About this sermon
“From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” The law was given through Moses, and grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, who fulfills the grace already present under the Mosaic covenant. No one has ever seen God, but the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known, so believers grow in the knowledge and love of the truth as it is in Jesus.
Sermon transcript
My sermon text this morning, taken once again from John chapter one. John 1, verses 16 through 18, as we’ve been considering this month, John’s prologue, the prologue of John’s gospel. I’m gonna read the first 18 verses to offer the fuller context. But again, our focus this Lord’s Day morning, as we complete this mini series in John’s prologue, our focus will be on verses 16 through 18 in particular. So let us, dear friends, hear the word of our God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light but came to bear witness about the light. The true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own and his own people did not receive him.
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 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. John bore witness about him and cried out, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. 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. Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Once again, please join me for a brief word of prayer as we ask the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of his word. Heavenly Father, once again we ask that you would open our minds and hearts to believe and receive wondrous things from your word. May the seed of your word find a lodging place in our souls this day. Make our hearts good soil so that the seed of your word would indeed take deep root and bear much spiritual fruit in our lives. Grant unto me, your unworthy servant, the grace to speak forth and declare your word with power, with clarity, and with the assistance of your spirit for the edification of your people and the salvation of the lost.
We ask these things in Jesus’ name, amen. Congregation, you may be seated. There is available to you, it’s by the bulletins, an outline for my sermon today if you’d like to follow along. And children, you can notice that I would encourage the children to keep track of these words. You can choose one or several of these words and count the number of times that I say these words in my sermon. The key words are fullness, grace, truth, law, revelation, and son. Well, dear ones, this is a season where we celebrate the name of Jesus.
But you know, friends, the name of Jesus can certainly be a controversial name. Just bring up Jesus or mention his gospel in polite company outside of the church, and you may find the subject to be perhaps a conversation stopper, or an argument starter, or overall a divisive topic.
Why is that the case? There’s something about Jesus that makes people uneasy, and sometimes that makes even believers uneasy. I want you to picture yourself having a polite conversation around the dinner table with a group of people, and let’s say amongst that group of your dinner guests are a group of unbelievers, non-believers. And let’s say that the conversation around the table wanders into one of those typically forbidden subjects. You know, they say never talk about politics or religion in polite company, but let’s say that that is transgressed and the conversation starts to drift toward the subject of spirituality or religion or maybe even the subject of God.
Now, I don’t know what your experience has been in situations like that, but friends, in my own experience, and I love it when that happens, I love to get in conversations with unbelievers and I enjoy getting to know people and where they’re coming from and what makes them tick. And one of the things that I’ve found in my own experience is that oftentimes, unbelievers are very happy to discuss their personal views on religion and spirituality and even on God, Just so long as things stay in the realm of the general or the abstract. Just so long as things don’t get too personal. but bring up the subject of Jesus of Nazareth or bring up the Bible’s claims about Jesus Christ, and you might notice some of your dinner companions suddenly getting quiet as they shift around uneasily or squirm uncomfortably in their seats. You ever had this happen in your own experience?
You see, friends, many who are quite comfortable talking about God or religion or spirituality in the general, in the abstract, will seem to studiously avoid discussing the person and claims of the Lord Jesus Christ. No doubt this is often due to the fact that the Jesus revealed in the Bible makes some rather bold assertions about himself, as the New Testament authors likewise make some radically bold assertions about our Savior. Claims and assertions that might require your dinner companions to make some radical, perhaps even some very uncomfortable changes in their own lives if they were to accept the claims of Christ.
Well, dear friends, as we’ve seen throughout this mini-series in the prologue to John’s Gospel, the Apostle John here reveals Christ to be the eternal, pre-existent, divine, living Word of God. He is revealed in this passage to be the one and only divine Son from the Father. The Word become flesh who came to dwell among us. Our passage for today continues to make bold claims about our Lord Jesus Christ, revealing to us truths that no doubt make unbelievers uncomfortable, but truths which are a cause for great rejoicing among those who have been born of God, who through sovereign grace have come to place their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ alone for their eternal salvation. So here in our passage for this Lord’s Day morning, as John wraps up his prologue, his introduction to his gospel, here we find some very important, significant truths. And the first thing I want us to consider, based on verse 16, is the fullness of grace that is found in Christ, the incarnate Word. We learn here, beloved, of the fullness of grace that is found in our Lord Jesus Christ, the one whom John has revealed to be, the incarnate Logos, the incarnate living Word of God. Notice these glorious words in verse 16, where John writes, For from his fullness, the subject here is Christ, the living word incarnate.
From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. There is so much packed into this short sentence here. From His fullness, the Greek word is pleromatos, fullness, from which we get the word pleroma. From His fullness, brothers and sisters in Christ, we have received the fullness of grace through faith in Christ. From His fullness, John writes, we have all received.
Now, One of the keys to properly interpreting and understanding the Bible is to ask good questions. When you come to a text of scripture, you need to ask yourself, well, who is the author here writing about? And the question that we need to ask ourselves now is, who is the we all that John is referring to in this verse? Is he talking about we believers in Christ in general? Or is he speaking of we apostles or perhaps we the leaders of the Johannine churches or community who give our endorsement to John’s gospel? Scholars no doubt would have suggested various understandings of the we all here. Well friends, John doesn’t directly say, and I suppose it depends not only upon the overall context of this passage, but also upon John’s audience.
Who is it that John is addressing these truths to in particular? When John set out, again being carried along by the Holy Spirit to write what he wrote, What was his intended audience? What was his purpose in writing this gospel account? Well, in order to discover that, we have to actually go to the back of the Gospel of John, and this is just a little, we’re gonna do just a little off-roading, and then we’ll come back to the main point here. But in terms of considering the purpose of this gospel, John makes it very clear. In John 20, verses 30 and 31, John writes this.
Now, Jesus did many other signs. It’s talking about our Lord’s miraculous signs and wonders that attest to the fact that he is the Messiah, the Son of God, the one promised by the scriptures. Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name.
It is because of this purpose statement that many believe that John’s gospel was written for the primary purpose of evangelizing the lost, of bringing believers to the point of coming to believe, bringing non-believers rather, to the point of coming to believe that Jesus is indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God. And if that’s the case, then the we all that John is talking about in verse 16 of our passage for today must be referring to we apostles. However, it is interesting to note, and some scholars have suggested, that verse 31 could possibly be translated, that I write these things, these things are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by continuing in the faith, you may have life in his name. If that is the case, then John’s Gospel is primarily geared towards nurturing our faith, strengthening our faith, enabling us to continue in the faith. After all, God uses means not only to bring us to faith, but to keep us in the faith. But I don’t think we have to choose one or the other.
I think John’s Gospel is indeed wonderful. It’s a wonderful evangelistic tool. Many have been converted, no doubt, simply through reading the Gospel of John. Many have come to faith in Christ through reading John’s Gospel. But we believers are also built up in our faith as we read these precious truths revealed in John’s Gospel. Now, again, I think that in view of the context of verse 16, the we all that John has in mind is probably, he’s probably referring to we apostles. That’s who he was referring to in the previous context, verse 14, where he says, the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we, meaning we apostles, have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father. But no doubt, brothers and sisters, just as the apostles experienced the fullness of God’s grace and truth in the Lord Jesus Christ, so we who believe their testimony, their apostolic testimony, we too, through faith in Christ, receive and experience the fullness of God’s grace given to us in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, it’s interesting, this terminology here, this statement, grace upon grace, it’s interesting. In the Greek, it’s literally, it could be translated as grace against grace, or grace upon grace, or grace in exchange for grace. It’s translated different ways in different translations. The ESV, English Standard Version, translates it as grace upon grace. But if you have a, The NIV, it translates it as one blessing after another. The more literal King James Version translates it as grace for grace.
What is John getting at when he uses this interesting, unusual terminology to describe God’s grace given to us in Christ? Well, I think Dr. Merrill Tenney puts it well. When he suggests as an interpretation of this terminology, he says, when one supply of grace is exhausted, another is available. John uses this unusual term, this unusual clause, grace upon grace, to underscore the fact that God’s grace given to us in the Word made flesh is inexhaustible. It is superlative. It knows no end. It is infinite.
