Titus lesson 8 begin

Let's read Titus 2, verses 11 and 12. And I'm going to include 13, just because, I mean, that extends a little bit of that sentence there. But before reading 11, I'm going to just read chapter 2, verse 1, and then jump down to 11. Okay, so 2-1, and then Paul talks about all the people, older men, older women, so forth, and then down to 11. So starting with verse 1, But as for you, speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine. Verse 11, 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.

It's hard to know where to stop there because you kind of want to keep reading, but we're looking at 11 and 12 here this morning. And as Mike mentioned before class started here, and the reason I went back to verse one, Before we get into question one of lesson eight, we just kind of want to notice that this verse starts with the word for, and we kind of have to understand what that's referring to. It refers back, right? If I just started a speech with the word for, you'd be missing the previous context. So I think that And that's why I went back to verse one.

I think that this reaches back to verse one, because that's where Paul introduces to Titus. You need to speak these, all these things, which are fitting for sound doctrine. And then he addresses, you know, older men, older women, slaves, free, so forth. And then he gets down here and He's giving the reason that Titus can teach these things that are fitting for sound doctrine. And it's almost like Paul is saying, Titus, you can teach believers these things about how they ought to live because of this fact, the fact that grace, the grace of God has appeared.

And on no other basis. Really, that's what Mike said at the beginning there. Grace is the basis. And you'll notice there in verse 11 that salvation is to all men. And so Paul just went through all these different categories of men, men and women, old and young. And the reason that Titus can teach these things to all men is because grace has appeared to all men. So I just wanted to kind of preface the questions with that. But let's look at question number one.

So this is a, I love this kind of a question because, you know, depending on your group, you could get some, you could get some interesting responses, but It says, because a believer now is totally free from the law, does it mean that he can sin with impunity? So if anyone had the opportunity to think about it.

The obvious answer is no, but everybody's afraid to say it. No. Well, you guys are afraid to say it because you guys have been taught grace for so long. you know, I mean, um, you, you know, a lot of people are going to get pretty, pretty heated with a question like this, right? Um, they, they want, they don't want freedom from law at all. Right. So, I mean, there, a lot of people are hung up before you even get to that first comma in the question, right? Because the believer is now totally free from the law.

Um, so, So that's a hurdle a lot of people have to cover, uh, you know, before they can even get to the question of, you know, the Romans 6 one, what, what should we say then? Should we go on continuing sin? It's a grace me increase. Um, we've been dealing with, uh, Romans six and now into seven a little bit, um, in our Wednesday night group here. And, um, you know, it's, uh, we're, we're, We're teaching people that are a lot like myself, come out of a pretty, you know, legalistic background. There's some major hurdles involved in the whole idea of grace.

So, I think, like, I kind of put down a couple of sort of add-on questions here. It's like, same question, just said a different way. Can we get away with anything we want as believers? And, you know, it's an interesting question, right? Because what does grace mean? What does grace entail? You know, we have something new as believers, right?

We have this new nature and it comes with new desires. You know, we have this drive or this compelling against sin. But, but then, and I was listening to, I think especially the consecration lesson, true consecration by Miles Stanford. And, and it really, really dealt with this quite well. Because in the process of time, what the Lord is teaching us is that we, you know, we can't carry this out. We may have this, this new desire.

We may have this new compulsion. you know, um, but, but we, but we cannot, we can't do it. We're totally incapable of producing this new life in and of ourselves. Um, and we, uh, we begin to find out that the old man can't produce anything but sin. Mike was telling me on the phone yesterday, you can, if I, I don't know if I have this exactly right, but, uh, the, the secret is to realize that the old man refuses to do nothing. And, uh, and that's pretty key, you know, Um, the old man doesn't, not going to sit there and do nothing. So, um, so as much as we may have this new desire, you know, against sin and, and, uh, towards godliness, we just can't, we can't carry it out. Go ahead.

Do you think, um, you think all believers have to, go through the experience of realizing that they can't control sin. The reason I ask that question is because if I'm in a law-based environment or church or fellowship group, that's the hope that's been held out that I will be able to, by implementing obedience in my life, be able to deal with sin. I mean, there's so many believers that try to live under a law-based system. Eventually, it would seem to me that they would wake up and say, well, this isn't working.

Yeah. Go ahead. I was just going to say, I was listening to something by Chester McCauley this last week. He said he talked about a legalistic concept of grace and says, grace, grace enables me to keep the law. And so you get concepts like that, you know, ideas like that, that there's something, you know, there's some there's some system that's going to, you know, enable me to keep the law.

