The letter to Titus. Titus, Chapter 2.
I take the first part of the last verse of Chapter 2 in order to throw back to what has just been said:
These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority.
“These things speak, exhort, reprove, with all authority.” And so we look to see what these things are, and we go back to Titus 2:11.
For the grace of God hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men,
instructing us, to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts,
we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world;
looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ;
Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity,
and purify unto Himself a people for His own possession, zealous of good works.
Three things are in that paragraph: the gift of grace, the goal of grace, and the method of grace.
The grace of God hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men. And you have to link with the first statement the last: “that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a people for His own possession, zealous of good works.”
Why did the grace of God appear, and to all men bring salvation? Not just that they should be saved and then rest upon the fact that they are saved people and nothing more matters, but that He might redeem unto Himself a people for His own possession.
Something more than their possessing salvation through grace—the goal of grace is that He should have a people for His own possession.
The kind of people who are His own possession are here. At the time, I will not dwell upon the characteristics and features of that people. You see the various words and statements on both sides: the negative side, the various things that are said from which this people for His own possession are to be redeemed, and things which they are to deny.
The negative side is very positive as a negative statement—something that must be. Grace demands it. Character is what God must have for His own possession. It is a kind of people.
I think, dear friends, perhaps one of the great needs of our time is to recover the greatness of the cost of grace.
Grace, perhaps, has been made a little too cheap. The greatest word in our vocabulary, but it has become perhaps one of the cheapest words—one most easily used—because it is the common and all-inclusive word of the Christian vocabulary.
But, oh, what grace has cost! And that is all what really does lie behind “redeemed” and “a people for God’s own possession.”
You will not misunderstand the use of the word. I think that this passage suggests that this people should be a spiritual aristocracy.
That word can be used, of course, in a very wrong sense. But it means a people of high character, of high dignity, who have looked at these things mentioned on the one side and said, “No, no more of that. No more of that. I have done with it. That belongs to a low level of life.”
And they have looked on the other side and said, “This is the standard which God has set, and that is my standard, by the grace of God.”
You see, because the grace of God is not only that favour which is unmerited. It is a demand. It is a call. It is an energy. It is something by which we are able to rise to a very high level of spiritual character—a people for His own possession.
Grace has come. Grace, in its costliness, makes great demands—very great demands. And the end is this: “Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a people for His own possession, zealous of good works.”
The gift of grace, the object of grace, the way, or the method, of grace—what is it? It is in this one word at the beginning of Titus 2:12.
The Authorized Version translates the word, “teaching us to the intent that.” In the Revised Version, it is “instructing us.” Perhaps you wonder what the difference is between teaching and instructing. Well, there is a difference.
The revisers were seeking a word which would convey a little more than the word teaching. You look back to Titus 1:11:
Whose mouths must be stopped; men who overthrow whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake.
Now, that word teaching is an altogether different word from the one in Titus 2:12—not the same Greek word. The first word in Chapter 1 means what we mean by teaching: telling people things, telling people things.
But this word here in Chapter 2 and Verse 12 is another word altogether, and it is the same word as is translated three times in Hebrews 12:
Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.
It is for chastening that ye endure.
They verily for a few days chastened us as seemed good to them, but He for our profit.
That word, chasten and chasteneth, is the same Greek word as is here interpreted, or translated, “instructing us.” Now everybody can see the difference between teaching—that is, telling people things—and chastening them.
Chastening is something very much more active, is it not? And so here the method of grace is instructing, child-training us, training us to the intent that.
Now, you see, grace leads us into trouble, or grace leads us into discipline. Grace brings us into a difficult school. It is grace.
Oh, what a different idea of grace from where grace is grace, and you receive the gift of grace, and everything is all right! You never need worry about things any more, and you are just going to Heaven; everything is going to be beautiful. It is all of grace, you see; it is all of grace. And in grace we have got everything, and we need not give another thought to it at all.
But here it says that grace has come to discipline us, to bring us into a school—within the school of grace. But we do not often think of it like this: in this hard school, in this discipline, in this child-training, in this chastening.
