He Saved Us (Part 2 of 2)

If you've ever felt like you're just not good enough to get into heaven, I have some good news for you.

Heaven is actually for bad people. We'll find out why today on Truth for Life as we learn how the ungodly can be justified. Alistair Begg is teaching from Titus chapter 3. We start today at verse 4. The kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, and he saved us not because of righteous things we had done. In other words, says Paul, Jesus came uncalled for and unsought, and in the vastness of his mercy he saved us. A righteousness from God to all who believe. Who believe.

So that the real question of men and women is, do they believe? Because, you see, God saves all who believe. That's why when the New Testament speaks of this response to God's kindness and his love, it is a believing into Christ. It is a believing on Christ. It is a believing in the fact that Jesus as our substitute has borne the guilt, has borne the curse, has borne the punishment of our sin. Paul, in other places, is far more succinct in his theology and increasingly profound, and nowhere more so than in the twenty-first verse of 2 Corinthians 5, where he says, God made him—that is, Jesus—who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And so it is this matter of salvation which he wants to drive home to Titus so that Titus in turn will make it a hallmark of his ministry to these people living in this culture. Make sure your folks, Titus, are marked by loyalty, courtesy, humility, and so on.

Remind them that all of us were once completely messed up. Make sure that they're really clear about the nature of salvation, that when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us. And his motivation—if the matter is salvation, then the motive is equally clear. He saved us. How did he save us? Or why did he save us?

Notice, negative and then positive. Not because of righteous things we had done but because of his mercy. In other words, our salvation, he says to Titus, is not triggered by any moral achievements of our own. That's big coming from the lips of Paul, isn't it? When you think about his testimony in Philippians 3, where he says on that occasion that his background, if anybody wanted to have reason for boasting or confidence in the flesh, he had a pretty good pedigree, both in terms of his intellectual background and his theological background and so on, and then eventually he says, But whatever I considered as a plus, I now consider as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

All that he once held dear, all that he once built his life upon, all that he once thought gain, he had counted loss. So that there is a disavowal in salvation, and it is that disavowal of ourselves and of any supposed goodness in us. This is one of the reasons that people hate the gospel. The average person, if you tell them that they can go to heaven based on philanthropy or based on their endeavors in some way, they may actually step up for that.

But if you tell them that the message of the Bible is that we are entirely dependent upon God's grace and upon his goodness, and that we contribute nothing to our salvation save the sin from which we need to be forgiven, it appears, well, I really don't like the sound of that. I mean, I didn't go to school and read all these books. I didn't work hard and make all this money. I mean, I'm used to pay my own way.

I am an American, after all. I don't take anything for free. Well, unless you take the gospel for free, you'll never take the gospel.

It's a bit like these downloads. Free to you and costly to us. Such is our salvation.

Free to us and costly to God. So, since by our good endeavors, as we know this well, we cannot save ourselves if we're ever to be put right with God. It must be on account of his gracious provision on our behalf. And God comes to us, we're told here, in his mercy. But because of his mercy, if grace is that whereby we get what we don't deserve, mercy is that whereby we don't get what we do deserve. And what we deserve is the curse and the punishment of our rebellion.

And why is it, then, that we would be freed from that? Well, because of the fact that Jesus is a Savior who bears the curse. And therefore, on the basis of his mercy, not according to the hopefulness of our character, God justifies the ungodly. I mean, I'm not sure how many of our churches really have got this clear in our minds, that God saves sinners. That God saves sinners. That heaven is for bad people.

That only bad people go to heaven. And in the congregation such as our own, I would think that in the listening numbers, some may have remained distant from the gospel because they feel that they have sinned so miserably that there is no possibility of forgiveness. Therefore, we need to remind them again and again of the kindness and love of God our Savior. But I think the greater number of the Parkside concentric circles remain distant from the gospel not because they believe there to be no possibility of salvation but because they believe there is no need of salvation, that they are kept from Christ not by their badness but they are kept from Christ by their supposed goodness.

And it is when God, in his kindness and love, pulls back the curtain of our ugly hearts and shows us the mess, and then we discover that the picture of the Father towards the Son is running down the street to fall on his neck and kiss him and to provide a party such as has never been seen because of the fact of what Jesus has done. So when God justifies the ungodly as he does—and that's what Paul is saying here—he does so in a way that is utterly unlike anything else in the history of religion. And I have in my notes just four phrases.

I'll give them to you. They're all from Romans 3. In answering the question, How can God justify the ungodly?, the answer is, number one, it is all of grace. Number two, it is all in Christ. Number three, it is all of faith. And number four, it is all of God.

