Book of Titus - Ch. 3, vv. 5-7

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Pastor Ben Mitchell

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If you all want to turn to Titus chapter 3, just a quick review while you turn there.
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We finished up verse 5 last week and I'm going to read a few verses here together just to set the context once more as we move into verses 6 and 7 today.
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But right after Paul begins the chapter with talking about our obedience in a very specific area, that being to the principalities and powers, the rulers and authorities, the civil magistrates, our obedience to them, being ready for every good work in that context, and then telling us to not be brawlers, not to be speaking evil or slanderously about anybody, but rather showing gentleness and meekness to all men, he then goes into this wonderfully and doctrinally rich argument to back up why he's saying what he's saying.
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So we'll start in verse 3 and just read down a little bit. For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.
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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 and renewing of the
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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.
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So last week we've been going pretty much literally verse by verse through this section for a few weeks now, one verse at a time, excuse me one second, next couple of weeks.
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We've been going one verse a week basically for the last few Sundays here.
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And last week we spent all of our time in verse 5, which of course is extremely significant. And again, this is review once more, but we see this phrase, the washing of regeneration.
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And it quite literally means new birth or recreation. The Greek term for regeneration here means new birth, recreation, regeneration.
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And it comes from a couple of words, it's a compound word, pollen, which just means renewal and Genesis, which is where we get our word
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Genesis from, which means origin or birth. And so we see this phrase, the washing of regeneration.
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And we talked about the fact that this is the only time in the whole New Testament where the word regeneration is used in the context of salvation.
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But we talk about the doctrine of regeneration all the time. We in fact, we put a lot of emphasis on it as we should, it is literally the new birth that takes place when a person calls upon the name of the
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Lord. Of course, we believe that regeneration is actually what makes calling upon his name possible in the first place.
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It is what births our faith in Christ as well and all of these things. So this word only appears once in this context, and yet the doctrine is all over the place.
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And we talked about this at length last week. We see it in John 3 when Jesus is talking with Nicodemus about needing to be born again.
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The apostle Peter rehashes that idea in 1 Peter, the reality that we need to be born again.
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We see it in Galatians 2 as Paul was letting us know that Christ lives in us.
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And in James, we learn that Christ brought us forth or birthed us. In 1
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John, we see a number of proofs of how to know whether or not you are born of God.
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So we see that same terminology there. And then we went all the way to the Old Testament. We looked at Ezekiel chapter 36 where it talks about Ezekiel's prophesying of the new covenant where the stony heart of man is replaced with a heart of flesh, one that is actually capable of seeking
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God, desiring God, wanting to be obedient to his law, to his word, and all of these things.
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And we see all of this in the Old Testament. And of course, we see it in a number of places as well,
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Ezekiel 36 being only one of them. And so we looked at all of that last week, and that was really interesting stuff.
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We talked about the fact that washing literally means to be bathed or immersed in this thing of regeneration.
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We looked at a parallel passage in Ephesians 5 .26 that talks about the washing of water by the word.
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And so we see that Paul, who wrote both of these epistles, makes this connection himself where you have the
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Spirit's action in the life of the believer in conjunction with the word, which is where the gospel is manifested in words.
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And so you have Scripture, the Spirit working together to bring about this washing and things of that sort.
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And then we ended by looking at some interesting commentary on those passages from John Calvin and John Gill. And so we'll just pick it up right where we left off last week.
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A couple of more thoughts as it pertains to verse 5, and then we'll move on. Like I mentioned a second ago, the word regeneration itself literally means new birth, recreation.
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Now our salvation, when we think about salvation, and I've talked about this before,
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I've alluded to it many times in this study, we've talked about it in detail at other times, but salvation is a multifaceted thing.
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It's really hard to try to pin it down into one particular thing. And usually when we talk about salvation more broadly, or when we use terms like we got saved or I got saved, maybe on this day and things like that, we are, whether consciously or subconsciously, referring to justification.
