Generous Mercy

Verses 1-2 encourage believers toward good works, which remains the goal of this letter. We can see that in verse 8 as well: that those who believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. Remember what the main theme of the book of Titus is?

That’s right, Moving the Church toward Godliness and Good Works.

So underlying our passage today, there is a command for us, the church, to commit to in the present: Do Good Works. Be courteous to all people. To avoid quarreling. To be gentle with all people. It’s these exhortations that are the main objective here. But there’s an important principle as to why Christians are able to do good works: and that is the main idea of our sermon today: Why are Christians able to do good works?

Because God is Generous in Mercy, we are able to do good works.

Because God is Generous in Mercy, we are able to do good works. We cannot do good things from our own strength or power, because our natural state of existence was one of sin and death. But God intervened, even when we deserved death, by pouring out the life of his Son in the greatest act of love this world has ever seen, so that the payment of our sins would be made and we would be justified before the Lord. It was God who brings our spirit to life and who makes us a new creation, capable of carrying out actions that are truly good. But the hinging point, the crux of this passage, centers on the Mercy of God.

So before we get much further, let’s read the passage, and then we’ll jump in. Please read with me, Titus chapter 3, beginning in verse 1.

Titus 3:1–8 ESV

Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. 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. 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, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. 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.

Our verses this morning, the middle section of that, are the gospel of Jesus Christ. They explain how we as Christians are moved from a former state of sin into a glorified state, being able to carry out good works. Why? Because of the mercy of God.

You see, the gospel and good works are inseparable. Good works are the fruit, the produce, of such a miraculous transformation. And You cannot have good works apart from the gospel of Jesus Christ. Once your life has been radically transformed, there will be marks, signifiers if you will, of that renewed Spirit of God in you. Jesus said: “You shall know a tree by its fruit.” and the Christian who has been affected by the renewing Spirit of God will be recognized by the fruits of the Spirit= love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. For from these things stem actions that are good before the Lord.

And that leads us to our first principle:

God is Good

This should be evident to us. We are told that it is evident to us in the things that we see, in the world around us. The whole world has in its very blueprints the goodness of God himself. And we are told that all things were made through Jesus Christ and for Jesus Christ. It is a gift from God the Father to God the Son.

Colossians 1:16 ESV

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.

The Father does not hate the Son, but he loves the Son. And out of this love comes a great gift, one that is good. This underlying love is seen in everything that is good in creation: things that are pleasing to the touch or to your sight. Food that is enjoyable. Vibrant colors and amazing creatures. People who carry forth the light of God into the world. All of the things that fill the earth are meant as a gift by God the Father for God the son, because all things were made through him and for him.

And all of these things stem from the one true good, and that good is God himself. When he authored creation and its order, he created it to be good. And upon making man as the capstone of all of creation, he looked over all that he had done as the creator and ruler over the entire world and deemed it very good. Goodness flows from the one who is truly Good. This fundamental goodness of God is what motivates God’s act of mercy toward us, even when we were dead in our sins.

So firstly, God is Good. But secondly, no good exists apart from God.

No Good Exists Apart from God

no good exists apart from God. No true good work or good thing can exist apart from God and more specifically, apart from the gospel of Christ. The early church, and people throughout all of time, and people today (perhaps, even yourself) have questioned whether someone who is not a Christian can do a good deed.

But scripture claims that apart from God, there is no good. We are told this in Romans 3:12- “There is no one who does good, not even one”. Though God made all of creation for Christ and it was very good, mankind turned away from God by the pursuit of their own passions and desires rather than to acknowledge the good order of God. Consider verse three:

Titus 3:3 ESV

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.

