The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"Grace and Truth"
"Ye… knew the grace of God in truth" (Colossians 1:6).
There is no other way to know it. That is, the grace and truth of God in the Lord Jesus Christ can only be known together. "The truth is in Jesus," that is, our Lord is the truth in living, personal terms, and He is also the means by which we know truth in principled, doctrinal terms (Ephesians 4:21). Christ serves as the supply for both heart and mind. He does not merely settle upon and within our hearts as a vaguely wafting mist of grace, apart from the directed, living waters of defined reality as found in His Word, the Bible.
"Search the Scriptures… they testify of Me" (John 5:39).
From Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:20, the Lord Jesus awaits us in the Word inspired by the Holy Spirit. Indeed, of the Spirit, the Savior declared, "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me" (John 15:26). The Holy Spirit did indeed proceed, to the hearts of believers by His indwelling presence, and and through the New Testament writers by whom He inspired His words to be read as living truth, revealing the living Savior. Approached in faith and humility, the believer will find life for the heart, and light for the mind, all as known in He who declared, I am the light… I am the life" (John 8:12; 14:6). Grace and truth, inseparable companions, present the Lord Jesus to us on every page of the Bible, whether indirectly through the history, prophecy, and allegory of the Old Testament, or the brightly shining and illuminating light of the New.
Occasionally, believers utter the words, "It is all grace," referring to salvation in Christ, and the provision He supplies for living the Christian life. This is true, but it is only half true. "It is all grace and truth" actually expresses the reality we find in the Scriptures and their revelation of the Lord Jesus. We cannot rightly know grace apart from truth. We cannot survive truth apart from grace. Both glories glimmer in the Person and work of Christ, as administered in our hearts and minds by the Holy Spirit, and declared by the Word He inspired to lead us in both personal and principled response to the God who made us to know Him, and to understand His truth. As was written of the Colossians believers long ago, may it be said of us in our day that we know the grace of God in truth.
"Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."
(John 1:17)
"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth."
(John 1:14)
Weekly Memory Verse
"In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him."
(I John 4:9)
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