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What the Apostle Paul teaches as justification, that forensic reality that God the
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Father can look at as if we had never sinned, and rather he sees righteousness in its stead.
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So that happens in a moment in time, and temporally it happens at the moment we call upon the name of the
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Lord. We are justified in his sight, and of course that's really a peak aspect of salvation, no doubt, but it's not the only thing.
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We have multiple aspects to it. We're actually, Paul's about to mention justification in verse 7.
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He's talking about regeneration in verse 5, so we can already see there are multiple aspects to it.
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We see two of them in this one verse alone, talking specifically about verse 5.
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Once again, if y 'all are still looking at that with me, we see the first aspect discussed being kind of this foundational restoration of man himself, from death to life.
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That's regeneration. Adam was created with the breath of life, the breath of life directly from God.
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He was created in a perfect state, sinless, prepared to essentially conquer the earth in communion with God, and yet he fell in sin and brought death to the human race.
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And so, regeneration is this restoration of the human race, and it's foundational.
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The human race has to be restored in order for them to enter that eternal communion with God as it was intended from the beginning.
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So we see that. That's the first aspect of salvation that we see in verse 5, is this restoration from death to life.
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But then the second thing we see, and it's often, it's not necessarily passed over, but maybe less emphasized, because it just happens to be right there with generation, which is such a significant thing, such a significant topic.
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But the second is the sanctifying renewal of the Holy Spirit. That's the second aspect of salvation we see right here in the same verse.
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The sanctifying renewal of the Holy Spirit, which begins immediately after regeneration.
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So we've talked about this before as well. Something we have to remember as believers as we live our lives is that we don't ever get to look back at salvation as this thing in the rearview mirror.
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It happened on the day of our spiritual birth, and then that's kind of where it stays, and then we're just kind of waiting for heaven until that moment comes.
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To the contrary, salvation is a continual process, and this is why we have to remember the fact there are multiple aspects to it.
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It is a continual process from the moment we are regenerated, justified, all the way until our glorification, which in and of itself is an aspect of our salvation as well.
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And so we see when Paul says the washing of regeneration and renewing of the
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Holy Ghost, that is an aspect of the continual sense, the continual aspect of our salvation, that being sanctification, becoming more holy, becoming more consecrated, becoming more sanctified.
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These are all synonymous terms, and it's a work of the Spirit in our lives. So we see both of these aspects of salvation in one verse.
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And this is why we can't ever separate all of the varying aspects of salvation.
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We don't ever want to get caught doing that where we put all of our focus on one over the others. Now, there are times when you're going verse by verse where the apostle may mention one aspect.
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And like I said, in verse 7, he's about to talk about justification. I'm not saying we don't do that.
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What I'm saying is with regard to our view of salvation as a whole, we don't ever want to just kind of chop it up and compartmentalize each of those chopped up pieces and then maybe put a hyper focus on one aspect of it in our teaching, in the way we view it, in the way we study the
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Bible as well, and leaving off these other pieces. We don't ever want to do that. We don't want to kind of reduce it in this oversimplistic way or this oversimplistic idea of how it works.
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Many in recent history have tried to separate justification from sanctification. So one of the kind of where I'm coming from with pointing this out is that you will see this in commentaries, you'll see this in books, you'll see this in many teachings in the modern church where, like I mentioned a second ago, a hyper focus is placed on the aspect of justification to the point that you will hear phrases like sanctification is of course a good thing.
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It's of course ideal, but it's not necessary because once saved, always saved, that sort of thing.
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And all of a sudden this kind of cheap grace is birthed out of this poor teaching that is not covering the whole counsel of God, but rather a certain piece of it.
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And so right here in this verse, Paul is making it very clear that, look, we don't separate these things. In fact, they are in perfect union.
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They are something that go together. As we see clearly, we have regeneration and it is inseparable from the ongoing continual renewal of the
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Holy Spirit in our lives. So you can't separate the two. Justification and sanctification, they can't be separated.
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They're both equally works of God, equally works of the Spirit, but they are worked out in time differently because we live in time.
