FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Scripture Reference: Titus 2:11-15

Until He Comes . . . – Continued

From Last Lesson: Since Christ has given Himself for us to redeem and purify us, it is for each of us to fall in with that purpose and never seek to thwart it.

In practical terms it means that lawlessness in every form is to be shunned. It means being eager to do what is good. Specifically, in the context of Paul’s concerns in chapter 2, it means following the directives that he has given for the various different groups. We are not to think for one moment that these are merely Paul’s opinions; remember, Paul was anointed in his writing by the Holy Spirit’s inspiration. It may have been Paul’s pen, but it was God’s Words. The truth is far from one man’s opinion. Christ died that we might live such lives. As His redeemed, it is our unchanging obligation to fall in with that purpose, to be what He has purposed we should be; to do what He has purposed we should do, until He does return. Don’t be misled, or doubt, He will come!

Final Directives

The Apostle ends this part of his letter by again emphasizing Titus’s responsibility in regard to the various different groups he is to instruct: “These, then, are the things you should teach.” Right at the beginning of the chapter Titus is exhorted to “teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1). Now that same exhortation is repeated. These details of Christian duty, with the impulses to obedience from the grace of God and the self-giving of Christ, are to be the subject of clear and careful instruction.

Paul then adds, “Encourage and rebuke with all authority.” Titus is not only to tell the Cretans how they are to live. He is to exhort and encourage them to carry his instructions out and to rebuke them for any failure to do so. And he is to do so “with all authority.” These instructions on godly living are ultimately Christ’s, conveyed to the Cretans through an apostle whom Christ has authorized to speak on His behalf. They have the backing of heaven and are to be delivered and received accordingly.

Finally, Paul says “Do not let anyone despise you.” Titus is to command the people’s respect as he labors among them as a teacher. How? By being an example of the godly lifestyle that he is preaching to others. It isn’t by lording it over others in a tyrannical way. In a similar exhortation to Timothy, Paul writes, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12). Titus is to follow a similar path; “In everything set them an example by doing what is good” (Titus 2:7).

There is much here for teachers and preachers today. We are certainly to teach the doctrines of the Word of God. Doctrines are foundational. But we are also to teach the duties that correspond to those doctrines and to clearly set before our hearers what godly living looks like. We are to do so with exhortation and rebuke, urging obedience and reproving sin, and all with the authority of Christ, if it is truly Christ’s directives that we are giving. Thus we are to be at pains to model this godly living ourselves. If we are to command our hearers’ respect and gain for our message the welcome that it ought to receive, we must exemplify that message in our own lives.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV © 2011 by Biblica, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved

Scripture Reference: Titus 2:11-15

Redemption

Imagine you were back in the first century, the slave-world of Paul’s day. There are a number of slaves in your congregation. They have heard the gospel, believed in Jesus, and are now saved. Among them is one whose situation is particularly distressing. He has a very cruel master and though becoming a Christian has made this slave a better worker, his master, if anything, is even more cruel to him. So you decide to try and secure his freedom. You offer to buy the man and his master agrees to sell him. What have you done for this slave? Simply put, you have redeemed him! By the payment of a price, a ransom, as it were, you have secured his freedom from the cruel tyranny to which he was subject.

It is that kind of transaction that helps us to understand Jesus’ death. He gave Himself for us to “redeem us,” or ransom us. He paid the price of His own life to obtain freedom for us. Paul tells us explicitly what that freedom was from: “all wickedness,” which literally means, all lawlessness. Think of the life you were living before your conversion. As far as the law of the land is concerned you may have been a law-abiding citizen. You didn’t steal cars, burgle houses, or do drugs. But as far as the law of God is concerned, it was an entirely different matter. At point after point your life was out of line with God’s law. It was full of things that the Law (of God) both forbids and condemns. Lawless! Therefore, it was precisely in order to set us free from such lawlessness that Jesus gave Himself as the ransom price for each and everyone of us.

Purification

His purpose in dying for us, however, went even beyond this. He “gave himself for us,” says Paul, “to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” To be eager to do what is good is to be the very opposite of being lawless. A person who is eager to do good, in the New Testament sense of that term, is eager to please his Savior and to do what He would have him to do. He wants to obey, to serve, and to worship by his doing. Thus, it was to have just such a people for Himself that Jesus died. However, it was necessary that we first be purified. We needed to be cleansed from our sin as well as delivered from its enslaving power if we were to be Jesus’ special, good-doing people. That was only possible through Jesus’ sacrificial self-giving, we couldn’t do it on our own.

Until He Comes . . .

