The Glorious Appearing

Titus 2:13

In Paul’s little letter to Titus, he explains to him that it is the grace of God which teaches the believer how to live (Titus 2:11, 12). Verse 13 further explains that this grace will also cause us to look for the “blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

Some people make the end time events sound horrific, leading Christians to constantly focus on the events in the Middle East and always speak of the wickedness of the world. We should remember that Paul never focused the early church on the political signs of the times, choosing rather to expose the loveliness of Jesus to his people.

Grace is not a doctrine; it is a person and His name is Jesus. John told us that the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (John 1:17). Paul’s instruction to Titus concerning how grace will teach us to live, also shows us that the grace of God, “hath appeared to all men” (Titus 2:11). Notice that grace has already appeared, and this would be in the form of Jesus. He now turns the believer to a separate appearance in verse 13, “the glorious appearance”.

Both “appearances” involve the same person: Jesus Christ. The first appearance is categorized as the appearance of grace, for Jesus embodies God’s grace and goodness. The second appearance is deemed “glorious”, as this is the return of Jesus to take away His bride, the church. Paul leaves no cause for fear or concern regarding this appearance, which is why he calls it a blessed hope and “glorious appearing”.

Believers should remember that anything that takes their focus off of Jesus and His loveliness is a distraction against the grace of God, and will ultimately lead to misery. To focus our end-time teaching on the appearance of an anti-Christ is to take our blessed hope off of the appearance of our Savior. Never look for an anti-Christ when you can look for the Christ!

Consequently, when Paul gave these instructions to Titus, he knew that they would make Titus a popular preacher with the sinners, but very unpopular among the religious crowd. He tells him, “These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.” (Titus 2:15) Saying what is right is not always easy, for many will never accept that grace is the answer for how to live. The exhortation of the hearer is essential if grace is to do its work. The believer must hear the grace of God and have it build their soul. If condemnation and guilt is preached at them, this must be rebuked “with all authority”.

Do not hear the voice of condemnation in your life today. Focus on Jesus and His loveliness, not the problems of the world around you. Minister grace to all of those who will listen and rebuke the enemy when he ministers death and condemnation. Not all will accept it from you, but many will look to Jesus with you, glad for that “blessed hope”.

Grace Teaches Us How to Live

Titus 2:11, 12

The most common argument that comes against those of us who teach the gospel of grace is that if we continue to preach and teach God’s grace without “balancing” it with the teaching of God’s law, then no one in the church will know how to live and people will begin to “sin like crazy”. This argument mixes the covenants. It places new wine (New Covenant) into old wineskins (Old Covenant) which never balances out either message, it simply ruins them both (Luke 5:36-39).

Because of Adam’s sin in eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, man trusts his own ability to do what is right and shun what is wrong. He thinks that the way to do well is to be aware of the evil and then to run hard and fast the other way. This thinking has made its way into the pulpit, with preachers constantly pointing out all of the evils of the world and warning saints away from them. That message puts all of the responsibility onto the believer to change themselves. This causes them to do penance when they fail and to place themselves under stricter discipline to keep from doing it again. This is the “spirit of bondage again to fear” (Romans 8:15).

Paul stated that the grace of God brings salvation, and no one who preaches Jesus, either by law or by grace would deny that (Titus 2:11). He further states that this grace “hath appeared to all men”. The “appearance” of grace is in the man Jesus Christ. John tells us that the law was given by Moses but that grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (John 1:17). Notice that when grace appears it has a job to do, “Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world” (Titus 2:12). What is it that does the teaching? It is the grace of God, through the personage of Jesus. The more sin is revealed to the believer, the more that they try to pay the price to get rid of that sin. The more that Jesus is revealed to the believer, the more that He teaches them how to live. In essence, the more they see Jesus, the more Jesus lives through them.

No one who preaches the gospel of grace wants to see Christians living in sin. Paul defended his message on more than one occasion, feeling the need to do so because he was being misrepresented. “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” he asks. “God forbid,” he answers (Romans 6:1, 2). Then, he doesn’t say that we shouldn’t sin because it will send us to hell, but rather he asks how we can continue to do those evil things seeing that our old man is dead and Christ is alive in us (Romans 6:2-7). Paul is showing how to live by reinforcing the believers position in Christ, allowing grace go to work in each person’s heart.

