The Gospel Changes Everything
Being the Church • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to everyone.
12 It instructs us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live sensible, upright, and godly lives in the present age,
13 as we await the blessed hope and glorious appearance of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
14 He gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.
15 Speak these things as you encourage and rebuke with all authority. Let no one despise you.
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Members of the church ... are entreated: b. To practice daily living that is consistent with the Spiritual principles of the Christian life; to abstain from worldliness in all its forms, avoiding such alliances which would constitute an unequal yoke with unbelievers; To guard against religious apostasy and false teaching; Titus 2:11-15; 2 Cor. 6:14; 7:1; 1 John 2:15-17.
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The basic principle of this statement of member responsibilities is that each member of this church must be seeking to live a holy life, following Christ’s commands, committed to believing and practicing the truths of God’s Word.
When we say that the Scripture is our only rule of faith and practice, or that the Bible is the basis for what we believe and how we live, this means that as professing believers we ought to believe and live out what the Book says.
And in order to do this, we need to know and understand what God’s Word says. This is why a commitment to personal reading and study of Scripture is so important. If we do not spend significant time growing in our knowledge and understanding of God’s Word, we will not know what to believe or how to live. This is why so many Christians today wander around aimlessly in life, thinking, believing, and doing so many wrong and worldly things —because we don’t know God’s Word as we ought to.
If you make it your commitment to know and understand God’s Word, this truth of holiness will gradually begin to characterize your life. Holiness will flow out of a true knowledge of God and His Word.
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The Gospel Changes Everything!
I grew up in a Baptist church in the South, and our church’s slogan was “The Gospel Changes Everything.”
The pastor would get up on Sunday mornings and say, “Welcome to Suber Road Baptist Church, where the Gospel Changes Everything.” But of course, that church is not the only church where the Gospel Changes Everything!
Wherever God’s Gospel is at work in individuals, that Gospel Changes Everything.
The Gospel doesn’t save you from hell and then leave you living in your sin. The Gospel saves you from your sin - past, present, and future.
The Gospel saves you from the power of sin, the payment for sin, and eventually the presence of sin. And so we can say, “The Gospel Changes Everything.”
The Gospel changes your past, your present, and your future. The Gospel changes your actions, words, thoughts, and desires. The Gospel Changes Everything!
This truth is especially clear in 2 Corinthians 5:14-21
14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that One died for all, therefore all died.
15 And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and was raised again.
16 So from now on we regard no one according to the flesh. Although we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!
18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:
19 that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s trespasses against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
20 Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ: Be reconciled to God.
21 God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
Verse 17 especially makes this clear:
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!
The Gospel doesn’t just change your destiny, it changes your life on the way. You don’t just have eternal life to look forward to in the future, you have a new life now.
Verse 15 told us that this is Christ’s purpose for us in his death on our behalf:
15 And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and was raised again.
What was the purpose of Christ’s death for us? Paul says that the reason Christ died was that we should live for Him! Jesus Christ gave His life for us so that we would give our lives to Him.
Peter says the same thing in 1 Peter 2:24
24 He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. “By His stripes you are healed.”
The message of this passage is clear. The Gospel offers you to be reconciled to God through Christ and his atoning sacrifice for you on the cross. You can be restored to a right relationship with God - you can be God’s friend through Christ. But this restoration of relationship with God also means that your life will be changed along the way.
If you are truly trusting in Christ for salvation, your life will not stay the same. If your life has not changed, then you have not truly trusted Christ. If your life looks just like the world around you, your profession of faith is false. If you act, and talk, and think, and desire things like the world does, you have no reason to think that your claim of being a Christian is genuine.
Let’s go back to Titus and examine what Paul says there about the effect of the Gospel on the life of a believer.
Paul gives us a wonderful Gospel statement in Titus 3:4-7
4 But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared,
5 He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.
6 This is the Spirit He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior,
7 so that, having been justified by His grace, we would become heirs with the hope of eternal life.
