Grace That Teaches

Titus 2:1-10 has just gone around a household telling each group in it how to live. Then comes the word that explains why any of that is possible, and it is the very first word of verse 11. He writes for, which means everything in front of it is resting on what comes after it.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to everyone.

Appeared is the language of something that was not here and now is, arriving from outside. Nobody on Crete produced it, and nobody on Crete had been working toward it, and then one day it was there.

What Paul says next is the sentence people trip over. Grace, he writes, instructs us. We usually set grace against instruction, as though being forgiven meant being left alone afterward, and Paul has the kindness that saved us doing the teaching. This is not a rule posted at a distance. It is the thing that arrived, and what it does, once it has arrived, is turn a person around from the inside out, which is slower and more thorough than being told.

Two things are to be put down, ungodliness and worldly passions. Three are to be taken up, and the verse names them as living sensibly and uprightly and in a godly way. Then Paul gives the address where all of this happens, which is the present age. Not later, and not once the circumstances improve.

as we await the blessed hope and glorious appearance of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

So there are two appearings on this page. Grace appeared, back in verse 11. Something else is still to appear, here in verse 13. The Christian life sits in the space between them, which is why waiting turns up here as an active occupation rather than as killing time until something happens.

Verse 14 says what the first appearing cost. He gave himself for us, and the verse states what for: to redeem us from all lawlessness, and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds. Follow the order of that sentence and see where the good deeds land. They arrive at the end, after the giving and the redeeming and the purifying, and they belong to people who are already his.

The passage closes with Paul telling Titus to speak these things, encouraging and rebuking with all authority, and to let no one despise him. The verse does not tell him to earn that standing first. It tells him what to say, and leaves the authority in the message rather than in the man carrying it.