The grace of God that saved you is also the grace that will keep you. Every believer has the voice of the Spirit in them showing them the way to live. When we fail, the Spirit doesn’t punch us in the spiritual face and force us to make up for it, condemning our every thought and deed, but instead, the Holy Spirit reinforces who we are in Christ, causing us to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called” (Ephesians 4:1).

Listen to the voice of grace in your heart today. He will lead you as to how to live and how to let Jesus live through you. Be blessed!

Circumcision of the Heart

Deuteronomy 30:6

The sign of circumcision which God demanded of the Jews was a physical sign of a spiritual promise. Paul explained it as, “A seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also” (Romans 4:11). Abraham accepted circumcision as a sign that he was declared to be righteous upon his faith, and that this righteousness would be passed onto his children through circumcision.

Circumcision was the physical sign of the Covenant of God with Abraham. When man procreated, the seed had to pass through the sign of the Covenant, thus passing that Covenant on to the next generation. Paul stated that the New Covenant had no need of this act, for Abraham was actually declared to be righteous while he was still in uncircumcision (Romans 4:9), and that “them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised”, would have righteousness imputed to them as well (Romans 4:12).

God had a higher plan for mankind than physical circumcision. He introduces the concept of the New Covenant plan of heart change through Moses’ farewell speech to Israel in Deuteronomy 30:6 when he says that He will “circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live”. This was a new concept to Israel, that God could change their heart, independent of their ability to do the good or shun the evil. The usage of “circumcision” made it clear to them that God intended to do a sort of spiritual surgery on their heart, changing them from the inside out.

How spectacular this must have sounded to a law-abiding Jew! The law requires a man to change from the outside in. It is a show of will-power and determination, which is visible to everyone. If you are keeping the law, it is seen by all and if you are breaking it, that is known as well. Attention is always being drawn to your works or the lack thereof, even in the ceremony of the sacrifice. If men saw you coming to the tabernacle carrying a lamb, they knew that you had done something wrong. The law was holy and good, but it constantly exposed how unholy and bad that men were.

Grace, however, changes a man from the inside out. It must, for God promised the cutting of the heart instead of the cutting of the body. One of the promises that God speaks through the prophet Ezekiel, regarding the New Covenant and the work of grace was “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you…And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them” (Ezekiel 36:26, 27). God saw the necessity of putting a “new heart” within man, and His very own Holy Spirit as well, so that man would live righteous without their own efforts being involved.

Does law teach us how to live right? No! Only God’s grace can do that, for Paul said, “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” (Titus 2:11, 12). Grace does the teaching in us, for He is living there. Hallelujah!

Condemnation Leads to More Sin

Titus 3:10, 11

If someone is in a “Catch 22” then they can’t get ahead no matter how hard they try. Every action will only worsen the problem, while inaction is often not an option. This principle applies in life as well as in the spirit realm, where believers want to be victorious but do not always know how to bring it about.

Most people in the church would tell you that to avoid living in sin you should memorize God’s laws and principles. The common knowledge is that if God’s law is right and you are wrong, then you should get to know what is right so that you will not be wrong, but that assumes that knowledge of the law leads to righteousness. Paul said the opposite: “…for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20).

What you dwell on eventually determines who you are. If you concentrate on one thing day and night, aiming all of your efforts at that, it begins to shape your lifestyle and the decisions that you make. When you dwell on the law and how to keep it, you become more and more knowledgeable about sin, while learning nothing about how to avoid it.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is to blame for this phenomenon. We know what is right and wrong but that tree provided us with no ability to stop the bad and start the good. The tree that we need was standing nearby; the Tree of Life. Fortunately for us, Jesus died on a tree and became our perpetual Life, so that we do not live by our knowledge of good and evil, but by His finished work.

Paul told Titus that if someone is given an admonition about what the effects of their lifestyle will be, and they still continue to live therein, warn them again and then part ways with them. This is not a condemnation of their soul but of their lifestyle, noting that it will bring ill-repute to the church and to the brethren while causing heartache for the man himself. After teaching us how to deal with the man, Paul gets to the root of the problem, explaining to us what is wrong with the man.

“Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself” (Titus 3:11).

“Subverted” is another word for “perverted” or “to change for the worse”. Notice what causes the man to live in this perversion and sin; “being condemned of himself”. The text does not say that God condemns him, for Romans 8:1 tells us that this is not possible for those who are in Christ Jesus. We can’t say for sure that the man in Titus is a brother, for Paul does not specify, but it is natural to assume as much since he has been talking about things that “are good and profitable unto men” (Titus 3:8).

