously died on the cross to pay the debt we owed for our sins. For the Samaritan woman at the well, he offered “living water” as a real solution to her broken life. For the woman caught in adultery he rescued her from a lynch mob by creatively chasing them away.

For Jesus, grace without truth is not real grace—it’s a lie that is ultimately destructive and harmful to the person. Yet truth without grace is no better—it fails to offer the hope that change is possible. The alternative to our contemporary tolerance is to do what Jesus did—dealing with others in “grace and truth.” As Christians, this means that we must learn to  uphold the basic elements of the Christian faith as revealed in the Bible while faithfully dispensing this truth in a gracious way.

To do what Jesus did should go a long way toward preventing spiritual abuse and legalism. The apostle Paul confirmed the teaching and practice of Jesus by saying that we should “speak the truth in love.”[iv] Whenever this takes place in Christian community, “the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”[v]

[i] John 1:17.

[ii] See John 4:1–42.

[iii] See John 8:1–11.

[iv] Ephesians 4:15.

[v] Ephesians 4:16.