Grace Has Appeared: Bringing Salvation

Titus 2:11

(PREFACE) We’re starting a short four week Advent Series called “Grace Has Appeared.” Advent means “Coming” and is a season centered on the appearance of God in the birth of the Savior, who is the embodiment of Rescuing and transforming grace. The goal of this series is to gain a deeper understanding of God’s grace. And we’re going to do so by going to the book of Titus 2:11-14. You may ask, “Why Titus?” “What does grace have to do with Christmas?” (Read, pray)

Intro:

I recently heard a pastor give an illustration and story about a Baptist minister many years ago who had an elderly woman in his congregation who was struggling financially. She rented a home and was very behind on paying her rent, and the church was aware of her situation and, without her knowing, pitched in and put together a significant amount of money to present her with a large gift.

The pastor got the money together, went to her house, knocked, and there was no answer, which surprised him because she was always home being the homebody that she was. He came back the next day, knocked, rang the doorbell, and no answer.

At worship that Sunday, there she was, so he went to her and expressed what happened, and she said, “Oh, I was home. But I thought you were the rent collector. I was so scared you were there to collect the rent and I didn’t have the money so I hid inside and didn’t answer the door.”

Many of us view God this way. If you’re not a Christian or if you’ve been a Christian for years, we can have a tendency to view God as the rent collector. God appears or knocks at our door to collect—to take something from us rather than to give something to us. But our passage will remind us today that God’s posture toward sinful humanity was not to force us to pay up what we owe, “but to give something to us despsite what we owe.” This is the grace of God.

It’s this free gift of grace that brings change to every aspect of our lives because it deals with sin in a comprehensive way.

But often for us, especially in a time of year that prioritizes giving and kindness, We seek to find something within ourselves to change our ways and pay up with good works to be accepted

Addiction or sin patterns

Feeling dry or stuck- plateaued

Serving the church, family, kids with little joy and a ton of frustration

Nothing seems to change. We try hard to look between the cushions for extra coins or go into our humble little piggy bank and we say we need to get it together and be better and pay up.

Paul presents a different picture. You see Paul the apostle wrote this ancient letter in the first century to equip a man named Titus to bring health and strength to local churches in a city called Crete.

It was quite the task. In a greco-roman society, the philosophies and sinful practices were pervasive in the day and false teachings and sinful practices tended to creep into churches.

And Titus’ job is to establish order and therefore, health in these churches so that they could live well in a God-hating culture. His heart for these churches was to reflect the character of God and live upright lives when everything around is against them.

If our way of life is meant to represent God in the city where’s the hope to truly change? Where is the power? The answer today for all of us is the rescuing and transforming grace of God! And Christmas is when we celebrate, not just grace in general, but the grace which became visible.

Main Point: Grace appeared when Christ appeared to redeem our past by rescuing us from guilt and shame brought about by sin—Sin’s penalty

This is the first thing we’re learning about God’s grace today—Grace rescues and redeems us from our past sin.

3 reasons we know God’s grace redeems our past…

Grace Became Visible “For the grace of God has appeared…” 11b

Paul does something uncharacteristic of many of his other letters and starts with the behavior needed to be faithful to Christ and to represent Him as a faithful church, and then now moves to right belief and motivation. Usually it’s the other way around, but it’s good for us to see what a faithful life looks like and now move into the how or why. That’s why he begins this section in vs 11 with the word “For”—pay attention to that word. It’s always a connector word that grounds everything that came before.

Previously he said this: Titus 2:6–8 “Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.”

This is just one example but this requirement remains for older men, older women, young women, servants in the workplace—all of this to adorn or make beautiful the teaching of Jesus Christ.

Then after saying all this— he essentially says “Here’s what drives you to do this and to be this kind of church—The grace of God appeared.”

What gives us the foundation or hope for being those God has called us to be is this first phrase the grace of God became visible.

We may now wonder what this means that Grace appeared. It means a few things:

First, God’s nature is that of love and because of sin entering the world He has freely chosen to pour out His grace upon the undeserving.

It’s the grace of God—in other words, from the character of God.

