He Save Us

If you would, please turn with me to Titus chapter three, verses three through seven. From time to time, it is helpful and healthy, I think, to just stop and deliberately contemplate the gospel. I'm kind of between series right now and wanted to take tonight as an opportunity to think with you about the gospel, to stir our affections together for all that Christ has done for us to direct our minds towards the truth of the good news of Jesus Christ. Now hopefully we do this in some measure every time we gather as a church. Jesus Christ and the good news of the gospel is the given, I hope, in all things Grace Church. But what I'd like for us to do tonight and what I think is spiritually essential from time to time is to give explicit, full attention to the fact that we have been saved by the blood of Jesus.

We don't want to just make it a given. We want to explicitly declare that our hope is in Christ and his blood. Titus three, verses three through seven is a gospel message for Christians, specifically to hear.

So let's listen to that message tonight. Titus three, beginning at verse three. 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. Let's pray. Holy Spirit, enable us to appreciate tonight the simplicity of the gospel as we think about what our God has done for us and about how things would have gone had he not acted. May it flood our hearts with gratitude that leads to obedience. Feed your church, O God, I pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Be seated. There's a sense, I think, in which familiarity breeds perhaps not contempt but apathy or indifference. Let's say someone buys a new car. It's clean, it's a hundred percent functional, its newness is intriguingly fascinating.

What does this button do? How does it handle this road situation? Look how easy it breaks. Look how fast it accelerates. But then fast forward 150,000 miles and the paint is dull, the wipers are beginning to rust, the interior smells like not leather anymore.

It just doesn't seem to accelerate as fast or stop as quickly. Now the week that it was purchased, the new older told everybody about his vehicle. He couldn't not talk about it. He Googled all sorts of details and specs, found himself admiring his car through the office window, but now he doesn't even glance up from his phone as he's getting into his car. He takes it for granted. That certainly doesn't stir his imagination and consume his thoughts anymore.

It's just an old used car. Daily use has bred indifference. There can be sometimes an ironic tendency for Christians to grow indifferent over time to the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we first hear the gospel, we come to recognize the difference it has made in our soul. We're elated. We're overjoyed. We're fascinated by grace. And so we talk about it. We think about it. We read the same scripture passages over and over just to make sure they're still in the Bible.

But in time we move on. We become enamored with other things and our familiarity with this most profound truth begins to breed indifference. So what I'd like for us to do tonight then is to just spend a few moments in deep conscientious contemplation of the gospel so that whatever indifference our familiarity may have bred can be exposed and it can be replaced with a renewed zeal for the good news. And there's a very particular sort of zeal that Paul is aiming at in writing these particular words here in Titus 3. In fact, he tells us what that aim is in verse 8. He says, I want you to insist on these things, the things in our text tonight, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. The zeal that we're aiming at tonight is not some sort of conjured emotional response to the gospel. It's not a warm fuzzy feeling.

It's not more head knowledge. The zeal we're aiming to stir up within ourselves, the sort of zeal Paul is aiming to stir up in this passage is a faith that says the gospel is so true, so weighty, that it warrants the surrendering of my will to obey the will of God. It's a zeal that believes to the point of obedience, or as Paul puts it, a faith that is devoted to good works. In his classic treatise on religious affections, Jonathan Edwards spends half of the book telling us what true religious affections are not. He tells us that sincere spiritual affections towards God are not demonstrated by tears or ecstasy, by emotional highs or intellectual confidence. On the contrary, Edwards says that godly religious affections are demonstrated most sincerely in the exercise of Christian practice.

The authenticity of our spiritual affections is most accurately proved by obedience. So with that aim in mind, let's think about the gospel tonight. These verses tell us something about who we were, about what God did, and about who we will become. First, let's consider who we were. Paul's audience is Christians who are already united to Christ by faith, and so he speaks in the past tense in verse 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.

So Paul begins the gospel by describing who we once were, who any human being, in fact, is outside of Christ, and it's not a pretty picture is it? We are fools who were enslaved to our own passions and pleasures. Notice how Paul first describes our nature, and then he describes our behavior in light of that nature. The first three terms, foolish, disobedient, and led astray, have to do with our nature, who we are, our default disposition as sinners. But because we are by nature fools who are inclined to disobey God's law or led astray by all the wrong voices, our lives produce a certain kind of fruit. Our lives, Paul says, are enslaved to passions and pleasures.

We do whatever our base desires drive us to do. We also pass our days in malice and envy, that is wishing ill on others and wanting for ourselves what they have. This then leads to our being hated by others and our hating them back.