And, and it'll be different, different things, different programs, different ideas, different systems, different Um, you know, why does, why does every, almost every reform covenant type sermon end with a challenge? You know, man, I mean, some, some churches, if the sermons don't end with a challenge, you know, um, he's a dud, you know, he can't, and, uh, and the problem with that is, is really all that can do, all that challenge can do is Do you know what I mean by challenge? Is that kind of a Christian-ese term that's everywhere? You know, to challenge the congregation to go out there and live for God, right?

To go out there and pull up your bootstraps, do your best, and put on some works, and, you know, and do this thing. And, you know, frankly, the flesh, I've come to realize that's what really tickles the ears. That's what the flesh really likes to hear. is, you know, I want you to tell me to get out there and work hard and do something and, and make myself, make myself pleasing, you know? And, and I, I, back to your question, Mike, I think it is, I think it is important that, that the believer comes to realize, you know, that, that, uh, in my flesh, well, it's no good thing, you know? Um, I think that's a pretty important, pretty important step, uh, staging in growth.

But if you're in that environment growing up, let's say, like my experience with Catholicism, you know, for quite a few years before I took a pass on Catholicism, in my mind, in my heart, I had already taken a pass because I knew I couldn't live up to what they were laying down. I couldn't do it.

And so you keep up appearances for a while. But then you find out, you find compadres within your denomination who feel the same way. So you go out and do sins together. It's really fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that's different than most other denominational backgrounds, you know? Yeah.

I think it's really the flesh wants to do something. So whenever something comes up, the flesh is all for it. And that's why in the Christian bookstores, all it is is about things for you to do. In the next program, it's the purpose-driven life. It's the prayer of Jabez. It's whatever the program du jour is, they just figure something else out.

And, you know, I think for, you know, before really understanding, you know, the identification truths and all that, and, you know, as I said, I think you have a flat forehead from hitting the wall so many times, you know, and then you move on to the next program and the next program, and then, you know, the flesh just keeps, you know, begging you on to do something.

You quoted the six, one and two, but in 15, you know, what is it? Same thing, Romans 6, 15, what then? Should we sin because we're not under law but under grace? May never be. As you go down further, it says, I'm speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. And I think that's the key right there is that, you know, the weakness is that our flesh just wants to do something.

And if you don't know that, you know, reckon yourself dead unto sin and alive unto God, you're just right in, right in there thinking it's, it's a great thing. It's positive. It's, you know, I'm, I'm doing something, you know, the prayer of Davis or the purpose driven life or whatever feels really good because it has a Christian tent to it. And you know, it's just the flesh being satisfied.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. It does feel really good to the flesh to be, to be active, to be doing, doing something, you know, whatever. I've got a couple thoughts. Yep. So your question was, can we get away with anything? Great. Yeah. Getting back to the core here. Let's do it. Okay. So let's, let's dive into that for just a minute.

Um, first of all, verse 11 is talking about the fact that not only salvation was available, but, uh, the grace of God. So the grace of your creator was made evident to you. We know that there are other things that have been made evident to us. We look at Romans 1, we see divine nature, you know, we know that the Lord has made himself evident in a multitude of ways. But here, Titus is talking about not only, he uses the grace of God and he also, and it's appeared, so it's been made evident. So it's been revealed. And it's bringing salvation to all men who would obviously acknowledge that, right? We know that all men are not saved. However, the grace of God has appeared to all men and it brings salvation to all men.

But then it switches to verse 12 and I'm probably jumping ahead to multiple questions, but it does get pretty specific about instructions and about um, living and how that life is, is lived. And it goes into the fact that that life is righteous and it is godly. And so it would be, it would be fairly easy to build a workspace perspective around this had God's grace not appeared. But that's the key. Yeah, absolutely.

And that's where we're wrongly interpreting grace. You know, everybody has to deal with the word grace, you know. Mike, you know, the Roman Catholics, they use grace all the time. Everybody uses the word grace, but they kind of import different meaning into it, right? And if grace is just the enablement of the Lord, and usually we'll tack the power of the Holy Spirit onto that, but we'll say that, you know, grace means that God enables me to do this and do that, but it's still, um, just language wrapped around, um, the self-life, you know, me doing it.