And indeed, brothers and sisters in Christ, as we reflect upon the many blessings that we have received in our Savior, we indeed experience one inexhaustible set of grace, if you will, upon another. As believers, we have received fullness of grace in our Lord Jesus Christ. For Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, has accomplished a perfect full redemption for us. Think about it. If you are in Christ, you have received, as Paul puts it in Ephesians 1, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And those blessings include things such as full remission of sins. If you are in Christ, forgiving you for Jesus sake.
You are fully and completely justified, declared righteous in the sight of the judge of heaven and earth. He no longer looks upon you as an angry, offended judge, but he declares you in the courtroom of heaven to be in the right with him, to be righteous in his sight, not because of your own righteousness, but because of Christ’s perfect, everlasting righteousness imputed to your account. received by faith alone. And in Christ, you’ve also been adopted as a child of God. Before you were a child of the devil, spiritually speaking, you were in the kingdom of darkness, but now in sovereign grace, he has brought you out of the kingdom of darkness and transferred you into the kingdom of light, the kingdom of the son of his love.
So, friends, in Christ we have been chosen, we have been redeemed, we have been remitted, forgiven of our sins, justified, adopted, we have been sanctified both positionally and we are being sanctified progressively as the Spirit abides in us. Indeed, we can say with John here in verse 16, from His fullness, we too have all received grace upon grace, infinite grace, inexhaustible grace. And this is so important for us to remember, especially, I wanna address you, if you’re perhaps struggling as a believer with a particular sin, maybe a besetting sin, or perhaps you have been backslidden in your walk with Christ. You know, sometimes just because we are born again and new creations in Christ does not mean that we cannot play the prodigal.
Sometimes God’s beloved children wander far afield from the Lord. Sometimes we play the part of the prodigal son. And sometimes we feel like, oh, I’ve gone too far. I’ve just gone too far. I’m at the point of no return. The Lord will never have me back. If that describes you today, if you’re thinking that in your heart, remember our Lord’s parable of the prodigal son. Remember the prodigal son, he wasted his father’s inheritance. He went off and spent all that he had and he ended up with the pigs in the muck.
And he said, well, maybe my father will receive me back as a hired servant. And he had prepared this speech You know, Father, I know I’m not worthy to be your son. Let me be like one of your hired servants. How did the father in that parable respond? I know I didn’t read from that passage this morning, but I’m sure you’re familiar with it. Did the father say, all right, all right, oh, it’s you. Okay, go with the servants. I guess I’ll tolerate you. No. Father saw his son coming in the distance. The father had been waiting for him, and he ran and embraced him, and he threw a party for him. God welcomes back the prodigal.
Why? Because in Christ we receive grace upon grace, one blessing after another, inexhaustible grace. This is not an excuse, of course, to wander away from the Lord or to backslide, but it is to say that if you have and you’re wondering, well, could the Lord ever forgive me? Remember that of His fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. His grace is offered and extended to you, dear wandering pilgrim. Christian, are you walking in the fullness of grace that you have received in Christ? We have all received from His fullness.
But what does this have to do with the law of God? And what is the relationship of this grace to the law of God? It’s interesting that, and this brings me to my next main point, we consider next the law and Jesus Christ. The relationship, in particular, the relationship between the law of Moses and Jesus Christ.
And John mentions this in verse 17. He says this, for the law was given through Moses. grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Now, no doubt John, who was himself, as an apostle, he was a Jew, and no doubt he, some of his original readers, no doubt were Jews as well. And so the question of the relationship of this grace upon grace, this fullness of grace to the law of Moses, would no doubt be in the minds of many of his readers. And so John briefly explains. He says, the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
Now, that’s a rather jarring contrast, isn’t it? In what sense is John contrasting the law? And by the law, he means the Mosaic law, such as you find in the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. What is the relationship between this law and Jesus Christ?