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We are temporal creatures. God is eternal. He's transcended. He lives outside of it, but we're not.
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And so he enters into time first in the incarnation, but also in the pouring out of his spirit that now lives within us.
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And he's working out these things in time. And for what purpose?
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Well, one of the reasons, the very end of the last epistle that Peter wrote right before he died himself, he says this, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our
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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to him be the glory both now and forever. What is he saying here?
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Grow. God ordained and expects for us to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our
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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. When we're saved, it's not like, boom, you're now perfect. You now know everything.
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You now have perfect doctrine. You're now perfectly sanctified. It's not how it works because God wanted us to grow in the grace and the knowledge of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. And because of that, in that growth process, all the glory goes back to him.
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Because the world and even the spiritual realm can look at us, whether it be the demons or the angels, can look at us and they can see that even an imperfect creature, as imperfect as we are, can make progress, can grow.
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And when it happens, it's obviously supernatural. It's obviously a result of that spirit of God working in them because there's no way that creature could do that in and of himself, which is true.
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And therefore the glory goes back to Jesus Christ himself. So we can't separate these things.
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They're inseparable. You can't separate regeneration from the renewal of the Holy Ghost. You can't separate justification from sanctification.
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And no, and by the way, the same guys that would kind of make these distinctions and overemphasize the distinctions, that's the thing, is there are distinctions.
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But like I said earlier, sometimes they're overemphasized and you're not taking into account the whole counsel of God.
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You are focusing in on something to the detriment of these other important doctrines.
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And what's funny about it is those guys that will do it and they'll talk about the glorious and gracious reality of justification, which no one would disagree with, but at the cost of sanctification over here, none of them would say that you could separate glorification from justification.
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They're all looking forward to their glory. They're all looking forward to their new bodies. They don't want to separate those two, but they will take the sanctification piece, put it down on a lower level as if it is somehow an optional thing, and it's not.
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It's why we talk about the cause and effects so much here, because a cause by necessity leads to effects.
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The effects are the sanctification process. So anyway, very interesting stuff there.
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We see that alluded to in verse 5, but now look at verse 6. Let me go back to chapter 3 here.
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It says, which, talking about all of that, he shed on us abundantly, the regeneration, the renewal of the
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Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, our
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Savior. So, as if Paul could not have been any more thorough up to this point with all of these meticulous doctrinal themes that he has been unfolding for us, in verse 6, he magnifies it even more with a very simple statement,
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I'll repeat it one more time, which he shed on us abundantly, that term abundantly is important, through Jesus Christ, our
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Savior. He shed, in other words, he poured out largely this washing of the
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Spirit on us abundantly or richly. In other words, he didn't hold back. It wasn't like he was kind of giving us the drip method.
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It was all of it, all at once, poured on us, the regeneration, the washing of the
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Spirit. It's indiscriminate. It doesn't play favorites when it is poured out on us.
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It's not withheld depending on how well we perform. It is abundantly poured out.
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It is abundantly shed upon those who are regenerated, those who do believe in the name of the
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Lord. It doesn't matter, like I said, how well someone performs.
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If you're a child of God, these things are poured out on you abundantly, richly.
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This is why the thief on the cross had equal right to paradise as Simeon, who died an old man and lived a long life of the tough battle against sin, the tough battle of sanctification.
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He fought hard. He fought well. He finished well. But the thief on the cross, who had been saved for five minutes, had equal right because of this abundant pouring out of the regeneration of the
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Spirit and the renewal of the Spirit in his life, right at the very end of his life. How is this done?
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How is it poured out abundantly? How is it poured out richly? Look at the final phrase of verse six, through Jesus Christ, our
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Savior. We can talk about regeneration. We can talk about the renewal of the
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Spirit. We can talk about justification. We will here in just a second. We can talk about all of these types of things.
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But it doesn't matter what doctrine you look at. It doesn't matter which doctrine you want to focus in on, in the proper sense.
