In Class with Professor Grace

All teachers are not created equal.  Most of us have had a few teachers in our past that truly changed us.  Perhaps it was their ability to communicate.  Maybe it was how they taught a paradigm-shifting truth that upended what you thought you knew.  Or maybe it was their servant-hearted investment into you that made you learn and do what you didn’t think was possible. 

Today I want to introduce you to a teacher that will change you.  Meet Professor Grace.  Grace teaches us in an apprenticeship program with a full spectrum of on-the-job training.  Grace opens up to us a world that seems too good to be true.  But, as all good teachers do, grace is able to handle all the arguments and cause us to walk a different path. 

This article is about one passage of Scripture and one central question regarding it.  The passage is this:

Titus 2:11–13

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, 12 instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, 13 looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus,

The central question is this:

            How does grace teach us? 

Before we can understand how grace teaches us, we must first know what grace is.  Let me give you one of the best explanations of grace from a man named Jeremy Treat:

Grace is not a thing. Grace is not stuff that God gives us apart from himself. He doesn’t run out of it. God gives us himself when we don’t deserve it; that is grace. The oft-repeated definition of grace as an undeserved gift is right but does not go far enough when referring to the grace of God. Grace is a gift, but God is not only the giver, he himself is the gift. God graces us with himself.  

So grace is God giving himself to us in undeserved ways.  When an unexpected check comes in the mail and meets pressing needs, that is an occasion of grace.  But grace is not mainly the check.  Grace is that you get to know God as provider in a new and/or fresh way.  The check is the platform upon which God shows you his kindness, fatherly care, power, and a host of other attributes.  God has given himself to you.  That is the true gift and it leads to true worship.  If all that dominates your mind is the check, then all you are worshiping is an idol: the check-giving God.  And if he doesn’t give you a check the next time around then you will most likely be filled with anger, fear and the like.  This is what the unbelieving world does every day when it receives God’s sunshine and rain and they turn around and relish sun and rain but not God. 

Now back to our bible passage and our question.  Titus 2 says that grace has appeared and it is instructing us.  Let’s take what we have learned and apply this to the realm of teaching. 

Grace teaches us to deny ungodliness

If grace is the reality that God is giving himself to us, then what does that teach us about denying ungodliness?  It teaches us that the false promises of ungodliness cannot compare to God as the ever-giving, unending fountain of goodness.  The promises of sin will always leave you unsatisfied and burned, but God will constantly give and give and give for your eternal good.  How does this work in a world where we are so often in need?  God wants you to have good things, but good things without the best thing become destructive things.  So, as another act of grace, God is never going to give us something that will take our hearts away from him.  He wisely withholds so that we learn he is our only need.  And the more we learn this, the more he freely gives us other things that then properly become pointers to his lovingkindness, and consequently occasions for worship.  No worldly desires can compete with this.  When grace begins to teach us that God will unfailingly give unimaginable and unending good to those who hope in him, sin loses all it alluring power.  It looks like a Cracker Jack toy compared with the Hope Diamond of Christ.  Additionally, you discover that the Cracker Jack toy of sin is actually laced with infectious disease.  Who would want that?   Worldly desires becomes easier and easier to deny as grace teaches us more and more of all we have and are continually given in Christ.

Grace teaches us to live sensibly, righteously, and godly

The above discussion works in the opposite direction as well.  Grace promises that God gives himself to us so that we can walk in every righteous way.  We must remember that every step of righteousness is a step produced by God himself. Jesus is the vine that supplies life to the branches for fruitfulness (John 15:5).  The Father gives and gives and gives the needed love, wisdom, boldness, humility etc. to those who ask, seek, and knock so that a person will be able to treat others how a person would want others to treat him ( see Matthew 7:7-12 and the grand “therefore” of vs.12).  To round out the triune work of righteousness in God’s children, the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22 contains 9 traits that can be summarized by a life that is sensible, righteous, and godly.  Those who are taught by grace are those who know that God will give everything they need to live godly.  This is what it means to “walk in Him” as stated in Colossians 2:6-7.  We walk in the sure hope that he will supply strength and wisdom for each step so that he gets all the praise.  This is what grace always does.  The God of grace is the giver, and the giver always gets the glory. 

Paul tells Timothy in 2 Tim 2:1 “be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”  We are strong in grace when we have been fully taught by grace.  When we hold our diploma certifying that we understand what grace means, and we are truly banking on all that God will give us through Christ, namely himself, then our graduating walk will be a “walk in Him.”