“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 2:11-13.
These verses are defiantly “drill down” material! This succinctly answers questions we continually askabout Life in Jesus’ name.Perhaps it sums up what it means to be disciplined by grace. Grace has brought us all into salvation through regeneration and bringing us into thelove cultureproducing righteous fruit on our limbs.
Last GN we discussed being created new Spirituallyin Christ Jesus. Another NT term used to express our new birth is regeneration. This word is used twice in the New Testament, once by Jesus and once by Paul. The Greek word combines two words meaning “again” and “born,”hence, “born again.”
Jesus used the term speaking to the disciples about a new order of life on this earth, His kingdom on earth. This speaks to the earth’s “regeneration” as spoken of by Isaiah in the Old Testament. Paul uses this same term applied individually, about you and me being washed by “regeneration.” Paul’s use conveys our new creation in Christ Jesus enabling us to produce good works. This is God’s intended purpose for us. Regeneration is God’s grace bestowed upon man andcreation itself since God has loves for us!
“The grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all people.” This is where we normally put a period, but notice, the scripture doesn’t put a period here. It’s a coma. There is more!
Grace appearsbringingsalvationto train usso we can Live godly lives being self controlled in Christ on this earth, right now, in this present age. Not only this, grace has appeared so we can experience the glory of God in us because He bought us with His own precious blood making usHis personal possession. But there is even more … grace appeared so that we can be purified through redemption producing good works in our present corporeal bodies.
In other words, grace is God’s cultureof Spiritual Life bringing us into who we really arehavingreceivedreconciliation and are in Christ Jesus. Grace brought us into salvation, giving us the resurrection power to overcome flesh and the promise of bringing us into a marriage at the end of this age, making us heirs and joint heirs with Jesus Himself. Grace brings us into eternal life and so much more.Grace is the means for us to be whom God intends us each of us to be.
Last GNwe looked and being created new; the old is passed and the new is here! In this GN, we are looking at the “new” that is here, our new kingdom culture of grace in which Paul tells us we are now standing.We are born again, created a spiritual person, removed from the kingdom of darkness and placed into the light kingdom of God’s beloved Son.
The disciples were promised, by Jesus,the everlasting presence ofthe Holy Spirit with the resurrection power of God. Many interpret this to be healing power, but no, it is much greater. This is the power of Life flowing out of God. This is the power making us overcomers, glorifying God and us in God.The passage goes so far as to say that this grace “purifies” us for Christ’s own possession.
This is where we dive into deep water! We are forced tojump in because the prevailing fundamental Christian doctrinebeing taught detours around our creation in Christ with a doctrine of imputed righteousness … at the expense of our personal identity in Christ as an overcomer. This is why in our last GN we emphasized the teaching in Revelation 19 which emphatically makes clear our fine linen wedding garment is our righteous deeds, thedeeds of the saints, which is you and me.
The doctrine of Christ’s imputed righteousness is not at issue. It is certainly taught in scripture but not to the exclusion of our creation as a Spiritual person in Christ. Our Spiritual identity created new by God makes us individually capable of being overcomers by our will to grasp and consume God’s grace, appropriating God’s resurrection power, putting to death in our soul and body the sin Jesus took with Him on the cross. This is how the Life of Jesusis manifested in our mortal flesh. This is why Paul is able to say, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”This is how we now have access to the mind of Christand are exhorted to possess His mind of as our own. Ouridentity is not imputed, it is created by the breath of God.
Grace is truly what is given by God but faith is our appropriation of what God has provided. Our new identity has a will to grasp and consume what God provides. You can consume what God provides!Grasping grace is merely taking the time to reflect spiritually in the word, entering into your closet, shutting the door with the Spirit of God and chew on it a little. Talk to God, expose yourself to Him, be vulnerable and honest to God in the Holy Spirit!