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Like I said, the apostles do point these things out, point for point. They do make distinctions. We just want to make sure we take the whole picture that they give us and not parts of it.
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As we look at all of that, it always comes back to Christ and his finished work. There is no doctrine, talking about inseparable things here, there's no doctrine that you can look at that you can separate from his finished work.
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There is no act of the Holy Spirit in our lives today that you can separate from his act on the cross 2 ,000 years ago.
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And so this abundant, rich, pouring out or shedding of these things happens through Jesus Christ, our
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Savior. It always comes back to him. Without what he did for us on the cross, the Spirit would not have the moral right to pour out his washing of regeneration and renewal of mind.
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He couldn't do his work that he's doing in us right now. He couldn't morally do that had it not been for what
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Christ did on the cross. The work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of human beings had to be purchased.
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And it was Christ who did the purchasing. That is what gives the Spirit the moral right to work in our lives today and to live in these earthen vessels, to live in these corruptible bodies that still mess up and that still need that renewal.
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Like I said, we're not saved and then we're glorified, perfect and know everything and sinless right then and there.
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No, it is a work, it's a process. And the reason why the Spirit can enter our bodies and make the abode of the
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Father and Christ within us here in these corruptible bodies is because of the purchase price that was made by Jesus through Jesus Christ, our
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Savior. The mercy that we received via the rebirth, the regeneration, and the consequent renewal of the
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Spirit would have been an impossibility without Jesus' perfect life, upholding the law on our behalf in all points so that we didn't have to because we couldn't.
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His sacrificial death, His burial, His resurrection, His ascension to the right hand of power.
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None of this would be possible had not those things taken place and Jesus done that perfect work,
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His finished work, like I mentioned. Now, this is kind of interesting here, looking at verse 6 once more, and then we see that there is kind of a callback to verse 4.
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And this isn't the first time we've seen this in this epistle. We see yet another case of Paul proving
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Christ's deity by using the exact same phrase with regard to who our
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Savior is. And in one case, look at verse 4, look how he words it.
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He attributes the title to God, our Savior. You see that in verse 4? And then you get to verse 6, still practically within the same breadth of argument that Paul is making, and he says,
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Jesus Christ, our Savior. So this isn't accidental. This is the
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Apostle Paul attributing deity to our Lord. He is calling Jesus God for the third or fourth time in a very brief epistle.
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Now, the grammar isn't as matter of fact, it's not emphatic as it was back in chapter 2, verse 13, when we looked at that Granville Sharp rule, you all remember that?
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But you can still see it right here. You know that Paul is just speaking this fluent
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Trinitarian language. He has no problem with it. None of the apostles ever had any issue with making the distinctions between Father, Son, and Spirit.
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They're not the same, and yet they are all of one essence. They are all one God. They had no problem talking about these things.
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In the modern era, or for the last 2 ,000 years for that matter, sometimes we have to really work through our language, make sure we're not tripping up on anything and not accidentally being heretical.
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There's no easier way, no easier, I guess, theological topic than the
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Trinity to accidentally do that, even when you don't mean to, because it's a hard thing to comprehend.
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The Trinity would not be truly unique if there was any other thing that we could look at and make comparisons.
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It wouldn't be unique anymore. That's why all of our analogies break down. That's why all of our analogies will fall short, because if you could make a perfect analogy, a one -for -one analogy, and then it would just click in our minds, and we could put the math on the board and say, oh, yeah, this is how it works, it would no longer be unique, truly unique.
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And so it's something we grapple with a little bit, but by the grace of God, we are given so much scripture, so many rich passages that dive deep into the doctrine of the
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Trinity, where we do see deity attributed to the Son and to the Spirit, and yet distinctions between the three persons.
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It's an amazing, glorious thing. And yet here we see Paul attributing the title of God to Jesus once more.
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God our Savior, Jesus Christ our Savior. It's an amazing thing. Let's take a look at verse seven now.
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Y 'all have any thoughts or anything y 'all want to share before moving on there? Okay, let's look at verse seven.