In what sense is John contrasting the Mosaic law from the grace and truth that came through Jesus Christ? I mean, is John meaning to imply that there was absolutely no grace or no truth in Old Testament times or during the Mosaic administration? I think an honest reading of the Old Testament would show that to be false, that indeed there was grace and truth under the Mosaic law. There was even gospel under the Mosaic law.
It came in shadow form, but the gospel was loudly proclaimed in the sacrifices and ceremonial law revealed to Moses. Again, those sacrifices and ceremonies pointed forward to the work of Christ. And they were only shadows and types, but they did proclaim good news. to the people of God. But nevertheless, there is a contrast here. So in what sense is grace and truth come through Jesus Christ and not through the law of Moses? And do his words here imply what is elsewhere taught in scripture about the law gospel distinction?
These are important questions to ask. Well friends, I think one of the ways to put this verse in context and to understand what John is getting at here, we need to first go back to Exodus 34 and look at verse 6. I invite you to turn to Exodus 34, verse 6. Exodus 34, verse 6. This is where the Lord passes before Moses and reveals his attribute, his character, his attributes and character and holiness to Moses. In verse six, it says this. Exodus 34, verse six.
The Lord, notice the word Lord in your translation is probably all in capital letters. This is referring to Yahweh, the covenant name of God. The Lord passed before him, passed before Moses and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in, now catch this, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, and so forth. Steadfast love and faithfulness. The study note in the English Standard Study Bible, ESV Study Bible, I think puts it well when it says, quote, grace and truth most likely recalls the Hebrew behind the phrase steadfast love, that’s the Hebrew word hesed, and faithfulness, the word emet, in Exodus 34, verse 6. where the expression refers to God’s covenant faithfulness to his people Israel. According to John, God’s covenant faithfulness found ultimate expression in his sending of his one-of-a-kind son, Jesus Christ. And then it makes an important observation.
It says, the contrast is not that the Mosaic law was bad and Jesus is good. Rather, both the giving of the law and the coming of Jesus Christ marked decisive events in the history of salvation. In the law, God graciously revealed his character and righteous requirements to the nation of Israel. Jesus, however, marked the final definitive revelation of God’s grace and truth.
So the point here, beloved, In all of these technicalities, the point, beloved, is that it would be a mistake to read this verse, verse 17, as if John were denying that there was grace under the Mosaic administration. Instead, John’s point here is what we would call a redemptive historical point. What he is saying is that the main focus of the Mosaic Old Covenant administration was the giving of God’s law.
And that was very important because in order to prepare God’s people and to prepare the world for the coming of the promised Messiah, People needed to know God’s requirements. They needed to know God’s law. They needed to know that God is holy and that they are sinful and therefore that they need a savior. You see, the law reveals God’s holy standard.
It shows us our sinfulness in falling short of that divine standard. And therefore, it shows us our desperate need for a sinless, law-keeping Savior. On the other hand, the main focus of the new covenant administration in Christ is the fullness of grace and truth that were realized and brought to mankind through the incarnation of Christ. the incarnation of the Word made flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ, His virgin birth, His obedient life, His public ministry, His atoning death on the cross, His glorious bodily resurrection and ascension, His reign at the Father’s right hand and His pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. These were pivotal events of redemptive history, events that have brought us the fullness of God’s grace and truth.
The fullness of grace and truth that were only pointed to, hinted at, shadowed, and given in typical form, in the form of types under the old covenant. Again, the law was given through Moses. Not that there was no grace or truth under Moses, but not the fullness of grace and truth, only the shadows and the types, but grace and truth. Grace and truth in their fullness came through Jesus Christ, Yeshua, the Messiah.
Beloved, by way of application, One of the very important theological distinctions that we must always maintain is the distinction between the law and the gospel. While the law and the gospel can and indeed must be distinguished, especially when we’re talking about justification, and salvation, they cannot be separated. You see, friends, without God’s law revealing his holy character and showing us how utterly sinful we are, we would not realize our desperate need for the gospel, for the good news of salvation through Jesus. Dr. J. Gresham Machen once wrote in his wonderful little book, The Christian View of Man, he wrote this, The consciousness of sin alone leads men to turn to the Savior from sin.
