Titus 2

Titus 2:11-14

CHRIST—OUR Titus 2:11-14. THE second chapter of Titus is one of those wonderful chapters in which “sound doctrine” and “sober” living are shown to go together. Paul in his Letter to Titus insists that he should be a teacher whose words should result in bringing the people to be “sound in faith” while he should be to them “a pattern of good works”. It is a chapter like the second chapter of James, sent of God to show us, while by the deeds of the Law there should be no flesh justified in God’s sight, yet the faith that does not effect works is a failure, and “dead, being alone”, as the Apostle says.“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, “Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and ‘Worldly lusts, We should live soberly, righteously, and Godly, in this present world; “Looking for that Blessed Hope, and the Glorious Appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; “Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works” (Titus 2:11-14). The last verse, the fourteenth, presents the great thought of self-offering for others’ sake, and that is the “esprit de corps” of our contention:CHRIST GAVE HIMSELF He “gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works”. In giving self, He gave life. He was the Life! On one occasion He said “For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself”.That life was His first offering to the world. People are tempted to overlook Christ’s gift of life in their custom of emphasizing death. But life, not death, was His first offer, and, in some respects, His greatest offer. It was by His life that He best manifested the Father’s character of sympathy, of compassion, of love.

It was by His life that He exemplified the greater graces and adorned the doctrine of God. His first disciples were necessarily disciples of His life as His death had not been accomplished as yet, and, as He associated Himself with them and they looked upon Him from week to week, observing His unselfishness, making note of His wisdom, astounded by His exhibitions of power, and overwhelmed with a sense of His roundness as a man, His very perfections from every point of study, they must have exclaimed often, “What a life!” While they looked on and studied that life, lo, they were being lifted up themselves into likeness unto it, and the change was marked from day to day.Henry Drummond, speaking of this change says, “First there steals over them the faintest possible adumbration of His character, and occasionally, very occasionally, they do a thing or say a thing that they could not have done or said had they not been living there.

Slowly the spell of His life deepens. Reach after reach of their nature is overtaken, thawed, subjugated, sanctified. Their manner softens, their words become more gentle, their conduct more unselfish. As swallows who have found a summer, as frozen buds the spring, their starved humanity bursts into a fuller life. They do not know how it is, but they are different men. One day they find themselves like their Master, going about and doing good. To themselves it is unaccountable, but they cannot do otherwise. They were not told to do it, it came to them to do it.

But the people who watch them know well how to account for it—’They have been’ they whisper, ‘with Jesus’. And His life has laid hold upon them. What a great gift to make to men! It is some such a gift, in small degree, that a father makes to his son when he sets before him noble example; some such a gift as the teacher makes to her pupil, when she instructs him in the arts, letters and sciences, and imparts to his mind pieces of her own mental furniture; such a gift as the great master in painting or in music puts before his students when he perfects a masterpiece and turns it over to them to be copied. But, a better illustration is seen in the mother who is imparting her ideas and pouring all her energies into the lives of her children, consuming her own life that she may strengthen theirs. The text says, “who gave Himself for us”.And yet, while this gift of life is too little thought upon, we should never forget that this text looks to the death He endured.He not only gave Himself to us in living, but also in dying.

Speaking of that great event—His death—He said, “I lay down My life * *. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself”.

Perhaps we are too far removed from that event to appreciate its entire importance. Perhaps we too poorly understand the suffering and the shame associated with His death to sound all of its meaning. These are times when we have fallen upon an unscriptural view of death. I read a few days since in a Baptist paper these words, “I saw a beautiful figure wandering up and down the earth. She touched the aged and they became young. She touched the poor and they became rich. I said, ‘Who is this beautiful being wandering up and down the earth?’ They told me her name was Death.”But nobody believes that! It is a theory that is popular in the conversations of some, but one practiced by nobody.