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I'd like to read it all together, because, again, it's one sentence here. But after that, the kindness and love of God our
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Savior toward man appeared, verse four. Verse five, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy
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He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our
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Savior, that being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
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This is, I mean, again, it just keeps getting more and more rich, more deep.
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Every verse you stop and park at, you think, man, Paul is just really covering his bases here.
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He takes it a step further. In these very succinct sentences, these very succinct verses.
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So what do we see here? We see justification, and we see it, of course, by His grace.
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Now, if you read this, if you slow down a little bit and you read that opening phrase, being justified by His grace, and then he continues, you might notice that there's a particular word formula that we normally would see here in other epistles we do that Paul wrote, but here there's a word missing, seemingly.
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Paul leaves off the ending through faith. How many times does Paul use that term, we are saved by grace through faith?
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Of course, you have Ephesians 2 .8 .9, the preeminent passage there with regard to us being justified by faith alone and not by works.
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But right here, he simply leaves it at we are justified by His grace in this instance.
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Now, this isn't because Paul all of a sudden is starting to change his doctrine. It's not that he is de -emphasizing faith in any way, shape, or form.
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But what he's doing is he's distilling everything into this singular source that brings salvation about, including faith itself, and that is the grace of God.
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Whether you want to break all of it up and talk about regeneration or God's mercy or the fact that we receive
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His faith so that we do believe in Him, so that we do call upon His name.
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Justification, sanctification, glorification, you can break it all up. All of it comes back to a singular source, which
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I believe is what Paul is emphasizing here. He's distilling all of it into one thing, and that is where it comes from.
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Grace, the grace of God, undeserved favor. All of what we just talked about is undeserving by a fallen, fallible creature that condemned himself, deserving of paying the blood price of his own sin, and yet, undeservingly so, receives this thing called grace.
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By definition, it's undeserving. And so Paul says here that we are justified by His grace, meaning we don't earn it, we don't deserve it.
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All of the things we just looked at from verses 4 now through 7, we didn't earn it. We can't think that we will finally trust
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Christ once we get our life in order, whatever that means. And of course, we have people, lost souls all across the world today that are in that strait of feeling like they need to purchase their salvation.
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It's why the rich young ruler came to Jesus with the questions that he had. What must I do to inherit eternal life?
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It's not necessarily a bad question, by the way. We look at that and we think, oh, he really didn't know what he was talking about, you can't do anything.
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Well, if you slow down a second and you think about where he's coming from, it's not a bad question. The problem is, he didn't get the point.
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When Jesus said, you can have eternal life by keeping the commandments. And right there we think, whoa, what is
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Jesus talking about? We can't get salvation by keeping the commandments, why would he say that? Well, what
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Jesus was doing was he was trying to turn the law, which this rich young ruler thought he knew so well, thought that he had kept so well.
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And by the way, from the human viewpoint, maybe he had. But that's different from God's viewpoint. Righteousness, our righteousness is of filthy rags.
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From our viewpoint, sometimes a guy can look pretty awesome with the way he's living. Honoring your father, not committing adultery, not killing anybody, not stealing, all of these things.
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He was probably keeping the Sabbath, he probably didn't have any idols. So from the human viewpoint, he was probably keeping all these things legitimately well.
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Jesus says, keep the commandments and you will have eternal life. And what he was doing is he was trying to turn the mirror that is the law back on the rich young ruler to show him his sin and his incapable ability to do that.
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To keep the commandments to such a degree that you inherit eternal life. It's interesting because you can do that if it's kept perfectly.
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You can receive eternal life by keeping the commandments if you do it perfectly without breaking a single one.
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Only one man was ever able to do it though, and that was Jesus. And that's why we require his imputed righteousness for us to receive eternal life so that when
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God the Father looks at us, he sees the perfect keeping of the law. It's just we weren't the ones that had to do it.
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And so we see all of this and the rich young ruler thinks that he can do something to deserve it.
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We have people by the millions, perhaps even by the billions on earth that think like the rich young ruler was thinking in that story.
