What does “grace” mean to you? And how about “truth”? John uses these two words to describe the fulness of Jesus’ ministry in the world – both when he walked the earth and even today. In fact, that grace and truth have been around since the beginning of time, if we’re to believe the first two verses of John’s Gospel.

When we think of grace and truth, we usually put them in opposition to each other. We think truth means legalism and grace means leniency. And then we have to somehow marry them, like balancing a set of scales. Give a person a little bit of grace…not too much. Here, add a bit more truth. There you go. Okay, now maybe they’ll act the way we want them to.

We have a slanted view of truth and grace, I think.

• Truth is the teacher who gives you an F for too many typos. Grace the teacher who lets their students run wild in the classroom with scissors.
• Truth is the parent who grounds their kids for missing curfew by two minutes. Grace are those who say, “Boys will be boys.”
• Truth is the bad cop, grace is the good cop.
• Truth is the Punisher, grace is the pushover.

But I don’t think any of those are accurate. And really, it all comes into clear focus on Christmas. When we sing about, read about and commemorate the birth of Jesus, what does that really represent? It’s the incarnation.

Jesus Christ is the incarnation. He is the Word made flesh. He is the culmination of everything humanity had been waiting for. He is the fulfillment of the Law.

That last part is the important part. Under the Law, we were judged according to our ability to perform. You may think of grace as a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. But it’s not. Grace is that expression of God’s love for us that understands our inability to live up to that standard, to perform to that level. So Jesus came in the fulness of grace, but also the fullness of truth. And both – hand in hand – is the true expression of love.

Because God loves us, he shows us grace because we can’t do it on our own. But because God loves us, he gives us righteous standards of truth that lead to order instead of chaos. You need grace because you can’t do it on your own. You need love because you can’t do it on your own. You need both. And that’s what Jesus is.

At Christmas time, if you’re a parent, it’s easy to see grace and truth as two ends of a sliding scale. Okay, the kids can stay up a little later to finish Polar Express – slide it to grace. But they better behave or they’re not opening presents yet! – slide it over to truth. But we use this sliding scale for ourselves, too. Go ahead and sneak a couple extra cookies, it’s the holidays – slide it to grace. But make sure you don’t max out the credit cards – slide it over to truth.

Grace and truth are not sliding scales. They’re how Jesus meets us right where we are. He offers grace – “I forgive you.” And he offers truth – “Now, go and sin no more.” When we see truth in its fullness, we run to grace. But when we experience grace at its most costly, we should cling to truth.

Grace and truth. Not perfectly balanced, but perfectly received in Jesus Christ.

We’ve been talking lately about the incarnation. That’s just a theological term that explains the poetic way John tells us the Christmas story. “The Word became flesh.” God is incarnate. He came to live with us. The eternal God set foot on mortal soil and took on temporal flesh.

In short, God became one of us.

And he lived like us, loved like us, felt like us, breathed like us. He knew what it meant to lose someone close and have his heart torn open. He found out what it meant to suffer.

That incarnate life that Jesus lived was powerful, because it presented not only a picture of who God is to us, but what he means to us.

Jesus entered human history and came with a message: “This is what God is like.” John said when you see Jesus, you see God. And the picture we sometimes have in our minds of the Old Testament God, the Father God, the creator God, is a judgmental God. A God who hurls thunderbolts at us from 2,000 miles away. But Jesus came near. And when he did, he came in love. And he came fully revealing who that Old Testament God really was.

Maybe we’ve got our stories mixed up. Maybe our theology is off by a few degrees. But Jesus is the true representation of God no matter what. What we see in Jesus, that’s the reality of God. Jesus loves you. God loves you. Period.

The message you hear from Jesus, that message that explained God, was often in the form of “You have heard it said…but I say.” Whatever you heard about God from religion, Jesus has another thing to say. Whatever you heard about God being angry, he’s not. Whatever you heard about gloom and doom and you better get nervous! Don’t. Because Jesus had something else to say about it. And that thing was overwhelmingly love.

In the Old Testament, our relationship with God was broken. In the Christmas story, it’s restored. The incarnation is all about getting together. It’s about relationship.

Why is that so important? Because the incarnation is not just a word we use to explain how Jesus portrays God. It’s also a word we use to explain how we portray Jesus. Incarnational ministry. Another theological term. Want a simple definition? We show up. That’s it. We become present in the world the same way Jesus did. We build relationships.

Culture’s view of Christianity is changing. Less people today claim to be believers than five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago. It may be because of the poor presentation some of us have made over those years. It may be that we created a battlefield out of culture, rather than a neighborhood. Instead of building bridges, we circled the wagons.

The Christian life is an invitation, not a threat. Does my incarnation in the world make people want to know more about Jesus? Does it draw them closer to a loving God? Does it make them feel loved and respected and belong? If not, then I’m not doing it right.

And Christmas time is the best time to get this thing right.

How are you portraying Jesus to your little circle of the world? Do you fear the culture around you, or do you see it as an opportunity to make a positive impact?