And, um, I have a question. Yeah. Well, getting away with anything, we know that not to be the case, but I'm just curious, how does God's grace appear? Yeah. Well, we will, we were going to talk about that in a question Four, is it? Or somewhere around there. Or it's kind of three and four. Yeah, yeah. How does it appear? Yeah. Which is really, really important because, yeah, I mean, as we kind of slow down and dissect verses like this, you know, little like word by word.

Yeah, we don't want to get lost in the details because how did that grace appear? That's what gives us a correct understanding of grace, you know, is understanding just how did it come? How did it appear? What is the clear revelation of grace? That's what gives us a proper understanding.

And it's probably fine to jump ahead and answer that question a little bit now. It appeared in Christ, right? The grace of God appeared. If we look down in chapter 3, verse 4, of Titus says, but when the kindness of God, our Savior, and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us. So there's a connected kind of thought there that's really connected to this grace appearing here. It has to do with our Savior, the man, the God-man Christ Jesus. It's not just a principle. Grace is connected to the person, Jesus Christ. That's where it's sourced. who he is and what he's done.

And so the question, you know, in a sense, the question can a believer get away with sin or can he sin with impunity? I mean, in a way, it kind of, you know, I mean, I guess we could ask the question, can the old man do anything but sin? No, that's kind of the question we've answered here so far, right? The old man, the self-life, good or evil, it's all sin, right?

It's all unacceptable to God. So kind of the question, can he get away with that? Like, well, I mean, it's already been dealt with. It's already been dealt with. You know, it's already condemned and judged at the cross. We can live temporally in sin, not recognizing that it's already been judged. But the thing for a believer, I think this is maybe important here to understand, is that what God does for us in response to sins that we may commit as believers when we're in sin. It's not a... Well, let's say it like this.

I wrote down here, God's discipline is not corrective, it is instructive. Hopefully that makes sense. Because the old man cannot be corrected. The old man must be dealt with by death alone. So when the Lord disciplines for sin, it's not corrective in that sense, it's instructive. Because the believer must be instructed as to the new life that is his in Christ.

Does that make sense what I'm saying? I was kind of trying to choose those words carefully. I mean, we tend to... I've never heard that before put that way. Me neither. I'm not sure where it came from. That's very insightful. You can't correct what you've been separated from, but you can instruct. And obviously, in verse 12, that's what grace does. It instructs you. Yeah. That's really interesting.

I would add, Miles, that When you get to Romans 6.14, where it says, for sin shall not have master over you because you're not under law but under grace. It tells you two things. One is I have a new master. I have a new controlling. And the second thing it tells me is that this is the thing that will deal with sin. This is the one thing that'll deal with sin. No law will deal with sin, but grace can. As you study through Romans 6, it's the one thing that can put sin out of business.

Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. I wrote down here that what God does for us as believers is he First, I think he brings, you know, the old word chastening, you know, or discipline. He brings that into our lives to teach us about the self-life, the life of the old man, to show us what's going on there. And then gradually over time, and it takes a very, very long time, he shows us that by grace, we've been taken out of a system. where self is the active force and he shows us that we are now in a relationship where Christ is the one who animates our being. He is our life. So we're taken out of that system where self is the active force and he shows us the relationship that we now have. with Jesus Christ, who is our life.

So that question of can a believer get away with anything? Well, you know, you do something. The Lord's going to use that. You know, if it was sourced in the old man, if it was out of the self, he's going to be at work to reveal that to you, to show you that this is not sourced in Christ. And it may hurt a little bit. It may, it may feel like discipline, but it's not, um, he's not trying to change that old man. You know, it's not that, it's not that kind of sense. Um, cause a lot of times when we ask the question, can a believer get away with anything? We say, no, God won't let you get it.

He's gonna, he's gonna correct you. Well, he's not correcting your old man. He's, he may be, we can maybe use the word correction in the sense that it's correcting my understanding, you know, that, that you're not, um, you know, you're no longer a slave to that. to that old nature.

Miles, a couple things. I think going back to the 6-1 and 6-15 and that, I think the intent of those is almost the continuing sin or a purposeful one that you know you're under grace, so I'm going to do it. And it's the attitude that he's dealing with here, I think, in 6-1 and 6-15. It's like, wow, I'm under grace so I can do anything I want. So he's saying that may it never be, but I think you kind of hit on it. It's the instructive part in that God allows us to sin. And why does he do that? And I think it's what you said, it's instructive.

Then it goes down to 1 John 1, 9, where we're confessing. We're not acting, and all that is is saying we're not acting as who we are in Christ, as who our life is. And it's the instructive part that allows us to sin. So we realize that we're not doing that. We're not acting as who we are in Christ. But again, it goes to the fact that he allows us to do it.

