He Saved Us

Okay, Titus chapter 3. We didn’t do very well, did we? We didn’t get very far—spent all the time looking for this quote. And someone said, “If you hadn’t spent all the time looking for the quote, you could have gone further.” You know what? I think I better just read this quote and get it over with, don’t you? Because I’ve a horrible feeling that this is going to become, like, a running joke here in a minute. And now that I’m looking at it, I don’t know if it’s that good of a quote. But since I’ve increased your appetite and expectation, you know, we might as well just stay with it. And hopefully, when we get back into our study, you’ll say, “My, that was a really good quote. Very apropos.”

The reason I was quoting it was because Wilberforce (who is regarded as the great champion, if you like, of civic duty and political engagement, and rightly so, for the work that he did vis-à-vis slavery), by the time he’s writing this book in the nineteenth century, he’s bemoaning the collapse at the end of the eighteenth century of doctrinal convictions—a collapse which he says has carried through into the contemporary circumstances of his time. And this is what he says: he says, “Towards the close of the last century”—which would be the eighteenth century—“the divines of the established Church (whether it arose from the obscurity of their own views, or from a strong impression of former abuses, and of the evils which had resulted from them)…”[1] That’s a parenthetical statement, which is one of the reasons it’s so hard to read these books. So let’s not do that. Let’s leave that out. Let me try again:

Towards the close of the last century, the divines of the established Church … began to run into a[n] … error. They professed to make it their chief object to inculcate the moral and practical precepts of Christianity, which they conceived to have been before too much neglected; but without sufficiently maintaining, [or] often even without justly laying, the grand foundation of a sinner’s acceptance with God, or pointing out how the practical precepts of Christianity grow out of her peculiar doctrines, and are inseparably connected with them. By this fatal error, the very genius and essential nature of Christianity was imperceptibly changed.[2]

He then goes on to say:

In this way the fatal habit, of considering Christian morals as distinct from Christian doctrines, insensibly gains strength. Thus the peculiar doctrines of Christianity went more and more out of sight; and, as might naturally have been expected, the moral system itself also, being robbed of that which should have supplied it with life and nutriment, began to wither and decay. At length, in our own days, these peculiar doctrines have almost altogether vanished from … view. Even in the greater number of our sermons, scarcely any traces of them are to be found.[3]

The thing that I found most striking in trying to read this book is that I think the notion that I had of that period in time, especially when you think about some of the contemporaries of Wilberforce—guys like Flavel and Doddridge and some of the Puritan divines—I think that I had the impression that these two things were being held together in perfect tension. But in actual fact, as Wilberforce points out, the roots and the decay were already in place. And the reason I think that it is of such significance is not simply because we’re studying Titus and realizing a similar circumstance all those centuries before but because I think that there is some measure of accuracy in suggesting that we’re facing the exact same thing all over again—that history is once again repeating itself, whereby we have divorced the practical moral factors in relationship to biblical Christianity from the very foundation of the gospel itself. And eventually what happens, as Wilberforce says, is that the morality just folds in on itself. ’Cause there’s no moral dynamic; there is nothing there to actually sustain it.

So, in 1965, illegitimacy in the United States was 5 percent. In 2009, illegitimacy—which is an interesting, ancient word, isn’t it?—illegitimacy is 40 percent. Four in ten children are born out of wedlock. And since Roe v. Wade, they estimate that fifty million babies have been aborted. And meanwhile, the church bookstalls are full of all kinds of how-to books: how to fix your finances, how to live with your daughter, how to live with your married mother-in-law, how do you do with all of those things. And yet, at the same time, despite all of that preoccupation with, if you like, ethical and moral exigencies, we’ve got a phenomenal decline. And I think that Wilberforce has put his finger on it, which is why I wanted to find the quote. And I’ve done that now, so I think I better pray again before we turn to the Bible.

God, help us now, we pray. You are our heavenly Father, and you love us with an everlasting love in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray that as we have this opportunity to think thoughts after you as you’ve given to us in the Bible, that we might increasingly be conformed to the image of your Son, Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.

All right. Chapter 3 of Titus:

“Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward[s] all men.”

