I love the book of John! I’m not sure why it’s my favorite gospel, but it is. I love how it starts – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”(John 1:1 ESV) And then down in vs.14 (ESV) is says “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” And then a few more verses down vs.17 says “For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (ESV)
Grace and truth…what beautiful words. It wasn’t until I was in my late 30’s that I began to discover what grace really was. I had grown up in church for most of my life but didn’t really understand grace. Grace was just an elusive word that was spoken when someone recited Ephesians 2:8-9. When I was 16, Jesus saved me. He helped me to see that there wasn’t anything I could do that would be good enough to save myself and get me into heaven and that was exactly why I needed Him. So even though I received His grace, I still didn’t really understand what grace was.
Fast forward about 20 years (10 of which I spent running from God and the other 10 spent trying to fix myself) and I found myself in a place where I was frequently saying “that’s got to be the grace of God.” One day God pointed out to me what I had been saying. I realized I didn’t understand what grace was. If someone had asked me to define grace, I would have just quoted Ephesians 2:8-9 (“For by grace are we saved through faith…). But that doesn’t really explain what grace is. So I started asking the Lord to show me what grace is. He brought me across the path of a preacher from overseas. I remember flipping through my “church channels” on TV and coming across his show. The sermon was titled “Secrets of Grace in the Hebrew Letters”. I thought “What! I’ve never heard anything like this before.” I remember him speaking on how each Hebrew letter has a picture associated with it and the 5th letter in the Hebrew alphabet “He” represents grace. He talked about the name Yahweh or in the Hebrew YHVH. He showed how the Y was a picture of an open hand and the V was a picture of a nail. He talked about how when you put the pictures together they provide the definition of the word. So YHVH (Yahweh) means “the open hand of grace nailed in grace”. I remember when I heard that all I could see was Jesus…Jesus on the cross. I was in awe of how the most holy of names, the name that the Jews won’t even speak out loud because of how holy they believe it is, points to Jesus! Jesus is grace!
This Christmas may God reveal to you in increasing measure the truth of His grace! Stay tuned…More to come next week!
