Titus 3:7

Titus chapter 3, reading verses 4 to 7, our focus tonight will be on verse 7. But after that, the kindness and love of God, our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy, he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, our Savior. that being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. May God bless to us His holy and sacred word this evening. Suppose you were walking through some slum area of Mexico City, and you noticed a dirty little beggar child following you, a little street urchin, and this young boy kept running out and too towards you and calling, mother, father. Now, you’d never seen this child before. Such an action on his part would perhaps stir you to anger. You don’t know this child, and you would certainly deny him any rights that would belong to your natural children. You don’t have a parental, relationship with him. However, if you would take this child off the streets, if you would adopt him into your family, then it would be an entirely different situation. You take him into your home, you clean them up, you address him, you provide for his education and his welfare, and then he would have a right to call you father and mother. Such a right has to be given to him. such is the case spiritually as well. In the divine relationship, God has made full provision for sonship for his people. He grant you the right to be called a child of God. John 112 tells us this. Scripture indicates that he’s adopted us into his heavenly family. made you a son of God through Jesus Christ. He’s taken you out of the world. He’s claimed you as his own. Now, Paul has stated your miserable condition before conversion as a sinner, verse 3. He’s explained how the grace of God has saved you as one who has come to faith in Christ, verses 4 to 6. And at this point, the Apostle speaks to the fact that you have a new life. as a Christian and how that is possible. Now let me begin by saying this. You, if you’re a Christian, enjoy right standing with God. You are according to this passage, justified by His grace. Let’s talk about the fact that you’re justified. Because justification is justified by His grace. such an essential aspect of salvation. It’s very important that we have a proper understanding of this biblical term, that there be no confusion with regard to it. Justification is a legal term, which was used in Roman courts, meaning to declare not guilty or declare a person innocent of all charges. It’s the opposite of the opposite of the of what we would call a verdict or of condemnation of someone. Guilty is charged. Now, the Bible uses this term in a sense as God being the judge would declare you righteous in his sight. In justification, an individual is reckoned to be free from all sin and the penalty. Because God can be free. considers you as righteous as if you never sent, as if you always obeyed the law. Look at me. He don’t you replace here, but look at Romans chapter 8, verses 33 and 34. We read these words here. Paul puts it this way. Romans 8, 33, and 34. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifyeth. Who is He that condemneth? It is Christ. that died, yea rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makeeth intercession for us. No, you’ll notice here, no charges can be brought to bear against God’s people. Why? Because God has declared them righteous. He has justified them. Verse 33. No one can condemn you, can condemn you as a justified sinner of any transgression. Why? As he says in verse 34, Christ has died in the place of his elect sinner. He is like people. Bearing the punishment due under their sins. And the perfect righteousness of Christ has been given to the sinner. So who can condemn you of transgressing the law of God? There’s an old term that is used to describe the work of Christ. It’s the term satisfaction. It’s taken from the book of Isaiah, chapter 53. We will read, he shall see the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Now Christ here, is God’s righteous servant. He completely obeyed the law of God down to every jot and tittle for his people. And we read here in this passage, he shall bear their iniquities. He took upon himself, their sins, and died in their place in order to justify them. He shall justify many. So God is satisfied. His holiness and his righteousness is satisfied by the work of Christ. So this is a legal declaration that will stand up at the final judgment. When we all stand before God and we have to give an account the divine judges evaluating us, the most important thing is that you are declared righteous in the eyes of God. And to be declared righteous, one must have Christ. That. That’s That is the clear, I think, teaching here of Scripture. Merlin Crothers had first-hand experience what it means to be declared righteous. During World War II, he had joined the army. Anxious to get into action, we find that Crothers went AWOL but was caught and he was sentenced to five years in prison. However, the judge made a stipulation. If he stayed in the army, he could serve out his term in the army, and then he wouldn’t have to go to prison. But he said, if you leave the army before the five years is up, then you’re going to have to finish off your sentence in jail. Well, Crothers was released from the army before the five-year term had passed because the war ended, and he return to the prosecutor’s office to find out where he would be spending the remainder of his sentence. Well, to his surprise and delight, Crothers was told they had a full pardoned that President Truman had given him a complete pardon. The prosecutor said this. That means your record is completely clear, just as if you had never gotten into trouble with the law. My friends, that’s the way it is with the justification in God’s sight by Christ. So you are justifying. Now the important thing here, as we look at the word justification, is what follows it. You’re justified by his grace. That’s essential. That that that is held. The Roman Catholic view of justification is completely different. According to the Roman Catholic view of justification, justification is a process. whereby one is made righteous in the eyes of God, not declared righteous in the eyes of God. They adhere to the faulty notion that Jesus Christ came and he established an elaborate ritual or system of rituals whereby one can be made righteous. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that this is a long process with God’s bestowal first of grace upon the individual, and then the person gets started on the way to justification. Now, you’re required to perform various good works to make yourself beautiful and holy in the eyes of God and eventually earn justification. Justification is furthered by participating, and of course, in all the Holy Sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church. Initial justification, we’re told, begins with baptism. During this transformation period, you can lose your justification status if you commit what they call a mortal sin. Then through the sacrament of penance, you can regain your status and start all over again. You know, when I was a child, we had to learn how to ride bicycles. I don’t, for some reason, we never had training wheels. They didn’t have those training wheels. you put on each side so it doesn’t tip over. All I remember is, you know, dad would hold the bike and we’d get on it, and then he’d give us a little push to get it started, and you have to start pedaling, and, you know, you crash a couple times, and eventually you get it. Well, the Roman Catholic Church teaches justification like that. God gets you started, you know, you get you on the bicycle and gives you a little push. That’s up to you. What are you going to do with it? And hopefully you can get to your destination. That’s the way it is, but most people crash. Salvation from the eternal consequences of sin, according to the Roman Catholics, is a lifelong process. You may never know whether you’re justified or not in this life. Hopefully, in the end, you’ll think I’ll be acceptable to God, but do you know? How can you know? So when the Roman Catholic Church speaks of justification, the difficulty is that they’re not using the same meaning, the biblical meaning, that you find Paul teaching here in scripture. You have to always keep that in mind. There’s an elaborate system whereby you earn justification before God. Ultimately, it comes down to salvation by human works, even though it starts out with grace, it ends up with works. So either you have Christ’s achievements alone. That’s the biblical view. versus Christ’s achievements plus your own personal works. That’s the Catholic view. So this view, of course, is completely contrary to what Paul has just stated in Titus 3-5. It’s not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us. Now, modern evangelical view of justification, I’m afraid, has slipped toward the Roman Catholic view, if it has not embraced it altogether. Repeatedly in evangelical circles, you hear teaching on justification such as, we are not only declared righteous, we are made righteous. We have been declared to be just because of our faith, and they talk about man’s contribution, being faith. The word justification also embraces a radical and real transformation. That’s what some people say. The Reformation debate centered on whether justification was a legal act or a moral act. In other words, is justification objective or is it subjective? Is it outside the believer where there is an act of God that declares you righteous? Or is it within the side the believer where there’s perfection, of holiness and morality so that you are actually made holy, a moral act. Well, some modern evangelicals have combined the two views, and they end up unwittingly or unwittingly with a Roman Catholic view of justification. And this is why you find so many. You wonder, how can these Protestants all sign these declarations with Protestants and Catholics together? How does that happen? It’s because they’re confused about the doctrine of justification. Why are those who were once Protestants sometimes becoming Roman Catholics? Scott Hahn, and from our area is one of the people that I could mention. Because many people are teaching faith plus works equals justification. The new perspective on Paul that is devastating a lot of reformed church. churches. You have to realize that this is the same thing. This is where it’s a Roman Catholic view of justification, a confusion of justification and sanctification. John Robbins said this once. Not only is there no real difference between the neo-Orthodox and the Romanist position on justification, there is no essential difference between the Lutheran, liberal, Wesleyan, Armenian, holiness, charismatic, and Pentecostal positions on justification. All the modern religionists agree against the reformers in the Bible that justification is a making righteous, a subjective moral change in the believer. To what you have is a total confusion today. Here is a fundamental teaching that we should not, this should be the last, thing we get confused about. If you know anything, you ought to know this, how you’re justified in the eyes of God. None of our works are meritorious. My friends, I read in scripture that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags in God’s sight. Why would you want anything be clothed with anything that you’ve done? It’s all tainted. Your best efforts to please God are tainted by sin. Look at Paul. He says, here, I find that a law that when I would do good, evil was present with me. When I’m trying