When Grace Appeared

Teaching of the Christian faith. The teaching of, let's say, the Protestant church. The thing that stands at the heart of our faith is that salvation, eternal salvation, is given to us by the concept of grace. That God would have saved a fallen, rebellious and ignorant people like you and me. Not because of anything that we have done, not anything that we could give in return, but out of pure love.

That God would save people like you and me. That is the thing that brings Christians back week after week to hear that same old gospel message. We love the doctrine of grace. But would it surprise you that many of us also have a very narrow understanding of grace? Ask any Christian and they will probably be able to tell you that we are saved by faith through this thing called grace by the work of Jesus Christ alone.

But many might not be able to tell you that grace does a lot more than saving us. This morning, we're going to look at a wonderful summary that the apostle Paul gives on the work of grace in his small letter, the letter of Titus in chapter two. We can turn there. Titus chapter two. In the context, in the first ten verses, verses one to ten, Paul tells Titus, who is a pastor of a church, to make sure that he teaches what is in accordance with sound doctrine.

In other words, Titus is to teach consistently. What is this teaching? Well, Paul mentions that it's a teaching that causes all sorts of people, people of different backgrounds to live good, moral, and virtuous lives. The teaching is to be good Christians. And no one is left out in the list.

Have a look. Old men, old women, younger women, younger men, and even slaves. They are all taught, they are all taught things that accord with sound doctrine. Their moral lives are being taught in accordance with sound doctrine. Well, what is this sound doctrine?

Well, Paul says that it is essentially the gospel message, the message of Jesus Christ and what He has done for us on the cross. It's the story of God's incredible grace. At the end of Paul's instructions for all sorts of people in how to live moral lives, Paul mentions that phrase again. Have a look in verse ten, sound doctrine or doctrine is used here. And here in specific relation, he's talking to slaves who must live such good, obedient lives in relation to their masters that they adorn the doctrine, that they beautify the doctrine of God our saviour.

And then Paul goes about defining what the content of that doctrine is and that's where we pick it up in verses eleven through to fourteen. Our passage today, Titus 2:11. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works. So far the reading, this is the word of the Lord. Paul is saying grace does more than save us.

Grace is the power by which we live and breathe as Christians. If you are ever tempted to have a narrow view of God's grace, if you hear the term God's grace and think it is only salvation, think again. Because in these few verses, which is actually just one giant long sentence, we see just how multifaceted grace is. Let's have a look at three things. Grace, Paul says, begins firstly by rescuing us.

Then verse twelve, it redirects our lives. And finally, verse thirteen, grace readies us for how the world is going to end. That is what grace does. It rescues us, it redirects our lives, and it readies us for the end. And we're going to have a look at those three aspects.

Firstly, the rescue of grace, the one that we're probably the most familiar with. The phrase, the grace of God, is actually the subject of this entire long sentence. Everything that flows from it, all the verbs like rescue or bring salvation or cause us to wait or teach us or train us. It all flows from this term, the grace of God. And we are told firstly that it is the grace of God which has appeared.

Now, very interestingly, this grace of God has appeared in the sense that the Greeks of the time would have really understood. It would have sparked something in their ears when they heard it. It's referring to a word in the Greek called epiphany, which is where we get the word epiphany from. Its most basic meaning is to shine upon, to shine upon.

But specifically in the New Testament, it means to become visible or to become known. Interestingly, in the Greek epics, the Greek mythology of the day, similar to our Marvel movies, the superhero movies, the great gods and the heroes would also epiphany onto the scene to come and save the damsel in distress or to save the villagers that are in danger. Significantly, Paul refers to a thing, a concept, the grace of God as epiphany. Like those great heroes of the ancient world, the mysterious heroes that have come down from heaven, so grace has come down and appeared. But what this does, the usage of the word epiphany combining with the phrase bringing salvation, well, it causes us to think that this is more than a thing.

This grace is a person. It is doing something that a hero in ancient mythology would have done. Grace is being personified. Who is that person? It's Jesus Christ, of course.

In fact, as Kent Hughes in his commentary on Titus puts it, Christ is grace. Christ is the grace that appears. So for those of us who want a quick way to define or identify the grace of God, you can simply say this: we know what grace is because we know who Jesus Christ is. Unlike the heroes of Greek mythology, however, who also epiphany to save these villagers or the damsels in distress, Jesus Christ, we are told, hasn't come for those simply deemed worthy of saving. Paul says that grace has come to who?

All people. Regardless of which village you are, what tribe you belong to, regardless of your spiritual healthiness to even call out to God for rescue. Grace has come to all of those who need it. Therefore, this grace is not simply intimate in that it has come to us. This grace is immense.

People everywhere may receive this salvation. All walks of life can be saved. There is no sin too great, in other words. There is no ethnicity too far from Western Christianity. There is no historical date too far from the cross.

No person tainted too much with their sin, no person too blind with their self-righteousness and pride who cannot be saved with this salvation. The grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all people. About fifteen years ago or something like that, a long time family friend, we'll call her Sandra, stumbled into our home very late one night, skunk drunk. Don't ask me how she managed to drive to our place at that time of the night, but somehow she got there. Now Sandra had been a functioning alcoholic for a while. But now, she was routinely drinking a bottle of whiskey a night.

Why? Her husband had died in a backyard accident while she was drunk and she was wracked with grief. For years, my mum had prayed for Sandra and shared the gospel with her and usually, there was very little interest. But this night was different. I remember coming back from a night class at seminary at the time. And I was happy to be home getting ready for bed and my mum grabbed me in my room and plunked me in front of Sandra because Sandra had questions.

Particularly, there was one deep lingering question that had been burning within her for a while. And through a slurring tongue, she dribbled out the question, how can a good God send His son to die for a terrible person like me? See, the problem Sandra had with the gospel was not being convinced that she needed saving. The problem was that God could be willing to save her and even at a great cost to Himself. But the Bible tells us that grace which brings salvation has brought salvation to all people.

Now, the fact that salvation has come for all people means two things, if you think about it. Firstly, it means that all people need saving. You might think that you're living a pretty good life. A quiet life, you don't have the cops around to your place very often. You've never been called bigoted even in this day and age.

You've not been too promiscuous, maybe, you know, once or twice with a boyfriend or girlfriend, but you're not a bad person. But even you, the Bible says, needs rescuing. Nice people like you, perhaps like me, we don't need a tweak here and there to just improve a little bit and come onto the right path. Nice people like you and me, we need salvation. We need a rescue.

But then secondly, a salvation that has been brought for all people means that all sorts of people can be rescued. God was willing to save someone like Sandra even at a great cost to Himself. Why? Because Jesus Christ is gracious. Thankfully, the story ends with Sandra realising that sometime later.

Today, Sandra is sober and saved. The grace of God, Paul says, personified in Jesus Christ rescues people of all sorts. Now, like I said, for most Christians, that's fine. That is wonderful news. We're happy about that.

We understand that. But then we see a second thing that grace does. Grace redirects our lives. Grace redirects our lives. Not only has grace caused us to be forgiven of our evil, grace causes us to desire the things that are truly good, truly godly.

Verse twelve says that grace trains us. That word can be, it teaches us to renounce ungodliness, to renounce worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age. In other words, the grace personified in Jesus not only rescues us from our wickedness, but it fills us with righteousness as well. When grace comes into our lives, when grace appears and bursts onto the scene, we don't receive simply a blank slate reset. It fills that blank slate with a heart that loves God.

That is what the godliness here is referring to, our hearts that now desire to imitate God. Paul explains the redirecting power of grace by telling us the same thing from both a negative and then a positive angle. On the one hand, grace causes us to renounce, which means to deny, to reject, to abandon ungodliness and worldly passions. Now, ungodliness in the Bible doesn't simply refer to immorality, you know, normally when we think of ungodly people, we think that they're horribly amoral people. It's not just that.

Ungodliness is a heart that runs away from God. A heart that doesn't want God in their life. Then worldly passions, which grace says no to, refers to the deepest desires of those ungodly hearts, the deepest passions or as the King James would put it, the lusts of the heart, the lusts for power, the lusts for greed, for sex, for freedom or autonomy. Grace, Paul says, says no to those things, but then positively, grace causes us to pursue or live for, Paul says, self-control, uprightness and godliness. The thing that is often overlooked by Christians and the thing that is truly wonderful about grace is that it is redirecting our thoughts, our feelings and our behaviours.

That is the wonderful thing about grace. One of my favourite inventions of the last ten years has been the live traffic GPS. So good. We all know that GPS has been around for a long time where a satellite can map out a path for you to take to get from point A to point B, but now, not only does Siri tell me how to find my way, it also knows about traffic bottlenecks. And so as I'm driving on the highway and there's an accident, it can tell me take this exit to make your way around the traffic.

It can redirect me to find an alternative path. Now, hearts, apart from the intervening grace of God, are locked into a path. Jesus calls it simply the path of destruction. Some of us who have become Christians later in life may actually remember this moment where we once lived far from God, a heart full of worldly passions, but then we were rescued and forgiven. But the grace that rescues doesn't simply leave us on that same path.

We're not just left there to keep going down the way we've been going, making the same mistakes again and again. Grace redirects us. As Christians, not only do we now say no to ungodliness, we are redirected to say yes to godliness. No to worldly passions, yes to self-control. Now Christian, I don't want you to forget this. The fact that your life doesn't look like your non-Christian friend, that has nothing to do with your temperament.

That's got nothing to do with your family or its background or your culture. It's got nothing to do with your education or your personality. In and of themselves, those things don't do anything to change your heart. Every time you notice that you are different, every time you realise you've done something that God would want you to do, that is grace. Grace has redirected your path.

And then finally, in this long sentence, Paul tells us that grace causes us to wait with readiness for the end. Verse thirteen tells us that grace causes us to wait for a blessed hope, our blessed hope. Then this blessed hope is defined for us. It is the appearing of the glory of our great God and saviour, Jesus Christ. You notice that the word appear happens again?

It appears again. This is the second bit of evidence to make my case that the grace of God mentioned in verse eleven is not a thing but a person. Because who appears here in verse thirteen? Jesus does. The Greek suggests the same.

The glory of God is written in the same way as the grace of God in verse eleven. They're both put alongside the same verb appearing. But there is also an intensifying happening. Here is the end goal of the grace of God appearing. Here is the end goal for what happened in verse eleven.

We see in verse thirteen, glory is the end goal. The grace that has come to first save us has the goal of glory, and the blessed hope for which those who have been rescued centres upon is the glory we see when Jesus ushers in the kingdom. That is the blessed hope. Some of our married couples here will understand something of this waiting. While they were waiting to find their one, their soul mate, so called, the wait was often a nervous one.

Who's it going to be? Where are they going to come from? When are they going to get here? But once you're married and you look back on your life and you think to yourself, why on earth did I have sleepless nights about that stuff? Of course, I now see how God wove my life into this other person's life.

Of course, in God's timing, it was always going to happen that way. And you think to yourself, if I was able to go back in time, I would go and talk to my younger self and tell them it's going to be okay. Relax. Breathe. Sleep well tonight.

It's going to happen. The grace of God causes us to wait with that peaceful readiness. It's a waiting with anticipation. Think about those two words, blessed hope. Something that is blessed we saw in the Beatitudes a few weeks ago is something that brings happiness purely.

Something that has been transcendently given to us as a good thing. And then hope is something closer to confidence. So the blessed hope of Jesus Christ's appearance, guys, that is simply waiting with happy confidence. Happy confidence that He is coming. We wait with eagerness, brothers and sisters, because Jesus' arrival is certain and it is good.

If you are a Christian and you have received the grace of God in your rescue, then the day when the glory of our great God and saviour Jesus Christ appears is going to be for us the most wonderful day of our lives. Even better than our anxious husbands and wives. And then Paul wraps up the idea that grace rescues, redirects and readies us in verse fourteen, and he simply gives us a summary again of how this grace actually works, how it was enabled through the work of Jesus Christ. We are told that Jesus Christ gave Himself for us, which is Paul's way of saying He died in our place. Jesus died the death that I deserved.

This sacrificing death causes us to be redeemed, says Paul, to be restored from the effects of lawlessness, which is harking back to that ungodliness and worldly passions idea. It's this idea of running away from God's moral system. And we've been redeemed, restored from the chaos of sin, sin being the rebellion against His law. And because of this rebellion, we have also been spared God's divine punishment. But now having redeemed us, Jesus also, we are told, purifies us.

So not only are we forgiven, not only is our slate clean, He's working to clean us still. And as purified people, lawful people, we start burning with passionate, heartfelt urgency to be zealous for good works, to live the life we're meant to live. We begin now to proactively seek to do good in our thoughts, our feelings, and our behaviours. This is what verse fourteen is summarising, how the cross of Christ has become our grace and how this grace has started transforming us now and for ever. Friends, Jesus Christ, the incarnate grace of God has burst into the life of humanity.

His arrival, His work on the cross has brought us to a place of being rescued from God's judgment and subsequently, hell. This salvation is so complete that His rescue now redirects the way we live so that we are now eager and willing to live good lives. All the while, we remain confident and steady that the progress is going ahead and the end is coming and we can't wait for it to come. The grace of God has appeared. And because His grace has appeared, His second coming will be all the more glorious.

Think about it. Why does Jesus get the glory at the end? Because grace means He's done everything and He doesn't share that salvation with anyone, including our efforts or lack thereof. He gets the glory because grace has saved us. Let's pray.

Our Lord, we ask this morning that You may cause in our hearts a desire to pursue the redirection that Your grace offers our lifestyles. But for some of us here, we are resisting this redirection. For some of us here, we wilfully desire to overlook what the cross of Christ means. I pray, Lord, for Your power to be displayed in their lives that they may come to know that there's no opportune time to turn to You. There's no moment to rebel and then turn to You, Lord.

There is only repentance and faith or everlasting destruction. Today is always the day of salvation. And then Lord, for those of us who believe these things, who know these things, who praise You for these things, help us to see when we say no to ungodliness and when we say yes to self-control. Why? So that we may give You the glory for what You are doing in our lives.

You deserve the praise for the good things we do. And then, Lord, help us to wait eagerly for Your return. Help us to live consciously as though Your arrival is coming soon and to think of that day as a day that fills us with joy, that we are eager for You to come back, and that we live our life marked by a priority that holds Your glory as the greatest thing we can desire. So Lord, for those that may not be sure of these things, may they pray today that they will know with all their hearts that there is a rescue for them, there is a redirection that has come for them, and that they can have a readiness for that final day of Your return. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.