Gospel Prism

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 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, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.
Titus 3:4-6

For those of you who are Christians, let me ask you this question, “What in your life led you to believe in Jesus?” Was it when you listened to some pastor preach a ‘message of salvation’? Did hanging out with Christians prove to you that God truly existed? Did God just make sense all of the sudden even though you had absolutely no ultimate desire to love him in the first place? What I am getting at here is that many believe they chose God because they suddenly realized God is God. But this simply does not compute when we consider our hearts’ deepest motivations. We come to realize that someone changed our hearts and preacher Charles Spurgeon explains who that someone is from his own personal story:

One weeknight when I was sitting in the house of God, I was not thinking much about the preacher’s sermon, for I did not believe it. The thought struck me: ‘How did you come to be a Christian?’–I sought the Lord. ‘But how did you come to seek the Lord?’–The truth flashed across my mind in a moment–I should not have sought Him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek Him. I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself: ‘How came I to pray?’–I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. I did read them; but what led me to do so? Then, in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that He was the Author of my faith. It was then the whole doctrine of Grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make it my constant confession. I ascribe my change wholly to God.

Charles Spurgeon summarizes the doctrines of grace well. Grace is God being “at the bottom of it all.” It is the realization that our good works do not gain us anything, including a genuine love for God. I am afraid that when we think of grace, we tend to see grace as something we extend to other people. For example there is the phrase, “You need to show him grace.” While I don’t think that this is wrong, I do think it is short-sighted. You will never know how to show grace until you first understand that grace speaks much more about God than us. When we begin to deeply understand that God truly is at the bottom of all of our goodness, all of our blessings, all of good works, all of our compassion, all of our love, all of our sympathy, only then will we be ready to understand grace, and give grace to others. The third verse to Elvina Hall’s famous hymn, “Jesus Paid It All” describes this grace so well:

For nothing good have I
Whereby Thy grace to claim
I’ll wash my garments white
In the blood of Calvary’s Lamb.

And this verse is a wonderful summation of Paul’s words to Titus in Titus 3:3-7. They are words of grace and they teach us 1) that grace is about a God of loving kindness (v. 3-4), 2) that grace is not about our works (v. 5), and 3) that grace is poured out to us by the saving work of Jesus Christ (v. 6).

Grace is about a God of loving kindness (v. 3-4)

First, grace is about a God of loving kindness according to verses 3-4: “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. 4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared.” You cannot understand verse 4 and God’s loving kindness apart from exploring sin. For example, Jerry Bridges gives the analogy of walking into a jewelry store to look at a beautiful diamond ring. The jeweler will place that ring on a black-velvet pad because the dark velvet provides a perfect contrast to the brilliance of the diamond, which makes the diamond appear even more spectacular. (Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace, 35) Thus, to understand grace, Paul is telling us in v. 3 that we must grieve and mourn over the depth of our sin. Only then will we realize just how great it is that God loved us when we had no love for Him at all (Rom 5:8). We were slaves to our own passions and pleasures. We were slaves to our fantasies: perhaps driving the Ferrari parked in front of our parked cars, or participating in lurid sexual escapades, or winning the lottery to appease our every whim, etc. Prior to Christ, the only god we believed deserving of worship was ‘me.’ Even seemingly selfless acts had the Almighty Me at the center. David Powlison insightfully observes:

No one can truly change who does not know and rely on gifts from the hand of the Lord. Since Christ is both Giver and Gift, attempts to change without grace are barren of the very purpose, power, and Person that change is about. Self-manufactured change does not dislodge almighty me from the center of my tiny self-manufactured universe. Still in the futility of my mind and the hardness of my heart, I only act a bit different. Successful living without grace describes mere self-reformation: get your act together, save your marriage, get off your duff and get a job. Failure in living describes failed self-efforts: when you can’t get a grip, you despair. Christless, grace-less attempts at change conclude either with the praise of your own glory or with your shame.

We simply cannot force ourselves to change, to transform, and especially to love God. Someone had to do this for us, to appear in our lives. Someone had to break through the spiritual hypnotic trance we were under in order to show us that total self-centeredness did not bring us any joy at all, but in actuality, often led us to being hated by others and hating one another according to v. 3. And of course, that someone is God our Savior through the person of God the Son, Jesus Christ. It was God’s loving kindness that led God to force His way into our lives and to demolish that self-centered state that we believed was our only hope for joy.

