Titus lesson 8 Continued
Titus · Miles Driedger · Nov 5, 2023
Titus, No. 25
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261933115505

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

All right. Well, we got down one question last time, so we're going to see how we can do today. But let me start with the verses that we're on. We're looking at specifically 11 and 12, Titus 2, 11 and 12. And this is Lesson 8, so continuing Lesson 8, I'll read starting with verse 11 and down through 13 and 14.

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 in the appearing of 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." So, last week we asked the question, because a believer is now totally free from the law, does it mean that he can sin with impunity?

I think we had a good discussion about that last week. I really thought that was good. And one of the things we sort of wound up with is that, you know, God does discipline. He does chasten. I like the old word chasten for what God does with believers. But it's not sometimes in the sense we think of corrective in terms of trying to make the old man better. But it is instructive because the Lord has already dealt with the old man, hasn't he?

And because of that, you know, when we do walk as slaves to sin, Romans 6, he shows us that. He's very patient and he shows us that that's where we're walking. But you're not a slave to that. You don't have to reckon yourself a slave to sin, but you can reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to God.

So, you know, I think we dealt with that pretty well, but we're going to... We just began question number two, which said, define grace. And I read that little quote from Andy Woods. I'll read it again to refresh that. But Andy Woods said, religion attempts to climb to God. whereas grace recognizes the impossibility of approaching God on our own merit. And that's not a definition of grace, as I said last time, but it's something worth thinking about, I think. It just helps give us a bit of a flavor of grace, maybe. But I'll let one of you guys define grace. I've heard one definition is God's riches at Christ's expense. Yeah. Yeah, the acronym, right? G-R-A-C-E. God's riches at Christ's expense. That's true. That's right. Very good.

I think last week I probably mentioned quickly the Chester McCauley definition, the one we often use, and I've come across similar ones that basically say the same thing in more words, but as far as a concise definition that I think really hits the keys, I think that still is it in terms of what I, you know, he said, grace is the unlimited and unmerited blessing of God based on the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross.

And that, of course, is wrapped up in the definition that Cheryl gave as well. at Christ's expense. It's based on the totally adequate work of Christ. So, I think what I want to throw down here is that we want to see here that grace is revealed in a person, not in a theology textbook. Grace is revealed or made visible in the person of Jesus Christ. So, who He is by character and the work that He carried out on the cross is the greatest expression of grace that there will ever be. Such that we can say that grace was revealed in Jesus Christ. Conversely, could you say that without Christ there's no grace?

Yeah, I think so. I think so. Do you think that grace and Christ coming in unison is because of the work he did or just because of who he is? Hmm. That's a good question. I mean, in my mind, like the first thought that comes to mind is that it's inseparable.

You know, I mean, he did what he did because of who he is. He couldn't not have, you know, have done that. And what he did was totally necessary. you know, to grace, but it really is rooted in who he is. You know, he never would have, you know, he didn't become gracious because he chose to go to the cross. No, he is gracious in character, I think.

Yeah. We often use the term his person and his works, and those are inseparable to the grace that he revealed himself to be and made available to us, right? It's made possible through his person and his works. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Go ahead. I don't know if you quoted this.

I was looking up something else. But yeah, John 1, 17. Law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, and maybe to Mike's question, can you separate those? I don't think so. I think they're both, they're both realized through Christ. He's the one that we get grace and truth through. Yeah. That's really good. Yeah.

I had that reference. Go ahead, Russ. And our sins all had to be placed on Jesus and taken off of us so that Christ's work is bloodshed so that we would become disciples of God in Christ. Was Russ breaking up for everybody or just me? Yeah. Yeah, he was. Sorry, Russ. We caught part of that, but it sounded good.

I was just saying that, you know, Jesus had to take upon himself all the sins of the world and his blood had to be shed. So he literally had to go to that cross, take away the penalty and place it on himself. Yeah, that's right. I mean, Jesus had to go to the cross, which is an interesting thing because it's almost like we can tend to think wrongly of that. Like, you know, God almost got pushed into a corner where the only way out was for Jesus to go to the cross. But the reality is, is that God in his sovereignty has, has, everything has led up to the cross. You know, it became necessary because that's what God intended. You know, he intended that the cross would be, would be necessary. And, uh, and it was. Why that? Why did he say the cross is necessary? Why did God say the cross is necessary? The point is that the Father and the Son got together in the eternal covenant and they did it to resolve the offense of sin against themselves.

And, you know, if you look at the alternative answers that they could have come up with, well, they could put the whole human race out of existence. That would have been easy, but it still wouldn't have satisfied their righteousness. It's interesting that God set up the rules to start with, and the rules were that if you violated God's will, you die. I'm not that the father and the son were having a discussion about this, but the parameters of where the discussion came from was they're both gracious because they are God. And this is actually the only way that they could solve the sin problem to their satisfaction. And the cool thing is that they did not have to accrue the benefits to man. to satisfy themselves. They could have said, OK, we're satisfied. See you later, humanity.

So that was my question, was the work that the Father and the Son did where Christ died to pay the penalty for the offense against themselves. Yeah. Was that gracious or was that a righteous act? And extending it to us, That was obviously gracious. That's a great quote. Yeah, very, very good, Donna. That really is it. I think that's because we have to understand that. That was the one righteous act. That's Romans 5, right? That was righteousness. But the fact that everything that God extends to us on that basis, That's graciousness, right? Yeah. Very, very good.

Well, let's look at question number three, because we're kind of moving into it a little bit. It says, what does grace appearing allow us to do? What does grace appearing allow us to do? Because we're kind of answering this question a little bit already.

The word there, appearing, is I'll say epipheno. No, it should be epipheno. It's... It's emphatic in the Greek, so it's the first word in the sentence, which means that this is the main idea in the sentence. And it means to appear, to become visible, or to become clear. And I wrote down an additional kind of tack-on question here that I think we've kind of answered now.

I said, has God always been gracious, or did he become gracious at the cross? And Mike, I don't know if you said, I think you've written this down in your notes that you sent me. Well, God has always been gracious. The visible manifestation of God's grace was not clearly seen until the cross.

So, as we talked about already, this graciousness is a part of God's character, I think. At least it expresses its Although it's interesting because I know JD we talked about this years ago in framework stuff. I mean Grace is something that's extended towards the sinner, you know, so so was God gracious before there was you know sin involved no, but But he was and always has been love right and and grace Part of the way I think about I don't know if I'm wrong here or not, but that I Grace shows us the depth of His love. That while we were yet enemies, Christ died for us. Because I think we talked, did we talk last week a little bit about the fact that grace, as a Greek word, you know, had meant to do a favor for somebody without expecting a return. But what God has done in grace is not just a favor for you know, a friend or someone, he has extended his grace to us while we were his enemies, unreconcilable enemies.

So grace allows us to see that. Would you say giving the law to Moses was a gracious act? Okay, good question. I say yes. I think it was too, J.D. It gave them a method where they could cover their sins. There was a way. Yeah. And without God giving us a way, what do you have? Yeah. So we're saying that, just to clarify here, we're saying that is God This is obviously love. Grace is an expression of God's attribute of love. And was that fair? Yeah, I think so.

So second of all, it's in his character, it's in his attributes. Prior to sin, was God gracious in how he treated Adam and Eve? Well, there was no offense, but he certainly provided for them graciously. They didn't deserve the garden. They didn't deserve the provisions yet. They were given the provisions.

So there was the attribute of love Potentially not expressing the fullness of grace because grace doesn't appear here until what titus is talking about in verse 11 In the fullness of christ, right? So here grace is being revealed, but it's not Fully revealed. It hasn't appeared in the fullness of it of its expression because Sin is what?

Grace requires not only a gracious act, but also a biblical perspective, unmerited and unlimited provisions for those who deserve absolutely nothing but death. And so until death came, the grace of God, as it relates to solving the sin problem, Was not needed maybe is the way to say it was available, but it was not needed It was a part of his character, but it was not he didn't exercise it until He sent his son to deal with the sin problem once and for all and And that's what the next part of that verse has to do.

The appearing of grace is tied directly to the bringing salvation to home in. Going back to the first John 1, grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. So grace was realized through him. So, you know, was it present beforehand? you know, if he's from, I guess, if he's an eternal being in God, he would be gracious. It wasn't like he became gracious when he stepped into flesh. They were gracious before, you know, but it was realized through Jesus Christ when he came into flesh. At the beginning of that, or that section 14, and a word became flesh and dwelt among us and we saw his glory, glory as the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. And that is realized.

So I guess the question if he was gracious before, if he's always been gracious. Yeah. Yeah. He hasn't changed. It didn't, when he suddenly appeared, he became gracious. I think that the trick here, or not the trick, but the catcher, is what the application of grace is. So, before, that grace was available in a limited form to Israel, to Adam and Eve, obviously the progeny and so forth. But now, it's universal. And so, and it's more, it expands, but it not only expands in its coverage of sin, the sin problem, but it also expands to all men.

Okay, let me see if I can tie together a few things we're saying here. So, one of the things we say God's character has never changed, it's eternal, right? Therefore, the persons of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Spirit, in their omniscience, their infinite knowledge, were fully aware of the magnitude, the scale of God's love. They could see it for what it was, because they're infinite. But the reality is you would have to be infinite to see the infinitude, is that a word, of God's love. You would have to be omniscient to see the size, the scope of God's love for what it is.

So when God created mankind, we're finite, which means by nature we will never be able to see the full scope of God's love for what it is. We just can't. We're finite. We can't see it as big and as grand as it really is. And one of the things that the law did, I think, when the law came in, is it It dug us a really, really, really, really deep pit.

It showed man that there is a huge, huge gulf, there's a huge gap between you and this righteous God. And that was gracious, I think, in itself, because you have to see the magnitude of that difference, of that problem, before you're prepared to see the magnitude of God's love and what He will do.

And when the cross, when Jesus Christ came, as Courtney's been looking at in John 1 there, full of grace and truth, what we see is that God is both just and the justifier, to borrow Paul's language in Romans. But if we look back at Titus 1, verses 1 and 3, notice that Paul has already kind of introduced this thought here. Let's see.

Well, I'll start in verse 2, even though it's the middle of the sentence, "...in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago." And we know that as soon as sin came into the world, as soon as Adam and Eve sinned, God came in and promised grace. He promised the Savior. And as time went on, that continued to be revealed more and more throughout the Old Testament. and in verse 3, but at the proper time manifested His Word.

And I think that ties right into the way John says it, right? The Word became flesh, full of grace and truth, so that at that time when Christ was revealed and when at the cross it was seen, It was revealed finally how God could be both perfectly just and judge sin in its entirety and be able to extend to all men His unlimited, unmerited love. Because up until that point, there was kind of always this tension, I think, that, you know, how could a just and holy God offer us eternal life? How could he offer a relationship to us? And the law did prefigure that through blood, a blood sacrifice, which really goes all the way back to the garden. But at the cross, it was made finally, completely, completely clear how that could be.

Does that wrap some of that together? Yeah, that was awesome. No, I think that looking at it from a kind of creation to cross perspective, and then even taking that statement moving forward is interesting too. where Paul and Titus are in this portion of the chapter. It's funny because he's been talking about all of these different laundry lists of older men, older women, younger men, younger women. And it's like, wow, that's a lot going on. And then you get to verse 11, and it's like, oh, yeah.

And this all exists within the reality of grace that is apparent to all men and for the purpose of salvation, which means All of these old and young has an idea of maturity, right? And that maturity happens in salvation, and that sonship, as we learned maybe from those of you that were reading The Hungry Heart this morning, growing into that sonship is growing into that person. And so you've got the older and the younger, older and the younger, but we know that that whole maturity process happens because of the fact that grace has appeared, bringing salvation to all men. And that's where we are in the current church age, right? As believers, we're maturing from younger men to older men, younger women to older women. In terms of our characteristics by way of our age, we're also maturing spiritually by learning not only what, Mike?

I'm raising my hand. Go for it. I had two thoughts there. One is, Miles, you said that our understanding is finite. I think that our recreation in Christ eliminates the finiteness and takes us into eternity because we're conformed to his image. Now, for all eternity, we're not going to comprehend the wholeness of it at one time. We'll continue to grow. But that's one of the benefits.

The second thing that I wanted to say is that when you define eternal life, eternal life is not a substance in a jar in your kitchen. He says in John 17 that eternal life is to know me and the one who sent me. So it's kind of cool when you equate Well, what is eternal life? Is it just some substance? And that's a problem like my coming out of Catholicism. They always wanted to put things in a bottle and then it would be something added on to you as you went along. And it cost you to get it, you know? Yeah.

Whereas God says, look, eternal life is to know me. and to know the one who sent me. And we don't, I don't think we put the value on intimacy with Christ like we should, because that, knowing, is what eternal life is. If I don't know him, I don't have eternal life, I don't care how fancy my walk is, you know. And so he graciously, what does he do? I don't want to use that word. He recreates us so that we can actually know the God of the universe, you know, personally and imminently, and that we find out that he loves us and that he's gracious. You know, without that introduction, we don't know any of that.

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I have a clarifying question, Mike. Yeah. So the question is, are we finite still? At this point. Are you finding? Bodily we are. Okay. So that's the one thing that's our limitation, right? Yeah. Our perspective is eternal. Our relationship with the Lord Jesus and the fact that the Holy Spirit can reveal his word to us. Yeah. Eternal understanding. It gives us a perspective.

That's where we get the abide above and keep looking down, right? So we have that eternal perspective of which an unbeliever doesn't have. They can't they can't see that it's blinded to them because of sin Right our body is still finite and still we we call the flesh the flesh for a reason not just because it's material But because it also produces sin The only thing it wants to do so in that way we are finite, but in terms of our spiritual position, we are not finite at all. We are eternal.

Go ahead. I just asked if that was fair to say. Yeah, that's good. I was going to say, getting back kind of maybe falls back into what the question says. What does grace appearing allow us to do now? Yeah, we were finite, and now we have eternal life. We have the Holy Spirit indwelling us eternally. So what does grace allow us to do now?

I went back to Romans 5.21, which is the reigning principle now. So that as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So grace is a reigning principle now.

Grace appearing now allows us to have that intimate union with Christ. His appearing now has allowed us, and I think one of the other, and I was looking up, and maybe from the John one, it was about now we can see the Father through Christ. So again, all these, Christ appearing in grace and truth, and now the reigning principles of grace, we now have that union with Christ. We now can see the Father through Christ. And it allows us to enter into that union with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, all three. And I think the appearing now has allowed us to do that, have that union, have that relationship.

And the other thing, I guess maybe I was kind of going, you know, I think really trying to hammer down on what grace is. You know, I think I like Macaulay's definition, but does the body at large right now really understand what grace is? I always think when grace, it's kind of just being nicey-nice. You know, it's not really understanding what grace was realized through Christ and what the reigning principle is right now. Grace is, I'm really nice, I'm going to be good to you, I'll bring you a meal or whatever, you know. It's not fully realizing what came through the appearing of Christ in the flesh. I would say that most of our cultural conceptions of grace really taint our understanding of it.

Like you said, I mean, we just think it means, you know, yeah, being nice, you know, overlooking some faults, whatever. And those are kind of vaguely, you know, loosely related to what grace is. But I was thinking of 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, you know, grace is utter foolishness to the world. So they reject it. I mean, it's the most foolish thing they could conceive of, you know. Until we understand grace and accept it, you know, we really don't Yeah, we just reject it. It's foolishness.

But with that grace, there's that. As a reigning principle, it reigns to eternal life, which, like we've been saying here, is all about knowing Him. So what does grace allow us to do? It allows us to have that face-to-face intimacy with God. that is otherwise impossible for us, I think. Let me try this thought on. Grace allows us to receive.