Now, what he does is, having given that as a call, if you like, to Christian citizenship—which we said was marked by loyalty and courtesy and humility and so on—having given that call to Christian citizenship, he recognizes, as a wise pastor and as an apostle, that it’s possible for Christians to look with contempt upon their culture rather than to look with compassion on their culture. And the one thing he realizes that will be an antidote to that kind of response is for the Christian believer to be reminded of our preconverted condition.

And so it is that he describes, then, in verse 3 what we once were before Christ. We often say here at Parkside that the Christian life is a two-volume book: we have prior to coming to Christ and after we’ve come to Christ. And there are many things written into volume number one that are sad and unhappy features, and while the Evil One would want us to delve back into sin that is forgiven—which we mustn’t do—nevertheless, we cannot forget and we dare not forget that apart from God’s amazing grace, we would be just like these people. We would be in the same predicament as themselves. Whitefield on one memorable occasion, in seeing somebody going to the gallows, turned to the person next to him and said, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” And that, of course, is exactly the case. And so it is that verse 3, when we recollect this, it will help us to view others with compassion rather than with contempt.

Now, the list is an unsavory list. I don’t want us to delay on it, but we should just notice it as we go through. “At one time we too were foolish.” In other words, we were darkened in our understanding, and we were separated from the life of God. It is “the fool” who said “in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”[4] Behind a facade of wisdom, we became fools, who exchanged the glory of an immortal God for things that creep and crawl.[5] “We too … were disobedient.” “Disobedient” marks the pre-Christian life: “Who is anyone to tell me anything?” Disobedient to both divine authority, to human authority, in rebellion against God’s law, in rebellion against the insistence of our conscience, which makes it clear to us that we are moral beings made in the image of God. Thirdly, “deceived”; in other words, easy prey for all kinds of specious arguments and notions. “Enslaved”: “enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures”—various desires, various pleasant feelings, trapped by a desire for stuff and so on. This is what we are outside of Christ.

“We lived,” he says, “in malice and [in] envy.” Not a nice picture: malicious thoughts, an evil disposition of mind, a selfish disposition of heart. “Being hated and hating one another.” People hated us, and we hated other people—because mutual hatred is eventually the effulgence of egotism. And self-centeredness—being turned in completely upon ourselves, which is what Luther really described as the nature of sin: that we are curved in upon ourselves. When a person is curved in upon themselves, then they will become hateful, and they will hate other people as well.

“And so,” says Paul, “I want you to remind your people, Titus, to make sure that they are the kind of people that are marked by courtesy and by humility and so on. And just in case anybody’s forgotten, let’s remember that were it not for the grace of God, we would be in the exact same position as themselves.”

Gospel living emerges from gospel truth.

That’s one of the things that always grieves me when I watch representatives—not always grieves me but sometimes grieves me—when I watch representatives of genuine Christianity being given an opportunity to go head-to-head with someone who is an outright pagan. And the disparity between the two individuals is fairly clear, but too often, it would appear that the tone from the Christian is not a tone of compassion but is a tone of contempt.

And I remember, for example, as I think along these lines, how encouraged I was when on one evening, as I watched Larry King Live, where there was an interview involving a gentleman who was an actor and a homosexual, and the person that was in the studio with him was John MacArthur; and in the interchange, somebody said something, or someone called in and said that, you know, this gentleman was going to go straight to hell or whatever it was. It wasn’t a particularly nice interchange. And I can’t remember just how it went, but I think the fellow said, “So, I guess that’s it,” or whatever it is, he said with a shrug. And I remember John put his hand on his shoulder, and he said, “Oh no, that’s not it.” He said, “You don’t want to go there. I know you don’t want to go there, do you?” It was just a breakthrough moment. And as a result of that, afterwards, in the meal that followed and then the dialogue that ensued, the connection that was made was a connection that was made as a result of compassion, not as a result of contempt. And unless we remember what we are by nature, unless we understand what we are either potentially or in actuality outside of Christ, then we will be in danger of this.

