When a musical instrument’s strings go loose,
it sounds awful.

But you can also overtighten the strings, breaking
them or creating discord.

There’s a perfect tension to grace
and truth, which makes the gospel’s music.

The devil doesn’t care which side of
the horse we fall off of—as long as
we don’t stay in the saddle.
We need to ride the horse with one
foot in the stirrup of truth,
the other in the stirrup of grace.

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
Susan asks Mr. and Mrs. Beaver
about Aslan the Lion:

“Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about
meeting a lion.” “That you will dearie, and no mistake,”
said Mrs. Beaver.

“If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or just plain silly.”

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you?
Who said anything about safe?
Of course he isn’t safe.
But he’s good.
He’s the King, I tell you.”

Christ is good.

But until we understand that He’s not “safe,” until we come to grips with the truth of His uncompromising holiness, we’ll never begin to grasp His grace.

Many today try to reinvent Jesus,
giving Him a facelift.

They spin His statements for public consumption, making Him fit popular notions of the kind of Christ people want.

But Jesus is notoriously uncooperative with all attempts to repackage and market Him.

He’s not looking for image-enhancers.

We’re to follow Him as servants,
not walk in front of Him as a PR entourage.

When Jesus walked this earth,
many people didn’t recognize Him.

They were looking for the Messiah
as a powerful lion, bringing judgment on His enemies.

But they overlooked the passages showing Him coming as a lamb:

He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

ISAIAH 53: 7

The lamb appears

“looking as if it had been slain”

Revelation 5: 6

This seems a picture of weakness.
But suddenly men are hiding themselves from the

“wrath of the Lamb”

Rev. 6: 16

“They will make war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will overcome them because

He is Lord of lords and King of kings”

Rev. 17: 14

At the end of
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,
the children see a bright white lamb, speaking in a “sweet milky voice.”

As they talk, suddenly

“his snowy white flushed into tawny gold and his size changed and he was Aslan himself, towering above them
and scattering light from his mane.”

The lamb of grace is the lion of truth.

Sometimes we see Him as one, sometimes the other.

Always He is both.

GRACE & TRUTH

Selected