When you condemn yourself, the natural course of events becomes sin then perversion. Your condemnation of yourself causes you to lose hope and dwell under a weight of guilt. Sin is soon to follow as you have opened the door for the enemy to attack you, having removed the finished work of Jesus Christ. Repeated sin leads to perversion, where eventually, even the most educated Christian begins to grow hard against the gentle voice of the Savior, turning wholly to a sinful lifestyle.

If condemnation leads you to sin then the lack of condemnation will lead you to righteousness. See yourself as forgiven and never condemned and you will see the weights and the sins fall off in Jesus’ mighty name!

New DNA

Titus 3:5
What separates us from the other religions of the world is the spiritual re-birth of those who are born again. Some try to split Christianity into two camps: the Christian and the Born-Again. They theorize that the Christian believes in treating others well and being a good citizen, tolerant and wholesome, while the Born-Agains are fanatics who evangelize others and take hard-line stances. In truth, they are not mutually exclusive. Jesus said that we cannot see the kingdom of God, “Except a man be born again” (John 3:3). Any separation of the two is a result of man influencing true Christianity with his own devices.

Paul said that we are saved according to the mercy of God, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done” (Titus 3:5). This excludes the idea that true Christianity is found in doing your best or in being your best. He also mentions the “washing of regeneration”, introducing us to a concept that is crucial to the understanding of the transformative powers of faith in Christ.

The Greek word for ‘regeneration’ is “paliggenesia”, meaning, “spiritual rebirth, renovation”. It is the New Covenant version of Jesus’ statement to Nicodemus, “you must be born again”. Nicodemus found the idea impossible, as no one could re-enter their mother’s womb and start over again, but of course Jesus was referring to a spiritual rebirth.

Even the world warms up to the idea of someone being “reborn”. An actor can fall out of Hollywood’s favor, drop to rock bottom, reform and make a comeback picture and the tabloids will say that they have been “reborn”. People love these kinds of stories and they are quite common. While the world has their own version of “born again”, for the believer it excludes trips to rehab, Botox and plastic surgery. For the saint it is being born again “of spirit” (John 3:6).

Paul’s use of “regeneration” speaks of us becoming a completely new person, “by the renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Titus 3:5). The Holy Spirit in us turns us into someone completely different. It could be said that when you are born again, the Holy Spirit gives you a new DNA sequence, one in which you have the desires of your new Father instead of your old.

I am not insinuating that we have an actual new set of DNA when we are saved, but I do believe that all of the old passions and desires that were passed onto us from our earthly families are no longer relevant whenever the regeneration of the Holy Ghost takes place in our life. If your earthly father had a drinking problem, then it is stands to reason that you have a propensity to want to drink and to be dominated by drinking. However, your heavenly Father has no such problem, and He has transformed you and “re-gened” you into the image of His Son. We can no longer blame our heritage for our problems, for we have a spiritual heritage that stretches all the way to Calvary.

If you are not walking in the fullness of your new spiritual identity, then it is because you are not fully awake as to who you really are in Christ. You are a new creation in Christ Jesus, so walk whole and free!

The Glorious Appearing

Titus 2:13

In Paul’s little letter to Titus, he explains to him that it is the grace of God which teaches the believer how to live (Titus 2:11, 12). Verse 13 further explains that this grace will also cause us to look for the “blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

Some people make the end time events sound horrific, leading Christians to constantly focus on the events in the Middle East and always speak of the wickedness of the world. We should remember that Paul never focused the early church on the political signs of the times, choosing rather to expose the loveliness of Jesus to his people.

Grace is not a doctrine; it is a person and His name is Jesus. John told us that the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (John 1:17). Paul’s instruction to Titus concerning how grace will teach us to live, also shows us that the grace of God, “hath appeared to all men” (Titus 2:11). Notice that grace has already appeared, and this would be in the form of Jesus. He now turns the believer to a separate appearance in verse 13, “the glorious appearance”.

Both “appearances” involve the same person: Jesus Christ. The first appearance is categorized as the appearance of grace, for Jesus embodies God’s grace and goodness. The second appearance is deemed “glorious”, as this is the return of Jesus to take away His bride, the church. Paul leaves no cause for fear or concern regarding this appearance, which is why he calls it a blessed hope and “glorious appearing”.

