All of Grace

Part 1

Titus 2:11-14

February 12, 2006

 

Grace is no new subject to anyone that has been around Christian worship and teaching. Hymns and choruses extol the wonders of grace. Even avowed pagans likely know the first stanza of "Amazing Grace." Prayers cry out for grace. Teaching and preaching discusses and extols grace. Yet, though familiar with grace, many in Christian churches do not understand or depend upon the grace of God.

 

The tendency is to separate grace from its source, to impersonalize it as though a tonic offered only in times of the most desperate need. Others consider grace a right to demand rather than a gift from God's benevolence. Some mention grace but perceive it as works. Many pray for grace but for the purpose of continuing in the same sinful pursuits rather than grace to know and love the living God.

 

One of the cries of the Reformation was sola gratia-grace alone. The deep conviction arose from study of God's Word that what most had believed concerning the Christian faith missed the teaching of Scripture. Grace, in the thinking of the typical man, was something added to your life if you didn't have enough of your own works or the merit of the saints to receive God's favor. Grace was extra and often unnecessary. Frankly, many still cling to this faulty premise even while using the language of grace in their liturgy and worship.

 

But the Scripture makes clear the centrality of God's grace. The Christian life from start to finish is impossible without the grace of God. God's grace applied is effective, doing what the flesh can never accomplish. Why do we need the grace of God? What does the grace of God accomplish in the believer?

 

We must keep in mind that the Epistle to Titus is a letter. There were no chapter or verse divisions in the original letter. Paul had one grand compelling message to deliver to Titus, and that was to paint a picture of the grace of God demonstrated in the gospel for the whole of life. Titus could appoint elders in Crete because they had been transformed by God's grace. The gracelessness of false professors of Christianity among the Cretans would be obvious by what was lacking in their character and works. Receiving the gospel of Christ did not put the believer into a neutral state so that it mattered not how he lived in relationship to family, church, and society. The gospel affects everything, so Paul could call upon Titus to exhort the older and younger generations of Cretan believers as well as those living as bondslaves, to live in God's grace manifested in the gospel.

 

Yet it had to be somewhat overwhelming for the Cretan believers to hear how they were to live now that they were Christians. They did not grow up in a culture that valued holiness or godly character or a Christian worldview or nurturing home life. The gospel called upon these believers to live contrary to what previous generations had exemplified and passed along. Their behavior would stand out with radiant distinction as they lived out the gospel. But how would they be able to live like Christians with such pathetic backgrounds? The same kind of question is asked in our day. How can someone who had no biblical instruction as a child and who saw nothing but godlessness modeled in his early years live as a Christian? This is where Paul answers clearly: the grace of God.

 

I. Grace interposes

 

The sentence in the Greek begins with the verb "has appeared." Used often in the New Testament and in Greek literature, the word and its derivatives imply that something has been made clear or made known that was previously unknown. It carries the idea of "to appear suddenly" as though that which was heretofore invisible is now, in a moment of time, brought into sight. Greeks used the term to speak of a troubling situation, such as a dire military crisis, when suddenly the triumphant general appeared and brought victory and deliverance. It was also used of the sudden dawning of light in the midst of darkness [Cleon Rogers, LEKGNT, 510].

 

Paul has set forth in vv. 2-10 the character and behavior that must correspond with the Christians in Crete. Then he connects that picture of Christian living with the only means of doing it. "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men." That which was not known before; that which was not visible; that which was not understood, by the merciful action of God has suddenly appeared. The passive voice of the verb identifies the appearance of grace as God's doing alone. But what does this grace look like? How does it function?

 

1. Uniqueness of God's grace

 

We sometimes speak of common grace being available to all men. That refers to the Sovereign Lord sustaining humanity, providing us air to breathe, food to eat, economies to create jobs, and all of the things that sustain our lives. These things do not come about because men deserve it or make it happen. God, by His own mercy and kindness toward the rebellious human race, provides for all. He causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. That is common grace. It refers to God's benevolent action in providing daily necessities for humanity. Whenever He withdraws that common grace, then men perish.