As fools, we turn away from God into the pursuit of our own interests and desires. Rather than fulfilling our role as people made through Christ and for him, by our sin nature we disobey God. We are led astray by the enemy of God, Satan, by feeding the inclinations of our own evil and wicked hearts, through seeking the fulfillment of passions and pleasures, gorging selfishly upon the goodness of God and claiming the good creation as our own. Rather than being generous with the good things of God and living according to the goodness which he created us for as a gift to the Son, we instead exchanged the truth of God for a lie and devoted ourselves to sin and destruction. The results of this action are evident: malice, which is the intention of evil or ill will toward someone; envy, which is looking at something that someone else has and thinking they are undeserving of said thing, and wanting it for your own; hatred: hating others and being hated. It is an unpleasant place to which we have strayed when we depart from the goodness of God and seek to find fulfillment elsewhere.

Consider another passage similar to this one in the book of Ephesians, which reads,

Ephesians 2:1–3 ESV

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

And so we see the similarities between these two passages, which help show us what life apart from God is like:

It’s a state of disobedience- Seeing the commands of God and choosing the opposite. Seeing the natural order of God for creation and pursuing the opposite.

It’s a pursuit of passions of the flesh- our bodies and minds have become corrupt in the things that they desire. Some may argue “Well, it’s just our nature to pursue these things, so we must.” And in part they are correct: it is because of their sinful nature that they chase headlong after passions and desires. But there is an even older nature than that of the sin nature: and that is the nature of God and his goodness. But without help from God, we are slaves to our own sinfulness.

But what about the good things that nonbelievers do? You might say. Can’t people who are not Christians do good things? This is a good question, for other people in the world seem to do good things: they feed the poor (sometimes), they take care of each other (sometimes) … aren’t these things good? And you might think that they are good. You might think so. But remember our principle from scripture? That no good exists apart from God.

A person of the world who seeks to do good apart from God twists God’s gifted skills and abilities for their own gain.

Consider the Pharisees of Jesus’ time: Outwardly, they were good. They avoided all things unclean. They regulated what they ate, what they did on the Sabbath. They were ceremonially clean. They observed all of the religious holidays. They were dedicated to the study of God’s word and law, knowing it backwards and forwards. And yet what was Jesus’ words to them?

Matthew 23:15 ESV

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Rather than being the holy persons like they pretended, Jesus revealed how the deeds of the Pharisees and Jewish religious persons were more of a snare to them, an extra burden placed upon themselves, a facade which hid the evil heart within, a facade that sought good through the outward works of man rather than an alignment with the good nature of God. If they had understood God’s nature, they would have been willing to step out of their way to help those who were sick and who were lost, rather than holding their own position of status in high regard. For man, changing outward appearances does not lead away from sin, which leads to death. Even if we changed our outward actions, there would still be an issue with the heart, the inclination toward disobedience against God’s order of creation and the pursuit of our own selfish pleasures and desires.

And there are many who pass through life thinking that they are a good person by the works that they do. They believe they will go to heaven because they’re a good person. But such ways of thinking are only chains that enslave them to an eternity of destruction. In this life, they add religious limitations, the abstinence of certain foods, special times of dedication and feasts and services, they donate to charities and spend time feeding others in soup kitchens, they dedicate their lives toward helping those who are impoverished, toward bettering the world and humanitarian aid: this is the same kind of person who believes that if they attend church regularly every Sunday, then they are saved. Or if they attend mass often enough and partake of the bread and wine offered, then by these actions they are saved. But woe unto them. For attending church on Sunday and eating food and drinking drink have no effect on making you into something.

It might come to a shock to those sad persons when on the day of judgment they approach the throne of God, saying “Lord, Lord, did we not do many good works in your name?” and he says to them these fateful words: “I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”

And on that day, many who believed their good works would save them will be led to an eternity of judgment and condemnation. All of those who believe that they are good enough to get into heaven. Why? Because they trusted on their own strength, placed faith in their own abilities rather than placing their hope and trust in God. They turned away from God’s goodness and pursued their own interests and pleasures instead. As a result, God does not know them, nor do they know God. So no Good exists apart from God.