First, we never receive all God is giving. What God provides is what we label grace because it comes outside of our (1) capacity and … outside of our (2) reach. Our heart and mind do not naturally receive grace. Our soul needs our intentional preparation. We need to train our heart and mind to accept spiritual things before it will accept who we are in Jesus Christ our Lord. Our natural self is actually hostile to grace. This is step one in overcoming.
Grasping is a way of teaching ourselves to exert disciplined effort within ourselves to receive and hear the word of God. It is work! The Christian Life is not the life of ease, as supposed by both believers and non-believers. Remember Ezra needed to prepare his heart to accomplish his Godly work.
Another illustration of grasping grace is reconciliation. The completed work of our Lord Jesus reconciled God to all mankind. In other words, after Jesus paid the price for sin, all mankind is now able to be reconciled back to God. Once our sin was paid for, God is able to re-establish a relationship with mankind which was His original intent. But in order for man to benefit from God’s reconciliation to us, we have to be reconciled to Him. We need to receive by the choice of our will, our identity, what God is offering. We have to grasp God’s grace to make it effective in our personal experience. We are spiritually born again when we actually receive God’s reconciliation which is already provided. We grasp God’s grace of reconciliation to be justified or made righteous. If we stop consuming God’s grace even while we are standing in it we loose Christ’s resurrection power to be an overcomer. This is a spiritual process referred to as sanctification, being set apart unto God for His purpose.But it requires our intentional commitment.
Salvation does not put us in the end game. It turns out to be a brand new beginning! We are just enteringinto our spiritual-corporeal boot camp. This is a challenge to lifeas we know it. LIFE takes on a whole new meaningbecause it is here we actually tap into an absolute total reality which is part of “new.” It just happens tobe an eternal thing. We are launched into a brand new era of Life. Our natural-corporal way of life gets turned upside down. Instead of trusting in our self, the way we are honed and trained, we learn not to trust what is seen … but what is unseen!!Being born again is entering into God’s eternality. We become members of Jesus’ kingdom of Light and we begin to see what is unseen!
Grace is a word that portends God’s action toward man. It covers everything that connects our creator God into a relationship with us, His creation. We are so far removed by nature and substance from whom God is, it includes eternal things beyond our sense and comprehension. It includes the “eternal riches of His grace.” Every breath a believer takes contains grace.Grace is where the unseen becomes spiritually knowable. Venturing into this unseen kingdom is where grace takes us when we respond with faith.
Grace is the culture of love every believer enterswhen receiving the reconciliation provided by God for righteousness, peace, rest and joy unspeakable. It makes total sense to grasp, cultivate, nurture and do all within our means to consume,leverage, chomp and devoureverything drawing us deeper into God’s grace. This is what is meant by maturing in faith. Faith is the process of growing in grace. It is knowing God personally not just knowing about him! Faith is responding to God’s grace.
But total grace also produces pain and suffering. In our spiritual boot camp here on earth,we learn to see things from God’s point of view. Our end result is a spiritual outcome. God does have a hedge around us just like Job but to get out of where we are and more deeply immersed into Jesus’ Kingdom of light means abandoning reliance on the comforts of our natural habitat. Inevitably, this means physical trauma because we are literally training our mind and heart to go to another place so that we can place our faithin God alone. There is no degree of suffering beyond the reachof grace. Suffering is always accompanied by grace.Paul shares with us in Romans 5 that he exults in suffering because he knows it will produce Spiritually what it cost physically.
Now that is contradictory!! Living in darkness and Light at the same time is a contradiction. We need to learn to be stepping in the light out from the darkness. We are born again into God’s kingdom of Light but our soul is still pulling the weight of time and physical comfort. This is the beauty of living in our body of flesh while being made Spiritually alive. We learn the difference between darkness and light. We begin to see the sinfulness of sin and also experience the glory of being in Christ Jesus our Lord. We are saved when we are born again but we are also being saved! Life in Jesus name means we will be disciplined by grace!
“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.”–
“To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” -2Thess. 1:11-12.
Amen!