God's Kindness to Sinners

Part 2

Titus 3:3-7

March 26, 2006

 

The devil vigorously opposes the sinner who would believe the gospel. He appears to do so primarily through enticement in the pursuit of various sins so that enslavement to one's lusts and pleasures blinds the sight to the gospel. He also does so through false religions so that multitudes remain deaf to the beautiful tones of the gospel of grace in Christ alone. They actively embrace another religious practice, thinking that by so doing they gain the favor of God. But perhaps more subtle than all is the danger of coming to the solitary door of the gospel and yet turning away for a more self-appealing way to God. This was the warning offered by the writer of Hebrews as he reflected on the failure of the first generation out of Egypt to enter into the rest of relationship to God through faith. "Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, anyone one of you may seem to have come short of it" (Heb. 4:1, italics added). He was speaking to church people. Just as that earlier generation failed to believe God, some in that present church stood on the brink of failing to trust in Christ alone for righteousness; and so he warned of the imminent danger of believing that the ground of their acceptance with God could be outside of Christ.

 

Can that happen to any of us? It can and it does. Rather than trusting in Christ alone for righteousness, more than we can number depend upon a decision or baptism or acts of service or strict lifestyles or their faith or any number of substitutes for the gospel of grace. They are duped into thinking that the kind of righteousness that God requires can be found outside the grace of God in Christ alone. God saves only one way, and that way is in Christ alone. But what does it mean for God to save sinners only through Christ?

 

I. Application of salvation

 

This epistle focuses on the action of Christians in the realm of the church, in relationships, and in society. Every call to action and each prescriptive for behavior, has its foundation in the gospel. So, though Titus is not an "evangelistic book" in the same fashion as the Gospels, it is thoroughly grounded in the evangel-the good news of Jesus Christ. The emphasis is not upon a person's response of faith and repentance to the gospel message but rather upon considering the wonder of the gospel as the motivation to holiness. Because the sinner has embraced Christ as revealed in the gospel, he has the call to live as a new creature in Christ.

 

Yet, having said that, nothing is more frustrating for someone in a church setting than to hear the call to action and biblical prescriptive for behavior while not truly understanding the gospel. His motivation consequently flows out of guilt or manipulation or some other kind of pressure rather than out of joy in Christ. He tries to convince himself that he is enjoying living the Christian life when in reality he grows bitter or cynical or more legalistic or just altogether quits.

 

That's one reason why the apostle explains the application of salvation. If we think that our actions or service or good deeds add to our standing with God, then our entire motivation is dead wrong. That could be due to confusion that can be clarified by studying the gospel; or it could be due to a total misunderstanding of the gospel.

 

1. By God's action

 

I grew up hearing the word "saved." I sang it in hymns: "Jesus saves! Jesus sves!" "For I'm saved! Saved! Saved!" Someone would give a testimony, speaking of that time when he was "saved." Little gospel tracts were circulated with the title, "What Must I Do to be Saved?" It's a curious term, and one that has been lampooned by those who see no danger to their spiritual condition. Yet it is a wonderful term for those that have come to terms with the gospel of Christ. The word implies deliverance or rescue from peril. When used biblically, it refers to deliverance from the guilt and power of sin, deliverance from the judgment of God, and deliverance from bondage to the devil and the world. But who does the saving? That's where our text makes it crystal clear: "But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy...."

 

Here is the great emphasis of the Bible: God alone saves. It doesn't take a trained theologian to figure this out! Just look at the plight of humanity. Paul describes it, "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." Bound up in our hearts is the capacity for committing any kind of sin. The four present participles (deceived, enslaved, spending, hating) of this verse demonstrate the ongoing activity of sin in all of us. Certain restraints upon us may curtail the outward actions. Fear of parental displeasure or punishment may hold us back, as do the mores of society and acceptance by particular people and the pangs of conscience. But the disposition to sin is there; and not just a little sin-a lifestyle of sin and self-centered behavior in defiance of God.

