‘A time for Truth and a time for Grace’ – a tool for the subversion of Truth

“I guess the problem is that I am talking about Truth, and they are talking about Grace. Maybe I should focus less on Truth and more on Grace...”

So said a Catholic whom I hold in high esteem. I’ve heard similar things from other serious Christians. I’ve also heard it applied from the other direction: “You’re talking about Truth, but I’m talking about Grace... You need a balance of Grace and Truth... Sometimes you should speak Truth, but sometimes you should speak Grace... Truth needs to give way to Grace...” and so on. This vocabulary of “Truth on the one hand, Grace on the other” seems to be a meme among young Christians. But I see one problem with it: it is a device of Satan.

It is a trick used to confuse speech and darken counsel. It is used to trap Christians who are loyal to Truth—that is, who are honest—by provoking them to guilt about whether they practice mercy.

It is simply and solely a weapon against Truth; and it is a sinister one because it exploits the tender Christian conscience about judgment and mercy. Every Christian knows there are grounds for accusing himself here, so an attack like this can strike home and turn him from his defence of Truth (in whatever conversation he’s in) to self-doubt.

The ‘Grace and Truth’ language is always used to accuse the ‘Truth’ party in defence of the ‘Grace’ party. It is not used in defence of Truth against Grace. How could it be? No one who was really defending the Truth would use it, because it concedes the whole point: that when talking about Truth, one is thereby not talking about Grace. And if that were true, wouldn’t the ‘Grace’ party, as a Christian, have a clearer conscience? wouldn’t they be less vulnerable to an attack on the grounds of neglecting Truth?

I heard it said that Grace and Truth are two sides of the same coin. They are not: Truth is the metal the coin is made of; Grace is the imprint on the coin. There is no ‘balance of Grace and Truth’, no ‘time for one and time for the other’. You always need Truth. In every action, every thought, every word of speech, Truth is essential. If you let go of Truth even a little bit, for any reason at all, to that extent you undermine whatever good you are trying to do.

In fact, Truth is the foundation of Grace. You can have Truth without Grace; but you cannot have Grace without Truth. Truth without Grace is not enough for salvation, but Grace itself when it comes forms part of the Truth. And Christians need to speak the Truth about Grace. If you aren’t loyal to Truth, then you won’t get true Grace, you’ll get comforting lies.

Here then is the real distinction in these debates: True Grace and comforting lies.

The culture we live in has abandoned Truth and therefore also abandoned Grace; it now insists that the hard corners of reality be corked with comforting lies. Christians, raised in this culture, are very vulnerable to being tricked into thinking that Grace means pretending things are what they are not; that is, that Grace means comforting lies. It does not. Grace looks at the Truth and does not blink.