 

But Paul is speaking of something that is not common to all. Rather he speaks of a unique grace; one that all do not know or experience in the same manner. It is a grace not present in the same manner or to the same extent or with the same magnitude as has been shown before, so that the Apostle could speak of it as that which "has appeared," or suddenly come on the scene through divine action. What is this "grace of God"? It is often defined as "God's unmerited favor." That is correct but we typically think of favor as an attitude or frame of mind. Grace begins with such a disposition in the being of God but goes further. God is so disposed with favor toward particular people that He acts on their behalf for their eternal good to provide what they could never achieve in their own abilities or strength. As we read this text it is easy to see that the grace Paul speaks of is active in particular ways. This "grace of God" brings salvation, instructs, spurs anticipation, redeems, and purifies (vv. 11-14). Whatever this grace of God might be, it is not natural to men in general. It is not part-and-parcel with the human race. It is not something to be claimed. There is no right to it. It's grace! Grace is a gift given by God out of His own good pleasure with nothing in the recipient motivating His action. God does not foresee certain excellent qualities or wise decisions in us, and thus decides that in light of such wonderful prospects, He will give us a little boost to complete what is lacking in us!

 

Why do we need the grace of God? Multitudes tend to get along without such grace, at least on the surface. So why is this grace necessary? Notice the uniqueness of this grace: "for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men." The specific work of "the grace of God" that Paul has in mind involves "salvation." He uses a word that refers to deliverance from a condition or plight by the action of another. Paul's use in this sense is that God brings "salvation" to needy, desperate people. Well, that is offensive to our natural minds! To imagine that God should think that something is wrong with us that necessitates Him alone acting on our behalf insults us! But consider that the grace of God is necessary because we lack something vital. That brings us to the basic human need. What we lack is righteousness. What we possess is sinfulness. Paul states it clearly to the Romans: "there is none righteous, not even one" (Rom. 3:10). "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). Yet righteousness is necessary to fulfill God's just law that He requires of His creation. Apart from complete righteousness no one can enter into relationship with God. The scribes and Pharisees of our Lord's day were the most exacting in their adherence to the moral law, yet Jesus declared, "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:20). The Psalmist asked, "O Lord, who may abide in Your tent? Who may dwell on Your holy hill?" His reply indicts all of us:

He who walks with integrity, and works righteousness, and speaks truth in his heart. He does not slander with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend; in whose eyes a reprobate is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord; he swears to his own hurt and does not change; he does not put out his money at interest, nor does he take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be shaken (Psalm 15).


But who can say that he does these things? Maybe occasionally we do what is right, and then we are filled with pride at what we've done, and sin still more! Paul described it in this same epistle like this, including himself in the description: "For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another" (Titus 3:4-5). That's what we were, in an absolutely desperate plight. Then came, the grace of God: "But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us." There's the same word! Salvation was foreign to us-impossible to us in light of our sinfulness, yet then God appeared with kindness and grace. Suddenly, apart from our doing, God came to us in grace to save us from our sin and eternal judgment.

 

"Salvation" is a strong term. The recipient is desperate and incapable of delivering himself. His need is for a strong Deliverer-a Redeemer that will rescue him from certain destruction. In our desperation-without even knowing our desperation-God came to us in grace. Here is the wonder of it: God gives saving grace to those that can do absolutely nothing for Him; He gives grace even though we can never repay His kindness.

 

2. Identity of God's grace

 

So far, it seems that grace is a special quality that God has and dispenses at His pleasure. In one sense, that is true, yet in a much more significant sense, "the grace of God" can only be understood by seeing the manifestation of God's kindness in His Son. Jesus Christ personifies "the grace of God." How can we know this? Notice that once this particular grace appeared, it brought salvation to all men. Salvation did not take place by divine declaration but by divine invasion! Grace came suddenly-not in a warm, divine emotion, but in the person of God's own Son; for it is not God's warm thoughts toward us that brought us salvation but instead, it is His Son who did so. That's why, as this text unfolds, it points to "the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds." We'll consider this passage more next week (D.V.), but we must see that the whole logic of the passage in unfolding divine grace points to grace's manifestation in Jesus Christ and His redemptive work. Paul goes to great lengths to declare how this "grace of God appeared, bringing salvation to all men." It came only through "our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus," and not simply by His entry into the human race in the Incarnation, but because "He gave Himself for us to redeem us." The grace of God that the apostle explains has very distinct parameters. It is the grace declared in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