We're so foolish that we live like slaves to our desires for pleasures, and the slavery leads us to mistreat and abuse those around us, which in turn leads those around us to hate us, so we hate them back. It's just an awful mess that Paul is describing, and this is who we are outside of Christ. Now why would Paul begin here? The gospel, the good news is supposed to be good news. Why would Paul share the gospel with Christians and start by telling them how helplessly wicked they would be if left to themselves?

Well, I think it's rather obvious. He begins here because he knows that part of the deceitfulness of sin is an inability to recognize the depth of our own depravity. Along with our sin nature comes a tendency to think too highly of ourselves. You wouldn't know that listening to the general tone of our modern therapeutic age. You'd think our problem is that we don't think highly enough of ourselves. I remember walking through a public institution not long ago and being struck by the messaging on the walls.

You could hardly walk 20 feet down the hallway without seeing a poster that affirmed and promoted the centrality, the preeminence of the individual. Believe in yourself. Be true to yourself.

Follow your dreams. Don't be anyone's doormat. You've got to love you first. These are the creeds of a culture that hasn't grasped the gospel of Jesus Christ because the gospel of Jesus Christ begins with an unqualified acknowledgment that all human beings, although made in the image of God, are morally destitute. And it's not as if we're merely lacking in virtue. No, the problem is that we're full of vice. We're not morally neutral.

We're actively, conscientiously, intentionally lovers of selves and haters of others. So Paul counters this natural bent of the fallen mind to think far too highly of itself by reminding us that outside of Christ we are hopelessly headed down a path of self-destruction. While the world says don't believe for a minute that you're anything but good, the gospel says the only way to overcome the guilt and the shame that burns your self-image is by acknowledging that you really are guilty and full of shame. But now the gospel doesn't leave us there, thankfully. It doesn't leave us to wallow in our sin and misery, but it certainly does begin there.

And so Paul would have us contemplate who we were and who we would still be if it weren't for Christ. This self-knowledge is painful and humbling, but it's a necessary prerequisite to believing and obeying the gospel. I'm convinced that a significant part of parenting is spending the requisite time convincing our children of the true nature of their heart. The world is telling them they're God's gift to humanity.

Their own flesh is confirming that message. And so we sit them down when necessary and we point out their blind spots. We expose their self-centered motives. We call them to admit their faults, their flaws, and we call them to change. Paul is essentially doing that same work as a parent, as an apostle with us. He's calling us to come to terms with who we are without Christ. He's calling us to remember who we were before Christ broke into our lives and changed everything.

Do we put ourselves under the scrutiny of God's word, God's standard, and let it expose our blind spots, our selfish motives, our pride? The gospel begins with an honest recognition of what we once were and what we still sometimes act like, but the gospel doesn't stop there. Notice, secondly, what God did. Verse four says, but when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us. He saved us. Now, before we look at the why, how, and who of this salvation, I just want to point out something very beautiful and reassuring about this statement. Paul says, He saved us, not He will save us, not He can save us, not He is saving us, but past tense, done deal, already accomplished, He saved us. You know, I don't always feel saved. I don't always act saved. I don't always experience what Scripture says is true of me. It just means that what is yet to be has yet to come to fruition, but that does not diminish the certainty of what is yet to be.

Why? Because the future working out of my salvation is grounded not in my experience or in my feelings, it's grounded in the promises of an omniscient, omnipotent God who says that my salvation is so certain that it's okay to go ahead and speak of it as having already been accomplished. St. Augustine said, it is true, we have not yet risen as Christ has, but we are said to have risen with Him on account of the hope which we have in Him. And because this hope is certain, we are said to be saved as if the salvation were already bestowed. John Calvin said, we have not yet actually attained what Christ procured for us by His death, but on the part of God, our salvation is completed.

While the enjoyment of it is delayed till the end of our warfare. And that is what Paul means when he says he saved us. The very tense of the verb assures us that God will do what He says He will do. But notice also that Paul tells us why we have been saved, how we have been saved, and who has done the saving. The why, the how, and the who.

First, the why. Why have we been saved? Well, it's not because of works done by us in righteousness because frankly there weren't any righteous works on our part.

If we are who verse three says we are, then verse five should be obvious. God didn't save us because we were so savable. He didn't love us because we were so lovely. God didn't declare us justified because we were so righteous in His sight. He did all of those things for us.

Why? Simply because He is merciful. According to His mercy, He saved us. Now mercy is one of those churchy words I'm afraid that can lose its significance and import by sheer overuse. I'm not suggesting we stop using the word. I'm just saying let's stop taking it for granted. Let's slow down long enough to think about its import. Let's let the significance of the word mercy sink in for a moment tonight.

Let's see this word, this concept with new eyes all over again for the first time. Mercy is not merely something God shows, it's who He is. His nature is to show mercy.