The reason grace is so hated, as Newell says, is because it doesn't give any room for the sin nature to do anything. It takes up all the space. And so before grace shows up, I'm not a receiver. I'm a doer. And if someone presents me with the idea of grace, I think, well, that's foolishness. I'm not a receiver. I'm a fool. I'm a doer. And so when you realize that what grace really does is it makes you a receiver of God's blessings. Yeah, willingly. Yeah. Well, that's a... Sorry. Go ahead, Don.

I was just going to say, that brings us right into question number four, actually. Why don't we do that? Because grace did bring something to all men. So what came with the appearance of grace is question number four. And so, like you're saying, Mike, if grace prepares us to receive something, I think this is what it is.

Do it. So I have a question. Well, I might be cutting you off, Miles. No, no, that's OK. I just opened up a question for it. We can go. Yeah, go for it. I was just thinking you were trying on that thought, Mike, and grace allows us to receive. It also allows us to believe. Right. What was that last thing? Believe. So faith is impossible. You can't receive, nor can you believe. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's tied in exactly with the whole context here in chapter two, is that everything that Paul is telling Titus to, you know, You know, so I was actually looking at it kind of this morning, and you could take any one of these imperatives, and you could just take that, just lift that two words out and attach it with verse 11.

So, young men, be sensible, for the grace of God has appeared. You know, reverent in behavior, for the grace of God has appeared. You know, beyond reproach, for the grace of God has appeared. And so that idea of believing or accepting, I mean, they're tied together, right? Faith is accepting by faith or believing what God has done.

And that's the only ground upon which any of these things can be a reality. I mean, you could make some of these things a fleshly reality, as most people try to do with this, but to make these spiritual realities the way that God intends, it has to be founded on the grace that has appeared, bringing salvation to all men. Because that salvation is a death-life salvation. It's a death that cuts us off from all that we were in Adam, and a life that unites us to Jesus Christ and all that He is. Yeah, when you realize that the response to the salvation message or the response to the salvation message or the fact that what our requirement is, is that we believe. It's interesting that faith is a non-meritorious act and you begin with the reception and you continue and receive reception. Imagine eternity is going to be all about receiving. That's really cool.

The other thing, going back to the John verse, what came with the appearance of grace? It tells us truth. Truth, which is Christ, everything that Christ is. The truth came with grace. And that's all bringing salvation to men, instructing them, all the things we see in this Titus. It's the truth brought about by Christ coming. And so I think, I mean, the answer is there, truth was realized with grace. You think of truth as the accumulation of facts, when truth is really a person, just like grace is.

I think one thing we should mention on this this phrase here, bringing salvation to all men, I'm pretty sure this is apparent to all of us, but it doesn't mean that all men have received eternal life. Not all men have received that grace, but it it has brought salvation, or made it, we should say, made salvation available to all men. And that, I guess, is what I'm kind of thinking along the lines here, is that there is no one who has, there's no one who, well, let me just say it this way, Christ's death has dealt with with all men in Adam.

There's nobody whose sin wasn't dealt with on the cross. And it was intended, the cross was intended to free us from that. It was intended to free us from that old life. And it's been provided for all men. And the only response, I think the only response that is consistent with grace is faith. It demands faith. No other response will do.

And so, it's really a phenomenal thing, the grace of God as a peer bringing salvation to all men, you know, and separating us from all the ungodliness that we're going to talk about next week in verse 12, that is who we were by nature. We were ungodly by nature. And that takes us back. Next week we'll look at it in Romans a little bit where Paul talks about that. Romans 4-5, he justifies the ungodly. That's the only way. There's no other position from which to come. And there's no other, you know, There's no alternative to that. He justifies us while we are ungodly. So, well, we should close there for today, and we'll pick up next time with that. Well, we'll finish up question four a little bit and then get into question five next week.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your grace, Lord. We really just scratched the surface of it. Lord, we pray that you would just continue to deepen our appreciation for the grace that has been revealed in Jesus Christ. Lord, we want to understand it more. We want to share the wonderful message of your grace with others. And so I pray that you would teach us. We need to understand this more. And we thank you that you will. In Jesus' name, amen.