 

Grace came definitely and solitarily in Jesus Christ. William Mounce rightly calls the grace of God "a one-word summary of God's saving act in Christ, given freely to sinners who believe" [WBC: Pastoral Epistles, 422]. The implication of the verb, "has appeared," is not that this grace needs to keep re-appearing. He's pointing to something already accomplished. The grace of God appeared when Jesus Christ came to accomplish the work of redeeming a people for Himself through His death and resurrection. He speaks of the grace displayed in the gospel. The writer of Hebrews uses different language to express the same truth: "By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ [i.e. at the cross to atone for our sins] once for all," so it is an unrepeatable event (Heb. 10:10). "For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified," again, one particular Person-Jesus Christ, and one particular event-His work of redemption, secured forever those whom He would redeem (Heb. 10:14). So when Paul speaks in this case of "the grace of God," he refers particularly to the embodiment and manifestation of this grace in Christ.

 

3. Scope of God's grace

 

We know from studying numerous passages that the Jews, for the most part, failed to see the universality of God's grace to all mankind. Many among them thought that God was for them and His judgment for everyone else! But Paul insists that God's grace knows no geographical, racial, geo-political, tribal, linguistic, or cultural boundary! "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men." The apostle is not teaching universalism� the belief that Christ's death actually provided salvation for all humanity. Nor does it imply that Christ's death potentially saved all humanity. Instead, the thrust is to show the extent of the power of the gospel to reach men from "every tongue, tribe, people, and nation" (Rev. 5:9). "All men," as William Mounce explains, "has the force of "all groups of people," referring specifically to the slaves in vv. 9-10" [422]. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the extraordinary 19th century London pastor, put it like this: "it is very rarely that "all" means all persons, taken individually. The words are generally used to signify that Christ has redeemed some of all sorts-some Jews, some Gentiles, some rich, some poor, and has not restricted His redemption to either Jew or Gentile" [Spurgeon's Sermons on Sovereignty, 92]. He said that of numerous passages using "all" in reference to Christ's saving work.

 

In an atmosphere where bondslaves had no citizenship and no rights accorded to the rest of the Roman Empire, this statement spoke volumes! And among those in Crete that had fallen prey to the Jewish fallacy that one must become a Jew in order to have God's favor, this truth was liberating! The "all men" of our text imply the thousands of different people groups, even those that at present have no believers among them. We can bear witness to the power of the gospel to save those living in idolatry or in false religion or in the most sinful behavior. "The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men" declares that God does not come only to those who are willing to be cooperative with the gospel. On the contrary, the grace of God interposes amidst the rebelliousness of mankind with the mighty power of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. God is not constrained or compelled to bring salvation to all men since none deserve it. But by His grace He brings salvation to all men through the redemptive work of His Son.

 

II. Grace instructs

 

This grace of God that we come to know through the gospel as the story of Christ's Incarnation, sinless life, perfect obedience, God-satisfying death, and triumphant resurrection is more than a great story! As we believe in Christ, trusting in His obedience and righteousness as our own, believing that His death fully satisfied divine justice on our behalf, receiving His life as our life, then His grace continues working in us. It is never passive or neutral in terms of its impact and influence upon our lives. This is where the all-too-common decisionistic regeneration of our day has misrepresented the gospel. Many simply make a religious decision, without the grace of God affecting them. But what Paul demonstrates is that this same grace that brought us salvation brought us a full, complete salvation. It is not just entry to heaven when we die that is secured through the grace of God in the gospel. Here we see that the grace of God instructs. "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus."

