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“Grace
Has Appeared”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: Titus 2:11-14
“For the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all.”
The grace of God has appeared. And
the grace of God will appear again and again in your life.
Yes, we are to be patient. The
two most popular holy days that we are blessed by within the church are
Christmas and Easter. They
are both mentioned in this passage.
“For the grace of God has
appeared… (And) … He
it is who gave himself for us…”
And we are being shown how God’s grace is appearing in our
lives here and now, today and tomorrow, as we live between the first and
second comings of Christ into this world.
I want us to start by looking into the “grace of God.”
We believe in God as being gracious.
And we often think of grace as simply being kind when some other
action could also have happened. And
also we often think of being gracious, in personal terms, as being
charming toward someone. And
I would certainly want to present God as being kind and even being
charming. But the meaning
of the “grace of God” in this passage is referring to God becoming a
human being. God is kind
when it comes to blessing God’s creation.
Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount: “…your
Father in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the
good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”
Right here Jesus is teaching about us being called by God to love
our enemies. And this
picture of God as giving the needs of life to the evil and the
unrighteous certainly is gracious.
Nevertheless, what we are being shown about the grace of God is even
much deeper than that. God
became a human. God did not
become a heavenly angel. God
did not become a magnificent Southern Magnolia Tree.
God did not become a beautiful Humpback Whale.
God did not become a mesmerizing sunrise or a sunset.
God did not become an American Bald Eagle.
God became a human being. God
created all of this. But
God became one of us. Even
now God perceives his beautiful creation from two standpoints: one as
God, the other as a human being. The
grace of God is that God became one of us.
We have been given the greatest gift from God.
We have been given a gift that no other part of God’s creation
has ever been given. We
have been given something even angels have not been given.
We have been given a place in the relationship between Jesus and
God the Father in the Holy Spirit.
We have actually been placed in that.
That is our home. That
is our family. And who they
are in God’s loving relationship has been placed in us; in our hearts,
in our minds, in our decisions, in our souls.
The relationship between God the Father and Jesus Christ in the
power of the Holy Spirit has been placed deeper within us than anything
we have ever come in touch with in ourselves.
God became one of us. We
have been given God.
And then after He became one of us, He gave himself for us.
God does not see humanity as something ugly.
God sees humans as, maybe, the most beautiful part of creation.
From my own selfish perspective, if I could become some beautiful
part of creation, like a gorgeous, stunning Chestnut Arabian horse, I
doubt I would want to give it up. But,
God, in Jesus Christ, gave up his life for us.
I do believe Jesus had the faith that God the Father would raise
Him from the dead. Still,
Jesus did not give himself over to the worldly passions of the devil
when He was tempted by Satan; he suffered in his humanity for you and
me, and he gave Himself totally for us.
He gave His life for us. God
gave himself to us. And
when God became one of us, he gave his life for us.
Now, God is giving new life to us through the Holy Spirit being present
in our lives.
Jesus Christ learned how to be obedient to God through the suffering he
went through in this world. He
died on the cross. That was
his choice. He died to put
to death the old Adam and Eve. He
was raised from the dead in a new humanity, which is our salvation, and
which is being given to us. And
because He is where He is and we are were we are, one of the most
important parts of the relationship between us and Christ is that he is
the instructor in our lives; he is “training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present
age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we
wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our
great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
If we had a two hour service I could spend five to ten more minutes
talking about each term: impiety, worldly passions, self-control,
upright, and godly. But, since we only have a few minutes I want to talk about
the most important of these terms, “godly.”
Christ is real and present in our lives, appearing to us, and
instructing and training us in what it is to be godly.
Godly means how we are to relate to God.
What Christ is teaching us in our lives is how we are now a
member of the relationship that He has with God in the Holy Spirit.
God became one of us for the very purpose of taking us back to be with
and in Him.
Christ is very patient. He
knows us better than we know ourselves.
And our growth in this knowledge and experience is not always
some great step forward. It
may take a lot of time, and we may move forward quite slowly.
But, the appearance of Christ in our lives and the gift that He is
giving to us at Christmas and throughout our entire lives is teaching us
that we are already in the relationship that he has with God.
God sees us in the same way God sees Christ.
And Christ is showing us how he knows God the Father and how we
can relate to God the Father with Him.
Our prayer right now may be, “Lord I hear this, but I need to grow in
what it actually means in my life.
I hear these words; and I believe there is truth to them.
I need to have my eyes open, so that I can try to see where
Christ is teaching me about my relationship with you.
Please, make this the most important thing in my life.
‘I do believe; help my unbelief.’”
Let us pray…
Amen |