All right? How can God justify the ungodly? All of grace, all in Christ, all of faith, and all of God. Now, the pictures that are used of this immensity of salvation are many in Pauline literature.

And he doesn't use the same pictures all the time. And salvation is, if you like, the comprehensive term that includes all the elements of justification and sanctification and all those bits and pieces. We tend, I think, to think of salvation in a very atomized way, that somehow or another that is that the gospel is there just to sort of get us started, and then once we're started, we're pretty well on our own from there.

We get by with a little help from our friends. But in actual fact, the gospel is not the ABC of Christian experience, but the gospel is the A to Z of Christian experience, so that salvation is vast in what God is doing. It involves our past and our present and our future. And what he does is he says, concerning this salvation, in what is it here? Verse 5, that he has saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. The matter that is before us is salvation. The motive for salvation is in the mercy of God, and the means that God has used is this work of regeneration.

In other words, what God does on account of his mercy is both marvelous and it is mysterious. And this notion of rebirth is there in John 3, which you can check later in the dialogue with Nicodemus. It is in Ephesians 2. If you want to go back to the underlying picture, I think, from the Old Testament for what Paul says here, I think it's in Ezekiel 36, where the whole prospect of being washed by clean water and being transformed by giving a new heart is probably the underlying thought. Now, some people actually think that what Paul is saying here is that rebirth takes place as a result of baptism.

Clearly, that would not be my view, and I'm not sure that we can justifiably ever say that it is the Bible's view. The washing that is described here is a holy spiritual washing. And I think that what we can say is to the extent that baptism is figured in this, baptism portrays what Christ's blood performs.

The baptism performs nothing but portrays something so that those who come and are baptized are baptized either in the prospect of trusting in the blood of Christ, as in pedobaptism, or in looking back to the sacrifice of Christ, whereby they have professed faith in Jesus. But what Paul is driving home here is the fact of the regenerating power of God. We are regenerated, and we are renewed, and all of this is the work of the Holy Spirit.

The mysterious elements in it are there for us to ponder. The hymn writer says, I know not how the Spirit moves, convincing men of sin, revealing Jesus through the Word, creating faith in him, but I know whom I have believed. It's the same notion that you have as Jesus dialogues with Nicodemus.

Nicodemus asks these rather obtuse questions for a man of his stature. He's thinking in very physical and material terms, and Jesus is speaking in spiritual terms. The wind blows where it wills, you hear the sound of it, you can't tell where it's coming from or where it is going, and so it is of everyone who is born of the Spirit, that this energizing, regenerating power of God is as marvelous as it is mysterious. Birkhoff, the systematic theologian, defines regeneration as follows, That act of God, by which the principle of new life is implanted in man, the governing disposition of his soul is made holy, and the first holy exercise of this new disposition is secured.

That's why you have to read these books on rainy Tuesdays with a large cup of coffee. But if you look at this verse, it is reiterated for us in the NIV, not in the ESV interestingly. The phrase, He saved us, is here twice for us in the NIV. They only have it once in the ESV.

He saved us not because of our moral character but because of his mercy, and he saved us through the washing of rebirth and the renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generally through Jesus Christ our Savior. I think in very simple terms. When Her Majesty acquires a property in the United Kingdom—if you visited there, you will know that one of the royal insignias goes up over the building, indicating that the queen, the monarch, has now acquired this property for her own personal use. And what then follows is usually a significant amount of renovation. And so you have the insignia giving indication of the fact that a transaction has taken place whereby the monarch has secured this and all rights to this for herself.

And now she has employed others to make it a fit place for her to spend her time. That is exactly what is described here. That he has saved us by the work of regeneration. The royal insignia has been placed, as if you like, stamped over our lives, and by the renewing work of the Holy Spirit, he has sent in, if you like, the members of his platoon in order to prepare the place for a suitable, abiding place for the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he says in verse 7, So that, having been justified by his grace—which is another way of describing the nature of salvation, that's why I say to you, don't think of salvation in an atomized way, but think of salvation as entirely comprehensive, that everything is involved in salvation—the prevenient grace of God all the way through to our glorification, all the way through to 1 John 3, that when we see him, we will be made like him.

Why? Because of the nature of salvation. And many things happen simultaneously in salvation. We are made the indwelling place of the Holy Spirit. We are made heirs of the Father, joined heirs with the Son. We are declared righteous in God's sight and so on. All of this takes place.

And so Paul, going to his familiar terminology, says, And so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs, having the hope of eternal life. We used to sing a song in Scotland. I loved it. We never sing it here. I don't think anyone knows it here. But I think we might have sung it once here. I take that back.