Believers should remember that anything that takes their focus off of Jesus and His loveliness is a distraction against the grace of God, and will ultimately lead to misery. To focus our end-time teaching on the appearance of an anti-Christ is to take our blessed hope off of the appearance of our Savior. Never look for an anti-Christ when you can look for the Christ!

Consequently, when Paul gave these instructions to Titus, he knew that they would make Titus a popular preacher with the sinners, but very unpopular among the religious crowd. He tells him, “These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.” (Titus 2:15) Saying what is right is not always easy, for many will never accept that grace is the answer for how to live. The exhortation of the hearer is essential if grace is to do its work. The believer must hear the grace of God and have it build their soul. If condemnation and guilt is preached at them, this must be rebuked “with all authority”.

Do not hear the voice of condemnation in your life today. Focus on Jesus and His loveliness, not the problems of the world around you. Minister grace to all of those who will listen and rebuke the enemy when he ministers death and condemnation. Not all will accept it from you, but many will look to Jesus with you, glad for that “blessed hope”.

Grace Teaches Us How to Live

Titus 2:11, 12

The most common argument that comes against those of us who teach the gospel of grace is that if we continue to preach and teach God’s grace without “balancing” it with the teaching of God’s law, then no one in the church will know how to live and people will begin to “sin like crazy”. This argument mixes the covenants. It places new wine (New Covenant) into old wineskins (Old Covenant) which never balances out either message, it simply ruins them both (Luke 5:36-39).

Because of Adam’s sin in eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, man trusts his own ability to do what is right and shun what is wrong. He thinks that the way to do well is to be aware of the evil and then to run hard and fast the other way. This thinking has made its way into the pulpit, with preachers constantly pointing out all of the evils of the world and warning saints away from them. That message puts all of the responsibility onto the believer to change themselves. This causes them to do penance when they fail and to place themselves under stricter discipline to keep from doing it again. This is the “spirit of bondage again to fear” (Romans 8:15).

Paul stated that the grace of God brings salvation, and no one who preaches Jesus, either by law or by grace would deny that (Titus 2:11). He further states that this grace “hath appeared to all men”. The “appearance” of grace is in the man Jesus Christ. John tells us that the law was given by Moses but that grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (John 1:17). Notice that when grace appears it has a job to do, “Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world” (Titus 2:12). What is it that does the teaching? It is the grace of God, through the personage of Jesus. The more sin is revealed to the believer, the more that they try to pay the price to get rid of that sin. The more that Jesus is revealed to the believer, the more that He teaches them how to live. In essence, the more they see Jesus, the more Jesus lives through them.

No one who preaches the gospel of grace wants to see Christians living in sin. Paul defended his message on more than one occasion, feeling the need to do so because he was being misrepresented. “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” he asks. “God forbid,” he answers (Romans 6:1, 2). Then, he doesn’t say that we shouldn’t sin because it will send us to hell, but rather he asks how we can continue to do those evil things seeing that our old man is dead and Christ is alive in us (Romans 6:2-7). Paul is showing how to live by reinforcing the believers position in Christ, allowing grace go to work in each person’s heart.

The grace of God that saved you is also the grace that will keep you. Every believer has the voice of the Spirit in them showing them the way to live. When we fail, the Spirit doesn’t punch us in the spiritual face and force us to make up for it, condemning our every thought and deed, but instead, the Holy Spirit reinforces who we are in Christ, causing us to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called” (Ephesians 4:1).

Listen to the voice of grace in your heart today. He will lead you as to how to live and how to let Jesus live through you. Be blessed!

Circumcision of the Heart

Deuteronomy 30:6

The sign of circumcision which God demanded of the Jews was a physical sign of a spiritual promise. Paul explained it as, “A seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also” (Romans 4:11). Abraham accepted circumcision as a sign that he was declared to be righteous upon his faith, and that this righteousness would be passed onto his children through circumcision.

Circumcision was the physical sign of the Covenant of God with Abraham. When man procreated, the seed had to pass through the sign of the Covenant, thus passing that Covenant on to the next generation. Paul stated that the New Covenant had no need of this act, for Abraham was actually declared to be righteous while he was still in uncircumcision (Romans 4:9), and that “them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised”, would have righteousness imputed to them as well (Romans 4:12).

