Grace Already Proclaimed at Sinai

Some verses are quoted so often that we stop hearing them, and John 1:17 is one of them. The claim built on it is simple. “John sets two men side by side, and two ages with them. Moses brought the law. Yeshua brought grace. The time of law and the time of grace are different, and we live in the second.”

Some English Bibles, the King James among them, print a “but” in the middle: the law came through Moses, but grace came through Yeshua. The King James itself sets that “but” in a different type, its sign for a word the translators supplied. Read that way, the verse sounds like a contrast, with law on one side and grace on the other.

What John actually wrote, and the verse just before it, tell a different story.

Grace Upon Grace

John 1:16-17 For of His fullness we have all received, and charis χάρις khar'-ece(grace) upon charis(grace). For the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) was given through Moses; charis(grace) and aletheia ἀλήθεια al-ay'-thi-a(truth) were realized through Yeshua Messiah.

Verse 16 comes first: “For of His fullness we have all received, and charis(grace) upon charis(grace).” It is one grace laid on top of another.

Verse 17 begins with “For,” and so it gives the reason for verse 16. We speak of grace upon grace because the nomos (νόμος) was given through Moses, and grace and truth were realized through Yeshua Messiah.

In the Greek there is no “but” between the two halves of verse 17, and nothing in the sentence sets them against each other. They stand side by side, and verse 16 has already told us how to read them: as grace upon grace. The law given through Moses was a gift. Then, on top of that gift, came the grace and truth realized through the Messiah.

Think of a man who writes letters to a family over many years. They have never met him, but they know him from his letters. They know how he speaks, what he cares about, and what he has promised. Then one day he comes to their door, and they see his face and hear his voice.

The visit does not cancel the letters. He is the very man the letters were describing. No one throws them away because he has arrived. The family finds that everything they read was true, and now they see it with their own eyes.

A Name Heard on the Mountain

The phrase “grace and truth” did not begin with John, and its origin changes how the verse sounds. It comes from the Torah, and John points there himself: in the same passage he says “we saw His glory” (John 1:14) and names Moses (John 1:17). It is part of the name of God that Moses heard on Mount Sinai.

Exodus 34:6 And the LORD passed by before his face, and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD, God, merciful and gracious, long of nostrils, and abundant in lovingkindness and truth,

The LORD passed by before Moses and proclaimed His own name: “merciful and gracious, long of nostrils, and abundant in lovingkindness and truth.”

The moment at which this happened matters. Moses had broken the first tablets after the golden calf. Now the LORD told him, “Hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first ones, and I will write upon the tablets the words that were upon the first tablets” (Exodus 34:1). Moses went up the mountain carrying those two blank stones, and it was there, while the Torah was being given a second time, that the LORD proclaimed His name: lovingkindness and truth. Before the chapter ends, the tablets carry “the words of the covenant (berit בְּרִית ber-eeth'), the ten words” (Exodus 34:28).

The name “grace and truth,” then, was not spoken in place of the Torah. It was spoken over the Torah, on the day the tablets were written again.

In Hebrew, “lovingkindness and truth” is chesed חֶסֶד kheh'-sed and emet אֱמֶת eh'-meth. Chesed is goodness, kindness, faithful love. Emet is firmness, faithfulness, truth. Chesed and emet are grace and truth.

When John writes that grace and truth were realized through Yeshua Messiah, he is not introducing something Moses never knew. He is pointing back to the very mountain where the Torah was given, and to the name Moses heard there. The God who proclaimed Himself “abundant in lovingkindness and truth” to Moses has now come before our eyes in Yeshua.

John is not setting the law of Moses against the grace of Yeshua. He is saying that the God of Sinai, whose name is grace and truth, has been seen.

What Yeshua Said About Moses

If John meant to set Moses and Yeshua against each other, we would expect to find Yeshua doing the same later in John’s Gospel. Instead we find the opposite.

John 7:19 Did not Moses give you the nomos(law), and yet none of you carries out the nomos(law)? Why do you seek to kill Me?"

Yeshua does not say that Moses gave the law and that its time is now over. He rebukes His hearers for not keeping it: “none of you carries out the nomos(law).” The problem He names is not that they are still under Moses. It is that they are not doing what Moses gave.

Earlier in the same Gospel He says, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me” (John 5:46). To Yeshua, Moses is not a rival standing on the far side of a line. Moses is a witness, and believing Moses leads to believing Yeshua. If His hearers do not believe what Moses wrote, Yeshua asks, how will they believe His words?

These are not the words of someone who came to end the age of Moses. They are the words of the One about whom Moses wrote.

The Torah Is Truth

One more verse closes the circle. John says that truth was realized through Yeshua, and the psalmist says this:

Psalm 119:142 Your righteousness is righteousness forever, and your Torah is truth.

In the words “your Torah is truth,” the Hebrew word for truth is emet, the same word Moses heard on the mountain.

The Torah is truth, and truth came through Yeshua. These are not two different ages, one with truth and one without it. They are two steps of the same truth. The truth written in the Torah is the truth that was seen in the Messiah.

Read as it stands, then, the verse is true and wonderful. The law was given through Moses, and grace and truth were realized through Yeshua Messiah. The God who wrote the Torah and proclaimed His name on Sinai is the God whose grace and truth stood among us in His Son. That is grace upon grace, not grace instead of law.