And the consciousness of sin comes only when men are brought face to face with the law of God. Brothers and sisters in Christ, perhaps one of the reasons why so many of our secular neighbors and friends and contemporaries and peers cannot see or cannot understand or cannot appreciate the gospel is because they do not understand the law. The full unbending demands of God’s law have not been brought home to them. And so they do not see their need for Christ as a savior from sin, the savior from sin.
It has been said that it is against the black backdrop of the night sky that you can see the stars in the sky shining the brightest. And likewise, beloved, it is against the black backdrop of our sin, our violations of God’s holy law. It is only against that black backdrop that we can see the glory of the light of Christ coming to us through the gospel.
Without the gospel, of course, Christ redeeming work for us sinners, without Christ redeeming work for us sinners, the law of God would only crush and condemn us without hope of escape. The law is necessary to see your need for the gospel, but the gospel is necessary in order to see and understand the ongoing relevance of the law in our lives as believers. You see, without Christ and without the gospel, the law can do nothing to save or to sanctify us.
In fact, the law is powerless. Because of our sin nature, because of our fallenness, the law can do nothing but command, demand, and condemn. The law says, do this and you shall live. The problem is we’ve already broken his law in Adam. We are by fallen nature and choice sinners apart from his sovereign regenerating grace. So the law is powerless. It cannot save us. It cannot sanctify us. It is powerless apart from Christ.
But the gospel says, live and you shall do this as a result of being alive in Christ Having that new birth, we talked about that at the instruction time this morning. Because of the new birth, we have new affections, a new disposition, new desires to obey God’s law. We love the law of God from the heart, not because we think it can save us or even sanctify us. The law doesn’t sanctify as Christ does by his spirit, although the law is something, is our standard. That is the measure by which we measure our progress in sanctification. But brothers and sisters in Christ, only the gospel gives us the power to even begin keeping the law.
Dear listener, do you know the grace and truth that are found in the Lord Jesus Christ? If the Spirit has opened your heart this day to see your sin, to see your need for a sinless Savior, I have good news for you. For as the scriptures say, though the wages of sin is death, spiritual death, physical death, and ultimately eternal death, the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Jesus Christ welcomes you, dear sinner, to come to him. He says, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. He will remove that burden of sin from you. Receive and rest upon him. Believe that in Jesus Christ you have a merciful, forgiving God. And by that faith, that God-given, sovereignly bestowed faith, you will find rest in Christ, new life in Him. And you will know, you will taste in your own soul this fullness of grace and this fullness of grace and truth that came through Jesus Christ. Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. As John wraps up this glorious prologue to his gospel in verse 18, we find in conclusion God’s supreme revelation in his son. That’s my final main point based on verse 18. We find in Christ God’s supreme revelation in his son.
As verse 18 says, no one has ever seen God. Remember God said in the Old Testament, no man shall see me and live. No man has seen God. Moses saw God’s backside, if you will. People have seen manifestations, or what the theologians like to call theophanies, supernatural, visible, symbolic representations of God’s special presence, such as we have in the book The Burning Bush. That was a theophany, a sign of God’s special presence. the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night that hovered over the tabernacle and accompanied the people of Israel through the wilderness, and so forth. These are theophanies. Many have seen God’s theophanies, God’s signs of his presence, but in terms of seeing God, in terms of the essence of his being, no man can see God and live, and yet, The only God who is at the Father’s side could be translated in his bosom.
He has made him known. We don’t see God in his inexhaustible essence. but we do see God revealed in the person of the incarnate word, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if you have a King James or a New King James version, you might be scratching your head and saying, wait a minute, pastor. In my version, it says no one has ever seen God, the only begotten son of God. rather than the only begotten God who is at the Father’s side has made him known.
Why the difference there? Well, ultimately this is a textual issue, and I don’t want to get too technical this morning, but some Ancient Greek texts read as it reads here in the ESV, the only begotten God, which is a very unusual expression, which is one of the reasons why textual scholars tend to think, many of them tend to think that this has got to be the correct original reading because it’s so unusual. Why would any editor want to change it? But others say, no, it should read the only begotten son.