God had a higher plan for mankind than physical circumcision. He introduces the concept of the New Covenant plan of heart change through Moses’ farewell speech to Israel in Deuteronomy 30:6 when he says that He will “circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live”. This was a new concept to Israel, that God could change their heart, independent of their ability to do the good or shun the evil. The usage of “circumcision” made it clear to them that God intended to do a sort of spiritual surgery on their heart, changing them from the inside out.

How spectacular this must have sounded to a law-abiding Jew! The law requires a man to change from the outside in. It is a show of will-power and determination, which is visible to everyone. If you are keeping the law, it is seen by all and if you are breaking it, that is known as well. Attention is always being drawn to your works or the lack thereof, even in the ceremony of the sacrifice. If men saw you coming to the tabernacle carrying a lamb, they knew that you had done something wrong. The law was holy and good, but it constantly exposed how unholy and bad that men were.

Grace, however, changes a man from the inside out. It must, for God promised the cutting of the heart instead of the cutting of the body. One of the promises that God speaks through the prophet Ezekiel, regarding the New Covenant and the work of grace was “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you…And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them” (Ezekiel 36:26, 27). God saw the necessity of putting a “new heart” within man, and His very own Holy Spirit as well, so that man would live righteous without their own efforts being involved.

Does law teach us how to live right? No! Only God’s grace can do that, for Paul said, “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” (Titus 2:11, 12). Grace does the teaching in us, for He is living there. Hallelujah!

Condemnation Leads to More Sin

Titus 3:10, 11

If someone is in a “Catch 22” then they can’t get ahead no matter how hard they try. Every action will only worsen the problem, while inaction is often not an option. This principle applies in life as well as in the spirit realm, where believers want to be victorious but do not always know how to bring it about.

Most people in the church would tell you that to avoid living in sin you should memorize God’s laws and principles. The common knowledge is that if God’s law is right and you are wrong, then you should get to know what is right so that you will not be wrong, but that assumes that knowledge of the law leads to righteousness. Paul said the opposite: “…for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20).

What you dwell on eventually determines who you are. If you concentrate on one thing day and night, aiming all of your efforts at that, it begins to shape your lifestyle and the decisions that you make. When you dwell on the law and how to keep it, you become more and more knowledgeable about sin, while learning nothing about how to avoid it.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is to blame for this phenomenon. We know what is right and wrong but that tree provided us with no ability to stop the bad and start the good. The tree that we need was standing nearby; the Tree of Life. Fortunately for us, Jesus died on a tree and became our perpetual Life, so that we do not live by our knowledge of good and evil, but by His finished work.

Paul told Titus that if someone is given an admonition about what the effects of their lifestyle will be, and they still continue to live therein, warn them again and then part ways with them. This is not a condemnation of their soul but of their lifestyle, noting that it will bring ill-repute to the church and to the brethren while causing heartache for the man himself. After teaching us how to deal with the man, Paul gets to the root of the problem, explaining to us what is wrong with the man.

“Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself” (Titus 3:11).

“Subverted” is another word for “perverted” or “to change for the worse”. Notice what causes the man to live in this perversion and sin; “being condemned of himself”. The text does not say that God condemns him, for Romans 8:1 tells us that this is not possible for those who are in Christ Jesus. We can’t say for sure that the man in Titus is a brother, for Paul does not specify, but it is natural to assume as much since he has been talking about things that “are good and profitable unto men” (Titus 3:8).

When you condemn yourself, the natural course of events becomes sin then perversion. Your condemnation of yourself causes you to lose hope and dwell under a weight of guilt. Sin is soon to follow as you have opened the door for the enemy to attack you, having removed the finished work of Jesus Christ. Repeated sin leads to perversion, where eventually, even the most educated Christian begins to grow hard against the gentle voice of the Savior, turning wholly to a sinful lifestyle.

If condemnation leads you to sin then the lack of condemnation will lead you to righteousness. See yourself as forgiven and never condemned and you will see the weights and the sins fall off in Jesus’ mighty name!

New DNA

Titus 3:5
What separates us from the other religions of the world is the spiritual re-birth of those who are born again. Some try to split Christianity into two camps: the Christian and the Born-Again. They theorize that the Christian believes in treating others well and being a good citizen, tolerant and wholesome, while the Born-Agains are fanatics who evangelize others and take hard-line stances. In truth, they are not mutually exclusive. Jesus said that we cannot see the kingdom of God, “Except a man be born again” (John 3:3). Any separation of the two is a result of man influencing true Christianity with his own devices.