 

The word "instructing" is in the present tense, so it describes an action that continues. As we believe in Christ, His gospel continues to instruct us or train us. The word carries the idea of training someone by discipline, often used of training a child. Sometime training involves information; other times it involves correction and persuasion; often it involves modeling the type of behavior being instilled. We see all of this in the gospel. We are informed about the kind of life and behavior that characterizes a Christian. But sometimes we falter in our practice, and so have to be disciplined and corrected. That involves reproof that causes pain so that we recognize our sin and begin to follow after the Lord. Every look at the gospel is not sweet! Sometimes the power of the gospel overwhelms us with stinging conviction because our behavior misrepresents the gospel. Lest we grow weary, the gospel gives us the example we need for living the Christian life, as we look to Christ as revealed in the gospel. Notice how the grace of God in the gospel trains each believer.

 

1. What to leave off

 

Everyone has patterns, habits, and practices that seem to be glued to his life and part of his personality, and yet these are sinful and displeasing to the Lord. So, the grace of God actively works in the believer, training him in what he needs "to say "No" to," as the NIV rightly translates it. "It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions" (NIV). Here's the certainly in the gospel, that grace keeps working to teach and train and discipline the desires and senses to turn from "ungodliness and worldly desires." The Greek has a small word that clarifies the purpose of grace continuing to work. I translate it as, "For the grace of God has appeared... training us so that (Gk. hina) saying "No" to ungodliness and worldly desires we might live self-disciplined and righteously and godly in the present age." The point by this demonstrative pronoun is that grace at work has a distinct purpose in teaching us to say "No" to the attitudes and practices in our lives that previously demonstrated our rebellion against Him. Grace enables you to say "No" and stand by it. The "worldly desires" refer to our enchantment with the world system opposed to God. It is characterized by fixation upon the temporal and embracing that which is antithetical to God and identified by its steady obstinacy toward God and His will. Grace teaches us to put off these things.

 

2. How to live

 

Grace in the gospel also teaches us how to live: "sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age." We've already seen the word "sensibly" several times in our previous study. It has to do with disciplining the mind to think rightly. We can call it thinking from a biblical worldview. Living in the grace of the gospel constantly re-tools your thoughts and desires; you begin to see everything about you in light of Christ and His finished work. "Righteously" focuses our attention on doing the will of God. Grace gives us to obedience so that we no longer find our delight in living for ourselves and rebelling against God's authority, but instead, in obeying Him. In living "godly in this present age," the believer realizes that all of life is to be lived unto the Lord; that as Christians, each day we present our "bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual serviced of worship" (Rom. 12:1).

 

There may be some among us that are resistant to the gospel because the idea of living as a Christian seems impossible to you. I want to clarify this for you. It is impossible apart from the constant supply of grace from God! This grace is God "at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13). I must admit, I experienced this long before I understood it theologically. In those early years as a new believer, the grace of God continually instructed me in putting off those things that had been so fond to me as an unbeliever, and teaching me to think differently and live as one that has known the mercies of the Lord.

 

3. Whom to look

 

The grace in the gospel refocuses our sight: "looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus." A new anticipation builds in the believer. Whereas before Christ, his anticipation focused on the temporal and quite often on pursuing sinful desires, but now this new anticipation begins to work in his thinking and affections. It is the happy hope of seeing Christ and the fulfillment of all that He accomplished in His redemptive work. The "great God and Savior, Christ Jesus," by the single act of dying in our place, secured forgiveness and an eternal inheritance for all that would believe. The believer now has a new longing to see Him face to face, and to appreciate at the deepest level the fullness of redemption in Christ. Seeing His "glory," the sum total of His radiant character and attributes displayed unmistakably, is the longing of the heart that transforms us from one experience of grace to another.

 

Conclusion

 

Grace works all of these things in the believer. By grace the sinner becomes conscious of his sin and separation from God. By grace the good news of Jesus Christ and His saving work becomes clear so that, by grace, he embraces Christ by faith. Grace convinces his mind and affections of the beauty and supremacy of Christ in the gospel. Grace convinces him of the infinite value of knowing Jesus Christ. Grace continually teaches and disciplines him in what he needs to say "No" to, what he needs to say "Yes" to, and in how to focus his sights on seeing the glory of Christ.

 

It's all of grace-from start to finish. That's another way of saying that it is all of God, for grace is God at work in us, showing us His kindness and love, constraining, convincing, training, correcting, instructing, enabling, strengthening until the image of His Son radiates through us.

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