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They feel that they can earn it. They feel that they need to earn it. That's how it works. And yet what does
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Paul say here? We are justified, we are made right, made righteous in the eyes of God as if we had never sinned, that's what justification is, because of grace.
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That is how it's supposed to work, not by getting our lives in order.
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And if that is how it worked, if salvation or justification was by getting our lives in order, getting everything right, it would no longer be grace but justification by works, which the
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New Testament totally turns that idea on its head, one epistle after the other.
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Now remember the context of Paul. Why did he distill everything into this phrase?
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Why is he leaving it at that in this instance when he doesn't do that for very obvious reasons in other places?
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We have to remember the context that Paul is delivering this epistle to Titus. He is equipping and instructing
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Titus. That much is very clear. But one thing we need to remember, and we saw this clearly in chapter 1, but it's been a while since we've been there.
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He's equipping and he's instructing his people while simultaneously refuting the false teachers that were introducing all forms of false doctrine, salvation by works, subverting whole houses, all of these types of things, these false teachers that we were introduced to in chapter 1.
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Those of the circumcision, the Judaizers that were trying to bring salvation by works back into the picture for all of these new believers that were there on the day of Pentecost, went back to the island of Crete, started spreading the gospel, started planting churches.
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Paul goes over there and is like, we've got a lot of work to do. So he sends Titus and he sends a few other guys that we'll be talking about next week.
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And we'll see at the end of the letter here. And he's instructing and equipping Titus to fix all this, but he's also being very intentional with the way he words everything because he knows the false teachers are watching.
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They're watching Titus. They're going to hear this letter be read out loud. And so Paul is refuting the false teachers while also equipping
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Titus at the same time. So Paul is with kind of a two -edged sword type style, establishes this truth with the simple statement, being justified by grace.
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There are no works involved here. There is no earning it here. There's nothing that you can come up with in your mind that gets you there outside of the singular source of God's grace.
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Now he could have went and talked further about faith and justification, sanctification, and the renewal of the spirit.
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He could have dug into all of that even deeper, but he didn't feel the need to do so here as he was being moved by the
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Holy Spirit to write these words. He left it at that, being justified by his grace. And to what end?
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Look at the last phrase of verse 7. That we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
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So by means of the new birth, remember the end, the ends are eternal life for God's people.
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What are the means that get us there though? By means of the new birth, our regeneration, what
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Paul just finished talking about, we are brought into the immediate family of God, being made joint heirs with Christ.
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Here Paul just simply uses the term heirs, but in Romans chapter 8, verse 17, he uses the term joint heirs.
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It's a little bit stronger because it gives the idea that we will be standing shoulder to shoulder with Christ as he receives, rules, judges, and has authority over his entire creation.
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What are we joint heirs of? We are literally joint heirs with Christ of eternity, never -ending time, of all of the created order.
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The entire expanse of the universe is ours for the taking. We receive as joint heirs the right to judge the creation, including the angels themselves.
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The Apostle Paul tells us this in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Right now we are made a little lower than the angels in these corruptible bodies, and Jesus humbled himself to that degree as well in the incarnation, but eventually we will be elevated above the angels and will judge angels.
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Perfect spiritual beings, how does that even work? I'm not sure yet, but the Apostle Paul says we will do that as joint heirs with Christ.
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We will possess all of it and have authority over all of it. With Christ, that's what it means to be heirs with him in that final phrase of verse 7, in joint heirs, as Paul puts it in other places.
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And so the basis, the foundation of our Christian living, being obedient to his word, following all of the very practical
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Christian living that we saw throughout chapter 2, the basis for all of it is mercy toward us, the mercy is then given, so the foundation of all of it is his mercy toward us, and this mercy is given at the point of our regeneration, the rebirth of our spirits to live according to God's word, we are given that heart of flesh, the stony heart is taken out.
