James Meehan - The Secret to Loving Others With Truth
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We are gonna talk about one of the most difficult concepts for people to wrap their minds around, Christians included, when it comes to the nature of God. And the reason why this idea is so important is because when we get it right, it will deepen our faith in God, and it will strengthen our relationship with others. That’s why we’re talking about what we’re talking about. Before we do, I need to see from you, show of hands, how many of you have ever experienced friction, tension, or conflict in a relationship? Show of hands. Yep, so pretty much all of us, right? Because relationships can be very complicated and messy.
Maybe for you, the friction that you experienced was you getting permission from your parents to do something that you really wanted to do until, unexpectedly, they changed their minds and you had to cancel those plans. Maybe for you, the conflict happened with a friend where you and they disagreed about something that really matters to you, and that conversation didn’t go well. And ever since then, your friendship has not been the same. Maybe for you, the conflict is actually with a person that you are dating, like you’re in a romantic relationship, and up until recently, things were going really well, but now recently, you’re finding yourself being tempted to compromise on your values. And this is creating a lot of stress for you because you don’t want to compromise on your values, but at the same time, you’re afraid if you tell the other person how you really feel, that it will damage your relationship, and so you’re not sure if you should say anything at all.
Relationships can be messy and complicated. And the problem for most of us is that when they get complicated, we default to one of two approaches, either we turn into a jerk who demands our way and pays little attention to the feelings of the other person, or on the flip side, we become a pushover who is so committed to not upsetting the other person that we just let them walk all over us. And if you have ever attempted either of those two approaches, you know that it does not go well. That’s why this message really matters, because Jesus wants to show us a better way. Jesus wants to show us how to tell the truth without being a jerk and how to extend grace without being a pushover. Jesus is the Son of God and savior king who died and rose again to rescue us from sin. He is the lamb who was slain and He is the lion who rose.
And in the opening words of John’s gospel, his account of Jesus' life, His ministry, His death and resurrection, John tells us this about Jesus, that the Word, that’s Jesus, became flesh, He became a human being, and He made His dwelling among us. And we have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full love, grace, and truth. Full of grace and truth. Jesus, the savior king and Son of God, who is perfect love personified, is the living embodiment of grace and truth, both at the same time, all of the time. This matters. Because what is grace? Grace is the unearned and the undeserved kindness of God. It is something that we do not deserve. It is something that we cannot earn. It is a gift from God because He loves us no matter what.
And truth, truth is the way things really are. It is that which is consistent with reality. Truth is objective, it is unchanging, it is anchored in the very nature of God who created and sustains all things, and Jesus came full of grace and truth. Now, for most of us, we tend to think of grace and truth as almost like two opposite ends of the spectrum. Like there’s grace on one side and then there is truth on the other. And depending on how you were raised, depending on how you’re wired, depending on how you feel in the moment, you’ll often feel tempted to pick one or the other. But if you only pick one, it very rarely works. And only picking one is not actually how it works.
As a matter of fact, I wanna show you I think a better picture of how it works in our relationships, that we, at all times, have to choose grace or truth or grace and truth. Now, if you do grace without truth, you would probably fall in this square up here. And I would affectionately call you a pushover. If you do truth without grace, you’re over there in the bottom right, and I would affectionately call you a jerk. If you don’t do either, hopefully this is none of you, but that kind of sounds like the devil. But if we can learn to do both, if we can navigate our relationships with grace and truth, then we will find ourselves starting to love like Jesus.
And so what I wanna do is I wanna walk through a passage of Scripture where we see Jesus put grace and truth on full display. We’re gonna look at a passage of Scripture found in Matthew 9 where Matthew, a guy who was a tax collector for Rome, is called to become a disciple of Jesus. So here is what we read in Matthew 9. We are told that as Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew and he was sitting at the tax collector’s booth. Matthew was sitting at the tax collector’s booth. Why? Because he was a tax collector.
Here’s what’s important. Jesus had the grace to meet Matthew right where he was. Jesus didn’t wait for Matthew to leave the tax collector’s booth and show up to church to meet him. He went right where he was. And Jesus said, follow me. And Matthew got up and followed Jesus. With grace, Jesus will meet you right where you are, and with truth, He will call you to more, just like He did with Matthew. Now, Matthew is so excited that he invites Jesus and a whole bunch of his friends over for dinner. And we are told that while Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with Him and His disciples.
Now, what’s super interesting about Jesus' day is that there were like two categories of people you don’t want to be associated with. There were the sinners, which is basically everybody, and then there were the tax collectors, which were the people that were considered so awful that not even sinners wanted to be associated with them. So you have sinners and then you have tax collectors, and that’s who Jesus called. And it was all of these people that Jesus was having dinner with. Now because of this, there’s another group of people, the Pharisees, when they saw this, they asked Jesus' disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?