And I think a lot of Christians get beat up by the fact that, you know, And the sin, and they keep dwelling on that part of it. And it's like, no, all the sin's been paid for. And John 9 is, I confess I'm not acting who I am. I still ain't paid for all those, and move on. And don't dwell on that sin. But I think what Paul is basically in 1 and 15, it's a continuous, he's addressing an attitude that, yeah, I can do this because of.

And it's not the sin that every believer has, you know, because we still have sin in the flesh. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think the, um, the discipline that the Lord may enact in regards to sin in our lives is, is not judgment of sin because that is complete at the cross. That's, that's done once for all at the cross.

Right. Um, And, uh, and, and, and, and that's where I think until you really understand grace, you, you probably don't, maybe in a way you don't really ask that. Sorry, am I cutting out? I just got to know that my internet is unstable. Okay. All right. Um, you're good. Okay.

Um, you almost can't come, you almost can't come to that Roman six, one and six 15 kind of question until you do understand grace here. Wait a second. It's completely. judged. There's no, you know, like I cannot be judged for my sin anymore. No, you can't. It was done on the cross. Well, then I may as well do whatever I want. And I kind of come to that conclusion, you know, saying that until, you know, you're not, you haven't really understood grace until your mind is going to kind of take that step into that question. Well, then I could do whatever I want.

And then, and you almost have to reach that point before you're ready to understand that, that Romans 6 truth of your of your identity with Christ in his death. But if you haven't understood grace yet for what it is, you're not really ready for that life union truth with Christ. I think that's good, Myles, because I think the law tries to give you the motivation not to do something. or to do something you think is righteous and it's academic, there's no reward in it really other than, but when you start to learn how gracious God really is, starting with salvation, starting with salvation in terms of deserving it, there's no deserving it whatsoever. And that the way to salvation is by a mechanism that is totally not, you can't say I did and God responded by giving me salvation.

Because all the values in what God did. And when I begin to understand that my whole life, everything that I have to deal with and do and everything is on a grace basis that it creates a greater motivation to not be involved with sin than law ever could. It's a huge motivator because even in human relationships, when someone really loves you, you don't want to do anything that would harm them.

Yeah, I noticed in those Myles Stanford tapes, he talks about the life motive. I really kind of latched on to that this last week here. The life motive. It's It's beyond the love motive. It's beyond the gratitude motive. It's life. Well, we are basically at time. And I just realized we only finished question one.

But what I'm going to do, question number two says define grace. And so I'm going to leave you with a quote that Alyssa came across by Andy Woods this week, because it ties into what we've been talking about. And I know we always use a Chester McCauley definition, and that I love and I use, and it's in my notes here. But this little quote by Andy Woods is great.

It says, religion attempts to climb to God, whereas grace recognizes the impossibility of approaching God on our own merit. That's not a definition of grace, but it's a good little contrast between grace and religion, which is... Can you say that one more time? Yep, yep. I can text it out later too. Religion attempts to climb to God, whereas grace recognizes the impossibility of approaching God on our own merit.

And you know, all those distortions of grace that we talked about really just turn grace, distort grace, and turn it into some way that I can approach God based on my merit. And we have to get that thinking clear. Grace means that no, there was nothing, nothing you could do to get to God. Grace was the only way. And it's based, going back to Chester's definition, is based totally on the the work of Christ on the cross. I was trying to find one real quick. There's one recently in Hungry Heart, and I think it's probably misquoted, but it says, the law says love God. Grace says God loves.

Yeah. I think I remember reading that. Yeah. That was pretty succinct. I thought. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I know you want to close real quick here, but one of the things I really am interested about in these verses is the instructing. I'm very curious about our discussion around how grace instructs. Yes. I'm, I'm, yeah, I've got some, well, I think they're great notes. I've got some exciting stuff. Yeah. I've been, I've been studying that and preparing for that. So we're going to, I guess next time we'll get into that.

So Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your grace. Lord, we, we pray that you would continue to just clear up our thinking in regards to your grace. It's so easy to distort it and contaminate it with ideas of the flesh. We're so, in our inner self, we're so eager to make ourselves pleasing to you in some way, shape or form. But Lord, we're so in need of understanding your grace for what it is. And we just pray that that would become more clear to us through your word. And Lord, we pray for just continued clarity in this passage as we continue to dwell on it and study it in the upcoming weeks. And Lord, we just thank you for your grace. In Jesus' name, Amen.