And that’s why I think Newton’s work has been so tremendous. And, again, Newton and Wilberforce were contemporaries. And Newton’s classic statement, which probably was the reason why the movie did so poorly in the box office, because the producers tried to get these two lines taken out of the movie, and the producers refused to take them out and, I think, in terms of its display, suffered badly on account of it—and that was where Newton at one point in the movie gives his great statement where he says, “I know two things: I know that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior.”[6] And that was always true of Newton, because he didn’t forget what he was apart from Christ’s redeeming love. And when you have self-satisfaction, when you have smugness, when you have contemptuousness that exudes from the Christian community within the culture of a day, then you can be pretty certain that these Christians have forgotten Titus 3:3.

So, what he’s saying is since we were once like these other people, let us not treat with contempt those who are still there, but let us, as we said last night, be energetic in goodness so that we might see unbelieving people becoming the committed followers of Jesus Christ. Okay?

So, in verses 1 and 2, he says, “This is what we are to be.” In verse 3, he says, “And this is what we were.” And then in verse 4 through to verse 7, he says, “And this is what God by his grace has us now and what we are becoming.” In other words, having outlined, if you like, the duty of the Christian citizen, he then explains the dynamic of the Christian gospel—the duty of the Christian citizen, which is founded upon the dynamic of the Christian gospel, so that gospel living emerges from gospel truth. And the obvious response of somebody in listening to this letter being read would simply be “Well, given what we are by nature in verse 3, how are we to live in light of the instruction of verses 1 and 2? How are we possibly to live in the light of verses 1 and 2 apart from the intervention of God—apart from the intervention of God on behalf of the sinner, doing for us what we could never do for ourselves?”

And that is exactly where he goes: “But,” he says—verse 4—“when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us.” “He saved us.” Some of you who are involved with Child Evangelism Fellowship—I think it’s Child Evangelism Fellowship—will be familiar with the [Wordless Book]. Have you used the [Wordless Book]? And it’s a great little book, and it just has pages that are different colors. And I haven’t seen it in some time, and I know there are more than three, but it essentially starts off with a black page, allowing the person to say, “And this is the circumstance of our lives, darkened by sin”; a red page, allowing the person to explain that the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses from all sin; and a white page that enables the person to say, “And God in his goodness has dealt with all these blots in our lives.” And the very simplicity of that is at the heart of what Paul is saying here: “When the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared…”

Actually, there is a sense in which verse 4 and following of chapter 3 is a reiteration of verse 11 and following of chapter 2. And this is a recurring theme not only in Titus, but it really is the recurring theme in the letters of Paul. If you go to Paul’s letters, you will see that he loves getting to the “But nows” or “But thens.” And so, for example, you have it in Romans 3, which we’ll look at in a moment or two, where he says, “But now a righteousness from God … has been [revealed].”[7] You have it in Ephesians chapter 2, where he is describing the circumstances of our preconverted state, and then he says, “But God, [being] rich in mercy…”[8] And then here in Titus 3:4: “But when the kindness and [goodness and] love of God … appeared…”

Now, let’s not miss this, because this little phrase “he saved us” is an important phrase. Indeed, it is a vital phrase. What is being described here is what God has purposed to do from all of eternity—that into the darkness the light has shined[9] as God’s love and kindness has appeared in the person of Jesus, so that the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 9 reaches its fulfillment in the incarnation: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; on those walking in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”[10] And what Paul is reminding Titus of is the fact that the gospel centers in the birth, the life, the death, the resurrection, and the ascension and the return of the Lord Jesus Christ; that this is the good news that he is called to proclaim; that this is the good news which provides the underlying impetus for the lifestyle that is to mark the believer in the Cretan culture. It is because of this gospel. It is because God has come in this way.

And that is important for us to recognize, even though we may be familiar with it. Because the storyline of the Bible is the reverse of what is commonly suggested. And what I mean by that is this: What is commonly suggested is that if you sort of take humanity as a whole, you will find that men and women are on a search for God—that it may not be apparent just when you see them driving to the office in the morning or into the lab or whatever it might be, but by and large, men and women are desperately seeking God, and for some reason, God has decided to make it really difficult for people to find him. And so they’re building turrets, and they’re climbing up into mountains, and they’re going out everywhere, and there they are, looking for God.