Yes, we did. And it went like this, I am a new creation, no more in condemnation, here in the grace of God I stand. I am a new creation, no more in condemnation, here in the grace of God I stand.

Why? Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Not the peace of looking into our lives and saying, I've had a marvelous week this week. I'm sure God must be very, very happy with me. Because when we look into our lives and realize what a horrible week we may have had, what is our standing before God?

The same standing that we had on the last week, there was a really good week. Namely, our standing is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, being justified by faith, I have peace with God. Fast-forward to Romans 8. There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. Why?

Because they're having a terrific time. No, because Romans 7 says that he's a wretched man, and he wanted to be delivered from his body of death. So how can you be both a wretched man and also somebody for whom there is no condemnation? Well, it's the north side and the south side of your house. South side of the house, the sun shines on that. You can go in there. You don't need to put any heat on. You don't even need a jersey. You go in the north side of your house, it's cold over there.

You have to ask somebody, Could you give me a blanket like, cover up my toes? Well, the same thing is true. It is both the north side and the south side of our Christian experience. We realize that we are simultaneously sinners and being forgiven, that we are both sinners and saved simultaneously. Therefore, because of being justified by faith, he has counted our sins to Christ's account, and he has counted Christ's righteousness to ours.

Imputed it to us. So that's why Luther—and I don't want to agree with Luther on everything, I've already disagreed with him on baptism, so I can agree with him on this and at least balance it out—but Luther masterfully says, you know, that our Christian life is ultimately outside of us in this sense, that we loop away to what Christ has accomplished in the work of his atoning death. And on the strength of that, his righteousness imputed to us and our sin imputed to him, we have peace with God. Our past is dealt with, our present standing is in grace, and our future is not in question. Hence, we are heirs, having the hope—which is not the hope, I hope it doesn't rain—but the certainty, the reality of that dimension of our eternal life, which we will one day possess in all of its fullness. So that from Sunday School terminology—and with this I finish—we remind ourselves that on account of God's amazing grace, I have been saved from sin's penalty, I am being saved from sin's power, and one day I will be saved from sin's presence.

O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood, to every believer the promise of God, the vilest offender who truly believes that moment from Jesus, a pardon receives. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Let the earth hear his voice. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.

Let the people rejoice. O come to the Father through Jesus the Son, and give him the glory, great things he hath done. That is what Paul is conveying to Titus, the gospel dynamic, which provides the impetus for our Christian duty. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg.

Alistair will be back in just a minute. Our mission at Truth for Life is to teach the Bible with clarity and relevance. We desire to reach as many people as possible through this daily program so that many will come to know and believe in Jesus. That's the mission you partner with when you join us at Truth for Life. We are 100% donor funded, and as we approach December 31st, we'd like to ask you to remember Truth for Life in your year-end giving plans. We rely on your support to finish 2024 with the funds needed to close the year in a positive financial position and to be prepared for another year of ministry in 2025.

You can make your donation securely at truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-588-7884. And when you give, we want to express our gratitude by inviting you to request a copy of a book called Cloud of Witnesses. This is a treasury of prayers and petitions from throughout the ages. It's an excellent resource to help you enrich your prayer life. The editors of Cloud of Witnesses compiled an extraordinary collection of 100 prayers along with brief biographies of the writers. These are believers from throughout church history who all had a deep love for God and the ability to put their sense of awe into words. Again, request a copy of the book when you give a donation at truthforlife.org slash donate. If you'd rather mail your year-end donation along with your request for the book, write to us at Truth for Life, post office box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio 44139. Now here is Alistair. Father, we thank you that your Word never returns to you empty.

It always accomplishes the purposes you've established for it. And we bow down before you, and we pray that you will seal all that is of yourself to our recollection, that you will banish from our memory anything that is untrue, unwise, unhelpful, unkind, that you will fill us afresh with a renewed sense of wonder at your amazing love and loving kindness, and that this may be the bastion for our souls. In your redeeming love, we rest not in our performance but in the provision that you have made for us in the abundance of your mercy. And we pray that this might be the hallmark of our day, in all of our coming and going, in the different things that we will engage in, the places we will go, and in our conversations, that we may long, that the earth might hear your voice, and that the peoples of the earth may come to know of the immense kindness and love of you, our God and Savior, in the message of the Gospel. For we pray, seeking the forgiveness of all our sins, in Jesus' name, Amen. Thanks for joining us today. Tomorrow we will consider the high priority of unity within the Church and what should be at the very core of this unity. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.