Paul said that we are saved according to the mercy of God, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done” (Titus 3:5). This excludes the idea that true Christianity is found in doing your best or in being your best. He also mentions the “washing of regeneration”, introducing us to a concept that is crucial to the understanding of the transformative powers of faith in Christ.

The Greek word for ‘regeneration’ is “paliggenesia”, meaning, “spiritual rebirth, renovation”. It is the New Covenant version of Jesus’ statement to Nicodemus, “you must be born again”. Nicodemus found the idea impossible, as no one could re-enter their mother’s womb and start over again, but of course Jesus was referring to a spiritual rebirth.

Even the world warms up to the idea of someone being “reborn”. An actor can fall out of Hollywood’s favor, drop to rock bottom, reform and make a comeback picture and the tabloids will say that they have been “reborn”. People love these kinds of stories and they are quite common. While the world has their own version of “born again”, for the believer it excludes trips to rehab, Botox and plastic surgery. For the saint it is being born again “of spirit” (John 3:6).

Paul’s use of “regeneration” speaks of us becoming a completely new person, “by the renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Titus 3:5). The Holy Spirit in us turns us into someone completely different. It could be said that when you are born again, the Holy Spirit gives you a new DNA sequence, one in which you have the desires of your new Father instead of your old.

I am not insinuating that we have an actual new set of DNA when we are saved, but I do believe that all of the old passions and desires that were passed onto us from our earthly families are no longer relevant whenever the regeneration of the Holy Ghost takes place in our life. If your earthly father had a drinking problem, then it is stands to reason that you have a propensity to want to drink and to be dominated by drinking. However, your heavenly Father has no such problem, and He has transformed you and “re-gened” you into the image of His Son. We can no longer blame our heritage for our problems, for we have a spiritual heritage that stretches all the way to Calvary.

If you are not walking in the fullness of your new spiritual identity, then it is because you are not fully awake as to who you really are in Christ. You are a new creation in Christ Jesus, so walk whole and free!

The Glorious Appearing

Titus 2:13

In Paul’s little letter to Titus, he explains to him that it is the grace of God which teaches the believer how to live (Titus 2:11, 12). Verse 13 further explains that this grace will also cause us to look for the “blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

Some people make the end time events sound horrific, leading Christians to constantly focus on the events in the Middle East and always speak of the wickedness of the world. We should remember that Paul never focused the early church on the political signs of the times, choosing rather to expose the loveliness of Jesus to his people.

Grace is not a doctrine; it is a person and His name is Jesus. John told us that the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (John 1:17). Paul’s instruction to Titus concerning how grace will teach us to live, also shows us that the grace of God, “hath appeared to all men” (Titus 2:11). Notice that grace has already appeared, and this would be in the form of Jesus. He now turns the believer to a separate appearance in verse 13, “the glorious appearance”.

Both “appearances” involve the same person: Jesus Christ. The first appearance is categorized as the appearance of grace, for Jesus embodies God’s grace and goodness. The second appearance is deemed “glorious”, as this is the return of Jesus to take away His bride, the church. Paul leaves no cause for fear or concern regarding this appearance, which is why he calls it a blessed hope and “glorious appearing”.

Believers should remember that anything that takes their focus off of Jesus and His loveliness is a distraction against the grace of God, and will ultimately lead to misery. To focus our end-time teaching on the appearance of an anti-Christ is to take our blessed hope off of the appearance of our Savior. Never look for an anti-Christ when you can look for the Christ!

Consequently, when Paul gave these instructions to Titus, he knew that they would make Titus a popular preacher with the sinners, but very unpopular among the religious crowd. He tells him, “These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.” (Titus 2:15) Saying what is right is not always easy, for many will never accept that grace is the answer for how to live. The exhortation of the hearer is essential if grace is to do its work. The believer must hear the grace of God and have it build their soul. If condemnation and guilt is preached at them, this must be rebuked “with all authority”.

Do not hear the voice of condemnation in your life today. Focus on Jesus and His loveliness, not the problems of the world around you. Minister grace to all of those who will listen and rebuke the enemy when he ministers death and condemnation. Not all will accept it from you, but many will look to Jesus with you, glad for that “blessed hope”.