When you read the Bible, you discover that it says no, that’s actually not the case. People are hiding from God, and God is looking for them—that the sheep are not out looking for the shepherd. And it’s a funny metaphor, isn’t it? I don’t know. My grandfather was a shepherd, on my father’s side, in the Highlands of Scotland—and, you know, it’s not customary for the sheep to be talking to one another and saying, “Where’s old Shepherd Begg? I haven’t seen him in a while. Why don’t we all get together and go and have a look for him? I think he’s probably smoking his pipe somewhere over behind the shed. We’ll go and try and find him.” No, but it is the unstinting task of the shepherd to go out, with or without those collie dogs, and round up those wandering sheep. So the picture of humanity is, again, in the words of the prophet, “All we like sheep have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way.” And here’s the glorious news: “The Lord has laid on the shepherd the iniquity of us all.”[11] What? That the shepherd dies for the sheep? The shepherd not only seeks them but dies in their place? Yes!

Now, let me just point this out to you and get you started on your own little Bible study in Romans. This is extra credit for your homework. If you turn to Romans chapter 1 for just a moment, let me show you how Paul works this whole notion out. If you like, this is an extrapolation from the opening phrase here: “When the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we [have] done.” Okay?

So, Romans 1:19: “What may be known about God is plain to [men and women], because God has made it plain.” Okay? And that’s what it says. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and [his] divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” So in other words, God’s disclosure of himself in creation is sufficient to convince but not to convert. Okay? It is sufficient to render men and women accountable to God. It is not sufficient to convert them to God. If it were, then we would have to acquiesce to our friends who said, “Well, I just met God up in Mount Kilimanjaro when I went for a walk. I was over in Zambia and just decided to go for a long walk, and I can find God up there in a way that I don’t need a Jesus and I don’t need a Bible.” No, the Bible says, “No, I’m sorry, you can’t.” You may encounter the creative handiwork of God, but you will never know God in a saving way as a result of that. What God has disclosed of himself in this way is sufficient for people to be held accountable and to render them without excuse.

He then goes on, doesn’t he, to argue all the way through that? We’re not going to go through it. But he then points out that the people who are in a religious frame of mind, they don’t have any excuse either. That’s chapter 2. Chapter 2 and verse 3: “When you, a mere man, pass judgment on [these other people] and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment?”[12] And then here, classically: “Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward[s] repentance?” “God’s kindness leads you toward[s] repentance.”

Now, you see the link in Titus 3? “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared…” This is essentially the epitome of Paul’s theology. Paul never really deviates from this very much. And so he goes all the way through, and into chapter 3 he says, “Well, what advantage is there if you’re a Jewish person? What advantage is there if you’ve gone through all of the external formality of Judaism?”[13] Here he says the fact of the matter is that “no one,” 3:20, “will be declared righteous in [God’s] sight by observing the law; [but] rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.” Okay? And in verse 19 he says, “so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.” So the inexcusable nature of man’s predicament in rebellion against God, curved in upon himself and herself, is in need of a remedy that must come from the outside.

So it’s no surprise that then, in verse 21, you have the glorious “But now…” “But now…” When Martyn Lloyd-Jones, whose books are in our bookstore—I commend every one of them to you, not least of all Iain Murray’s latest one, Messenger of Grace—but when Martyn Lloyd-Jones did his expositions of Romans at Westminster Chapel in the twentieth century, he began with the Romans 3:21: “But now a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known,” and it is this “the Law and the Prophets testify” to. And “this righteousness,” you will see, “comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” “To all who believe.”

Now, when you think about it, it’s a remarkable story, isn’t it? That “the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared,” and “he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done.” In other words, says Paul, “Jesus came, uncalled for and unsought, and in the vastness of his mercy, he saved us. A “righteousness from God … to all who believe.” “Who believe.” So that the real question of men and women is: Do they believe?