And here is the caution for us: A misplaced motivation for good works is just as damning as any act of sin against God. (repeat)

There are many in the world who believe they are going to an eternal state of bliss because they genuinely think themselves a good person. But the only way into heaven is by knowing God himself- for heaven is a place where people will dwell with God and God will dwell with them. If a person does not know God, what use is living in a place where God resides? If they do not know God, and God does not know them, then there is no place for them in eternal life.

So not even those who think they are good in this life are truly good.

And if no good exists outside of God, and mankind has rejected God, then the only logical conclusion is that Man is Totally Depraved. He can do nothing good in and of his own nature. Rather, he exists in a state of evil and pursuit after things contrary to God’s goodness.

Man is Totally Depraved

A man might think to himself: I can obtain the hope of eternal life by the things that I do, by the way that I make.

But what he does not realize is the state of sin in which he now lives, how he is chasing after the things of this world and the things that satisfy the desires of his flesh. He is enslaved to every whim and fancy that passes his way. Even his best actions are as but dirty rags before the Lord.

For

Isaiah 64:6 ESV

We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

Think of that- Before the days of toilet paper and all of the modern bathroom accessories we have today, these filthy garments, these rags, were the things used to clean oneself. They were abhorrent, they smelled, they were often so filthy that the only proper way to dispose of them was to burn them, but even in that they let off an incredible stench. And that is how man’s quote unquote “Good works” are seen before a holy and truly good God: that they are disgusting, a work carried out with the wrong reasons, in the wrong purpose, in the wrong motive, bringing about even more destruction and layered forms of sinfulness than before. For those who live in such a world live as those who are only in a world of plastic than of flesh- everything is covered and layered and superficial.

But Jesus called out those of his day on this as well: that these pretenders are merely whitewashed tombs- they look pretty on the outside, but on the inside they are full of death and decay.

And this is the state of us all. Remember:

“No one does good … no, not even one.”

For “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

We, as mankind, are totally depraved.

My friends: we have absolutely nothing to contribute to our own spiritual salvation. It is as if we stood before a judge under a sentence for our own guilty actions, and the only defense we could offer for ourselves would be an appeal to how in the past few hours, we tried to be good. But even an appeal to supposed good actions in a person’s life does not excuse them from murder: from theft: from lies: from adultery. All of these things stand before God. And the expected sentence for our offense is eternal death. There is not one of us who does not exist in this state of sin.

Romans 3:23 ESV

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

This could have been the state in which the Lord left us. Doomed to be burned for eternity as a dirty rag, to be disposed of in all of its filth.

But God is even greater beyond anything we could have imagined.

But God is Merciful

God is Merciful.

What is mercy?

Mercy is compassion or goodness shown by someone to a person who would otherwise deserve judgment or harm.

(repeat) Mercy is the act of giving good to a person who doesn’t deserve good.

The only thing that could have removed the wrath of God from ourselves is if God saw us, not as those who have sinned and are displeasing before him, but as those who have not sinned, who are perfectly pleasing.

And that is exactly what the work of Jesus Christ does for us.

Jesus was the only one who lived the perfect life: who did not sin, who looked to God and trusted in him completely, living out of God’s power when he conducted good works rather than trusting in his own strength, looking to please the Lord rather than looking to appease the desires of his flesh. When he was in the wilderness and and was starving, he did not command the rocks to become loaves of bread, fulfilling the passions of his flesh, but he trusted that the Lord would satisfy his needs. And he not only faced this struggle in the wilderness, but all the days of his life. The pursuit of passions and desires according to the flesh. But Christ, in his humanity, resisted them all. He was sinless. His life was one of good deeds and perfection.

And God made a way, through Christ, to make an exchange. To take Christ’s righteousness and to give it to you, and to take your uncleanness and revilement and to give it to Christ. And in this way, God remains a faithful and just God: for a payment has been given, a proper due is made for the sins and errors that you have committed, in rebellion against God, in the hate and evil and malice in which you once lived. For a judge who does not take action against evil is not a fair and just judge.

But Christ offered himself as the payment: to give you his own perfect and pleasing way of living before God by taking the punishment you deserved upon himself and by giving you his righteous life.

And this exchange occurred on the cross when Jesus died. For it was as the words of the song go,

“On that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied. For every sin on him was laid. Here in the death of Christ, I live.”

At the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross, when the Father’s face was turned away from the Son because he bore the mark and stench of sin, that great revilement of iniquity, when he was the most reproachable evil and filthy thing in all of existence, God worked salvation for you. At that moment, God poured out his wrath upon the Sond. He took your sin and evil and bore it upon himself. And in doing so, he abolished it for all of time. All of the sin in your life which you committed, which you currently commit, which you will commit, was all abolished at the death of Christ Jesus on the cross. And God has set you free. The bondage of serving your passions and your desires is destroyed. As the Apostle Paul writes, “We are no longer slaves to sin.” Why? Because God is the one who has taken the sin from you and placed it onto Christ, and has taken the righteousness of Christ and has imputed it, has placed it, onto you. You do not effect this change and transformation. God does.

Titus 3:4–6 ESV

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, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,

My friends: you existed in a state of sin and condemnation. There was nothing you could do that was good, that was even remotely close to good. You once did not pursue God nor did you have an interest in being part of the Father’s good gift toward the Son, or of bringing glory to his name.

But it took God, in his goodness and loving kindness, to reach out and redeem you. To make you alive.

Ephesians 2:4–5 ESV

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—

It is by God’s very nature, who he is, in his mercy which stems from his goodness, that God chose to save you, a sinner.

And do note here: God is the primary agent in your salvation. He saved us. Not because of any of our works. But because of HIS OWN great mercy. Because of the Spirit which HE poured out on us.

Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

There is no boast we can make regarding our work in our salvation. Scripture is clear on this point. Apart from God, there is no good. We were totally depraved. But because God is merciful, HE saved us.

What is at the root of your love for God? Do you love God because he first loved you?

(pause)

And there is yet more that happens in the life of a believer at the moment he or she is saved.

God makes you alive in the Spirit. The Spirit breathes into your life a living soul, one that is aware of its new spiritual state. And rather than living in the former life of disobedience, serving your own passions and desires, God the Spirit leads you into a life of obedience. Obedience to him, and to his laws and commands. This might take some time and training. It might mean mistakes along the way, but God is at work in your life to restore you to good works, as he originally had planned, so that you might be a pleasing gift to the Son from the Father. And though your former passions and desires may still persist in part, you know how to put them to death, how to endure them in faith, trusting God to provide for you and allowing him to lead the way out of it and back to him. It is these kinds of people who now know God, who can live eternally with him. They have become truly good.

So who are we? We are

Saved Sinners

Not because of any work we could do.

And there is much we could go into on being a saved sinner: the different parts of the act of salvation, how God first predestined us, then called us, regenerated us by the spirit, make us alive spiritually at a moment called conversion, justified us before his presence and declared us righteous, and then brings us to a place of glorification. This is the order of salvation by which a person is brought from a state of sin to a new life in Christ. But we will save the details of this teaching for a later date. For now, it is important to realize that because we are saved sinners, we are now able to do good works. Because of the work of Jesus Christ, we now live in a place where we can do good things in the present world.

Titus 3:7 ESV

so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

And our new life in Christ is glorious. We are able to do good works now that our state of sin has been erased and that we no longer serve ourselves, but the one who made us. And we will continue to do good things into the everlasting life to come. We don’t do good works to obtain eternal life, God has already done that for us. But we do good works because we are people whose lives have been radically transformed by the gospel of Christ.

And now we arrive at the point in the sermon where we ask the question, so what??

So What???

Do you remember the underlying principle to this passage? That we are to do good works? Look at verse 8-

Titus 3:8 ESV

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.

Paul’s whole point is to encourage the church toward good works. The gospel is the grounds, the motivation for doing what we do. It is out of the mercy of God that we are able to do good works.

Ephesians 2:10 ESV

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Next week we will dig deeper into what exactly those good works are and what they look like. But for now, let us not lose sight or focus of who we were, why we were saved, and by whom we were saved, lest we start trusting in our own power to achieve a good standing before God.