to do good, I find myself at times doing the wrong thing. If you have done anything that is part of your justification, you’re doomed to hell, because there’s not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sineth not. If that’s any of your works end up being connected with your justification, I’m afraid you’re doomed. The gavel’s going to come down on the judgment day, and God’s going to say, I never knew you. I remind you in Matthew, chapter 7, when that Pat, when Jesus talks about the last day and the judgment, what were all those people talking about? Their works. Have we not done this? Have we not done this? That, well, the one thing you should have done is you should have believed on Christ. You didn’t talk about that. I opened the book of Revelation. what are they talking about? The one that loved us and washed us from our sins and his own blood, made us kings and priests under the Lord and so forth. That’s what the, that’s what the believer is focused on. He’s not going to stand before God and say, hey, look at all I did. You’re going to stand before God and say, Christ is my Savior. He’s the one that’s done it all for me. So the biblical view of justification is very simple. being justified by his grace. You’ll notice that Paul doesn’t say being justified by his grace and the works of righteousness which God has enabled you to do. That’s not what he says. Grace is the unmerited favor of God. He has previously described this grace as the kindness and love of God and the mercy of God in this chapter, verses 4 and 5. grace precludes any good works previously mentioned in verses 1 and 2. Scripture always contrasts grace and works. if it’s of grace, then it can’t be of works. Paul writes in the book of Romans. He does it right here. Verse 5A and verse 7A, he contrasts the 2. So God declares us as believers, righteous, on the basis of what our Savior, verse 6, alone has done. Justification is by grace alone. Now, look with me at the book of Luke chapter 18. Here’s a good, vivid illustration of this. The parable here of the Pharisee and the public, verses 9 to 14. By the way, just substitute for the word, Pharisee, Roman Catholic, okay? And it’ll work out just a second. It’ll work out perfectly for you. Just to update things for you. Keep it in the right perspective. And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. Two men went up into the temple to pray. The one of Pharisee, the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week. I give ties of all that I possess. In the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone that exalted himself shall be abased, and he that humbleeth himself shall be exalted. Now I want you to notice that if you look at this passage of Scripture, that he is talking about justification. You’ll notice verse 9 tells us that the, he’s speaking about those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous. The Pharisee was a very religious, person. He considered himself a righteous person before God. He was highly respected in the Jewish community, the society. He was a person who strictly kept the law of God. The public in here was a Jewish tax collector for the Roman government. Very despised in Jewish society. He was viewed as a very ungodly person, the worst of setters. I remind you that when Jesus talks in Matthew 18 about excommunication from the church, when a person is excommunicated from the church, you’re to treat that person as a heathen man and a publican. That puts it on a level as bad as you can get. Whatever notions this Pharisee had of God’s grace, it’s clear that when he was thinking about justification before God, it was on the basis of him being a righteous person. Wasn’t it? Unless you find in his prayer here, which really isn’t a prayer, it’s a reciting of his good works before God, a reference to the fact that he didn’t commit the horrible sins of others. I am not as other men are. Verse 11. Hey, I’m not like these sinful people out there. I strictly keep your law. And you find him pointing all the good works he’s done. Look at his fasting. Look at his tithing. Look at his righteous living. And so forth. Look what I’ve done. He gives his laundry list. The Pharisee, however, was not declared justified before God. Because he was trusting in his unrighteousness. In order to gain acceptance before God. Isn’t that what the text tells us. He wasn’t relying on God’s mercy and grace. If he was, he would have come humbly. He didn’t come humbly. He comes, you know, proudly, exalting himself, as Jesus says. I’m a very good person. You have to accept me. Jesus taught clearly, though, in the Sermon of the Mount, except your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. You show in no wise, enter into the kingdom of heaven. It’s not good enough, is it? You take the strictest keepers of the law in Jesus Day and he said, that’s not good enough. You need something more than that. The public in here did not have any good works to pray before God. He doesn’t give us a laundry list. Indeed, he has to stand apart from all those around him because he’s viewed as an ungodly sinner. They don’t want them in their company. the publican acknowledges he is a vile, wicked person in the eyes of God who needs God’s mercy. He doesn’t base his acceptance with God on what he’s done as far as his efforts and deeds. That would be a hopeless case. No, he cries out in his prayer, God be merciful to me a sinner, a lawbreaker. And he appeals to God’s grace alone. And what does the Bible say? He goes down to his house justified, whereas the Pharisee does not. There it is for you. Straight forward teaching on the subject by Jesus himself in this parable. If you think like the Pharisee, you’re going to perish in your sins. For your own righteousness is never acceptable in the sight of God. If you desire just to be justified, you have to come as the public and does. and throw yourself on the mercy of God. The scripture says here, the wonderful thing about God’s salvation is that God justifies the ungodly Romans 4-5. And here’s an ungodly man. I’m a sinner. And yet he’s justified. Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus or in Christ Jesus, Romans 320. If you have anything to do with your justification, it’s not free. You had to do something to participate, to earn something for your justification. And then it can’t be of grace, if it’s of works. It’s by faith, which is God’s gift, in the redemption of Jesus Christ, that you find a perfect righteousness and complete forgiveness of sins. So that God is the justifier of Him which believeth in Jesus, scripture says, therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Romans 3, 26, and 28. So you as a Christian enjoy right standing with God. You’re justified and you’re justified by grace alone. Now, secondly, didn’t I? And briefly here, you as a Christian enjoy the privilege of being a child of God. The second part of our text here in the book of Titus is this. We should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. You are an heir of God. The word air implies being a child of God. An inheritor of the riches of God. And if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ, Paul says, Romans chapter 8, verse 17. Now children are either natural or they are adopted children into the family. The only begotten son of God is Jesus Christ. The other sons of God are adopted into the family. As Ephesians 1 indicates to us, having predestinated us under the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself. So it’s by Christ that you were adopted into God’s family. For unless you are justified by the redemption of the Savior, you can’t be classified as a son of God. When Israel was in bondage in Egypt, you recall that Pharaoh made a decree that every male Israelite that was born, was to be put to death, drowned in the river. You recall that Moses was born at this time and his mother concealed him, putting him in this little ark made of bullrushes and hiding him among the flags evidently at the river’s edge. When the daughter of Pharaoh comes down to bathe she finds the infant, Moses. And what does she do? she has pity on him and she adopts him into the family. Now Moses is the son of Pharaoh by adoption. And he’s an heir of all the treasures of Egypt, as the writer of Hebrews tells us. This is a picture of which we should see that Paul could convey to you as a believer that once you were a mere slave of Satan, once you were under the sentence of death, now you are made a son of God. You are adopted, taken from a precarious situation, and adopted, and now you have the eternal riches of the Lord provided for you. All this has taken place for Christ’s sake. So are you an heir of God, and you have the hope, he says, of eternal life. If you’re an heir, you have to have an inheritance. What is that inheritance? Well, the main blessing he focuses on here is having eternal life. Hope is that certain, joyful expectation of future good. For your inheritance is not visible at this time to the naked eye, but it is visible to the eye of faith. Eternal life is not just endless living, because people that are in hell have endless living, so to speak. They live on and on and on and on in the eternal flames. But that’s not how the scripture uses the term eternal life. It speaks of the wonders of heaven. It speaks of the joys of being with Christ, of fellowshiping with God throughout all eternity. As a son of God, your inheritance is secure so that you may claim that you have eternal life even now while you walk on this earth. You wait for the day when this corruption puts on incorruption. You wait for the day when this mortal puts on immortality. When this death that we have, the body of death we have is swallowed up in victory. Now certainly because eternal life rests with God, it doesn’t depend on any good works that we do or on any prodigal waywardness that we might have. if you’re a son of God by a gracious divine adoption then you have an air of eternal life. The question you need to ask yourself is am I a child of God? Have I come to faith in Christ? Here’s what Scripture says. John 113. But as many has received him, meaning Jesus Christ, by faith, to them gave he the power, the right, the authority to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. If you’ve been made an air of God, you are assured of your heavenly father is going to take care of you, he’s going to provide your eternal inheritance for you. It is, as Peter says, reserved in heaven for you. When you suffer losses in this life, whatever you go through in this life, you have to look beyond that and say, I have an eternal inheritance. I remind you of Moses. There was a point where Moses had to make a choice. Being the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, he could have the riches of Egypt. Or he could choose the riches of Christ. He chose the riches of Christ, above the riches or the treasures of Egypt. Because what God has to offer us is much more valuable than anything in this life. Though if a dirty beggar child in Mexico comes up behind you and calls you father or mother, you may resent that because you have no relationship to that person. Spiritually, God has granted you the right to be called a child of God and therefore you are an heir of everything. He declares you righteous based on Christ’s perfect righteousness and substitutionary death on the cross. It’s all by grace. That is the message of the gospel of Christ that we must properly understand and adhere to at all cost in this day of apostasy. Let us close to the way of prayer.