You Cannot Understand Truth Without the Holy Spirit, Grace, and Love

In the Bible truth is often paired with other things like “grace and truth” or “Spirit and truth.”

Maybe God knows that we have a profound inability to comprehend, apply and share truth without abusing and distorting truth over and against God (Spirit and truth) and others (grace and truth) in some way.

Grace and truth reminds us of the reality of truth and the necessity of grace. You cannot really understand truth without understanding, experiencing and practicing grace. Graceless truth ceases to be truth. You miss aspects of truth when you refuse to extend grace to self and others. Those who operate on a graceless truth become abusive. Those who operate on a grace without truth can do just as much harm.

Spirit and truth reminds us that the ultimate conveyor of truth is the Holy Spirit. We are not living in a vacuum away from the presence of God in the world or in our communities. Truth is not an isolated set of propositions sitting out on some cosmic shelf in the cold universe to be discovered. Truth is shared with us in communion and community with God (Spirit and truth) and neighbor (grace and truth).

When truth is understood in connection with God and neighbor it is a reminder that truth also leads to love and an increasing love of God (love God with all your heart, soul,, mind and strength), neighbor and self (love your neighbor as yourself).

When you are having a conversation with someone either online or in person…and you are upholding the truth, realize you have failed if you cease being graceful, if you lose your love for self, God or the other person and if you ignore the Spirit’s work in you in the process.

Paul summed it up best in 1 Corinthians 13,

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”