12.25.19 Titus 2:11-14
11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. 12 It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.
At Christmas Time, Grace Appears
The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. Our church is all about grace. We are here by grace. The three solas of the Reformation start out by saying that we are saved “by grace alone.” It is only fitting that at Christmas time we talk about God’s grace.
But what does that mean? Grace is one of those Christian catch words - that we say a lot - but do we know what it means? That’s one problem with so much of what passes as Christianity today. Everything is vague. Grace, love, and even today’s version of God - it all means acceptance and tolerance and bland niceties. Heaven and hell, angels and demons, salvation and damnation, the Trinity and so many other articles of faith are left undefined. Some people think grace is nothing more than a table prayer. Others think “grace” just means that God loves us and so we are saved because God is more or less a nice guy. Catholics tend to think of grace as gifts that God gives you so that you can live a life that is pleasing to Him.
If grace is going to save us and be the foundation of our church, we better know what it is. If we get grace messed up, then we also get our salvation messed up. And let’s also remember what we mean by salvation. We’re talking salvation from hell and from death and from God’s wrath. We aren’t talking about giving you better health or more wealth or just giving you a happy life. We’re talking about eternity. We need to be saved from God’s wrath and being condemned to hell.
So let’s look at grace this Christmas morning. Paul told Titus, “the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.” If grace is something that “appeared,” then it must be an actual thing that is visible and tangible: something we can see and touch. Today we see that grace is an actual person - someone who could be weighed and measured - held and seen. It is someone who did actual things on this earth - real things - not just make believe stories like flying around in a sled through the sky. Grace is Jesus in the flesh. It is who He is and what He has done. If you were to say, “draw me a picture of the grace of God,” then I would draw you a picture of Jesus. So today, as we come to look in the manger, we come to see grace in the flesh.
By all accounts, there is nothing extraordinary looking with this baby. He doesn’t have a special glow about him. He’s just lying in a bed of straw that cattle eat out of. He’s just an ordinary looking child in a very under-ordinary place of a manger. He doesn’t look like He could save anyone from anything. But that’s one of the things that attracts us to Jesus. He’s not high and mighty looking. He’s not so majestic that we are afraid to even come. He’s not standing on the top of Mt. Sinai under a pillar of fire. He looks like an ordinary man, because He came for the ordinary, the under-ordinary, and the extraordinary. He came for the lowest of the low. That’s grace: a world of grace packed into a tiny baby.
What did Jesus, the grace of God, come to do? He “brings salvation to all men.” The word in the Greek ends in an ios - swthrios - and emphasizes the action - He is saving. This is what Jesus came to do - the action of saving - not just some of humanity - and not just His fellow Jews - but ALL of humanity - men, women, and children. He came to save the world of humanity. If you define yourself as a human - then you know He came to save you. He didn’t come to save the demons or the animals. He came to save the humans.
This implies, first of all, that we need to be saved. That’s a heavy doctrine in and of itself that’s loaded with insinuation. The Bible says that we aren’t just fine the way we are. We are born to die because of the curse that God place on Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We are by nature objects of God’s wrath. God hates sin, and we are sinners. So we need to be saved from God Himself. That’s pretty offensive to humanity, but that’s how God’s Word describes humanity. And if Jesus came to bring salvation, this also insinuates that we can’t save ourselves. We can’t bring it to ourselves. No, God has to send His Son to come and do it for us and bring it to us from heaven above. That’s grace too.
How did He do it? He “gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own.” Here is the heart and soul of why we celebrate Christmas - for redemption. Redeem means to buy back. Jesus took on flesh for one main reason - that He could suffer, bleed, and die on the cross: so that He could pay the price we owed God. We know why the baby is in the manger, so that He can be sacrificed for our sins. This was the sacrifice that God demanded on behalf of humanity - the bloody death of God Himself. The death of a mere man wouldn’t do - not for the sins of the world.
Who would WANT to be blamed for the sins of the world and abandoned by God? Not me. But we see that this was what Jesus did HIMSELF. He wasn’t forced into it. He GAVE HIMSELF - why? Not because we deserved it, but because of GRACE - an undeserved love - FOR US - to redeem us from all wickedness and purify us FOR HIMSELF. This is why baptism is so important. Paul said in Romans 6,
don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
In your baptism God takes all of Jesus’ holiness and blood and bathes you in Him and buries you with Him. Not only this, He raises you with Jesus too! Jesus gave Himself to die FOR THAT VERY PURPOSE. He wanted you to look pure and holy in His sight. He wanted you to be HIS. That’s why Jesus was in that manger, because He WANTED to be there, so that you could be WITH HIM. None of us CHOSE to be babies or to be born into this world, but Jesus DID! Now, when I believe in Jesus and I’m baptized, I have complete and full and free forgiveness. I am bathed and covered in Jesus. I am bathed and covered in grace.
So Christmas also changes the way we live life NOW. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. (Isn’t this a great passage on the divinity of Jesus?) Paul doesn’t mince words. Jesus, that little baby who was born and placed in a crib - He is God - and He’s coming again in the clouds to take His children home.
This is a BLESSED hope. It’s not a hopeless hope. We are blessed with a different mind set. We don’t have to wonder if some sins were left unpaid by Jesus. We know we are loved by God because of Jesus. If God was willing to become man in order to save ME, then I want to be like God in the way I live. I want to live for the future and for God.
So grace trains us to say “no” to the “now age.” Grace restores our mind, refocuses it on Jesus. We want to live gracious and merciful and disciplined lives, willing to suffer and die for Him too. Everything that we have is a gift of His grace as well. So we are blessed with generosity and thankfulness. We are blessed with the realization that this world is temporary, so we aren’t too attached to it.
Here’s another neat thing not to overlook: that God’s grace is still tangible and touchable - even now without Jesus walking in our world - only in hidden ways. We can still touch Jesus as we eat and drink of Him through the Lord’s Supper. The Holy Spirit still uses real water to come washing into our soul. We have the actual words of Jesus, spoken in time, to listen to every Sunday in the Gospels. These are real things that change our lives. What a blessing!
When someone puts a gift under your tree, they want you to use your gifts. They don’t want their cookies or their bread to go stale. They want that one gift to last you for longer than one day. Paul’s letter to Titus takes the manger and spreads it out to the present and the future - so that we don’t only look at Christmas nostalgically for one night or one day of the year. When you receive the gift of Christmas, you have God saying “yes” to you. And when God says “yes” to you, then you are confident and free to say “no” to something - things that are not what God wants you to have. You’re not desperate for a “yes” from so many things in this life that will only enslave you. You already have everything you need. Now you are free to GIVE.
I think of a young mother who desperately stopped by at church years ago on Christmas Eve. She had a whole list of Christmas presents that she wanted to give to her children, but she didn’t have the money. She wanted the church to help and said, “My kids can’t have Christmas without these gifts.” It saddened me to see her so frantic - thinking that Christmas was about that list. I wanted her to just come in to the service, sit and listen to the Christmas songs and the message. If she would have had the “yes” of Jesus, she could have said “no” to the peripherals and not felt like she or her children were missing anything. She would have been saved from the stress of the holidays. But she didn’t really know what Christmas was about. She left to find another church that would maybe give her the money she wanted instead of the Savior she needed.
Where would we be without Jesus, the grace of God, appearing? Then nothing appeared. Then nothing changes. Then godlessness reigns. We would only be concerned about ourselves. We would only be bound by laws and regulations, were it not for grace. Then there would only be death. No hope. All guilt.
And what if this salvation appeared, but it was NOT given to us as a pure gift? Then none of us could be sure that it was ours. Then Jesus would be nothing more than a divine Santa Clause, finding out who’s been naughty or nice. Then we’d all be damned, because we all fall short of holiness. But Jesus has appeared, grace has appeared, to bring salvation, free of charge, by His death and resurrection, through faith.
When you have your first child, you have no idea how much your life is going to change. Your sleeping patterns, your prayer life, your schedule - it all turns upside down. Even though they are smaller than you and much less powerful, they still have a way of changing your life and in some ways becoming the boss. You enslave yourself to them in some ways in order to raise them and teach them to live on their own some day. Why? Because you love them.
When Jesus was born, our lives changed too - even more so. Now we know what grace is. Grace is God become man and living in a filthy world FOR US. Grace is going to die and be condemned on a cross FOR US. Grace is in having freedom from the cravings and desires of this world - not to live on our own - but to live with Him as His people in His house. When Jesus was born, this wasn’t something that humanity had planned or even thought of, but God sure did. And for that we are thankful. We are thankful for God’s grace, His blessed grace, through the appearance of grace personified, Jesus Christ in the flesh. Merry Christmas. Amen.