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The basis of our obedience is that we have been justified by his free grace, and that through it we receive adoption into his family and heirship, joint ownership over everything, even though by nature we were just like the others around us today who are foolish, who are deceitful, who are disobedient, who are maliciously wicked.
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Despite the fact that we were once like that ourselves, we receive all of these things.
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He brings us into the enjoyment of eternal happiness with him as a fact that has already taken place that being on the cross, that is taking place, that being in the lives of every believer over the course of church history, as they live their lives, as they are being sanctified, and it's something that will take place upon his return, it's something that stretches the full spectrum of time really from the point of the universe being brought into existence but more specifically from the time of the cross moving forward.
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Everything that happened in the Old Testament like we mentioned a few weeks ago was anticipatory. It looked forward at the cross.
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They saw God's goodness, they saw his grace, they saw his kindness in the prophesied act of a
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Messiah coming to blot out the sins of his people. So they looked forward to it, but at this point the cross has happened and so from the point of the cross until his return the entire spectrum of church history, of human history, we see that this is all working out in the lives of his people and therefore it is the basis for our obedience.
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It is the foundation of everything. And because of this foundation we can be obedient believers, living peaceable lives, showing gentleness and meekness to all men which is where we started in verse 2 of this chapter.
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And so from verse 3 all the way through verse 7 Paul creates an incredibly robust, doctrinally robust argument to prove why he is telling us what he tells us in the first place in all of the preceding verses of this epistle.
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So that's verse 7, that's verses 5 through 7 and we'll get to verse 8 next week because we're out of time now, but just look at how verse 8 begins.
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Everything we just read, everything we just considered, everything we just talked about this is a faithful saying and these things
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I will that thou affirm constantly that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works.
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So he goes right back to the good works. He gives us good works from chapters 1 through chapter 2 verse 11 he reminds us of God's saving grace then he goes back to some good works in chapter 3 verses 1 and 2 then he spends more time giving us that foundation once more and he brings it right back in verse 8 that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works.
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These things are good and profitable unto men. This saying is faithful, this saying is true.
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This is a faithful saying. Really amazing stuff. So next week we'll get to verse 8 and possibly finish the epistle.
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I know there's a number of verses left but the salutation we might be able to get through.
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We might be able to work through next week. So y 'all have any thoughts? Any questions or anything like that? Before we dismiss. I don't know how refugees all get talked about the position of things and then move right into the but be careful to maintain good works.
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As if to him it's not it's not it is two different topics but they're one thing it's interesting how he can do that so easily.
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It is amazing and I believe that the reason they were able to do that the apostles and of course they had an unfair advantage no doubt.
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They got to walk and talk with Jesus even the apostle Paul saw him post resurrection. They were able to talk about these things with such ease.
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Going back to the trinity like we talked about earlier and then in this case the positional versus the temporal.
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They were able to do it with such ease because they just experienced it. They were living it out in a very particular way.
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Of course they were apostles. So they were well it's like I'll just use the trinity as an example one more time.
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One thing that Dr. White says often that I think is kind of neat is that the apostles were experiential trinitarians.
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The apostle Peter for example held Jesus the second person of the trinity.
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He could touch him. He could feel him. He saw him walk on water. He saw him prove his deity time and time again through his miraculous works and all these types of things.
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He was there on the mount of transfiguration where he heard the voice of the father. So he sees
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Jesus. He hears the voice of the father and guess who was preaching on the day of Pentecost when the spirit was poured out?
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Peter. So Peter experienced all three distinct persons of the trinity in his life.
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And so of course he was able to talk about the trinity with ease. He experienced it in time and space.
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All three persons. Well in the same way the apostles experienced the reality of yes we are positionally righteous and this dad to go back to your point the apostle
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Paul sometimes talks about sanctification and glorification in the past tense. Well how does that work?
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Because we're no we're not dead yet. We don't have glorified bodies yet. So how is it that he can say he also glorified past tense in the passive mood?
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Well it's because they understood that from the father's point of view that Jesus has already been victorious wholesale.
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The entire reality of redemption has already been won with Jesus' work on the cross.