Now, this is like a pretty normal question to ask. If Jesus is a holy man, if He is a faithful follower of God, then why is He associating with sinners and people who are worse than sinners? Because like by eating with them, it kind of makes it seem like Jesus accepts them and possibly even approves of their behavior. And Jesus, they’re tax collectors and they are sinners. And so naturally, the spiritual elites, the Pharisees, are really uncomfortable with this, because grace is uncomfortable. It is scandalous because grace is unearned and it is undeserved. God’s grace is for the people who do not deserve it, who should not get it.
That’s why it’s called grace. And the thing that I want you to understand is that you cannot outsin God’s grace. No matter what you’ve done, no matter the mistakes that you have made, even if you think you are the worst of the worst, God’s grace is for you. And Jesus wants you to be His because He loves you. And with grace, He will meet you right where you are. And with truth, He will call you to more.
Now, we see a lot of grace here, but in this next section, this is where we see that the grace of Jesus is never without truth. On hearing this, Jesus said it’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Jesus isn’t trying to pretend like the sinners and tax collectors are healthy. He recognizes that they are sick, they have been infected by a disease of selfishness called sin. But Jesus wants the leaders of their faith to go and learn that what God desires is not just sacrifices made at the temple, but mercy offered to people, for Jesus has not come to call the righteous, but sinners. He came for sinners. He’s not pretending that they are not scumbags. He readily admits it.
And he says, that’s why I’m having dinner with them. And if you really knew the heart of God, then you would pull up a chair at the table and you would be here too. The thing about Jesus is that He had grace for sinners and tax collectors. And He brought truth to sinners and tax collectors. And he did the exact same thing for the religious leaders. You see, the Pharisees who we just saw and talked a little bit about actually got to watch Jesus during His three years of ministry doing all the stuff that Jesus did. They got to hear Him talk about the kingdom of God and extend the kindness of God to the people that did not deserve it. They watched him do miracle after miracle after miracle, and they heard Him call them to also be His disciples, but they constantly refused. They didn’t wanna have anything to do with Jesus because they did not like the way that Jesus did things.
And so after three years of ministry, near the end of His life, in the last week of his life in the city of Jerusalem, Jesus gives the Pharisees some very hard truth, because He recognized that if they continued down the path they were going, the consequences would be severe. And so what we’re gonna do is we’re going to jump ahead just a little bit in Matthew’s gospel to Matthew 23. And what we’re gonna see is a whole lot of truth, but also some grace. So this is Matthew 23. We’re gonna start in verse 15. And we’re gonna read what are called some of the woes, the warnings that Jesus gave to the religious leaders. Starting in verse 15. Jesus Says, «Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You travel over land and see to win a single convert. And when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are».
No punches being pulled here. Jesus is going for the jugular. But here’s the thing, it’s true. What He’s saying is factual. The way that the Pharisees were doing their religion was turning people away from God and not bringing them to God. If we keep going, Jesus continues. He says, «Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, you are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside, you appear as righteous, but on the inside, you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness».
If you follow Jesus, it’s possible for you to be full of grace and truth. But if you follow the path of the religious leaders, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will be full of hypocrisy and wickedness. This is why Jesus is warning them so emphatically, because he knows the consequences of their decisions are ruining them and hurting others. Now, whole lot of truth there. But I promise you, there is grace. At the end of these seven woes, Jesus says, you snakes, still truth, you brood of vipers, very true. But this is important. He says, how will you escape being condemned to hell? And then he says, therefore, how will you escape the fate that you have chosen?
This is the answer. Jesus says, therefore, I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. I am sending you people who are going to tell you that what you’re doing is wrong so that you can change your ways and do what is right. Some of them you will kill and crucify. Others, you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. When Jesus says, some of them you will kill and crucify, He was talking about Himself. The grace in this passage is that Jesus cared enough about the Pharisees to tell them the truth, even though it would cost Him His own life. He cared enough about them to warn them one last time, you are about to drive off the edge of the cliff, turn around. He cared so deeply that their decisions would cost Him His life and them their eternity. That He said these words that got Him killed. Not because they deserved it, not because they earned it, but because He loves that much.
Quick example, a few weeks ago, I was watching two of my nephews, they’re two-years-old and three-years-old, and they were taking turns jumping off the couch onto the floor, and they were having a blast. It was super fun. Until my 11-month-old daughter crawls right in front of where they are jumping. And as she is sitting there on the floor, looking up at them with this big old smile on her face, 'cause she thinks this is the funniest thing ever, my three-year-old nephew prepares to leap. And I look at him and say, hey, don’t jump on baby Micah. You’re gonna hurt her. And then he looks at me with the defiance that only a three-year-old can muster. And then he looks at her and his arms go back a little further. His legs bend a little more. And that child of God gets ready to jump.
