Full of Grace and Truth

Yesterday one of my children hurt their sibling in a very intentional way, and after getting in trouble this child laid on the floor and moaned over and over, “I’m a bad person!” This went on for a while until we finally got the children to make amends and move on, though this is not the first time we have heard this and surely won’t be the last. It can be difficult when mistakes are made by children to separate the action they performed from their identity, and surely the adversary wants us to feel hopeless about ourselves when we sin and do wrong. But the Savior encourages us to stop the sin while still moving on with hope in our divine identity. We see this clearly in account of the woman taken in adultery. Her adversaries, representing Satan, wanted to condemn her forever for her sin. The Savior, on the other hand, said this: “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8:11). A condemnation would be a type of final judgment, in effect saying, “You are forever a bad person.” But Jesus was not sent “into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17). He invites us to forsake sin while at the same time understanding that we have divine potential through Him to become even as He is. We should not equate our identity with our worst actions; or as one youth song states, “You’re not your mistakes.” The Lord sees us as the best we can become and not the worst we have done.

               One of the descriptions of the Savior that we see in all the standards works is the phrase “full of grace and truth.” John declared, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). In the Book of Mormon, Lehi taught, “Wherefore, redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth. Behold, he offereth himself a sacrifice for sin, to answer the ends of the law, unto all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit; and unto none else can the ends of the law be answered” (2 Nephi 2:6-7). In the Doctrine and Covenants we have this testimony of the Savior recorded of John: “And I, John, bear record that I beheld his glory, as the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, even the Spirit of truth, which came and dwelt in the flesh, and dwelt among us” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:11). In the Pearl of Great Price, we have the story of the angel who visited Adam and taught him about the sacrifices he was making: “And then the angel spake, saying: This thing is a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of grace and truth. Wherefore, thou shalt do all that thou doest in the name of the Son, and thou shalt repent and call upon God in the name of the Son forevermore” (Moses 5:7-8). Here he taught as well that the Savior and His atonement are full of “grace and truth.” With such repetition across the standard works, surely it is important for us to understand how Jesus is full of grace and truth.

To be full of grace in the context of these verses seems clear, for it is through His grace that He took upon Himself our sins and can forgive them. His sacrifice was an act of offering us grace. But how are the Savior and His atonement full of “truth?” We know of course that He knows all things as Jacob declared, “O how great the holiness of our God! For he knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it” (2 Nephi 9:20). But some kinds of knowledge are more important than others, and perhaps the truth that defines Him most is the truth He knows about us and our divine identity, purpose, and potential. If His grace is for us, then perhaps His truth is for us as well. In other words, He is full of grace to forgive our sins, and He is full of truth to help us see who we really are and who we can become. Because of His atonement, we do not have to be defined by our sins; through His grace and truth we can be forgiven again and again and become what He wants us to become. As Alma declared, “And not many days hence the Son of God shall come in his glory; and his glory shall be the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace, equity, and truth, full of patience, mercy, and long-suffering, quick to hear the cries of his people and to answer their prayers” (Alma 9:26). Along with His grace and truth He is also full of patience, mercy, and long-suffering towards us as we work to live up to the truth that we can, through His grace, become even as He is. And as the adversary seeks to convince us that we are inherently bad because of our mistakes, we can declare with Moses, “Behold, I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten.” Moses knew this because of what the Lord said to him, and those words were surely meant for us as well: “And I have a work for thee, Moses, my son; and thou art in the similitude of mine Only Begotten; and mine Only Begotten is and shall be the Savior, for he is full of grace and truth” (Moses 1:6, 13).