Grace and truth never came into conflict or competed with one another in the life of Jesus as He encountered and related to everyone from prostitutes to Pharisees, scribes to sinners, and rabbis to revenue collectors.  His message of truth and His ministry of mercy were so beautifully blended and perfectly balanced that they simultaneously comforted and convicted, reproved and redeemed, according to the most pressing need of the moment.

“For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ,” (John 1:17).

However, the integration of grace and truth remains a rather elusive combination of qualities for many of us who seek to walk in the steps of Jesus.  We are so predictably “either/or” in our orientations and allegiances.  “I’m all about truth.”  “I’m all about grace.”  Pick a side; join a team; cast your lot; choose your weapon; divide and demonize.  Jesus would have none of that as an equal opportunity offender and a “both/and” purveyor of truth and grace.

Jesus extended unmitigated grace to a man at the pool of Bethesda who had been debilitated by illness for 38 years.  Nearly four decades of suffering were brought to an immediate end when Jesus said, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk,” (John 5:8).  When Jesus caught up with the man in the temple later that Sabbath day, He said, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you,” (John 5:14).  Jesus wasn’t suggesting that the man’s suffering had been caused by some sin in his life.  He was just providing a timely and needful reminder that there is something infinitely worse than being physically sick for 38 years.

Jesus courageously defended the life and dignity of a woman caught in adultery, and He lavished divine grace upon her when He said, “Did no one condemn you?  I do not condemn you, either,”  (John 8:10-11).  Then He challenged her to “go, and sin no more.”  He didn’t condone or minimize the seriousness of her sexual sin (or that of her absent partner).  He simply covered her transgression with compassion and grace and called her to greater purity and conformity to God’s will for her life.

Grace and truth.

How would Jesus bring that same truth and grace to moral, ethical, and social issues in our contemporary culture?

My reading of Scripture leads me to hold an extremely high view of the sanctity of human life, including the preciousness and sacredness of life inside the womb.  For this reason, like many other Christians, I oppose elective abortion on demand, despite its legality according to state and federal laws and the landmark Roe v. Wade decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973.

As a whole, conservative Christians have been firmly convicted and extremely vocal on the truth side in the abortion debate.  However, as with so many other moral concerns, we very frequently fall short in affirming grace.

There is a widespread need for Christians to communicate a message of grace, compassion, kindness, and forgiveness toward those who have elected to terminate pregnancies by abortion.  We need to seek to understand what was going on in their lives, in their minds, and in their hearts when they made this decision.  For many, it was an absolutely agonizing decision, perhaps driven by fear, confusion, shame, panic, or an overwhelming sense of anxiety about the future.  Very often, abortion is not a solely personal choice, but one that is heavily influenced and swayed by the counsel of friends or parents or pressure from the fathers of unborn children.  The intensity of this influence ranges from mere suggestions, to heavy-handed threats and ultimatums, to outright coercion.

Millions of women need to know that in Jesus Christ, and through the power of His cleansing blood, there is grace, forgiveness, healing, and freedom to be found from the guilt of the past.

“But, elective abortion is murder!”  I know it is.  However, murder is precisely what King David did to Uriah after his sexual sin with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba.  Yet, David found grace, forgiveness, and restoration in his relationship with God.  3,000 years later, we are still reading and meditating upon the lyrics of David’s poetic songs of praise, lament, penitence, and thanksgiving.

Murder is what Saul of Tarsus, whom we know as our beloved apostle Paul, did to countless first century Christian men and women.  But, he was washed, he was justified, he was sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God (I Corinthians 6:11).

“Well, I don’t know anyone who has had an abortion.”  Yes, you do!  You just don’t know who they are.  It’s a friend of yours, a classmate, a co-worker at your office, a neighbor, a family member, or someone in your church family.  It is someone who desperately needs to know that healing and wholeness can be found in Jesus Christ.

In 2008, I went through three weeks of intensive, day-patient counseling to address some serious issues of depression, emotional dysfunction, and emotional and spiritual exhaustion.  One of the therapeutic practices in the program involved being asked to write on subjects in which the counselors perceived that there was unresolved emotional baggage.  We were then asked to read those completed assignments in a group counseling setting.  A major emotional breakthrough came for me two weeks into the program when I was asked to write about my son Coleman’s birth, diagnosis, condition, and prognosis.  I had processed these things cognitively 15 years earlier, but had never allowed myself to face them emotionally.

One of the most gut-wrenching things I have ever experienced was listening to another member of my counseling group read letters that she had written to each of the five children she had aborted earlier in her life.  Her letters were raw, honest, and incredibly powerful.  In the letters, she explained to her children (and to us) what was going on in her life and in her mind at the time, why she did what she did, how she regretted her decisions, and how she longed to see them, meet them, and embrace them when she got to heaven.  The rest of us cried along with her as she tearfully worked through this cathartic process of acknowledging past guilt and embracing present grace and forgiveness.

Even when “right” on the principle of an issue, Christians can be, and very often are, extremely judgmental, cold and calloused, self-righteous, and hypocritical in our fixation on and demonization of a single moral issue.  Worse still, if we allow the abortion debate to be reduced to a plank in the platform of a political party, no room at all remains for grace or mercy.  If I view someone first and foremost as a political enemy on the wrong side of an “issue,” it becomes nearly impossible for me to effectively influence them as a Christian friend.

We don’t have to surrender an inch of moral ground or compromise a single conviction regarding abortion, but we can do much better, we must do much better, in communicating that truth with grace.

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