He Saved Us

The Powerful Transformation: Ingredients of Salvation

Bible Passage: Titus 3:3–8

Summary: This passage highlights the transformation that occurs in our lives through the grace of God, emphasizing the key ingredients of salvation: mercy, regeneration, and justification.

Application: This sermon helps Christians recognize the radical change that salvation brings to their lives, encouraging them to live out their faith as a reflection of God's mercy and grace. Additionally, it can help those struggling with feelings of inadequacy or past failures to understand their identity in Christ, leading to renewed hope and purpose.

Teaching: Through this passage, we learn that salvation is not based on our works, but is a gift from God through His grace, leading us to live lives that demonstrate that transformation. It teaches us that acknowledging our past and relying on God's mercy is crucial for a vibrant Christian life.

How this passage could point to Christ: In the context of the Bible, this passage points to Christ as the ultimate source of mercy and regeneration. His sacrifice on the cross made it possible for us to be justified before God, illustrating the fulfillment of God’s redemptive plan from Genesis to Revelation.

Big Idea: Salvation is a transformative gift from God that leads to a life reflecting His mercy and grace, demonstrated in the actions and attitudes of believers.

Recommended Study: As you prepare, consider using Logos to explore the historical context of Crete and its influence on Paul's message to Titus. Investigate the original Greek terms for 'regeneration' and 'justification' to understand their implications more deeply. Reviewing commentaries that address the theological significance of grace and works in salvation will also provide insight into how to apply these truths effectively for your audience.

1. The Need of Salvation

Titus 3:3 “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.”

The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus a. The Need of Salvation

In verse 3 the apostle supplies an unsavoury picture of the state and conduct of unregenerate people. In doing so, he discloses what we ourselves used to be like. Moreover, this is not an exaggeration, but ‘the very exact image of human life without grace’. It is perhaps best grasped as four couplets.

First, at one time we too were foolish, disobedient. In other words, we were both mentally and morally depraved. We lacked sense (anoētos) and sensibility (apeithēs). This is elaborated in the next pair.

Secondly, we were deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. Both verbs are passive in form, and so indicate that we were the victims of evil forces we could not control. We were not ‘foolish’ only, but deceived. We were not ‘disobedient’ only, but enslaved. Doubtless Paul is alluding to the Evil One, that arch-deceiver who blinds people’s minds and that arch-tyrant who also takes people captive.14 We were his dupes and his slaves.

Thirdly, we lived in malice and envy, which are very ugly twins. For malice is wishing people evil, while envy is resenting and coveting their good. Both disrupt human relationships.

Fourthly, we were being hated and hating one another. That is, the hostility which we experienced in our relationships was reciprocal.

Thus a deliberate antithesis seems to be developed between the kind of people Christians should be (1, 2) and the kind of people we once were (3). It is a contrast between submissiveness and foolishness, between obedience and disobedience, between a readiness to do good and an enslavement by evil, between kindness and peaceableness on the one hand and malice and envy on the other, between being humble and gentle and being hateful and hating.

How is it possible to get out of the one mindset and lifestyle into the other, and to exchange addiction for freedom? The answer is given in verse 5: he saved us, he rescued us from our former bondage and changed us into new people. The New Testament loves to dwell on this transformation, which salvation entails, by using the formula ‘once we were … but now we are …’

2. The Source of Salvation

Titus 3:4 “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared,”

The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus b. The Source of Salvation

If we were truly deceived and enslaved, one thing is obvious: we could not save ourselves. Yet the possibility of self-salvation is one of the major delusions of New Age philosophy. It teaches that salvation comes not from without (someone else coming to our rescue) but from within (as we discover ourselves and our own resources). So ‘look into yourself’, Shirley MacLaine urges us, ‘explore yourself’, for ‘all the answers are within yourself’. And in her subsequent book, which is revealingly entitled Going Within, she writes that ‘the New Age is all about self-responsibility’, i.e. taking responsibility for everything that happens, since ‘the only source is ourselves’.

But Paul teaches a different source of salvation. With verse 4 he turns from us in our depravity to ‘God our Saviour’ (1:3; 2:10; 3:4), from our hatred of one another to his amazing love for us. Paul traces our salvation right back to its source in the love of God. But when the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared (4), that is, in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, he saved us. Then at the end of verse 5 Paul mentions God’s ‘mercy’ and in verse 7 his justifying ‘grace’. These are four tremendous words. God’s ‘kindness’ (chrēstotēs) is shown even to ‘the ungrateful and wicked’; his ‘love’ (philanthrōpia) is his concern for the whole human race; his ‘mercy’ (eleos) is extended to the helpless who cannot save themselves; and his ‘grace’ (charis) reaches out to the guilty and undeserving.