If you think about that in relationship to the man going about his routine practice as described for us in Acts chapter 16—presumably said to his wife, “We got a couple of new prisoners have come in. I’ll take care of them, and then I’ll be out for a bowl of spaghetti, and I think it’s probably going to be a pretty straightforward evening.” He could never have known what he was about to encounter, nor could his wife or his children, or the radical transformation that was about to take place in the home of the Philippian jailer! For now he had encountered a couple such as he had never seen in his jail. “Who are these people, that instead of uttering oaths and curses in the middle of the night, instead of them being marked by hatred and hating one another and disavowing people and being malicious and vicious and mean and unkind—who are these strange characters who sing in the midnight hour? Who are these people who cry out to the living God, having been fastened in the stocks?” He must have said to himself, “I thought I’d seen everything in my jail, but I never thought I would see this.” And as their songs prevailed, and as the earthquake came, and as the chains were shaken loose, and as all of a sudden he realized that he was presiding over a prison that had no opportunity to retain the prisoners any longer, he took out a sword, deciding he’d be better to end his life before the Roman authorities did it for him. And then the intervention of kindness and the intervention of grace.[14]

Jesus, as our substitute, has borne the guilt, has borne the curse, has borne the punishment of our sin.

And Paul, I suppose, could have said, “Hey, he’s a Roman. He’s been doing bad things to people for a long time. Let him fall on his sword. I’ve got to get out of here and preach the gospel. He deserves it, miserable prison officer that he is.” No. How could Paul ever say that? He had been a miserable, murderous wretch until the kindness and love of God his Savior had shone into the darkness of his embittered heart and made him a new person. And so he said, “Hey, don’t harm yourself. We’re all here! We’re all here, boys, aren’t we?”[15] They’re all going, “Well, you know, I suppose so. Yeah, yeah, we’re all here.” And then the most remarkable thing out of the mouth of the jailer: “What must I do to be saved?”[16] What? Where did that come from? Came from kindness. Came from love. Came from patience. Came from singing. Came from praying. Came from the initiative-taking grace of God. And he said, “Well, you could just believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.”[17] Because, you see, God saves all who believe.

Spurgeon on one occasion, addressing this very question of belief in response to the initiative of God, says to his congregation in classically Spurgeonic terms: “O my hearer[s],” he says, “if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ this morning you are saved!”[18] Interesting. He doesn’t say to them, “If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ this morning you will be saved.” He says, “If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ this morning you are saved.” “I beg you,” he says, “to get hold of this truth [of God], that according to his mercy the Lord has saved us who believe in Jesus.” “The Lord has saved us who believe in Jesus.” Then he says, “Will you tell me, or rather tell yourselves, whether you are saved or not? If you are not saved, you are lost; if you are not already forgiven, you are already condemned.”[19] “O my hearer[s], if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ this morning you are saved.”

That’s why when the New Testament speaks of this response to God’s kindness and his love, it is a believing into Christ. It is a believing on Christ. It is a believing in the fact that Jesus, as our substitute, has borne the guilt, has borne the curse, has borne the punishment of our sin. Paul, in other places, is far more succinct in his theology and increasingly profound, and nowhere more so than in 2 Corinthians 5:21, where he says, “God made him”—that is, Jesus—“who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” And so it is this matter of salvation which he wants to drive home to Titus so that Titus in turn will make it a hallmark of his ministry to these people living in this culture. “Make sure your folks, Titus, are marked by loyalty, courtesy, humility, and so on. Remind them that all of us were once completely messed up. Make sure that they’re really clear about the nature of salvation—that when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us.”

And his motivation. If the matter is salvation, then the motive is equally clear. He saved us. How did he save us, or why did he save us? Notice, negative and then positive: “not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” In other words, “Our salvation,” he says to Titus, “is not triggered by any moral achievements of our own.” That’s big coming from the lips of Paul, isn’t it, when you think about his testimony in Philippians 3, where he says on that occasion that his background—if anybody wanted to have reason for boasting or confidence in the flesh, he had a pretty good pedigree, both in terms of his intellectual background and his theological background and so on. [20] And then eventually, he says, “But whatever I considered as a plus I now consider as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.”[21] All that he once held dear, all that he once built his life upon, all that he once thought gain he had counted loss—so that there is a disavowal in salvation, and it is that disavowal of ourselves and of any supposed goodness in us.

This is one of the reasons that people hate the gospel. The average person, if you tell him that they can go to heaven based on philanthropy or based on their endeavors in some way, they may actually step up for that. But if you tell them that the message of the Bible is that we are entirely dependent upon God’s grace and upon his goodness and that we contribute nothing to our salvation save the sin from which we need to be forgiven, the people say, “Oh, I really don’t like the sound of that. I mean, I didn’t go to school and read all these books… I didn’t work hard and make all this money… I mean, I’m used to paying my own way. I am an American, after all. I don’t take anything for free.” Well, unless you take the gospel for free, you’ll never take the gospel. It’s a bit like these downloads: free to you and costly to us. Such is our salvation: free to us and costly to God.

So, since by our good endeavors, as we know this well, we cannot save ourselves, if we’re ever to be put right with God, it must be on account of his gracious provision on our behalf. And God comes to us, we’re told here, in his mercy: “but because of his mercy.” If grace is that whereby we get what we don’t deserve, mercy is that whereby we don’t get what we do deserve. And what we deserve is the curse and the punishment of our rebellion. And why is it, then, that we would be freed from that? Well, because of the fact that Jesus is a Savior who bears the curse; and therefore, on the basis of his mercy, not according to the hopefulness of our character, God justifies the ungodly.

I mean, I’m not sure how many of our churches really have got this clear in our minds, that God saves sinners—that God saves sinners, that heaven is for bad people, that only bad people go to heaven. And in the congregation such as our own, I would think that in the listening numbers, some may have remained distant from the gospel because they feel that they have sinned so miserably that there is no possibility of forgiveness; therefore, we need to remind them again and again of the kindness and love of God our Savior. But I think the greater number of the Parkside concentric circles remain distanced from the gospel not because they believe there to be no possibility of salvation but because they believe there is no need of salvation—that they are kept from Christ not by their badness, but they are kept from Christ by their supposed goodness. And it is when God, in his kindness and love, pulls back the curtain of our ugly hearts and shows us the mess, and then we discover that the picture of the father towards the son is running down the street to fall on his neck and kiss him and to provide a party such as has never been seen, because of the fact of what Jesus has done.[22]

So, when God justifies the ungodly, as he does—and that’s what Paul is saying here—he does so in a way that is utterly unlike anything else in the history of religion. And I have in my notes just four phrases. I’ll give them to you. They’re all from Romans 3. In answering the question “How can God justify the ungodly?” the answer is: number one, it is all of grace; number two, it is all in Christ; number three, it is all of faith; and number four, it is all of God. All right? How can God justify the ungodly? All of grace, all in Christ, all of faith, and all of God.

Now, the pictures that are used of this immensity of salvation are many in Pauline literature. And he doesn’t use the same pictures all the time, and salvation is, if you like, the comprehensive term that includes all the elements of justification and sanctification and all those bits and pieces. We tend, I think, to think of salvation in a very atomized way—that somehow or another, that is that the gospel is there just to sort of get us started, and then once we’re started, we’re pretty well on our own from there. We “get by with a little help from [our] friends.”[23] But in actual fact, the gospel is not the ABC of Christian experience, but the gospel is the A to Z of Christian experience, so that salvation is vast in what God is doing. It involves our past and our present and our future.

And what he does is he says, concerning this salvation in verse—what is it here?—verse 5, that he has “saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” The matter that is before us is salvation, the motive for salvation is in the mercy of God, and the means that God has used is this work of regeneration. In other words, what God does on account of his mercy is both marvelous, and it is mysterious. And this notion of rebirth is there in John 3, which you can check later in the dialogue with Nicodemus. It is in Ephesians 2. If you want to go back to the underlying picture, I think, from the Old Testament for what Paul says here, I think it’s in Ezekiel 36, where the whole prospect of being washed by clean water and being transformed by giving a new heart[24] is probably the underlying thought.

Now, some people actually think that what Paul is saying here is that rebirth takes places as a result of baptism. Clearly, that would not be my view, and I’m not sure that we can justifiably ever say that it is the Bible’s view. The washing that is described here is a holy, spiritual washing. And I think that what we can say is: to the extent that baptism is figured in this, baptism portrays what Christ’s blood performs—that baptism performs nothing but portrays something, so that those who come and are baptized, are baptized either in the prospect of trusting in the blood of Christ, as in pedobaptism, or in looking back to the sacrifice of Christ, whereby they have professed faith in Jesus.

How can God justify the ungodly? All of grace, all in Christ, all of faith, and all of God.

But what Paul is driving home here is the fact of the regenerating power of God. We are regenerated, and we are renewed, and all of this is the work of the Holy Spirit. The mysterious elements in it are there for us to ponder. The hymn writer says,

I know not how the Spirit moves,
Convincing men of sin,
Revealing Jesus through the Word,
Creating faith in him.

But I know whom I have believed.[25]

It’s the same notion that you have as Jesus dialogues with Nicodemus. Nicodemus asks these rather obtuse questions for a man of his stature. He’s thinking in very physical and material terms, and Jesus is speaking in spiritual terms: “The wind blows where it wills. You hear the sound of it; you can’t tell where it’s coming from or where it is going. And so it is of everyone who is born of the Spirit”[26]—that this energizing, regenerating power of God is as marvelous as it is mysterious.

Berkhof, the systematic theologian, defines regeneration as follows: “That act of God by which the principle of … new life is implanted in man, … the governing disposition of [his] soul is made holy. … ‘and the first holy exercise of this new disposition is secured.’”[27] That’s why you have to read these books on rainy Tuesdays with a large cup of coffee.

But if you look at this verse, it is reiterated for us in the NIV—not in the ESV, interestingly. The phrase “he saved us” is here twice for us in the NIV. They only have it once in the ESV. “He saved us” not because of our moral character “but because of his mercy,” and “he saved us through the washing of rebirth and the renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior.”

I think in very simple terms. When Her Majesty takes over—and there’s a wonderful picture of the Queen and Prince Philip in the Wall Street today at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. You have to look very carefully to see them, but they have a special seat out in front of the rest of the congregation—’cause if you’re a queen, you get to do that. But when the Queen acquires a property in the United Kingdom, if you’ve visited there, you will know that one of the royal insignias goes up over the building, indicating that the Queen, the monarch, has now acquired this property for her own personal use. And what then follows is usually a significant amount of renovation. And so you have the insignia giving indication of the fact that a transaction has taken place whereby the monarch has secured this and all rights to this for herself, and now she has employed others to make it a fit place for her to spend her time. That is exactly what is described here: that he has saved us by the work of regeneration. The royal insignia has been placed, if you like, stamped over our lives, and by the renewing work of the Holy Spirit, he has sent in, if you like, the members of his platoon in order to prepare the place, a suitable abiding place, for the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so he says in verse 7, “so that, having been justified by his grace”—which is another way of describing the nature of salvation. That’s why I say to you, don’t think of salvation in an atomized way, but think of salvation as entirely comprehensive—that everything is involved in salvation; the prevenient grace of God, all the way through to our glorification, all the way through to 1 John 3: that when we see him, we will be made like him.[28] Why? Because of the nature of salvation.

And many things happen simultaneously in salvation. We are made the indwelling place of the Holy Spirit. We are made heirs of the Father, joint heirs with the Son. We are declared righteous in God’s sight, and so on. All of this takes place. And so Paul, going to his familiar terminology, says, “[and] so that,” he says, “having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.”

We used to sing a song in Scotland. I loved it. We never sing it here. I don’t think anyone knows it here. But… (I think we might have sung it once here. I take that back. Yes, we did.) And it went like this:

I am a new creation,
No more in condemnation.
Here in the grace of God I stand.[29]

“I am a new creation, no more in condemnation. Here in the grace of God I stand.”

Why? “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”[30] Not the peace of looking into our lives and saying, “I’ve had a marvelous week this week. I’m sure God must be very, very happy with me.” Because when we look into our lives and realize what a horrible week we may have had, what is our standing before God? The same standing that we had on the last week that was a really good week—namely, our standing is in the Lord Jesus Christ. “Therefore, being justified by faith, I have peace with God.”

Fast-forward to Romans 8: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them [that] are in Christ Jesus.”[31] Why? Because they’re having a terrific time? No, because Romans 7 says that he’s a wretched man, and he wanted to be delivered from his body of death.[32] So how can you be both a wretched man and also somebody for whom there is no condemnation? Well, it’s the north side and the south side of your house. The south side of the house, the sun shines on that. You can go in there; you don’t need to put any heat on. You don’t even need a jersey. You go in the north side of your house, it’s cold over there. You have to ask somebody, “Could you get me a blanket? I’d like to cover up my toes.” Well, the same thing is true. It is both the north side and the south side of our Christian experience. We realize that we are simultaneously sinners and being forgiven—that we are both sinners and saved, simultaneously. Therefore, because of being justified by faith, he has counted our sins to Christ’s account, and he has counted Christ’s righteousness to ours—imputed it to us.

So that’s why Luther—and I don’t want to agree with Luther on everything. I’ve already disagreed with him on baptism, so I can agree with him on this and at least balance it out. But Luther masterfully says, you know, that our Christian life is ultimately outside of us, in this sense: that we look away to what Christ has accomplished in the work of his atoning death. And on the strength of that—his righteousness imputed to us and our sin imputed to him—we have peace with God. Our past is dealt with, our present standing is in grace, and our future is not in question. Hence, we are heirs, having the hope which is not the hope “I hope it doesn’t rain” but the certainty, the reality of that dimension of our eternal life, which we will one day possess in all of its fullness—so that, from Sunday-school terminology (and with this I finish), we remind ourselves that on account of God’s amazing grace, I have been saved from sin’s penalty, I am being saved from sin’s power, and one day I will be saved from sin’s presence.

O, perfect redemption, the purchase of blood,
To every believer the promise of God;
The vilest offender who truly believes
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the earth hear his voice!
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the people rejoice!
O, come to the Father through Jesus the Son,
And give him the glory; great things he hath done.[33]

That is what Paul is conveying to Titus: the gospel dynamic which provides the impetus for our Christian duty.

Father, we thank you that your Word never returns to you empty; it always accomplishes the purposes you’ve established for it.[34] And we bow down before you, and we pray that you will seal all that is of yourself to our recollection; that you will banish from our memory anything that is untrue, unwise, unhelpful, unkind; that you will fill us afresh with a renewed sense of wonder at your amazing love and loving-kindness; and that this may be the bastion for our souls: in your redeeming love we rest, not in our performance but in the provision that you have made for us in the abundance of your mercy.

And we pray that this might be the hallmark of our day, in all of our coming and going and the different things that we will engage in, the places we will go, and in our conversations: that we may long that the earth might hear your voice and that the peoples of the earth may come to know of the immense kindness and love of you, our God and Savior, in the message of the gospel. For we pray, seeking the forgiveness of all our sins, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

[1] William Wilberforce, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity (London: T. Cadell, 1833), 241.

[2] Wilberforce, 241.

[3] Wilberforce, 242.

[4] Psalm 14:1 (NIV 1984).

[5] See Romans 1:23.

[6] Amazing Grace, directed by Michael Apted (Momentum, 2006). Paraphrased.

[7] Romans 3:21 (NIV 1984).

[8] Ephesians 2:4 (KJV).

[9] See John 1:5.

[10] Isaiah 9:2 (paraphrased).

[11] Isaiah 53:6 (paraphrased).

[12] Romans 2:3 (NIV 1984).

[13] Romans 3:1 (paraphrased).

[14] See Acts 16:25–28.

[15] Acts 16:28 (paraphrased).

[16] Acts 16:30 (NIV 1984).

[17] Acts 16:31 (paraphrased).

[18] C. H. Spurgeon, “The Maintenance of Good Works,” The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit 34, no. 2042, 498. Language modernized.

[19] Spurgeon, 498–99.

[20] See Philippians 3:4–6.

[21] Philippians 3:7–8 (paraphrased).

[22] See Luke 15:20–24.

[23] John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “With a Little Help from My Friends” (1967).

[24] See Ezekiel 36:25–26.

[25] Daniel Webster Whittle, “I Know Whom I Have Believed” (1883).

[26] John 3:8 (paraphrased).

[27] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 4th rev. and enlarged ed. (1939, 1941; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 469.

[28] See 1 John 3:2.

[29] Dave Bilbrough, “I Am a New Creation” (1983).

[30] Romans 5:1 (KJV).

[31] Romans 8:1 (KJV).

[32] See Romans 7:25.

[33] Frances J. Crosby, “To God Be the Glory” (1875).

[34] See Isaiah 55:11.