Jesus’ fullness
Readings: John 1. 10-18, Ephesians 1. 3-14
We thought quite a bit about the first half of John 1 at midnight on Christmas Day. But this morning I want to focus on two descriptions of Jesus in the passage. The end of verse 14, and verse 16, which both talk about Jesus’ fulness. What is he full of?
The first, at the end of verse 14, tells us the wonder that John, and the others, have seen the glory of the Son, who came from the Father. That in itself is astonishing isn’t it. Can you imagine being John and declaring that the man you had spent those years with travelling around, preaching, healing, eating. This man is God himself, the Son of the Father, you’ve seen his glory. And if you can imagine that, just pause for a moment and realise that the Jesus you know, the Jesus you have a relationship with, is the same Jesus, you too have beheld his glory.
So this Son, who has come from the Father, how is he described, what is his glory? It’s that he is full of grace and truth.
Imagine for a moment someone who is utterly grace filled. Nothing is too much trouble for them, they’re good and kind, and generous. They give and they give and they give. You can rely on them completely and trust them with anything. How amazing is that person. But there’s a shadow side to that sort of way isn’t there. Where grace becomes license, they never challenge you, never tell you to stop, or warn you you’re not doing right. They never say no, it’s always whatever you want. They never want to cause a problem by telling you you’re going wrong or doing something you shouldn’t.
Now imagine someone who is utterly truthful. They never lie. You ask them a question you’ll get an honest response. In some ways that’s wonderful isn’t it. You’re not second guessing them, you know where you stand with them, you aren’t trying to read between the lines, they just say it how it is. But we know don’t we, that truth given raw sometimes stings, you can be utterly truthful and hateful with it.
Is there a better way? Yes. It’s Jesus, full both of grace and truth. He will give and give and give for us. But he is not afraid to challenge and to rebuke us. But when he does it is with gentleness and kindness. His sharpest rebukes were reserved for those who knew what they should be doing but refused. It’s such a wonderful picture; grace and truth. You can trust him to be honest with you, even if it’s not what you want to hear, but you can also trust him to be gentle to you, kind, merciful. You can trust him to tell you you’re sin without condemning you for it straight away. You can trust him to be kind to you whilst also not allowing you to harm yourself by his lack of warning.
We can easily fall into putting Jesus into one of those categories. He’s full of grace. Therefore he’s utterly for me in all the ways I want him to be. He’s grace filled so would never stop me doing what I wanted. His love means he will love me no matter what, and not care how I act or speak. Which means we’re to do the same with others. We’re never to tell people they’re doing wrong, we’re just to love them, let them carry on however they want. It’s a tempting picture of Jesus, and an easy road for us. But it’s not true of Jesus is it. It’s not the Jesus we find in the Gospels who had hard truths to give to people.
But we can go the other way. He’s full of truth. He just says stuff as it is. So what I need to do is just tell people how it is. We need to condemn people more for their sin. We need to be busier rebuking culture. And I’ll just say it all up in your face when you’re wrong. For some people that’s a really tempting option. It feels bold, courageous. We’re going to battle for Jesus. But whilst Jesus always spoke the truth, for those who were hurting, who were longing for God, he was utterly gracious. Sometimes his words, particularly to the religious leaders, were harsh, but they were always motivated by compassion, either for the person who he is speaking to, or for those who are suffering as a result of their actions.
I think the most poignant picture of Jesus’ character as full of grace and truth is the woman caught in adultery in John 8. She’s brought out before the crowd and there’s a group ready to stone her and they ask Jesus what they should do. So what does he do? He responds with both grace and truth. He starts with truth ‘let the one without sin throw the first stone’. And what happens? Well, if he was only truth he’d grab a stone and throw it, he alone is without sin. But that’s not what happens, instead as writes in the dirt they all slowly drift away, faced with the truth of their own sin, they don’t condemn. Grace wins out. When they’ve all left, and it’s just the woman and Jesus, he tells her that he won’t condemn her either. Grace again. But ‘go and sin no more’. Truth. A warning, a gentle rebuke. Leave your sinful ways, take this as the chance to change.
This is how Jesus is with us, utterly truthful, utterly grace filled. So we are to do likewise, challenging one another, but always out of love and compassion for one another.
Which brings me to verse 16 ‘out of his fulness we have all received grace upon grace’. There’s his fulness again, his abundance, his overflow. And what do we receive from his fulness? Grace upon grace. It’s overflowing. And this grace upon grace is linked to the next verse.
Whilst first there was the grace of the law given through Moses, we don’t often think of that as a grace do we, but it is. The law is given as the system to identify sin and start to account for and make up for it, it’s the first way back to God. That was a manifestation of God’s grace, his goodness to his people. Now grace and truth have come through Jesus. Jesus fulfils the law, and in doing so pours out new grace, a grace on top of the old, even more of God’s goodness that flows over the old.
Whilst the law was given, handed down, now grace and truth have come, come to us in Jesus. And he is the overflow, it’s like Jesus is a fountain, not filled with water but with God’s grace, overflowing.
Grace is a funny word, but it’s been termed by some as an acronym for ‘God’s riches at Christ’s expense’. Grace. And what riches Christ gives us in this grace he heaps upon former grace. We see some of those riches in that passage from Ephesians.
Through the coming of Jesus, from the fountain of his grace we have received: every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, been made holy and blameless before God in love. Adopted as his children. We’re redeemed, forgiven our sins. He has given us wisdom and insight so we might know his will. He gives the promise that all will be gathered up in Christ at the end of the age. And the promised inheritance of all things to us in Jesus. And finally we’re given the Spirit as the pledge of that coming inheritance and redemption.
That’s eight things, and there’s more we could say, but it’s a pretty great start isn’t it. All lavished upon us by God’s grace through the coming of his Son. All this, all this is the grace we have received on top of the grace already given in ages past. God isn’t like Scrooge, he gives, gives in abundance.
Which brings me to my final point, because both of these truths about Jesus’ fulness are placed right beside his relationship to the Father. His glory being full of grace and truth is tied to his being the Father’s only Son. Grace upon grace is followed by the truth that whilst no-one has seen God, Jesus has made him known because he is the Son.
What both of these verses are insisting upon, and the truth we can stand on from these verses, is that God is not putting on a front through Jesus. The Son isn’t a distraction from the real character of God. Jesus is full of grace and truth because he is from the Father who is full of grace and truth.
Jesus is an overflow of grace because the Father is an overflow of grace. It cascades down from the Father to the Son, and the Son has poured it out upon us. Which means, and I know I’ve laboured this point this Christmas but it’s worth labouring, when we see Jesus we see God. His character is God’s character. His actions are God’s actions. His words are God’s words.
And whilst we may not have seen the Father, the Son, who is incarnate in Jesus, has made him known. And because the Son is in the bosom of the Father, is the one who is closest, most intimate, most near to him, we can trust what he says. As we thought about in the second part of our sermon series on the Nicene Creed back in the summer, because the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, of one being, because he is not at a distance, not a created being, the Son is the one best placed to reveal the Father, because the Son is the one who knows him best. He knows him as well as he knows himself.
So, who is born to us at Christmas? The Son who is full of grace and truth who has given grace upon grace. Here in human form is grace and truth enfleshed. He will be both honest and compassionate. Not hiding the reality from us, nor beating us over the head with it, but graciously leading us into the right way. He gives grace upon grace, a fountain that overflows with the riches of God which he lavishes upon us. Why? Because it is his and his Father’s good pleasure to do so. In Jesus we see God as he is, and because the Son is eternal, yet only now in flesh appearing, he reveals him truly, for he knows him fully.
The Word was made flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.
Amen.