And so you better believe as he goes into the air, I lunge forward, grab him, catch him, sit him on the couch next to me and say, now, I told you don’t do that. And if you did, you were gonna hurt baby Micah. You chose to do it anyways. So now you have to sit here next to me for a few minutes while everybody else plays. And he was so not having it. He began screaming at the top of his lungs, you are hurting me. And if you’re wondering, I was not hurting him, was barely even touching the kid. But he did not like the fact that there were consequences for his actions. And to him, it felt very unloving. But I promise you that my actions were motivated by love for him and for my daughter, because I love my daughter enough to protect her from harm, and I love my nephew enough to help him understand that his actions have consequences. They can hurt others and himself. And if he doesn’t think about what he’s gonna do before he jumps, his jump might cost him and somebody else.
Why do I tell you all of that? Because the truth that Jesus brought to the Pharisees probably did not feel very loving, because sometimes, the truth hurts. But if Jesus is who He said He was, then we can be confident that every time He brings truth, that there is also grace. That at any point the Pharisees could have heard what He said, taken it seriously, turned their lives around and experienced heaven rather than continuing down the highway to hell. But they were the ones that had to make the choice. And in his kindness, Jesus wanted to make it as clear as possible what would happen if they did not change even when it cost Him His own life. Because with grace, Jesus will meet us right where we are. And with truth, He will always call us to more.
So what does that look like for us? Like how do we, as followers of Jesus, take all of that and apply it to our lives in a way that can help us be like Jesus, not like the devil? Ephesians 4:15 tells us this, that when we speak the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the head that is Christ, that is Jesus. When we do what Jesus does, we become like Him. So the way that we become like Jesus is by loving with grace and truth. Like when we actually do our best to bring grace and truth into every conversation, every situation, every relationship, we become more like Jesus. Why? Because when you do what Jesus does, when you do what Jesus did, you will become more like Him.
And that’s kind of how a lot of things work. Like if you want to be good at anything, you actually have to do the thing. You have to practice the sport. You have to spend time on the instrument. You have to get out your colored pencils and draw. If you want to get better, you have to practice. And we practice becoming like Jesus by doing our best to love with grace and truth. I wanna show you the graph one more time from earlier. Because for most of us, either based on how we were raised, how we’re wired or how we feel, we will tend to either lean on truth without grace and be a jerk, or grace without truth and become a pushover. But Jesus is calling us to more, to loving the way that He does, full of grace and truth.
And so what we’re gonna do when we get to our switch groups in just a little bit is we’re gonna ask and answer two big questions. For you, what comes more naturally? Is it grace or is it truth? Like where do you most often find yourself in difficult situations? And then what do you need to grow in more? Is it grace or truth? Because until we acknowledge reality, until we recognize our own tendencies, we’re gonna have a really hard time identifying the steps that we need to take to become more like Jesus.
So as honestly as you’re able to, talk about it with your switch group. And if other people in your group have a tendency that is different than yours, ask them for advice. Like ask them to help you to grow in that area. Because for all of us, like when we get this right, when we learn how to love like Jesus with grace and truth, it’s going to help us better understand the love that God has for us that is full of grace and truth. It’s gonna help us have stronger relationships with other people because instead of being a bunch of jerks and pushovers, we will act like Christians full of grace and truth.
And another reason that this matters is because there is nothing more evangelistic, there is nothing more attractive to people who do not know Jesus than the person of Jesus and people who have been changed by Jesus. And if we continue to walk around as a bunch of jerks and pushovers, we will not be attracting people to the God who is full of grace and truth, who wants to meet them where they are and call them to more so they can experience life with Him. Life more abundant and just around the corner is the greatest invite opportunity we have.
Easter weekend is coming. It is the day that we celebrate as Christians around the globe that Jesus did what no man has ever done. He predicted his own death and resurrection, and He pulled it off, because on the third day, when everybody expected Him to stay dead, He walked out of His own tomb leaving sin and death behind Him. And on that weekend, there will be people who show up to church because some of you invite them. And they will say yes to that invitation because they have experienced the love of God through you, because of the way that you loved them with grace and with truth. So let us become people of Jesus, people like Jesus, people who follow Jesus, who are, by the power of His spirit, becoming more and more full of grace and truth.
Lord Jesus, we come before you right now, so grateful for the grace and truth that you have already shown to us. I pray that every single one of us would recognize that sometimes your truth does not feel good, but it always is good, because it is intended to draw us closer to you and to help us love others the same way that you have loved us. And so I pray that you would help us recognize just how deep and wide and vast your love is, and that we would receive your grace in a new way. For all of this in your name, amen and amen.