Grace has always been a part of his multifaceted character. It’s God’s undeserved gift of love. It’s not like God was incredibly grumpy for thousands of years and then suddenly in the new testament Grace appeared. No, God’s grace has always been there. It’s God giving favor and blessing and right standing to those who naturally are worthless and deserve judgment because of their sin. This is who God is eternally.

This flows to us because of our deep need. We are all born in a helpless and hopeless condition—We are by nature enslaved to our sin and by our choices the claws of sin and death have sunk deeper. But God, rich in mercy, out of the infinite storehouse of His love gave…

Secondly, the next thing grace appearing means is grace not a thing, but a person.

When God made the world and made man perfect, the first human Adam had the ability to earn eternal life for all of us if he would have obeyed. But instead, we see a great exchange take place:

Romans 1:22–23 “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.”

While Adam may not have bowed to images resembling birds, he did exchange the worship of the creator for the worship of the creature and thus, he exchanged perfection for a sin nature that causes eternal death. That’s the inheritance given to each of us when we’re born.

Thankfully, grace means that God presented another great exchange and it’s what we celebrate on Christmas. God, dwelling in the glories of heaven exchanged eternal, dazzling glory, for a humble dwelling on earth. The Divine Son of God took to Himself our human nature, was born as a baby of the virgin Mary and the power of the Holy Spirit. Truly God and truly man.

Grace appeared because mankind was broken. The image of God in man was irreparably damaged because of Adam’s sin. But now Jesus, being the true image of the invisible God, shows up and shows us what it truly means to be human. He lived the perfect life we were required to live, all in a state of humility, facing all the weaknesses us humans face yet without sin. Grace was revealed to us—not just through some audible voice booming from a God who is aloof, giving us some kind of divine assistance to figure it all out. No, The grace of God was embodied. The grace of God became incarnate. Grace became visible. Powerful rescuing Grace was revealed to us in flesh and bone. God came near to bring true freedom. Ever paid attention to what you sing this season?

Long lay the world in sin and error pining: till He appeared and the soul felt it’s worth. a Thrill of hope a weary world rejoices—All be cause He appeared.

Look at how Paul uses a classic greek word for intervention. Grace redeems our past because the image of God that was damaged in us because of sin, has now intervened in the person of Jesus to restore in you and me God’s very image once again.

The image of God was shattered and therefore, we had nothing to bring to the table. No money we could pay, no good work that would make God look and say, “now I can exchange your work for my favor.”

To Paul, this epiphany or intervention was by Jesus on the basis of grace alone and not human effort. Christ, like Adam, represented all of mankind to once again show what it truly means to be human, thereby redeem us from being shattered, broken image-bearers. It was undeserved. He came to bestow His favor on those who could not reach up to Him by human strength. This is one of the many reasons grace appeared.

This advent season, let’s remember that the gospel is not just the good news about Jesus Christ. But that the good news is Jesus Christ. When mankind had nothing and was bankrupt. God’s gift was not to show up as the debt collector, but the gift giver and in love, the gift He gave us was Himself.

Galatians 4:4 “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,”

This restoration by God giving us Himself redeems our past because Jesus is our salvation.

Grace Rescues “bringing salvation…” 11c

Do you remember why God called the incarnate Son Jesus? When the birth of Jesus was announced, here’s what we read: Matthew 1:21 “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

Name “Jesus” Means salvation. This is in the past tense. Jesus was born 2,000 years ago, and being born meant He brought salvation. Salvation assumes and you and me needed saving.

The world around us is awash with guilt and constantly feels the weight of not doing enough.

The culture says the guilt and shame you feel is merely a self-deprecating, subjective feeling that can be wiped away through a higher self-esteem.

The Bible is pointing us to the fact that our guilt before God is an objective, all-consuming reality. We’re in big trouble without grace appearing. Change only happens when we know, remember, and embrace our weak human condition—Enter stage right Jesus of Nazareth. He doesn’t just provide salvation, He is salvation, He is redemption, He is the hope for all in union with him.