Salvation is the gift of God’s grace and mercy through Christ, received by faith, not by our works of righteousness, but by trusting in God’s work in Christ.
We cannot work our way to God; God has done the work in His Son, and we must receive it as God’s free and undeserved gift to us.
But those who do receive the Gospel are also transformed by that same Gospel.
The Grace of God Brings Salvation
11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to everyone.
God’s grace in Christ brings salvation to everyone - not that every person will be saved, but that God’s offer of grace in Christ extends to the world and to every kind of person - no one is excluded: God’s grace is for Jew and Gentile, male and female, old and young, rich and poor, slave and free - anyone who wants to accept God’s free gift of salvation by grace can have it.
But that’s not where God’s grace ends. That same grace that saved us will also transform our lives.
God’s Grace Transforms Our Lives
Titus 2:12 (BSB)
12 It [God’s grace] instructs us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live sensible, upright, and godly lives in the present age,
1. Grace Trains Us to Reject a Sinful Life
12 It instructs us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live sensible, upright, and godly lives in the present age,
Sin in relation to God (“ungodliness”)
Ungodliness is thinking and speaking and acting as if God didn’t exist. It means that I live however I want to without ever giving a thought to God and what He wants.
Sin in relation to the World (“worldly passions”)
Worldly passions refer to those passionate desires that the world pursues and seeks to fulfill, such as a lust for sexual pleasure or other physical pleasures, a lust for money and possessions, a lust for power and prestige and the like.
2. Grace Trains Us to Embrace a Righteous Life
12 It instructs us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live sensible, upright, and godly lives in the present age,
Personally (“Sensible” or sober)
Not living in any kind of excess or out of control, but under the control of the Holy Spirit. This has to do with the kind of people we are individually even when others aren’t watching.
In Relation to Other People (“Upright” or righteous)
This has to do with how we treat others around us. Grace teaches us to love our neighbor as ourselves, to put the interests of others above our own, to be merciful and forgiving toward others, to treat others with respect and kindness, the way we want to be treated.
In Relation to God (“Godly”)
This is the opposite of ungodliness; it means that Grace teaches us to think about God in everything we do, to consider what He wants rather than what we want. Grace teaches us to honor God with our thoughts, words, and actions.
3. Grace Causes Us to Long for Christ’s Return
13 as we await the blessed hope and glorious appearance of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
It is our “blessed hope” - the thought of seeing Christ and being with Christ makes us happy and fills our hearts with confident hope in the promise of His return. Do you long to see Christ and be with him? God’s grace gives this hope and longing to every believer.
It will be glorious - We can’t begin to imagine how wonderful it will be to be with Christ - whether He returns or takes us home to Him; it will be so amazing that we can’t really understand or fathom it now, but the best experiences of this life will pale in comparison with the joy of seeing our great God and Savior Jesus Christ in all His splendor.
This hope is the motivation for growth in holiness now. John tells us that when we see Christ we will become like Him, and this confident hope spurs us on to holiness now.
1 Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.
2 Beloved, we are now children of God, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when Christ appears, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is.
3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as Christ is pure.
We pursue holiness now because it is our future hope.
4. Grace Keeps Us Focused on Christ’s Sacrifice and Its Purpose
14 He gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.
The Sacrifice of Christ
“He gave Himself for us” - the Gospel in a nutshell. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, gave Himself for us. He died instead of us. We deserved to die for our own sins and be separated from God forever, but He died for our sins instead so we can be restored to a right relationship with God.
The Purpose of His Sacrifice
To redeem us from all lawlessness - not only to save us from the consequences of our sin, but to actually save us from our sins right now - the power and effect of sin on our lives here on earth. He died so that we would no longer be slaves of sin but free to do what is right.
To make His people pure - by Christ’s death we have been purchased as His own special possession; we belong to Him; we are set apart - set apart from sin, and set apart to Jesus Christ - our lives belong to him now.