And thank goodness that's the case because we need mercy every moment of every day. Our natural bent towards sin is so constant, so thorough that God would be just to strike us down right here where we sit. Without grace, we cannot think a thought or express an emotion or perform an action that is not in some measure contaminated with sin, defiled by pride or lust or self-centeredness or idolatry or any number of wrong motivations. Everything we do or think, everything we are outside of grace, incriminates us before a God who is so surpassingly holy that we can't even comprehend His holiness and purity. We can't even properly evaluate our own guilt before Him.

That's how fallen we are. Without His mercy, without His saving grace, none of us is righteous, not even one. None of us understands God, much less seeks for Him. Outside of His mercy, the best we can hope for is worthlessness because none of us does good, not even one of us.

Our words deceive and destroy, our feet are swift to run to anger, our hearts murder people every day. The path we choose in life leads without exception to ruin and misery outside of the mercy of God. 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. Outside of that mercy, our hearts are stone and stone cannot cooperate with God to help the process along.

Stephen Charnock said, we can no more cooperate with the removal of sin than a man buried under the ruins of a fallen house can contribute to the removal of that great weight that lies upon him. If anything is to change, it has to be because God wants it to change and because God takes action to bring about that change. Church, the good news, the gospel is that God did want to show mercy and He has shown mercy.

Thomas Watson said it well, he said, every time you draw your breath you suck in mercy. Why did God save us? For the simple fact that He is merciful. But Paul then tells us how God saved us. He says we are saved by the washing of regeneration and renewal.

The only way for the stain of sin to not condemn us to an eternity of separation from God is for that stain to be washed. And this washing is so radical, so thorough that Scripture refers to it as a regenerating wash. Regeneration is a resurrection word. It means new life. Something that was dead is now alive. This entails a complete change of nature. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, those who are in Christ are new creations. This isn't some sort of surface reform. It isn't a refurbishing.

It is a creation of something entirely new. So how does God save us? He saves us by performing a miracle that only He can do. He saves us by an act of creation, an act of resurrection that washes away the dirt, the stain, the death of sin. Next, Paul highlights the who of salvation. Who does the saving? Well, of course, God does the saving.

But I want to point out one thing that might go unnoticed. I want us to notice that the entire Trinity is involved in the saving of sinners. First, we see that it is the Holy Spirit who regenerates and renews the soul. As spiritually dead people, we have no ability or even desire to respond in repentance and faith to the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We're dead. But the Holy Spirit's role in saving sinners is to resurrect that which is dead. The Holy Spirit gives us the capacity to respond where previously there was no capacity. Secondly, we see that this regenerative work of the Holy Spirit is granted to us by the authority of God the Father.

We see that in verse 6, whom He, that is God the Father, poured out on us richly. If you have been resurrected by God the Holy Spirit, it is because God the Father has marked you as a recipient of the Holy Spirit's work, without which no one is saved. But then thirdly, notice that all of this, the Holy Spirit's work of regeneration and the Father's work of electing love, is done through Jesus Christ our Savior. In other words, the conduit by which the Father's love reaches us and the Holy Spirit's work regenerates us is the atoning work of Jesus Christ. Christ's life and death is the means, the grounds, the basis through which salvation gets to the sinners. I love Reformed theology for many reasons, but one of the reasons is that it proclaims the gospel in which all three persons of the Trinity are working together to bring about the same result. Other systems of doctrine often put the intentions of Jesus Christ at odds with those of God the Father, or put the results of the Holy Spirit's work in conflict with the Father's will. The robust theology of the Reformation restored this biblical assertion that in the saving of lost souls, all three persons of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are working in perfect harmony to bring about exactly what was determined before the foundation of the world. Church, we who were slaves to sin have been saved by an all wise, all powerful God through no merits of our own, but simply on the basis of the fact that God is merciful and it has pleased him to show us mercy.

So where does this mercy lead? We've seen what we were. We've seen what God did.

Let's see finally who we will be. Verse 7, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Not only have our sins been forgiven, we have also been adopted into the very family of God. We have been made heirs of the riches of God's grace.

Jesus Christ is not only our Savior, he is our high and holy brother because we have been made sons and daughters of the most high God. And as sons and daughters, we have a hope that is so grand and glorious that it can't even be described with words. The hope of eternal life. I'm convinced that children know how to hope better than adults do. The older I get, the more mundane it seems life just becomes. But I can remember, if I think hard enough, back to a time when there was a novelty, an unparalleled excitement of childhood joys. I can remember how it felt to be unable to go to sleep on Christmas Eve for sheer excitement over what the next day held. I can remember the anticipation of hearing that a carnival was coming to town and we were going to go to the carnival and ride roller coasters and eat cotton candy.