Theologically, Salvation is this umbrella term—

It doesn’t just speak of being saved from hell—It speaks of a whole new reality. And it can be summarized with the two classic words used over and over again in Scripture “In Him.”

For those in union with him, you’re delivered from the penalty of sin, you’re being delivered from the power of sin and it’s hold on you in the present (What we call sanctification), and you will be delivered from the very presence of sin when Christ returns and renews all of creation. Every spiritual blessing that Christ gives instantly becomes yours—justification, sanctification, and future glorification.

We will speak of how grace affects each of these in the weeks to come but today, we focus on the fact that grace redeems your past and the deliverance we received from sin’s penalty.

If we’re honest, for a lot of us, our past, maybe even recent past as Christians hangs constantly over our heads.

One of the consequences of sin shame we feel. It’s like this monkey on our back that we can’t shake off. It stays and nags at us, reminds us of our despair because of our bad choices.

The first thing to recognize is what the culture tells us about shame isn’t true like I mentioned earlier. Subjective feelings of shame are just signs of objective guilt. If you feel guilty it’s because you are guilty. But we understand that in Christ, the guilt has been removed.

We are right before God which we’ll be reminded of in just a few minutes.

Even still, even as believers our past is that burden. Maybe that’s how you came in today. The things we did to others. The things others have done to us. The good we should have done but left undone. These things weigh on us and they cause us to believe our identity is founded in these things.

Our past also causes us to live based upon a system of merit once again as well. Where your focus every day is your performance and though you would never say it out loud, you subtly live like your performance will once again earn you more love from God.

Or maybe we’ve been seduced by modern culture or pop psycology and we just need to tell ourselves that we’re enough. We need to rewrite our story. We need more self-confidence and remember that we need to be true to ourselves and believe in ourselves. It’s this desire to be “Okay”

So, whether your an addict of some kind or you’re struggle is with constant anger or resentment, we erroneously think that either just white knuckle this thing, get ourselves together and obey the law or religious practices so we can slap the label good on our foreheads, or we just simply embrace our flaws with a pseudo redemption created by me, myself, and I.

We recognize that this mentality is never the right starting point toward lasting transformation and change.

It’s remembering who we truly are which is granted to us by this “salvation” Paul is talking about.

This salvation redeems your past because Christ appeared, the intervention has come and he’s not come to collect the rent.Let me list for us 3 things this initial, past salvation means He knows you can’t pay up so instead He…

Has forgiven every single sin

We’ve come to realize that we were absolutely bankrupt. So instead of making us pay for our sins for eternity facing His wrath, for those who trust Christ, he paid our debt and he paid it in full.

He has forgiven every last sin, past, present, and future.

Ephesians 1:7 “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,”

Forgiveness comes not just from some generic move of grace at the expense of justice. No, it comes from Christ’s dying grace. Him taking the penalty we deserved on the cross and rising again from the dead so that we can receive His perfect forgiveness. Oh the joy we would have if we truly believed we were forgiven.

I remember one time my son disobeyed and he felt very guilty and sad for what he did. He was down and asked me, “Dad, do you forgive me?” with the deepest frown on his face. And as soon as I said, yes I forgive you. He immediately smiled and hugged me and went on to play.

So your past is redeemed because you know you’re forgiven. Even today, though every sin has been forgiven, you still recieve the everyday joy of confession and forgiveness not because you’re getting resaved over and over, but because your relationship with your Father experientially can be hindered by sin. So God by His Spirit is continually in the business of restoring that fellowship and communion. But often, many of us are not walking in that Psalm 32 reality—happy is the person whose sin is forgiven. Instead, because we’re such mature Christians, we want to let ourselves feel really guilty for a while. Should we grieve and mourn our present sin? For sure.

But should we wallow in shame so that we can some how pay God back? Absolutely not.

Changed your Identity through His righteousness

Grace is nothing less and nothing more than possessing Christ, being united to Christ because of the pure Kindness and promise of God alone.