To make His people passionate for good deeds - before we knew Christ, we were passionate about doing evil deeds. We lived for ourselves and the values of this world. Now by God’s grace, he is making us the kind of people that value Him above everything, and so we passionately pursue a life that honors him in the way we think, talk, and live. We “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness” rather than our own interests.
Truths to Keep in Mind
Sanctification is God’s work through us.
God is the One making us holy - it is His grace at work in our lives that causes our growth in holiness. It is the fruit of the Spirit because it is His Spirit producing the fruit in our lives. We can’t take credit for it. He deserves all the glory from our lives:
Philippians 2:13
13 For it is God who works in you to will and to act on behalf of His good purpose.
But God doesn’t do this without our involvement. He could if he wanted to. But he has chosen to accomplish this through our effort and hard work.
Philippians 2:12 (BSB)
12 Therefore, my beloved, … continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
One day God will make us completely holy and he will do it completely apart from our own effort. But for now, God has ordained that we should grow in holiness by striving to live in holiness.
Growth in Holiness Demonstrates Genuine Faith
14 Pursue peace with everyone, as well as holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.
Someone who is a genuine believer will be pursuing holiness.
If God’s grace has changed your eternal destiny, it will also be changing the current direction of your life.
Growth in Holiness is Gradual
It does not happen overnight, and it has its ups and downs. You might not notice much progress over a week or even a month, but progress should be visible as you look back a year or a few years.
18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into His image with intensifying glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
Practical Questions
Does your life look different from unbelievers around you?
-Are you doing the same things unbelievers do?
Do you watch the same movies?
Do you listen to the same music?
Do you put your interests above the interests of others?
Do you seek to accumulate possessions and wealth?
Do you indulge in sexual sin, use pornography, or engage in sexual relationships outside of marriage?
-Do you talk like the world around you?
Is your speech characterized by negativity and complaining?
Do you speak unkind words about other people?
Do you use foul language or use God’s name lightly or in cursing?
Do you stretch the truth or practice dishonesty or deception in the way you talk?
Do you always talk about yourself and what you’ve done?
-Do you think like the world around you?
Are you focused on this life and what you can experience with your physical senses rather than heavenly reality?
Do you value what this world values? Money, possessions, fame, power, physical pleasure
Do you think and talk and act as if God didn’t exist? As if what He has said in His Word is unimportant or doesn’t apply to you?
Or are your actions, words, and thoughts guided by an awareness of God’s presence and a desire to honor him?
6 in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.
Is this not the essence of godliness or holiness? In all your ways acknowledge Him.
Think about God. Acknowledge Him in all your ways.
Everywhere you go, everything you do, everything you say, and everything you think ought to be governed by the reality of God, His presence with you, and His infinite value. If we truly practice the presence of God, we will be a holy people.
This is what the Gospel does in the life of a true believer. It will change you from the inside out and make you the kind of person who loves and values God more than anyone or anything in this world. The Gospel will cause you to think, speak, and act in ways consistent with the character of God as He has revealed Himself in His Word.
Application (Bowed Heads)
Have you truly received the Gospel of God’s Grace in Christ? Is there evidence that your life is being changed by the power of the gospel? Is there any fruit of the Holy Spirit? If not, come to Christ today, and receive His free gift of salvation.
12 But to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God—
If you are experiencing growth in holiness, give glory to God! Praise Him! Thank Him for His work in your life.
How has God challenged your heart this morning? What needs to change in your life? What thoughts, words, or actions do you need to give up? In what ways do you need to pursue holiness in your own life?
If you have felt convicted of sin in your life this morning, I urge you to remember God’s promise:
9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
God’s grace in the gospel offers us ongoing forgiveness and cleansing, and His grace enables us to get back up after we have fallen and keep running the race.
And I would remind you again, our need for personal holiness takes us back to our need for God’s Word. It is by spending time with God in His Word and in prayer that our lives will gradually be transformed to be more and more like Christ.
By God’s grace may we be holy people who draw attention to our holy God.