 

In the midst of this desperate plight "He saved us." Never do we find even a hint that once God sees that we are doing our best to change our sinful ways and to behave more in keeping with His commands that He feels compelled to help us out! He finds us in our sin. He confronts us in our rebellion against Him. Out of His kindness and mercy He acts on our behalf to deliver us from ourselves and the certain eternal ruin that we deserve. No merit on our part moves God to action. The apostle makes sure that we understand that His saving work occurs "not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy." Augustus Toplady expressed this well.

A debtor to mercy alone, of covenant mercy I sing;
Nor fear, with Thy righteousness on, my person and off'ring to bring.
The terrors of law and of God with me can have nothing to do;
My Savior's obedience and blood hide all my transgressions from view.


2. Through changing the disposition

 

But immediately we recognize a problem. What if I don't want to be saved? I'm enjoying my sin and inclined to continue with my sinful pursuits. Will God intrude upon my desires and trample upon my will by saving me? Will He dare to exercise His sovereign power over me to deliver me from my spiritual darkness and my love for sin? Indeed, that's why Toplady sang, "A debtor to mercy alone!" "He saved us," Paul wrote, God took saving action "not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness," so that His action came without any motivation on our part and prior to any desire on our part. If we are dead in our trespasses and sins, and darkened in our understanding and excluded from the life of God because of our ignorance and hardness of heart as Paul explained to the Ephesians (2:1; 4:17-19), then it is obvious that we will not have a desire to be saved apart from God's merciful action. So how does God do that? The apostle explains, "He saved us... according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit."

 

If the inward disposition of the heart is inclined toward sin and rebellion, "dead in trespasses and sins," then in order for anyone to be saved that inward disposition must be changed. Though hearing the call to repentance and faith in Christ over and over, apart from the heart being inclined to God and fellowship with Him, the call of the gospel will go unheeded. Can a dead man change his disposition? Neither can one dead in trespasses and sins. A dead man cannot be coaxed into doing anything! As Jeremiah wrote, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil" (Jer. 13:23). Here is God's kindness and love displayed! He regenerates the lifeless heart by the Holy Spirit. He accomplishes in us what we have no power to do. The word means "to make new again." And that is the great need; one that is dead in sin must be made new by the sovereign work of the Spirit known as "regeneration." Paul explains this as "the washing of regeneration," which implies that an inward cleansing takes place. Chrysostom explains the meaning clearly. "For as when a house is in a ruinous state no one places props under it, nor makes any addition to the old building, but pulls it down to its foundations, and rebuilds it anew; so in our case, God has not repaired us, but has made us anew" [quoted by Wm. Mounce, WBC: Pastor Epistles, 449].

 

Through this merciful act of regeneration we are made savable. Our disposition toward God is changed so that we are brought to life in order to hear the gospel and respond in repentance and faith. And we do so gladly and willingly! But the apostle is not interested at this point in talking about our response to the gospel. Keep in mind that he is explaining the Christian's motivation "to engage in good deeds" (vv. 1, 8). So he focuses on God's action in our salvation. Even our response to Christ has its foundation in the grace of God provided in regeneration. As the Scottish theologian John Murray put it, "For unless God by sovereign, operative grace had turned our enmity to love and our disbelief to faith we would never yield the response of faith and love" [Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 100].

 

This is precisely the point that Jesus made to His night-time visitor Nicodemus. Jesus told this teacher of Israel, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). Nicodemus struggled over the new birth, yet Jesus rebuked him for failing to understand it since the new birth was part of the promise made in the new covenant. "Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe my ordinances" (Eze. 36:25-27 italics added). Jesus capsuled this in John 3:5, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water [here's the sprinkling with clean water used metaphorically for inward cleansing] and the Spirit [here's the new heart indwelled by the Spirit creating a new disposition and desire for obedience] he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." This doesn't take place by human origination.  Jesus explained, "The wind blows where it wishes and you heart the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit." Here is the mystery of regeneration as a sovereign, powerful, and gracious act of God the Spirit upon the sinner. Though we cannot give a rationale for why He would regenerate us, the effects of regeneration are certain in springing forth to new life. Murray comments, "Regeneration is at the basis of all change in heart and life. It is a stupendous change because it is God's recreative act" [105].