So therefore, the difference grace makes for you today is this:

Grace redeems your past because In Jesus, because he was our representative and we by the Spirit are brought to be one with Him, His righteousness is imputed to us. Our status before God’s holy throne is changed. Though our fundamental identity was that of sinner, We are now seen by God with a status that cannot be shaken by our sin, our circumstances—our identity is as secure as Jesus Christ Himself. Just like Jesus, our status is the same yesterday, today, and forever—and it had nothing to do with us. Our past is redeemed because we have adoption. Christ’s father, becomes our father, and the father sees us wearing Christ’s moral perfection and purity.

The fact is, we were all Scrooge—trapped in our selfishness. The ghost of Christmas future shows up and points toward our inevitable fate— the grave, beyond which lies an eternity of suffering. But what the ghost of Christmas future did not show Scrooge was that he could not redeem himself—a verdict better than we deserve, can be bestowed upon us by the righteousness secured by our savior.

Given you rest in your soul

Jesus’ invitation came and you recieved it, and it stands even still each day: Matthew 11:28–30 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

It’s one of the reasons I love saying that Jesus is the grace of God on display. Only in Jesus can the heart and soul find such rest because it knows that there’s no more striving, there’s no more trying to pay God back, there’s only freedom. Freedom is experienced once and for all when you recognize that grace is about God doing it all, and faith is receiving.

Grace Rescues Every Kind of Sinner “for all people…” 11d

This likely will be the shortest of my points today but it’s no insignificant matter.

Back in the first century when he penned this letter to Titus, Paul was pushing back against a kind of elitism—It was a kind of jewish exclusivism where it was difficult for certain Jews to admit or be okay with gentiles being right with God and brought into the family. Paul explicitly expresses that there are Jews seeking to cause division in the church.

And in context, Paul here is declaring something amazing—this salvation is not just for the Jews. It’s for all. Every kind of sinner is included in God’s plan of salvation.

The throne of heaven is surrounded by every tribe, ever language, every people group. Jesus loves every sinner and God so loved this WORLD that He gave His son to redeem it.

This doesn’t mean all are saved in the end, but that God does not discriminate or chose based on ethnic or social status. Plus, in context, Paul is speaking of classes of people He desires to walk in holiness to represent Christ in the world—Older women, younger women, older men, younger men, servants, etc. So Paul then says, the reason we can change and grow in our faith is because the grace of God has appeared to bring this salvation to all!

Additionally, this also means that this message, this offer of Salvation is given to every person. No matter who it is. We offer the gospel, we offer the Savior freely to everyone.

You who have commited heinous acts that only you know about, things you’ll take to the grave, Christ came and is offered to you.

You who grew up in church and yet still can’t seem to get your act together, Christ is offered to you, not when you get it together, but now.

You who feel that you’re too old and you’re not worthy enough for forgiveness, Christ is offered to you because He forgive all who come to Him by faith.

You who feel that you’re too young and you can’t live up to your parent’s, or peers, or pastor’s expectations, Christ came for you because He loves to save sinners from the guilt of their past and redeem any who come to Him. Your identity can be founded in Him, not by your performance.

You’re not too young you’re not too old. Receive. For the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation for all mankind.

Conclusion

So for you who used to be addicted or you still have sin patterns

Feeling dry or stuck- plateaued

Serving the church, family, kids with little joy and a ton of frustration, Christ’s salvation has come, grace appeared to you and you are forgive, you are absolved of guilt, and underneath the shadow of Christ’s cross, the burden has rolled off of your shoulder.

Grace appeared when Christ appeared to redeem our past by rescuing us from guilt and shame brought about by sin

Of course, the next sermon, the next section in our text Paul is going to reveal how grace transforms our behavior—We’re not just saved by grace but also changed by grace so that we grow to put renounce our sin and put to death wickedness day by day. “But we can only say no to what we know has been forgiven. We can only renounce and put to death what we know to be pardoned.”

So I invite you today to once again receive these things by faith. To see the guilt and shame of your past was born by Jesus on the cross and when He rose again He rendered every one of your sins paid for. This is the starting point. We must begin here if we’re to see how grace changes every aspect of our lives.