We very often think, “This is anything but the grace of God,” and we mean the graciousness of God. We have got to adjust ourselves to this, get our minds changed about this.
It is just as much of divine grace toward us to perfect us as it is to begin the work of salvation. It is just as much a part of the grace of God not to let us up when we are wrong, but to bring us up short—and, if needs be, to do it very strongly and seemingly unkindly.
It is just as much a matter of divine grace to do that as it is to bring us into salvation.
It is grace, dear friends. After all, the grace of God—you and I still have to learn this lesson. You see, for young Christians, sometimes when things begin to get a bit difficult, and all the blossom on the tree of their beginning Christian life—so beautiful—begins to be torn off by a rough wind, and there is nothing but apparent nakedness left, and it all seems now to have lost a lot of its glamour, this Christian life, you are passing into difficult times.
The temptation is to think, “This is not the grace of God. This is not the grace of God. This cannot be grace.” And the devil will tell you that you have fallen from grace.
Not at all. Do believe it, young Christian: when times become difficult in your Christian life, it is all of grace. But it should be so.
No one wants to be weak and happy and sickly as a Christian—one who cannot stand up to anything at all, one who must have everything so nice and comfortable in order to go on being a Christian.
Well, if you looked at others like that, you would not admire them at all. You would not think that was really, after all, much good. Well, that is how we look at other people.
Let us remind ourselves: God’s grace is at work to make us able to stand up and be strong, to go through. And it is grace. This can only be learned in a hard school.
People whom God wants for His own possession are people like that, who really can stand their ground in a test, who really can hold on when there is a tremendous shaking, who can show grace in their own lives when everything around is ungracious.
The Lord wants two things in the Christian life—two things which He has written so visibly in creation, and yet two things which it is so difficult to combine in human character. They are perfectly combined in the Lord Jesus, and conformity to His image will be conformity to Him in these two respects: the most difficult combination, beauty and strength; strength and beauty.
In our family worship this morning, we read the Psalm in which that phrase occurs:
Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.
Study the temple again. See strength: massive pillars, mighty foundations. Then look at the beauty—the carvings, the fruit, everything. Strength and beauty.
Look at it in creation: the massive mountains, the very embodiment of strength; and nestling at their feet, the beautiful wild flowers, so tiny and yet so superb and wonderful. Strength and beauty in combination throughout all creation.
The Father says, “This is His mind.” And grace can make that combination. But it takes grace, you know, for us to be strong—to be strong, and yet to be beautiful.
A lot of grace is wanted for that combination. Some people are inclined to be too strong, and there is not the beauty, and the loveliness, and the kindness, and the gentleness, the graciousness.
On the other hand, some people are all on the artistic side, and there is, as I used the word just now, feebleness about them. They are not strong.
No, a combination of these things in a people for His own possession. Over here, instructing or teaching, you see, is the school of grace.
The headmaster in the school of the Christian life is One who has fullest sympathy on the one side, but fullness of sternness on the other, as occasion requires. But there is a perfect balance in Him, and His name is Grace.
Do not think of grace as something that is only soft. Grace can be very stern. Do not think of grace as always and only making exacting demands. Grace is full of sympathy.
Then, are not these things? These are the things. I have curtailed them very considerably because of the time, but here they are: “These things speak.”
Well, let us talk about these things. Talk about them, and exhort. “Come along now, come along. You take some—look here, look here—you are having a bad time, I know. I know. And you are inclined to think the Lord is against you, and this is not what you were led, or led yourself, to expect in the Christian life.”
Now come along—not only after something stronger, something deeper. You can never have the fruit until the blossom is gone, and it takes terrible winds to get rid of the blossom in order to bring on the fruit. Come on now. That is the exhortation.
“These things speak, reprove.” Oh, is that the right word to use in the same sentence as the word grace—reprove? With all authority? Yes, it is all grace.
The Holy Spirit is like this, because He is called the Spirit of grace. The Spirit of grace can come down with all His sympathy. He can be full of sympathy and yet quite stern.
He has, after all, when we think about it, some difficult children to deal with. And what difficult children we are! We are.
But grace, in the combination of sympathy and strength, will make us a people for His own possession.