For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.(Titus 2:11-14)
That’s an amazing sentence! It frames our Christian lives between two appearances: the appearance of God’s grace that brings salvation and the appearance of God’s glory in Jesus Christ, our blessed hope.
We Christians live between those two poles. Ours is a life of continuing appearances–grace and glory.
One place short on grace and glory is the Cretan neighborhood. Very little of life gets interpreted in light of God’s saving grace in Jesus Christ. And most often glory gets associated with the grit and grime of this fallen world–materialism, hedonism, violence and the like. The people we hope to reach in tough neighborhoods, hard places, Cretan contexts need very much to come into this great in-between of true grace and true glory. In fact, all humanity needs to taste and possess grace and glory.
Here’s how we know we live there.
What Happens When Grace Appears
Grace does two things when it appears. First, grace brings salvation for all people. Without the grace of God there would be no salvation for any neighborhood. We are rescued from the coming wrath of God only because God in Christ is kind to people who do not deserve it. The Lord Jesus Christ manifests the kindness of God, and in Him “all people” may find an unearned salvation. Rescue from God’s judgment and for God’s love is not earned, purchased or bartered. It is given freely by a God who cannot be compelled from without to show favor to sinners full of demerit within. When the grace of God appeared in the first coming of Jesus Christ, it appeared to save.
But grace does a second thing. Grace trains or teaches. It not only saves us, it also instructs us. Genuine grace has pedagogical power. That’s how you distinguish it from its cheap counterfeits. Cheap grace does nothing to reform the lives of its professors. But saving grace trains us to “renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright,and godly lives in the present age….”
When most people think of tough neighborhoods they think of people who embrace ungodliness and worldly passions, and live wanton lives, on the DL, ungodly. And many people who think this way about people in tough neighborhoods go on to assume that what’s needed is law, enforcement, moral rehabilitation, education and re-education. They invest lots of energy and lots of money in law and its entailments… with few results. That’s because God designs His grace to accomplish what the law never could. The kindness of the Lord leads to godly sorrow repentance, not the sternness of preachers, law enforcement officers, school officials, and get-tough-on-crime elected representatives. The law is futile in restraining the flesh. Nothing restrains wanton living like the grace of God which teaches self-control, uprightness, and godliness. The ministry that will reach the Cretan context will be a ministry built on grace.
What Happens When People Live in Light of Christ’s Appearing
Here’s another truth about difficult contexts: The rougher the context the more relentlessly it assaults hope. Poverty, unemployment, violence, isolation and abandonment, abuse, drugs and alcohol–all these and more conspire to rob people of hope, the life-giving anticipation of a better day and a better life. We’re seeing in some neighborhoods an unprecedented sense of nihilistic despair.
But when people look to Christ’s return, they look to their “blessed hope.” They know that His coming changes everything. That’s partly why they’re able to live godly lives in the present age of brokenness, sin, evil and death. Jesus is coming! When He appears everything will be renewed! Everything will be changed–in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye! The grime of life will give away to the glory of the Lord!
The One “who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works” will return to claim the His redeemed and purified. A deep, abiding, unshakable anticipation of our Savior’s glorious appearing is our blessed hope. It’s how we’re able to do good works when surrounded by evil. It’s how we’re able to see above the fray with heads raised high when others bow crushed beneath the rubble of this fallen world. In fact, it’s how we dig people from beneath the rubble–with a divine hope in Jesus Christ. The gospel rightly preached gives that hope.
So What?
It seems Paul’s ministry prescription for Titus in Crete has nothing to do with pragmatic self-help programs. It has little to do with social programs or social justice. Those are good things. Very good things. They’re necessary displays of compassion.
But at the bottom is the preaching of grace and glory. The church is the only institution where that message can be heard. Government doesn’t inspire hope. Schools aren’t hubs of grace. Even families may fail to nurture faith. The gospel-preaching, grace-taught, glory-awaiting church of Jesus Christ is the only organization that can position the downcast and hopeless between grace and glory.
So… the church that serves the Cretan context, as pedestrian as it sounds, needs to stake all its hope for reaching people on the grace and glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Preach the good news and watch grace appear in the lives of the broken and glory fill their hearts with hope. That’s what Crete needs. That’s what every neighborhood needs.
Other Posts in the Series
1: Appoint Godly Leaders
2: Rebuke the People to Make Them Sound in Faith
3: Teach the People How to Live