Just the excitement that that conjured up. I can remember the exhilaration one day when my parents woke me up from a nap to tell me we were going to go see a movie in a movie theater for the first time in my life. I remember how their description of a movie screen that was taller than our house absolutely captivated my imagination.

I can remember the delight of waking up to the smell of bacon frying in my grandmother's kitchen and knowing that an incredibly delicious breakfast was about to be served. I can remember when we lived in Costa Rica hardly being able to contain myself when my dad told me we were going to hike to the top of a volcano and look into the crater and see boiling lava. These sorts of childhood experiences trigger excitement and expectancy. And in retrospect, I can clearly see that the anticipation of the experience was a huge part of the excitement and the joy of it. Hoping for future joys that are certain is itself a joyous thing. The hope is part of the joy. And not only is it a joyous thing, it is a purifying thing. It is a tempering thing. Now what do I mean by that? I mean, have you ever noticed how the promise of a future joy tends to eclipse immediate hardships?

Knowing that something wonderful, delightful is on the horizon is sure to happen tomorrow makes today's adversity seem a whole lot more bearable, don't they? My sisters and I didn't always get along growing up. I had a tendency to aggravate them just for fun.

Shocking, I know. They had a tendency to boss me around. But it's interesting that every summer for several years in a row we would travel up to the Carolina coast to vacation at the beach with my uncle's family. And just knowing that in a day or two we'd be heading off for a week of body surfing and boating in the sound and eating seafood every night made it surprisingly easy to get along with my sisters.

I think we somehow intuitively didn't want our normal pettiness to interfere with the fun that was in store. Brothers and sisters, something far greater than a summer vacation at the beach is in store for us. We have the hope of eternal life in which there will be no more sorrow, no more pain, no more death, no more accountability groups, no more confessions of sin in our liturgy, no more church splits or denominations, no more atheists or humanists, no more tears. All will be right. All will be just. And the joy we experience will be unspeakable as heirs of the hope of eternal life.

That is what we stand to inherit. And we should look for that day and long for that day with as much happy anticipation as we can muster. But as we close this contemplation of the Gospel tonight, I want to point out that our longing for that day ought to have a very profound effect on how we live in this day.

If we really are captivated by the joy that awaits us, it ought to have a noticeable impact on our choices and attitudes and obedience right now in this waiting room of eternity. In fact, Paul's reason for bringing up the Gospel here in Titus 3 is very specific. He tells us in verse 8 to insist on these things, on these things we've just been talking about, on the Gospel.

And why? Verse 8, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. Knowing that we are living life on the eve of the new heavens and the new earth ought to make us a people who are readily given to, devoted to, zealous for good works. The theme of good works is mentioned repeatedly in Paul's epistle to Titus.

In fact, it's mentioned four times in this short letter. In Titus 2.14, the opposite of good works is lawlessness. So in its broadest sense, good works refers, I think, to general Christian obedience. But here in Titus 3, Paul is addressing a specific area of obedience. Notice that sandwiching our text tonight are verses that address the danger of dissension within the church. Verse 2 calls Christians to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all.

And then verse 9 exhorts us to avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. And Paul goes on, he says, as for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self-condemned. And right in the middle of these two admonitions to get along, to show Christian charity to each other, is the articulation of the gospel. You see, the gospel message is not something that we hear and believe in order to get saved and then promptly forget about as we journey along in the Christian life.

No, the gospel is intended to have a continuing influence on the way we think and feel and live, particularly as it relates to how we relate to one another within the church. Are you having difficulty not getting annoyed at the imperfections in the lives of your Christian brothers and sisters? Then take a moment to remember who you once were and learn to show others the same grace you have been shown.

Are you finding it hard to put up with the slow progress of everyone else's sanctification? Then stop and remind yourself of the hope of eternal life. This life is just a vapor.

That life will be forever and ever. Surely we can forbear with each other until Christ returns. Church God didn't have to save us, but he did. He saved us. He saved us so that we might honor and serve him with a life devoted to good works. Does our treatment of each other reflect the certainty of hope that we all share?

Or does it reflect hearts and minds that are consumed with the stuff of this earth? The gospel is the antidote not only to hell, but also to all the peccadillos of pettiness and divisiveness that threaten our joy and our testimony on our way to the celestial city. He saved us. Let's remember that and let's act like it by serving God and serving each other with joy until he comes. Let's pray. Lord, part of loving the gospel is loving those to whom the gospel has been given. Teach us to so appreciate what you have already done for us and to so long for what you will yet do for us that we are able to sincerely serve each other in joy today in this age. We pray all this in the name of Christ. Amen.