Thus salvation originated in the heart of God. It is because of his kindness, love, mercy and grace that he intervened on our behalf, he took the initiative, he came after us, and he rescued us from our hopeless predicament

3. The Ground of Salvation

Titus 3:4–5 “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,”

The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus c. The Ground of Salvation

Granted that God’s love is the source or spring from which salvation flows, what is the ground on which it rests? On what moral basis can God forgive sinners? It is true that in explicit terms this question is neither asked nor answered in

4. The Means of Salvation

Titus 3:5–6 “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,”

The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus d. The Means of Salvation

In order to clarify what the main verb is, on which this long sentence depends, the NIV repeats it in verse 5 (he saved us … he saved us …), although it occurs only once in the Greek text. On the one hand, he saved us … because of his mercy, that is, because of his merciful deed (the ground of our salvation); on the other, he saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit (the means of our salvation). Here is a composite expression containing four nouns—washing, rebirth, renewal and the Holy Spirit. What do they mean?

Washing (loutron) is almost certainly a reference to water baptism. All the early church fathers took it in this way. This does not mean that they (or Paul) taught baptismal regeneration, any more than Ananias did when he said to Saul of Tarsus, ‘Get up, be baptised and wash your sin away, calling on his name.’ Most Protestant churches think of baptism as ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace’, namely of the washing away of sins, and of new birth by the Holy Spirit. But they do not confuse the sign (baptism) with the thing signified (salvation).

The next two nouns (rebirth and renewal) are variously understood. ‘Rebirth’ translates palingenesia, which Jesus used of the final renewal of all things, and which the Stoics used for the periodical restoration of the world, in which they believed. Here, however, the new birth envisaged is individual (like the ‘new creation’ of

5. The Goal of Salvation

Titus 3:7 “so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus e. The Goal of Salvation

God saved us, Paul wrote, … so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life (7). All those whom God has justified and regenerated become his heirs, because he has saved us for this purpose. We are ‘heirs of God and coheirs with Christ’. And as his nominated heirs we cherish the sure expectation that one day we will receive our full inheritance in heaven, namely ‘eternal life’, an unclouded fellowship with God. During the present age, although we have received a foretaste of eternal life, the fullness of life is the object of our hope, and we are its ‘heirs-in-hope’.27 Yet our hope is secure because it rests on God’s promise (1:2).

This is a trustworthy saying (8a), Paul adds. We have seen that the Pastorals contain five ‘trustworthy sayings’ (pithy statements which Paul endorses). This is the only one in Titus. In three of them the formula almost certainly relates to what follows. But here in Titus (as probably in

6. The Evidence of Salvation

Titus 3:8 “The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people.”

The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus f. The Evidence of Salvation

Although the ‘trustworthy saying’ formula seems to have concluded Paul’s exposition of salvation, he has not yet finished the topic. He will not leave it without underlining the indispensable necessity of good works in those who profess to have been saved. And I want you to stress these things (that is, the essential ingredients of salvation), so that those who have trusted in God (and so have been saved by faith) may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good (8b).

What kind of good deeds does the apostle have in mind? Because the verb translated ‘to devote themselves’ (proïstēmi) can have the almost technical sense ‘to practise a profession’, the RSV margin translates it ‘to enter honourable occupations’, and the REB margin ‘to engage in honest employment’. But the context does not require, or even encourage, this meaning. The reference seems to be a more general one to good works of righteousness and love. Although Paul has made it plain in verse 5 that God has not saved us ‘because of righteous things we had done’, he nevertheless now insists that believers must devote themselves to good works. Good works are not the ground of salvation, but they are its necessary fruit and evidence. It is in this way that these things are excellent and profitable for everyone (8c).

The necessity of good works has been noted by several commentators as a major topic of the Pastorals. Robert Karris, for example, has called it ‘the author’s basic message’. But it is Gordon Fee who has drawn particular attention to it, not so much in the Pastorals in general, as in Titus in particular. ‘The dominant theme in Titus … is good works … that is, exemplary Christian behaviour, and that for the sake of outsiders’ and ‘in contrast to the false teachers’. It is ‘the recurring theme of the entire letter’.

The expression ‘good works’ (kala erga) occurs fourteen times in the Pastorals. Paul seems to emphasize five points. First, the very purpose of Christ’s death was to purify for himself a people who would be enthusiastic for good works (