There are the evidence, the textual evidence is about even on both of those translations, and you could make a case for either view. But whichever view is the correct one, whichever translation is correct, whether it should read God or son, the emphasis here seems to be on the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the divine word, the one and only from And notice how Jesus is described here. No one has ever seen God, the only God who is what?
At the Father’s side, he has made him known. Dr. Tenney says this about that expression at the Father’s side. He says that the Father’s side is substantially the same expression as that used in John 13, 23 concerning the disciple whom Jesus loved, namely the Apostle John. who was reclining next to him. Remember John, the Apostle John at the Last Supper leaned on our Lord’s breast. That’s the imagery here we have of Jesus, the living word incarnate, that he was at the Father’s side. Tenney says, it shows intimate association which presupposes close fellowship. As the confidant of the Father, Jesus is peculiarly qualified to act as the intermediary who can carry the knowledge of God to men.
I remember one time, this was many, many years ago, but I recall once, I think I was driving in my car, this is when we lived back in New Jersey, and I was listening to a Christian radio station, And if I’m recalling correctly, the preacher I was listening to was making the point that the reason that God created us was basically because God was lonely. Poor God, he was lonely all there by himself. And so he needed our companionship. Of course, such a view is not only unbiblical, but also actually heretical.
God doesn’t need anyone. He is perfect. He is the ever-blessed God. He is perfectly content within his own being. The scriptures furthermore reveal that God has never been lonely because God has enjoyed eternal communion and fellowship within the Godhead, the three persons of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have enjoyed perfect communion and fellowship one with another forever. God is not an eternal hermit. He’s not a unitarian hermit. He is He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One God, but three persons in one God, who has enjoyed perfect communion and fellowship and intimacy within Himself. And we see that the only God, or the only Son, the Word made flesh, was at the Father’s side in intimate personal communion with Him.
So He was qualified as the Father’s confidant to perfectly reveal the Father to us. And that terminology here, the last, The last phrase here, he has made him known. He, the son or word, has made the father known. Again, to quote from Tenny, he says the phrase has made him known, it’s exegesato in the Greek, comes from the verb from which exegesis is derived, which means to explain or interpret the being and nature of God, which cannot be perceived directly by ordinary senses, has been adequately presented to us in the incarnation. Obviously, the author implies that his writing gives us adequate record of this revelation. The life and words of Jesus are more than an announcement. They are an explanation of God’s attitude toward men and his purpose for them. What this is saying is that Jesus Christ perfectly exegetes, perfectly explains the Father.
To put it in simple terms, if you want to know what God is like, study what the scriptures, especially the gospels, teach about the Lord Jesus Christ. Or to put it another way, if you want to know what God is really like, study Jesus Christ. Of course, in order to do that, you’ve got to study your Bible, for the Bible is God’s inspired written word. But the main thing that makes the Bible such a special book is not only that it is God’s written word, which it certainly is, but ultimately that it is a word that tells us about God’s chosen anointed king. That’s what the word Messiah or Christ means, anointed one. It reveals Jesus, the son of God, our Messiah and Lord.
Have you gotten to know Jesus? Have you gotten to know God? To ask the one question is to ask the other, because God is known in His fullness of grace and truth in the Lord Jesus Christ. May we trust and rely upon Him, and may we find the truth of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ, who is given to us in Holy Scripture.
Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you and praise you, God, for the fullness of grace and truth that we experience through faith in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We thank you, O Lord, that Christ has indeed fulfilled the law for us and has died to pay the penalty for our sin. We thank you that we have been raised to newness of life in Him. We thank you that in Him we have received grace upon grace, inexhaustible grace. And we thank you that Christ has fully exegeted you, O Father, fully explained you, revealed you, made you known. May we heed the truth as the truth is found in Jesus. May we walk in the truth and may we grow in our knowledge and love of the truth of Jesus Christ. In his name we pray, amen.
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