 

3. By implanting new life

 

By His mercy, God saves us from judgment and from the guilt and power of sin, yet does He leave us with the same disposition to sin and rebel and pursue our own selfish ways? In other words, is His saving action only for the purpose of ensuring our eternal destiny with no concern for the present life of holiness? "He saved us... by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit." Though I don't believe that Paul is speaking of two distinctly different acts by the Spirit he is speaking of dual effects. He brings us to life so that we might believe the gospel (He regenerates); and He makes everything about us new in quality (He renews). He implants new life within us; He transforms our affections and inclines our hearts to God. The "seed of God," (1 John 3:9) as the Apostle John puts it, has been implanted within us, so that there is a newness in our love for the brethren, a distinction in our attitude toward the things of the world, a new desire to turn from sin and to walk in righteousness, a new passion for obedience to God's commandments, and a new heart to love God preeminently (see 1 John 2:3-6; 15-17; 3:4-10; 3:14-18; 3:23-24; 4:7-14).

 

We do not repent and believe in order to be born again. We are born again-regenerated so that we might repent, believe, and follow after Christ. I agree with John Murray's assessment. "We may not like it. We may recoil against it. It may not fit into our way of thinking and it may not accord with the time-worn expressions which are the coin of our evangelism. But if we recoil against it, we do well to remember that this recoil is against Christ." And he adds, "And what shall we answer when we appear before Him whose truth we rejected and with whose gospel we tampered?" [99]

 

II. Instrumentation of salvation

 

Yet, having made the case for God's sovereign work in regeneration, it would not have happened apart from God's instrument of salvation-Jesus Christ our Savior. Notice that Paul declares that God poured out the Holy Spirit upon us richly "through Jesus Christ our Savior." He makes the point that all God does in saving sinners, He does through His Son. Apart from the Son of God becoming a man, obeying the law in sinless perfection, and dying on the cross as our representative before God and rising from the dead, there would be no salvation. Regeneration enables us to believe. Christ's work is the focus of that belief. Regeneration has nothing to do with bearing away the judgment of God or satisfying eternal justice. That work belongs to Christ alone so that He is the ground of all righteousness before God. Notice how Paul explains this.

 

1. External work of Christ

 

The apostle turns our attention to the work of Christ in relationship to the law and eternal justice. It is found in the phrase, "through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life." It is Jesus Christ that has done this particular work so that we might be "justified by His grace." What does this mean and what is involved in justification?

 

Justified is built on the root stem that means "righteous." It has to do with righteousness, but not primarily righteousness in a moral sense of doing the right thing. That is worked out on a daily basis in the believer's sanctification. Rather justification has to do with righteousness in a legal or judicial sense. It is a rightness regarding God's law.

 

This is precisely where we have great need. We are all lawbreakers. God's standards declared in the Ten Commandments have not changed. That simple statement known as the "ten words" that we plan to consider more thoroughly in a few weeks, holds us accountable to God as sinners-lawbreakers-transgressors. When He gave the Law to Israel, He did not tell them, "Why don't you look through this list and pick out a few things to obey and the rest of it you can ignore." God commanded, and all must obey perfectly or else be found as transgressors. God accepts nothing less that total obedience to all that He has commanded; and rightly so for God is absolutely holy and righteous Himself. No imperfections linger in God. He accepts nothing less than perfect righteousness.

 

But we cannot deliver perfect righteousness! We are unacceptable to Him. We are inclined toward sin in our disposition and actual transgressors of God's law in our practice. God, as the Eternal Judge, is morally obligated to punish transgressors according to the weightiness of the offense.

 

That leaves every sinner with two great needs if we are to enter into relationship to God. First, we need sufficient righteousness to appear before the eternally righteous God. It will need to be of such perfection to be worthy of God and acceptable by Him. Second, we need the guilt as transgressors of God's law to be removed but that can only be done through God's justice being exercised against us as transgressors. God's justice must be met and fully satisfied. So, on one hand we need a new righteousness of sufficient quality to be accepted by God, and on the other, we need the justice due to the guilt accumulated by our transgression of the law to be satisfied.

 

2. Provision of righteousness

 

Though the apostle deals with this subject more thoroughly in Romans and Galatians, here he sets it forth within the context of God's saving work so that we might grasp the wonder of "being justified by His grace." Keep in mind that justification has to do with one's legal standing before God rather than the act of making a wicked person righteous. God cannot simply, by a sovereign declaration, justify the wicked. Proverbs 17:15 tells us, "He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord." God's justice must be satisfied. He cannot slide when it comes to judgment against sinners.

 

Well, let's suppose that we have some way to offer God all of our good deeds-our personal acts of righteousness in attempts to off-set His judgment. Many perceive God's justice in this way, that if they can do enough good things to outweigh the bad, then God winks at them and lets them off the hook of divine judgment. But no quantity of good deeds can satisfy the legal demand for appropriate punishment. Such a case took place a short time ago in California. A gang leader convicted of multiple murders wrote articles and books against gang violence during his stay in prison. Supporters pointed to the good that he had done as enough to outweigh the bad. But a legal decision had been made; justice could only be served by the death of the murderer. Good deeds did not erase his transgressions. Neither do they erase our transgressions. "He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness." Human righteousness is insufficient to bring us to God and unacceptable to God to satisfy the legal requirements of His eternal justice.

 

But God did this through His Son, "Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life." In the first place, Jesus Christ represented us before the law of God. "He had to be made like His brethren in all things," the writer of Hebrews tells us, even to the point of being "tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 2:17; 4:15). Just as in Adam we are accounted transgressors, in union with Christ we are accounted righteous. "For as through one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous" (Rom. 5:19). God accepts the righteousness of Christ on our behalf. He imputes Christ's righteousness to our account. As Murray put it, "God cannot but accept into his favour [sic] those who are invested with the righteousness of his own Son" [124]. We are accepted by God because of the righteousness of His Son on our behalf. God's requirement of perfect obedience to His law was met by the active obedience of His Son in fulfilling the law.

 

Yet a major problem appears to remain: how do we satisfy God's righteous demand for justice with regard to our transgressions of His law? We're guilty as lawbreakers. We deserve judgment. As a righteous Judge, God requires that transgressors pay the just penalty for sin. He does not toy with the penalty, lowering His requirements for justice, since that would be incompatible with the character of God. Rather, on our behalf, God satisfied the requirements of justice by accepting the death of His Son on the cross as the full payment for our legal debt. God's requirement of eternal justice fell upon His Son. All of the wrath of God that we deserve, Christ bore on our behalf, so that by His passive obedience through His bloody death on the cross, nothing else remains to be paid for our transgressions since He fulfilled all legal requirements.

 

That's how we are "justified by His grace." As an act of grace, we do nothing to deserve or earn it; it flows out of His kindness and love. As those who are justified, we are declared to be righteous before God: declared not guilty for all of the transgressions that we've done; declared righteous so that we are now acceptable before God. Since God the Son did the work it is totally sufficient so that we need nothing added to make us acceptable to God. Christ has done it all! Sinners are declared righteous by His grace.

 

3. Heirs through Christ

 

This saving union with Christ has made us heirs "according to the hope of eternal life." We have a new position and new status: heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:17). We live within a new paradigm: the hope of eternal life. We're not like the man that I heard of this week that changed his name to "Han" which stands for "here and now." We live in the here and now, knowing that it is training ground for eternity. We're already citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20) and members of a kingdom that has no end (Rev. 1:6). Having been justified by His grace we have a new hope that changes our outlook on everything about us.

 

Conclusion

 

And all of this is from God! He saved us out of His kindness and love for us. Due to our spiritual deadness and bondage to sin He regenerated us, giving us a new disposition to trust and obey. He accepts us on the basis of the righteousness of His Son through His perfect obedience and God-satisfying death at the cross. It's not about me or my righteousness that constitutes the Christian life. It's about Christ alone. Do you see that your only hope before God is not in you but in Christ alone?

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