Paul's Apprentice

At Christmas, attention is often given to atmosphere: lights in dark streets, familiar music, generosity, and a vague sense that this is a time for goodwill. Yet beneath the cultural layers lies a striking claim made by one of Jesus’ closest companions. Reflecting years later on the life he had witnessed, John wrote: “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” It is an unusual thing to say about a person—and worth pausing over, whether one is religious or not.

John was not suggesting that laws, moral frameworks, or traditions are unnecessary. Societies depend on them. In the Jewish world John inhabited, the Law was rooted in a powerful vision of human dignity: that people are not commodities or obstacles, but bear inherent worth. Ideally, such a vision would produce communities marked by mutual honour, restraint, and care. Where people are truly seen as valuable, rules fade into the background.

But John had also seen how easily moral systems can be hollowed out. When filtered through pride or fear, even good laws become tools for comparison and control. Truth turns into a blunt instrument; grace is dismissed as softness. Authority becomes distant or harsh. The result is not moral clarity, but moral exhaustion—and often, quiet dehumanisation.

What John believed he encountered in Jesus was something different: not a new rulebook, but a way of being human in which grace and truth appeared together, naturally and consistently. Jesus spoke honestly without humiliating, showed compassion without denial, and confronted wrongdoing without contempt. For John, this was not an abstract idea but a lived reality—something he watched unfold in ordinary conversations, in moments of failure, and in encounters with those society had little patience for.

This is why Christmas matters in John’s telling of the story. It marks the moment when grace and truth, long discussed and long debated, came to dwell among us. Not as concepts, but as a life lived in full view. Whether one interprets this theologically or historically, the claim itself is extraordinary: that in a particular human life, the best qualities we hope for—honesty without cruelty, kindness without illusion—were finally held together.

Seen this way, Christmas is not only a celebration for believers. It is an invitation for anyone to consider what it would mean if grace and truth truly could live side by side—and what it might look like to let them take root in our own lives. If such a way of living has once been embodied, then it is not merely something to admire once a year, but something worth imitating: in how we speak to one another, how we judge, how we forgive, and how we choose to live with those around us.