Titus 2:11-15 – God’s Grace Has Been Revealed

Titus 2:11

1. Salvation is not something that can be demanded or snatched away, it is something that is offered by the grace of God.

Titus 2:12

1. God’s grace gives us Christians total forgiveness and enormous freedom in the way we live, but we must not allow this freedom to lead us to live ungodly lives. Although God gives us forgiveness for both our past and future sins, we should not abuse this grace and think that it is okay to sin (Romans 6:1-2). The forgiveness of our sins should encourage us to say no to a continued life of sin and ungodliness and instead to live godly lives in gratitude.

Titus 2:13

1. When I worked as a security guard in Stockholm, I once guarded the tax collection outside the Tax Agency. As the final minutes approached, I realised that there were many people who saw it as a sport to file as late as possible, preferably when the big collection boxes were about to be rolled back in. A few people arrived a minute late and appealed to me to make an exception, but unfortunately I had to tell them it was too late and that the only thing they could do was to appeal to the Treasury’s mercy.
   1. In the same way, I believe that many of us Christians wait until the very end to give up our “worldly desires”. We take care to live in sin as long as there is forgiveness and we think there will be plenty of time for church when we get older and no longer have much else to think about.
   1. But the point is that we don’t know when Jesus will come back, he could come back at any time, and so the Bible urges us to live constantly in a kind of “expectation” that Jesus will return soon (Matthew 25:1-13). If this were our last day before we could go to heaven, wouldn’t we be doing everything we could to spread the gospel, stop sinning, and restore our broken relationships?
2. Paul’s phrase “our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” is, along with John 1:1-18 and Philippians 2:6-11, one of the Bible’s clearest statements of Jesus’ divinity.
   1. The prophet Isaiah is clear that there is only one saviour (Is 43:11), and that saviour is YHWH, our God. In the letter to Titus, Paul refers to God as “Saviour” three times and to Jesus Christ as “Saviour” twice and then conflates God, Jesus and the Saviour when he refers to Jesus Christ as “our great God and Saviour“:
      1. “God our Savior” (Titus 1:3)
      2. “Christ Jesus our Savior.” (Titus 1:4)
      3. “God our Savior” (Titus 2:10)”
      4. “our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13)
      5. “God our Savior” (Titus 3:4).
      6. “Jesus Christ our Savior” (Titus 3:6).
   1. Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity; the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Jesus has always existed but was born as a human being and is therefore 100% God and 100% human at the same time.
   1. The Roman senator and writer Pliny the Younger wrote about the first Christians in about 110: “They met on a certain day before daylight, and addressed a form of prayer to Christ, as to a deity.”
      1. From the very beginning, Christians have both confessed and worshipped Jesus as Lord and God.

Titus 2:15

1. If God has called you to be a preacher, then you must preach. You cannot keep silent about the Truth but have a responsibility to proclaim sound biblical teaching and to carry the message of Jesus.
2. When you as a pastor or preacher have to instruct people who are perhaps twice your age, it is easy to become insecure and thus back away from parts of your mission. But Paul encourages Titus to dare to stand up for himself and not let anyone look down on him. If God has called you and blessed you, why should you be afraid of what people will think?