And God’s goodness and loving kindness is a theme that continually marks the story of the Bible, often hand in hand with the sinfulness of humanity. It tells of the intricate link between God’s loving kindness and God’s grace. In Lamentations 3, the writer is mourning the destruction of Judah, the same Judah that was regularly worshipping idols, sacrificing their children to the Canaanite gods, and whose priests were corrupt and failing to call Judah back to a right worship of God. Surely, Judah did not deserve God’s love at all and in every way deserved to be destroyed. So the writer of Lamentations in mourning says: “Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! 20 My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.” And yet verses 21-23 shine forth this wondrous hopeful statement: “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: 22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lam 3:19-23) Judah deserved its current state of chaos. But the writer knows that God is a great God, a God of steadfast love and loving kindness. This was something he could bank his hopes on even though Judah had turned away from God so miserably. In other words, despite Judah’s continual lack of faith and trust in God, despite their rejection of God, God would initiate love.

The story of Jonah tells the same story of grace. God calls Jonah to go to Ninevah to preach repentance. Jonah refuses to go. But when Jonah is finally convinced to go, through a little prodding by God, he arrives into the city and Jonah 3:4-5 records: “Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.” If you really think about these amazing two verses for a second, you’ll find that you cannot explain it apart from God’s grace. Here is Jonah saying this one word sentence and the people are so struck with a conviction of sin that the whole city believed God. You have to remember, Ninevah was a pagan city who never heard of God. And yet, everyone fasted from the king to the poorest of people. Now I have a feeling that it wasn’t Jonah’s oratory skills which produced such rapid and all-encompassing results. No, God acts out of His loving kindness to save Ninevah, despite their wretchedness and in spite of Jonah’s disobedience and lack of compassion. Listen to these words of Jonah after God decides NOT to destroy the city: “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. 3 Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” (Jonah 4:2-3) Jonah was furious with God because He knew that God had so much loving kindness that would save Nineveh, a city that had no previous inclination to love God. God acts graciously to Nineveh simply because of HIS loving kindness. Jonah essentially ran away to thwart God’s grace. But of course nothing could ever stop God’s grace.

These two stories, and many others in the Bible, speak of God’s loving kindness and goodness and grace. God never waits for people to be ‘good enough’ or ‘repentant enough.’ If God waited for our ‘spiritual readiness,’ He would be waiting forever and we would never be saved. But God is a God of infinite loving kindness and so He acts apart from our good deeds and evil deeds which lead to the second point about grace: Grace is not about our works.

Grace is not about our works (v. 5)

Paul writes to Titus in verse 5: “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.” That is to say that God’s grace is not tethered to our good works. To illustrate this, let me ask how many of you committed to rise early to be with the Lord? And then after your rising, you spend quality time with God reading the Bible, interceding for lost co-workers, journaling your prayers. You go through the day whistling hymns and showing kindness to others. And so as your head hits the pillow, you go to sleep thinking, “Wow, I had a really good day. God has blessed me.” But the next morning, you are so exhausted that you hit snooze multiple times and wake up so late that you have no time for God. You rush off to work (or whatever you do) and you become short with a co-worker. On your way home, a guy cuts you off on the road and you say a word to him that you haven’t said in a long time. You get into an argument with your spouse because you didn’t appreciate what she said. You check espn.com, sulk, then get into bed wondering if God really does love you after all. In these situations, how easy it is to think that God loves us when we are ‘good’ and how God is angry with us when we are ‘bad.’ But look at verse 5 again, and then verses 3-4. God loves us not because we are good enough. He loves us because HE is good and loving. In fact, I believe this text is teaching us that God loves IN SPITE of our good works. Puritan divine John Owen has this to say about our good works:

Believers obey Christ as the one by whom our obedience is accepted by God. Believers know all their duties are weak, imperfect and unable to abide in God’s presence. Therefore they look to Christ as the one who bears the iniquity of holy things, who adds incense to their prayers, gathers out all the weeds from their duties and makes them acceptable to God. (Quoted from Jerry Bridges, The Disciplines of Grace, 42-43)

Do you hear what Owen is saying by the phrase “bears the iniquity of holy things”? Our good works are filled with iniquity (sin, unrighteousness, self-centeredness). When we claim rightness on the basis of our good works, God sees them as no better than the obvious sins we regulalr commit (anger, lust, lies, etc.), and here is the reason why: