The Law and Jesus: from grace to grace
John 1:14-18
I always enjoy hearing how people ended up in a relationship and once asked an elderly couple I met in the UK, who shared their story. He was from England learning Spanish at university and wanted a penfriend, so he could practise the language. The girl he ended up corresponding with lived in Barcelona and soon their friendship turned into something else. They decided to meet in person, and he flew out to see her, armed with a photo of what she looked like. Although they knew so much about each other by that stage, it was still a nerve-wracking moment to meet face-to-face. However, they got over that hurdle, spent time together and the rest, as they say, is history. Their story played out long before online dating and our digital age, when we have many more options to communicate, including video meetups. Still, not even those can replace a real in-person encounter.
God’s grace through the Law
The difference between writing letters and meeting face-to-face in this couple’s experience is like the gap between God’s revelation through His Word in the Old Testament and Jesus’ presence in our midst. Just like Jesus as the Word-made-flesh is Light and Life, so was God’s Word when spoken in the Old Testament. God’s Law or instruction was a light on the path of people who wanted to follow the Lord (Ps 119:105). Living by God’s Word led to life because it was in line with His will (Ps 1:1-3). Thus, it fed God’s people, like manna did Israel in the desert (Deut 8:3). Neither did it demand sinless perfection but made provision for human sin through sacrifice and atonement. Even deliberate, high-handed sin for which there is no sacrifice (Num 15:30-31) could be forgiven if people threw themselves on God’s mercy, as David had done after his adultery and murder (2 Sam 12:13). God could forgive because in Jesus He would bear the burden of sin and pay the ultimate price for it. Nor was the Law a means of salvation. God saved Israel from slavery by His grace alone and Israel’s obedience to the Law was meant as the people’s response to this salvation (Exod 19:3-6). Thus, the Law was a gift,[1] God’s grace, that enabled a sinful people to have God’s presence in their midst.
God’s grace in Jesus
Yet, as we have seen in the previous Advent reflections, Jesus’ coming as God’s presence among us is a fuller expression of the same covenant love and faithfulness (‘grace and truth’) that consented to live with Israel in the tabernacle. It is of this fuller expression of grace that we receive, fresh grace replacing the earlier grace (John 1:16).[2] Some translations unhelpfully juxtapose the Law with grace and truth in Jesus (John 1:17), as if the Law were a negative force now replaced by grace in God’s Son. However, the Greek in v.17 has no ‘but’ or any conjunction (linking word) between the two halves of the sentence. Rather, the flow of John’s Prologue suggests instead that the Law and, in a broader sense, Scripture in the Old Testament, points to what is to come in Jesus (John 5:39, 45-47). Thus, it is God’s grace that operates throughout God’s involvement with the world from start to finish.
Grace from start to finish
At this point, it is worth remembering the arc of the biblical story that moves from God’s gracious creation to humanity’s rebellion against the Lord. Israel is called and saved only to succumb to disobedience and sin again and again. Yet throughout the centuries, God perseveres, warns, disciplines and never gives up on those He made a commitment to. How many of us have been hurt by others and vowed to have nothing more to do with them? It is a natural reaction to pain and injustice that we feel anger and want distance or even revenge. Yet, how often have we hurt and took advantage of God’s love and loyalty? And still the Lord has not given up on us. Instead, the Father sent His most precious One, the Beloved Son, so we might know who He is (John 1:18).[3]
[1] Despite the often very negative view that Christians have of the Law, Jews themselves consider the Law a gift to this day. Yes, it can be abused, just like God’s grace can, but it should not stop us from recognising the value of both Law and grace.
[2] There is debate over the sense of ‘grace upon grace’ in John 1:16 because anti (NASB ‘upon’) is an unusual preposition here. The majority of translations and interpretations take it as grace piled upon grace, but D.A. Carson’s alternative seems to me more convincing. He argues that the most common meaning for anti is ‘instead of’ so that the grace received through the Law is replaced by the grace in Jesus Christ. However, he points out that this is not a negative perspective on the Law. Rather, John’s Gospel sees the Law as essentially prophetic pointing to Jesus, so that at His coming, “from the fulness of his grace and truth we have received grace that replaces the earlier grace—the grace of the incarnation, of the Word-made-flesh, of the glory of the Son ‘tabernacling’ with us, now replacing the grace of the antecedent but essentially promissory revelation” (p.134). The Gospel According to John, Pillar NTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans/Leicester: Apollos; 1991), 131-34.
[3] The Greek ‘to explain’ in v.18 is exēgeomai, the same word that our exegesis comes from, so that as we do with texts, so Jesus ‘exegetes’, i.e. interprets or explains the Father.
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