I have a few further points of application:

1. Be wary of Pride

Pride destroys good works

It’s one thing to read Paul’s instruction to do good works and then try to change our life habits. But we must challenge ourselves by asking a further question, beyond just accepting the command to pursue good works. We must ask ourselves WHY we pursue good works.

So church, let me ask you that question: what is the reason for and the motivation behind the good works that you do? (repeat) Is it because you are building up yourself? Is it because you are pursuing your own fleshly passions rather than the passions of God? Because this is the only place where you have felt accepted? Is it because you feel better doing good things than not doing them? Those would be bad motivations for doing good works.

But for the believer, the motivation behind good works should be the gospel. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the reason why we as the church do good works in the world. It’s the only thing that can change our sinful hearts to be genuinely transformed away from sinful passions and pleasures. God is the only one who can transform the heart and turn it away from sin and lead it to life.

Do not be deceived by the selfish thinking of the world. They are severely misinformed. For in their quest to avoid sin and evil, they are led instead to idolatry.

This is the ultimate form of pride, taking matters into your own hands, thinking that you can get salvation on your own, and rejecting the salvation which God has made for you in Jesus Christ the savior.

So avoid pride in all of its forms by rejecting humanity’s offer of pursuit after passions and desires and by taking on the gospel of Christ, by recognizing what God himself has done for you in the work of salvation.

While others do good works out of their own strength, what they can achieve, Christians conduct good works because of a transformation from someone outside of themselves: because of the divine intervention of God himself.

We must ensure that our motivation, our reason behind any kind word, any outreach event, any handed box of food or donation to the poor, is done because it stems from the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, which we received in humility.

The Christian doesn’t serve good works. They serve a master who leads them into good deeds, into the love of others, into a transformed life and a renewed spirit that encourages rather than condemns, that builds up rather than tears down.

So recognize the battle against pride, that your strength comes not from yourself, but from God.

Which leads us into another takeaway:

2. Be Humble

Our humility stems from our knowledge of our own salvation- that it is God who saved us. There are those today in the church universal who believe that salvation is a work done by both God and man working together. The verses this morning, and the rest of God’s word, shatters that notion: It is God alone who is responsible for your salvation.

Ephesians 2:1 ESV

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins

Can a dead man make himself come alive? No. Not even Lazarus raised himself from the dead. Did Jesus raise himself from the dead? Even Jesus in his humanity relied on God’s power outside of his own human ability: he was raised by the collective work of God (including by the Father and Spirit) to new life.

Acts 2:24 ESV

God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

Romans 8:11 ESV

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

So God was collectively at work to raise Jesus from the dead, all three persons of the Trinity. So if Jesus wasn’t raised by his own strength, what makes you think you can by yours? But just as all three persons of the Triune God were at work to raise Jesus to life, it is also all three persons of the Godhead who are at work in your own salvation. Do you see it in our passage this morning? God in his mercy saved you, through the Son, by the Spirit. When God acts, all three persons act as one to bring about his will. So let us be humble, and recognize that God is the one who saves, all three persons acting, and not because of any good work that you can do.

Thirdly,

3. Reflect on God’s Mercy

I do not want to minimize the main point in this lesson.

God is merciful. It is a great mystery of his love that he would choose to save sinners who have rejected him. That he would offer mercy toward his enemies, when they did not deserve it.

Friends, reflecting and meditating upon this mystery, upon God’s mercy, has much value for your soul. It will help you understand God’s love for you in a deeper light, and in turn it will help to generate more love for God as the Spirit works in your own heart.

“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” (Titus 3:4-5a)

Take these verses and meditate upon them. Throughout this week, if you have a moment of downtime, or in your daily devotional with the Lord, reflect upon God’s word to you and the great mystery of his act of mercy.

We are all here today because of God’s great mercy in kindness toward us. May we be ever spurred onward to good works because of God’s great love in mercy toward us.