Titus 2:11-12

Titus 2:11-12

¹¹For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, ¹²instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age,

Changing Gears

So Paul has spent a few verses talking about each of the basic divisions of society in his time.  He gave instructions for older men, older women, younger women, younger men and closing with slaves.  Now he is changing the direction to more general information about the gospel and the way it works in the life of the healthy believers.  It is important to realize that this is not something that the believer is to be working to manifest in his or her life.  These are character traits that will flow very naturally from Christ as the center of our lives and our faith.  If we are submitting to Christ and continually working to live out our eternal position in our daily condition these are the traits and behaviors that will flow naturally out of our union with Him. 

Verse 11

¹¹  For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men,

  For

This is a conjunction that denotes causality, it could also be translated as “since” or “for.”  And in this case it is initiating a summary statement.  The Holy Spirit has been specific with different groups of people, however we find here that there is also a general example of what godliness looks like in individual lives.  These are traits and commands that apply to everyone, not just to a single group, that should be lived out in the life of every believer.

grace of God

As we have discussed before the Grace of God has been well described as God's undeserved, unearned favor to the believer.  The word “grace” was expanded for the Biblical definition.  It was one of the great words like “love” that was given a whole new meaning and context by the Holy Spirit.  In the original context it was a free gift, usually given to family,  that could not be paid for or returned in any way shape or form.  This is the wonderful gift of God through which he forgives us and purifies us of all sin.

Appeared

The Greek word here is epiphaino and it is where we get our English word “epiphany.”  It combines the word for “over, above or beyond” and the word for “appear, to shine, or to be seen.”  So it has the idea of something that has “shined over” or “shined out!”  It is also in the aorist tense, putting it in the past.  This is something that has appeared before.  This is pointing back to the salvation wrought by Christ on the Cross.

salvation to all men,

This is not a statement that precludes that all people are saved.  Quite to the opposite, the perspective of the rest of scripture makes it clear that the sacrifice of Christ on the cross made salvation available to all men, however that does not mean that all will take God up on this offer.  It is clear from scripture that Christ's work was powerful enough to forgive all sin, and deal with every sinner (1 John 2:2; John 3:16) however His death is only appropriated to those who believe on Him.  (1 John 5:1-5; John 1:12)

Verse 12

instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age,

instructing

This idea of instructing is different than simply teaching.  It involves the ideas of disciplining as well as instructing.  It is important to remember that in Proverbs and in the book of Hebrews the idea of discipline is very closely connected with loving care of a good Father.  Our heavenly Father will discipline us when he sees us directing our lives towards sinful and unfulfilling acts and lifestyles that God knows may be attractive to us in the short term, but in the long term will destroy us and keep us from becoming mature believers.

deny ungodliness

This is a negative statement.  It shows that the mature believer is not merely to have godliness as a part of their lives.  This also shows a level at which we are to stand in opposition to ungodliness.  This means that we don't simply live godly lives, but rather, we also live in contrast to the darkness.  This does not mean that we are only doing good things, only being nice, but also denying bad things.  It is our way as humans to try to weigh our lives out on a balance.  We try to say “I know I do these bad things, but I also do all of these good things...”  and this is clear that we are not just to be involved in good, but also to live out of the bad.

worldly desires

This word “desire” can also be translated as “worldly lusts” or “worldly passions.”  The idea being that these are the carnal and fleshly desires that we know draw us away from God and draw us closer to the world.  This is very often equated with physical lust, and sexual impurity, and this is a huge part of this word.  It is especially applicable to us in this day in age when we are assaulted with so much sexual imagery and such debauchery and also surrounded by a culture that absolves us for such sexual sins as pornography and lust.  This culture is out to say that those are all natural things and many women have come to a point where they believe that guys just need to do that stuff.  But we find that the Bible points in the exact opposite direction.  We cannot be fooled into believing the lies of our culture, because the second we do we realize that we are being willfully deceived.  Trying to believe what we know to be wrong, simply because we want to continue in our ungodliness.  This is unacceptable and we are to deny it completely.

Sensibly

Here is our dear friend sophronos again.  Once again conveying this idea of “wise-mindedness” this is not just someone who makes wise decisions, but rather someone whose entire mindset is dominated and marked by wisdom.  As we know: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” (Prov. 9:10)  Our wisdom comes from our position in Christ as his redeemed ones, put into his death, burial, resurrection, ascension and seating by the will of God.  This is, quite often, at strict odds with worldly wisdom.  Often times worldly wisdom will encourage us to cut corners to get ahead, or even injure others to get ahead, Godly wisdom will have none of this sort of behavior.  Godly wisdom keeps us in a heavenly perspective of where our life comes from, and where our future really is, and who our provider really is.

Righteously

It is interesting that, though the teaching of scripture is so consistent about the fact that we are saved by nothing we have done there are still commands to a righteous life found in Scripture.  We find that now that we are born again our new language is righteousness.  We still suffer the influence of our old man who, though separated from us, still makes demands on our day to day existence.  We find these verses are talking about our daily condition, how we live out our lives day in and day out.  This is a natural outgrowth of our union and growing intimacy with Jesus Christ.

Godly

This is the opposite of ungodly behavior which we are warned against earlier in this verse.  This suggests a reverence for God that is sometimes missing from the Church today.  American Evangelicals have spent quite a bit of effort to present Jesus, and thereby present God, as quiet and approachable.  We have played up the idea of Jesus as our friend to the point that we don’t realize that there is still a need for reverent love and respect in our relationship.  There is a need for us to realize who we are in the presence of the Almighty God. 

the present age

This present age that we are in is often called the Church Age.  It is distinct from any other age in history and extends from Pentecost all the way to the Rapture of the Church.  This is a reference to the fact that God’s requirements for Church Age Saints differs from His requirements for Old Testament Saints and differs from the way that God will interact with those Saints who come to Christ during the Tribulation period.  In this age we are freed from the law and saved completely by the grace of God by our faith in Christ, and while we are here this passage, as well as others throughout the Bible, tells us how we are to behave in this time.