Jesus, the Grace Giver
“For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” (John 1:16–18, ESV)
When God came to us in Jesus, He brought the Godhead with Him. All the fullness of the Triune God, you understand, not just a part but the whole. This fullness was no stagnant pool of hermetically sealed perfection, He is available-- graciously available, fully available, abundantly available to all and to any who feel their need of Him. We do not need to fit ourselves to Him. He comes down to us, to our level. We are sinful, but He is gracious. We are unworthy of notice, but He looks on us with everlasting love. We are torn, but He stoops to mend us. We are filthy, but He reaches down to cleanse us. We are lost, but He finds us. We come to Him and receive one grace after another (grace upon grace). It would be easier for a child to drain the ocean dry with a thimble than for a sinner to exhaust the gracious heart of Jesus. For while there is an end to the ocean, the heart of Christ is an endless expanse of kindness “with neither bottom nor shore.”
When John says, “The Law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” what did he mean? He is neither drawing an absolute line of distinction between Jesus and Moses, nor is He dividing the Testaments as if Jesus is good and Moses is bad. There is, after all, much grace in the writings of Moses. The law, don’t forget, gives us wonderful pictures of Christ like the tabernacle, the sacrificial economy, and the Day of Atonement. If John is not standing in judgment over the Law in that sense, what is He saying?
If you cast your mind forward to the end of Hebrews (Heb. 12:18 ff), you will notice that the writer draws a distinction between Sinai and Zion. Both of these pictures are Old Testament ones. Both have their place in the ordination of the Law. Sinai pictures the Law unmediated, whereas Zion pictures the Law mediated through the Priestly ceremonies housed in the Temple. Herein lies the great difference dividing Mount Sinai from Mount Zion. In Zion, there is a Temple where priests stand as middlemen joining God and man through the at-one-ment of blood sacrifice. On Sinai, there is no such mediator. Come that way to God, and you come to die and not to live; you come to an abandoned wilderness and not the glad fellowship of a city. So it is with Jesus and Moses. If you approach God (or try to) behind the back of Jesus through the bare law, you will receive no access at all, only condemnation and death. Jesus alone can grant us access to God on the basis of grace and not (our) works. Come to Jesus and you find God. Of all the men in the world, only Jesus has seen God. Dwelling in the divine bosom, He alone knows the Father’s heart. He alone has the ability to explain God to us (1:18).
When you approach God today, therefore, come through Jesus. Beware the ever-present danger of losing Jesus amidst all the trappings of religion. For even if we have the most intricate, organized, and reformed habits of religion but have not Jesus, we have nothing.
When you begin even the simplest of religious acts, therefore, like reading the Bible, remind yourself: I cannot do this by myself. If I am to receive even the least benefit from this passage, it must come to me through Jesus. Call upon Jesus: “Lord teach me the Father’s heart in this passage of Scripture. Show me God’s face in Yours. Have You Yourself not said, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father? So bring me up to the Father, and in your boundless mercy, bring the Father down to me.” Answering this prayer would take grace upon grace, but that is precisely the kind of grace God has made available to us in His Son. Indeed, His gracious fullness overflows in all directions; you surely will not come away empty.