Jesus - Full Of Grace And Truth Series

Here He is again, showing His glory; restoring the fallen fisherman, giving Peter three chances to express his love corresponding to the three times that he failed. Grace came in restoring Peter, truth came in commissioning Peter. Peter, don’t spend your life fishing; spend it feeding others. Show your love for me, Peter, by a life of ministry to My flock. And in the restoring, we see Jesus full of grace and truth.

Let me apply this for a minute. All of us have roosters in our lives - those reminders of where we failed, times when we dishonored Christ. If you have falls and failures like that, Jesus has grace to restore, grace greater than all our sin. See there was one rooster, but 153 fish. “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” Jesus has grace that restores, and truth that commissions us for ministry. Do you love me? So many profess faith in Christ but then go back to their old life, hopeless. But there is hope and restoration for you; Jesus has plenty of grace and truth for you.

So we’ve seen Jesus full of grace and truth; in the healing, forgiving and restoring. But let’s go deeper here. We haven’t seen a tenth of His glory. There is another event that entirely eclipses everything else in Jesus’ life, when it comes to showing that He was full of grace and truth. That event is the cross. Never in the history of the world has humanity seen One so full of grace and truth than when Jesus emptied Himself at the cross for us. Never was a man shown to be so glorious than when Jesus was covered with our shame at His death.

It’s one thing for Jesus to heal a man who was sick for 38 years; it’s quite another for Him to take all the diseases, all the sicknesses of all humanity for thousands of years upon Himself, and to suffer and die for our healing. At the cross “He, Himself bore our sicknesses, and He carried our pains” and “By His stripes we are healed.” That’s how we know He is full of grace and truth.

It’s one thing for Jesus to pardon a woman from condemnation; it’s quite another for Him to be condemned in her place. “Bearing sin and scoffing rude, in my place condemned He stood.” Never has this world seen such grace and truth as when the Righteous One is condemned so that condemned sinners might be declared righteous!

Finally, it’s one thing for Jesus to restore the one who denied Him; it’s quite another for Jesus to be denied and forsaken by His own Father, so that all who repent and believe can be accepted and reconciled to God. That’s the fullness of His grace and truth.

Paul describes this grace and truth in Romans 5, look there with me:

8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 That’s grace! That’s the fullness of His grace.

9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Romans 5:9-10 That’s truth! We are justified, saved and reconciled! As Jesus dies on the cross, He is filled with grace and truth: “I’m dying to justify you; I’m perishing to save you; I’m being treated as God’s enemy in order to reconcile you.