Grace and Truth

Why the World Needs Both Grace and Truth

We live in a world of extremes. On one side, cancel culture demands accountability with no room for mercy. On the other, a "live your truth" philosophy insists that anything goes and no one has the right to say otherwise. Both feel incomplete. Both leave damage in their wake.

In this episode, Matt explores one of the most important descriptions of Jesus found anywhere in Scripture — that he was "full of grace and truth" — and asks what it would look like if we learned to hold both together.

The Problem With Choosing Sides

The starting point is a verse from John's Gospel, written very early in the book's introduction to Christ: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

Not grace or truth. Full of both.

Matt lays out why this matters. If we live in the extreme of truth all the time but never extend grace, we become mean and judgmental. That leads to cancel culture — and it shows up both inside and outside the church. Neither camp can escape it.

The flip side is equally damaging. If we lean entirely into grace, we end up believing it does not matter what we do. God loves everyone, no one can judge me, and I will live according to my own truth — changing it whenever it suits me. It sounds lovely and is very "Instagrammable as a quote," as Matt puts it. But where is the standard?

Jesus was not at one extreme or the other. He was fully both. And Matt suggests that navigating the divisive times we live in requires us to be people full of grace and truth too.

Grace Saves

The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians: "By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

Grace is God's undeserved favour and goodwill. If God were only about truth, we would not stand a chance, because none of us can live up to his standard. We cannot even live according to our own standards or the laws of our land, let alone his.

Matt shares a definition of grace that he particularly likes: "Grace is God's ability in us to do those things we don't have the ability to do." It is not about our skills, talents, charm, or good looks. It is nothing to do with us and everything to do with him.

Because of grace, we are commanded to extend it to others — to be kind, generous, forgiving, and loving, even when people do not deserve it. Especially when they do not deserve it. That is what grace is.

"People do not need to behave before they can belong," Matt says. "We don't need to clean the fish before we catch it."

Truth Sets Free

But grace without truth is warped and unbiblical. Matt turns to one of the most well-known verses about truth, also from John's Gospel: "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

Grace saves. Truth frees. We need both.

To illustrate, Matt paints a picture. Imagine an eighteen-year-old lad. He is a nice enough kid, got his whole life ahead of him, but he sleeps around and has never been faithful to any of his girlfriends. In his mind, it is fine — he is just being authentic to himself. Everyone else does it.

"What do you say to him?" Matt asks. "Do you say keep going, be authentic, no one can judge you? But how amenable are you to that philosophy when his current girlfriend is your sister? Or maybe your daughter?"

The point lands hard. We all have a standard, whether we admit it or not.

Paul addresses this directly in Romans. After spending a passage describing how amazing grace is — how where sin was great, grace was greater — he immediately follows with: "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?"

Grace without truth is permission to keep doing damage. Truth without grace is condemnation without hope.

Matt's Own Story

Matt makes it personal. "I know this because I was that eighteen-year-old boy," he says. "I needed grace — and a lot of it. And once I'd received that grace, the truth set me free. It changed my life, it changed my thinking in radical ways."

The encounter with God's grace was so real that his natural response was to change his wrong behaviour. The truth he had grown up with — the one he had created for himself to excuse his behaviour — was nothing compared to the truth of God.

"I'm still my authentic self," he says. "But part of living a life that is authentic recognises that I am not God, that I am not Lord, and that Jesus has a much bigger and better way of living than me."

Grace and Truth in Action

Matt applies this to the specific topic of sex outside of marriage, acknowledging his current theology that it is wrong. But he wraps that truth carefully.

"To preach that truth without wrapping it up in grace is probably just as wrong," he says. He also humbly acknowledges that his theology may develop over time as he grows in understanding. But standing for nothing, he argues, is worse than standing for something that may not yet be fully formed.

He then turns to the story of the woman caught in adultery in John's Gospel. The crowd wants to stone her. Jesus responds: "If you are without sin, cast the first stone." One by one, they leave.

Jesus addresses the woman: "Does no one condemn you?" She replies, "No one, Lord." And Jesus says, "Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on, do not sin."

He did not excuse what she had done — he called it sin. But neither did he condemn her. Grace and truth working together in total harmony.

Matt imagines what the world would look like if we could actually live by this standard. Women would feel safe and secure. There would be no need for the MeToo movement. No pornography, no sex trafficking, no courtrooms full of sexual assault cases.

"On one hand it's a hard truth," he says. "But what it creates, if we could live according to that standard through the grace of God, is something extraordinary."

The Way Forward

The call is not to pick a side — grace or truth — but to hold both, as Jesus did. To be people who extend grace generously while also having the courage to stand for what is true. To wrap truth tightly in grace, bringing life and hope to a world that desperately needs both.

"Let's aim to be like Christ," Matt says. "Let's aim to be full of both grace and truth."

Where in your life might you be leaning too far toward one and neglecting the other?