We might naturally ask, “Why is Paul telling us this in particular?” Primarily, to answer a very basic question: “How are we to live in the meantime, in this present age?” This present age continues. Christ still has to appear to fulfill the promise. How are we to conduct ourselves as we wait for the fulfilment of that blessed hope? Part of the answer has already been given in what has been said about the grace of God in salvation. However, now in Christ’s self-giving on Calvary, we have another part of it. Since Christ has given Himself for us to redeem and purify us, it is for each of us to fall in with that purpose and never seek to thwart it.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV © 2011 by Biblica, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved

Scripture Reference: Titus 2:11-15

Something Wonderful

As we have seen, the Apostle emphasizes this grace, this appearing of Christ’s glory as our “blessed hope.” How will things be when our hope is realized? Immeasurably the better! It is often said that for believers, “the best is yet to be.” It is an understated absolute truth. Though the future may have many a dark shadow over it and there may be many hard things to bear, it still remains true that the best is yet to be. That is wholly because of our “blessed hope.” The hope of the second coming is a hope whose realization will bring wonderful blessing into the lives of believers everywhere. Here are two examples:

The blessing of resurrection:

“Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:20-21).

The blessing of comfort:

“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4).

A Divine Savior?

It has been argued that when Paul speaks about the appearing of our “great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,” he is actually referring to two persons, “the great God,” that is, our Father, and our “Savior, Jesus Christ.” Nevertheless, for grammatical and theological reasons it becomes apparent for giving the preference, as the NIV does, to a one person reference. What we have here in this verse is an ascription of deity to Jesus Christ, for He is our “great God and Savior.”

At the level of Greek grammar, for example, the verse is constructed in such a way that this is the most natural way to translate it. The facts are as follows: There are two nouns in the same case, “God” and “Savior.” The first one has the definite article “the” and the other does not, yet they are joined together as one by the conjunction “and.” When you come across such a construction in Greek the reference is to one person and one person alone.

To quote from the late theologian James M. Boice:

“Since Paul is writing of the second coming and sudden appearance of Jesus both words must refer to him, for it is not God the Father who is going to appear suddenly but rather ‘our great God and Savior’ who is ‘Jesus Christ.’ ”

The Savior, therefore, for whose appearing we are eagerly and expectantly waiting, is a divine Savior.

Jesus’ Self-Giving

Now, continuing on in the next verse, the Apostle reminds us of what this divine Savior did for us when He appeared the first time; He “gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” It is a picture of remarkable condescension and overflowing love. For we know what this self-giving involved. It involved the death of the cross. To every aspect of its sufferings, from the betrayal, the arrest, the trial, to the crucifixion itself with its shame and God-forsakenness, He freely “gave himself.” You might wonder the reason? It was for our redemption and purification.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV © 2011 by Biblica, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved

Scripture Reference: Titus 2:11-15

What Grace Does – Continued

It has often been said that these three words: self-controlled, upright, and godly, each look in a different direction. Self-control has reference to ourselves; uprightness to our fellow men; and godliness to God. There is, in other words, nothing unbalanced about the life grace enables us to live. There is an all-roundedness about it. The aim of divine grace is to make us Christians who in every area of life, man-ward, self-ward, and God-ward, are well-pleasing to God, our heavenly Father.

That being so, our clear duty is to co-operate with this grace and not resist it. It is taking us in the direction of a life in which ungodliness and worldly passions have no place; a life in which self-control, uprightness, and godliness hold absolute sway. Therefore we are to steadily follow its leadings, adopting daily the godly lifestyle, already outlined in the whole of the second chapter of Titus, and that it is prompting and empowering us to adopt into a lifestyle.

Until He Comes . . .

As we continue on in Paul’s Epistle, it is apparent that the Apostle has a particular reason for this emphasis on God’s grace. He speaks there of “the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” It is something yet in the future. The “present age” to which he refers at the end of the previous verse has not yet run its course. How are we to live in the meantime, as we wait for Christ’s return? The grace of God in salvation, teaching us to renounce sin and to live lives that are in every way pleasing to God, supplies us with our answer.

Something Certain

It is time now to move on to the glorious appearing itself, noticing, to begin with, that Paul describes it as our “blessed hope.” Normally when we use the word hope, the reference is to something uncertain, not yet attained. We hope that we’re going to get the job we have applied for, but of course we can’t be totally sure. We hope that we shall be able to visit again next year, but there is no guarantee that we will be able to. Hope is not the sort of word we use when we are speaking about something that is absolutely certain!

However, and that is a big however, in the Bible it is different. If you go back to the first chapter of Titus you will notice that in the reference to when we are looking at the hope of eternal life. Hope is repeatedly used for blessings that will one day be truly and totally ours. We do not have them yet, however. They still lie in the future. But they are promised to us and are therefore sure. That is very much the case Paul is making with “the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” It is a subject of explicit and repeated promise. He is most definitely coming back! That’s why Paul can speak about it here as our “blessed hope.”

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV © 2011 by Biblica, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved