Jesus Today. . .

THE GRACE OF GOD WHO APPEARED

The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men.—Tit. 2:11

One of the most incisive things Alexander Campbell ever wrote was to the effect that a person does not have to do anything to receive the grace of God, but only to enjoy its benefits. The above Scripture indicates as much. Salvation, made possible by God’s grace, has come to all people, unconditionally. We do not have to do anything for this to be a fact. As with the prodigal son, who did not have to do anything to get his father to be gracious to him. The father was waiting and watching, extending his grace, unconditionally. The son only needed to return home to receive the joys of the father’s goodness. Even more gloriously than Delta Airlines, who is “ready when you are,” the heavenly Father does not have to be coaxed or wheedled into doing something about our wretched condition. He is ready and stays ready, with everything already done for us that needs to be done. We only need to respond to what He has already done. What a glorious truth!

This may be an effective approach to missionary work. Our message can be that God has already saved them. The ransom has been paid and sealed. They only need to drop by the post office to pick it up. Man does not have to cooperate with God to make His abundant grace a reality. It is a free gift. It only needs to be received if the benefits of the gift are to be realized. The apostle makes it clear that it is not “because of deeds done by us in righteousness” but by his own mercy. And how was this?—“When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared.” It is in this context that he places “the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit” (Tit. 3:4-5).

It is evident from these verses that the Christ is both the essence and the personification of the grace of God. He is God’s grace. To say that the grace of God has appeared (Tit. 2:11) and that the goodness and loving kindness of God has appeared (Tit. 3:4) is to say that Jesus Christ has appeared. He is the glorious epiphany, the appearance of God. It is what Paul is saying in 2 Cor. 8:9: “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might be rich.”

So, the coming of the Christ into this dark world is the grace of God. Grace is a personal reality, for it is a person that lifts us from our poverty and makes us rich. This is the essence of God’s grace. Jesus did not come to help us save ourselves, nor to encourage us to save ourselves or even to make it possible for us to save ourselves. He came to save us. This is the force of 1 Tim. 1:15, one of the “sure” passages of the pastorals: “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and I am the foremost of sinners.”

If the apostle could see himself as the number 1 sinner, we should have no problem including ourselves in that awesome category of sinners, and to realize that as such we are subject to God’s wrath. The wages of sin can be but one thing, death. If we received what we deserve, we would all die in eternal separation from God. But “the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared,” and that is what the gospel is all about. Since it is “the gospel of the grace of God” it is really good news. Jesus did not come with a better philosophy or a more effective scheme to improve the world. He came to save us. We can only conclude that if the world does realize that it is lost it is because it does not understand the meaning of sin.

The passage before us, Tit. 2:11-12, not only shows us that Jesus Christ is the grace of God that has appeared, but also that this grace trains or teaches us “to renounce irreligion (ungodliness) and worldly passions, and to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world.” It is surely one of the great passages of Holy Writ, so pregnant with meaning.

This means more than that the Scriptures provide guidelines for righteous living, for the Bible and the grace of God are not to be equated. Paul is referring to God’s grace appearing after the Old Covenant Scriptures had been given, which shows that they in themselves were not sufficient to do the training he refers to. And it was before the New Testament became part of the Bible. So the training-in-grace can only be the gracious example of Jesus Christ.

Here is the key to understanding Christian ethics. It is much more than following (or attempting to follow) the Sermon on the Mount or cultivating (or trying to cultivate) Christian virtues. We are to be trained by God’s grace, and that grace is personified in Jesus Christ. It is only in Christ, sustained by God’s grace, that we can renounce ungodliness and worldly lusts and live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world, as Tit. 2:12 teaches. We can never follow a Book itself, or be sustained by its ideas, however hard we try. Grace cannot be reduced to the pages of any book. God’s grace appeared, broke into human history, not in the form of a book, but a Person. It is that Person that makes us gracious, that sustains us and empowers us to do such things as renounce lust and affirm holiness of life.

To renounce or reject ungodliness calls for decisive action. We cannot sleep our way into heaven. As we are trained by grace, by the living presence of Christ within us by his indwelling Spirit, we renounce those worldly lusts that defile the human family, such as a mania for liquor, and inordinate craving for material possessions, sexual sins of all sorts, self-assertiveness, selfish pride, the lust to dominate. We are to take whatever action necessary to reject from our lives all inordinate longing for power, pleasures, and possessions.

On the positive side, grace trains us to live a changed life—sober, upright, godly. To be sober is to have mastery of self, making the proper use of the desires and drives that are not sinful in themselves. To be upright is to be just and honest, to have a right relationship with others. To be godly is to be holy, to have a right relationship with God, to be reverent. All this we see in Jesus in perfection. He is our example, but he is more: he is the source of God’s grace. By allowing him to make his home with us we are continually trained to renounce what is evil and affirm what is good.

This is what makes religion beautiful and not a legalistic liability.—the Editor