We run toward the beautiful figure we behold, but from death we run away. The simple reason is that we all understand death as our enemy, that it came into the world as “the wages of sin”, and as one said, “is the climax of humiliation and disgrace to the body.” And Christ started back from it and said, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me”! And yet, seeing that the lives of men could not be redeemed without His death, He changed about and cried, “Not My will, but Thine, be done”, and walked straight into the arms of this foe for our sakes. And here again, He illustrated one of the greatest laws of life, namely, that if we would save others, we ourselves must be sacrificed. Of every man who becomes the greatest possible blessing to his fellows it must be written as it was written of our Lord, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save”.Henry Ward Beecher says, “Every patriot who is sacrificed, on account of the heroic fidelity of his life, to the public weal; every martyr whose blood is shed as a seal and witness of that holy faith by which he would illumine and bless the world; every prisoner lingering in dungeons, and, with long dying, suffering unseen and forgotten by the multitudes for whose welfare his life is spent; every man who goes forth to lands of fever and malaria, and to early death, knowing that he carries religion, civilization, and liberty to the ignorant, at the price of his own life, and cheerfully dies in the harness there, where men, being most degraded and thankless, are on that very account more needful of this very sacrifice of some one— all these, and all others whose death is brought about by persistent adhesion to the welfare of men, follow their Lord not less really because the sphere is lower and narrower. They follow their Lord in death, and through death.

For, does not the little five-year-old child follow his father, though it requires three of his little foot-steps to measure a single stride of his father? He follows him in speech, though he prattles.

He follows him, though it be in weakness, and more slowly and wearisomely. And all who willingly yield life for the sake of a moral cause, or a beneficent influence, follow their Lord and Master just so far as these things are concerned.”Our text also suggests a second fact, namely,CHRIST GAVE HIMSELF FOR US This is true from whatever standpoint you approach the Scriptures. Of the whole wide world, it is still a fact. If only the faithful are included, you need not change the text, “He gave Himself for us.”He gave Himself for all men.“God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”. To the Romans Paul wrote,“Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life” But He gives Himself to His own. In behalf of those who reject Him He offered Himself, but to those who receive Him, He is giving Himself; an actual appropriation of His life is occurring so that Christians may be spoken of as those in whom Christ lives, moves, and has His being.I had a letter some time since from a good woman who was a member of my church telling me a little of how her daughter was saved when life seemed actually ebbing out by filling the veins with warm salt-water. I was reminded of another method of saving life concerning which I recently read this: “Science in its highest discoveries is perpetually stumbling on Scriptural analogies. Feeling after the secrets of nature we are startled to find that, though all unconscious of it itself, it has grasped some secret of the Gospel, which we can now use to translate and interpret the deep things of grace. Medical skill you know has recently succeeded in curing by ‘transfusion’, as it is called. When a patient’s blood has become so impoverished that his case is hopeless they will open the veins of a healthy body and pour into its circulation some of this strong, rich blood.

We may thank science for such a sermon preached by a surgeon’s art. That is what God has been doing for centuries with our invalid and dying humanity, restoring it by a Divine transfusion.

Through Christ’s heart the healing tide has been pouring into our race to recover it from its mortal sickness. Regeneration is simply the pulse-beat of the eternal life throbbing in human hearts. Redemption, which began in the shedding of Christ’s Blood on the Cross, is carried on from age to age by the communication of His life to men through the renewing of the Holy Ghost. Of course the illustration is inadequate, as every such analogy must be. It is not, in this instance, human life at its highest ebb helping human life at its lowest; it is the Divine assisting the human; it is God yoking His holy nature up with our fallen, helpless nature that He may lift it out of its low estate. It is so great a fact—this communication of God’s life to man—that one has well called it ‘the miracle of miracles, the sum of all miracles, the standing miracle of the ages’.”No wonder Miss Mary J. Mason wrote,“Saviour, who died for me I give myself to Thee; Thy love, so full, so free, Claims all my powers. Be this my purpose high, To serve Thee till I die, Whether my path shall lie ‘Mid thorns or flowers. “But, Lord, the flesh is weak; Thy gracious aid I seek, For Thou the word must speak That makes me strong. Then let me hear Thy voice, Thou art my only choice; O bid my heart rejoice, Be Thou my song. “Saviour, with me abide; Be ever near my side; Support, defend, and guide; I look to Thee. I lay my hand in Thine, And fleeting joys resign, If I may call Thee mine Eternally.” In going back to our text again I find a third suggestion,CHRIST’S PURPOSE WAS A PEOPLE “Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works”.The first characteristic of a peculiar people is their redemption from iniquity.Henry Van Dyke, in his “Sermons to Young Men”, says, “Men are telling us nowadays that there is no such thing as sin. It is a dream, a delusion. It must be left out of account. All the evils in the world are unnatural and inevitable; they are simply the secretions of human nature. There is no more shame or guilt connected with them than with the malaria of the swamp, or the poison of the night-shade. But Christ tells us that sin is real and that it is the enemy—the curse— the destroyer of mankind.” And, if Christ is right, then there should be some redemption from it and our text tells us that Christ Himself effects that redemption.

He stretches out His hand to the weak to lift him out of his weakness. He opens the treasuries of His mind for the benefit of the ignorant to lift him out of his stupidity.

He unsheathes the sword of His might to strike off the bands of Satan to set men free. If one is an entire slave to some appetite, surrendered to it so long that nothing of resistance is left to him, Christ often redeems by removing the appetite entirely. But if there is strength remaining He adds His great strength to that little remaining strength and lifts it to the level of success. How much this means to many a man history teaches us both positively and negatively. The man who isn’t redeemed from sin by God’s Son has no sure standing. Dr.

Hillis says, “For lack of righteousness, Bacon lost his leadership; while his head was in the clouds, his feet were in the mire. So great was Goethe’s genius that he sometimes seems like one driving steeds of the sun, but self-indulgence took off his chariot-wheels.

Therefore the German poet has never been to his country all that Milton was to his age. During his life Goethe always kept two friends busy—the one weaving laurels for his brow—the other cleaning mud from his garments. But Paul, striding the earth like a moral colossus, braving kings, daring armies, toppling down thrones, setting nations free, has dwelt apart from iniquity. John and Paul, Hampden and Pym seem like white clouds floating above the slough from which they rise.”And, we want never to forget that they rose to such heights simply because Christ had redeemed them from iniquity.Another trait of a peculiar people is that they should be purified from the world.The only definition of pure religion given in the Bible in such short space and clean cut expression as to make it worthy the name definition is this: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world”.Now the way to keep one’s self unspotted from the world is the way that Christ preached and approved. He would have His disciples be in the world, but not of it—living in places where iniquities abound but not participating in iniquitous acts; moving among the sinful, but showing them a better way.Hall Caine’s John Storm was never at any time the best specimen of the Christian, but the poorest evidence he ever gave of his power, and the poorest attempt he ever made at purity, was when he quit the world for a cell. True he had met iniquity in high places in the church; true he had seen the church and the world vieing with one another to see who could be the sleekest sinner; true his parish duties had put him into touch with many whose feet were slipping and whose souls were going down; true his fits of courage had brought him up against persecution and outrage, and yet it is not the part of the Christian to retire into a cell, and shut out the world with its sins and all its sufferings that he may save himself trouble and keep himself unstained.As Henry Ward Beecher says, “The chrysalis is not a fool.

There is a next summer for him. But if a man attempts to do the same; if he spins out for himself a silken dwelling and then wraps himself up in that, there is no next summer for him.

He will never come to be a butterfly, though the chrysalis will, and will rise up in judgment against him. * * For that which is very well for a bug is very poor for a Christian.”True purity is the purity that is the result of conquest that comes not so much out of escaping Satan as out of meeting him and defeating him. God never said, “Blessed are the pure in conduct.” God never said, “Blessed is the man that keeps himself from the world.” God said, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God”. Ah, they have seen Him, and through His indwelling Spirit have come to their success.One trait more—zealous of good works. You remember that John Ruskin, in his “Modern Painters”, shows that everything has a claim upon man’s higher life; the fields have, the woodlands, the mountains. A recent writer says, “He reminds the weary king and the tormented slave alike that the secrets of happiness are in ‘drawing hard breath over chisel or spade, or plow, in watching the corn grow and the blossom set, and after toil, in reading, thinking, hoping and praying’. Would any man be strong, let him work. * * Or happy, let him help; or influential, let him sacrifice and serve.” No wonder Henry Van Dyke says, “My friends, there are two kinds of religion in the world, the religion that is heavy with self, and the religion that is strong with love.

There are some people who mix opium with their Christianity. It soothes and charms them; it gives them pleasant dreams and emotions; it lifts them above the world in joyous reveries.

They would fain prolong them and dwell in them, and enjoy an unearned felicity. Their favorite hymn is,“‘My willing soul would stay In such a frame as this, And sit and sing herself away To everlasting bliss’.” No one ever got to everlasting bliss by that method. The world has small need of a religion which consists solely or chiefly of emotions and raptures. But the religion that follows Jesus Christ, alike when He goes up into the high mountain to pray and when He comes down into the dark valley to work; the religion that listens to Him, alike when He tells us of the peace and joy of the Father’s House and when He calls us to feed His lambs; the religion that is willing to suffer as well as to reign; the religion that would bear a cross when needful, is the religion that will wear the crown.