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He wants us to live these lives to bring the elect the sheep into the fold. He actually uses us to do that.
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Jesus isn't coming back until every single one of his family members, his sons and daughters have been brought into the fold safely.
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That requires space and time. He uses us as his instruments to do that by preaching the gospel. Paul tells us how can they be saved without preaching?
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And how can they hear the preaching without a preacher being sent? I'm paraphrasing badly but the point is we are instruments used of God to do this work.
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And so the apostle Paul can talk with ease about our positional righteousness and the fact that our glorification is already sealed.
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It's a done deal. We're going to be glorified as if it already happened even though we haven't experienced it yet while at the same time emphasizing evangelism and emphasizing maintaining good works and establishing a pattern of good works.
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A phrase that he used in chapter 1. Because that he saw the way God was working and he was loving it.
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And you can feel his love for these realities in the way that he wrote about them. And so there you go.
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We can be inspired by the same thing. We may grapple with things that Paul didn't have to because he was an apostle.
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And he just he was able to experience Christ on a level that we haven't yet. We will but we haven't yet.
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So we grapple with things but we can look at these writings and we can look at the ease with which they talk about these things and be inspired by it and know that we can understand these things too and live our lives accordingly.
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So there you go. Yes. So you were talking about how keeping of the law was required for salvation and Christ kept it and pursued it down to us.
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When Jesus is preaching and explaining kind of like the intent of the law and pointing out like you may not kill but you have hatred in your heart.
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I know he's not adding to the law but his righteousness did exceed that of the
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Pharisees but that's keeping the law because they still had hearts of stone and they still had
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Do you think there's a distinction between a transgression of the law and a sin of the heart and regardless of how well you did these outward things without regeneration because the
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Old Testament saints were saved the same way we are. So I don't know just kind of like thinking through all the aspects of that like what was required of Christ was not just keeping a list of rules it was required because any transgression of the law is not a sin so he had to be sinless but he was also sinless in his heart and like beyond what we can even comprehend as being necessary.
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Absolutely so first of all yes the Old Testament saints were saved the same way we are. We learn in Romans 5.
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Abraham believed and it was counted to him as righteousness so there's the imputed righteousness of Christ before Christ died on the cross.
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Why? Because God is eternal and he can do that. He can operate God is not bound by time.
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Time is a creature just like we are. And so Abraham received imputed righteousness because of his belief, his faith like us.
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Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah was saved by grace in the Old Testament so grace was still there.
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So that's the first thing. Yes your point is what Jesus was doing in the Sermon on the
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Mount when he was saying look if you hate your brother you've murdered him already.
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He's not changing the law. What he's doing is he is reminding these hard hearted stiff necked pharisaical legalists that you have totally blown it and you forgot the intent of the law in the first place which was an inward thing.
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The tenth commandment is thou shalt not covet. That's not an action. That's not an external thing that you do.
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That's in the heart. You covet in your heart. So Moses Moses taught all these things but the
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Pharisees absolutely blew it. They forgot it. And so what Jesus is letting them know is look you think that you have righteousness from your works.
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You're not even doing works correctly and when Jesus says when he's telling the people and he's preaching to these thousands of people and says unless your righteousness exceeds the
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Pharisees you will not enter the kingdom of heaven well first of all that is true it requires a righteousness greater than their own which is what we receive with Christ's imputed righteousness.
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No one enters the kingdom of heaven without that. Without the positive righteousness of Christ being imputed to us which is
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Paul's whole thing in Romans 5 so that's the first thing he tells us but it's also a backhanded slap to the
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Pharisees by saying and he did this more than once it's why he tells them look a physician doesn't come to heal those that aren't sick
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I came for them. You don't need me and of course they needed him but his point was you have already rejected me and you think in your eyes that you have earned salvation by your works you're not even sick so go mind your business and I'll sit with the sinners that need a physician.
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So Jesus countless times is reminding them look you need righteousness that exceeds the
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Pharisees but guess what I can give that to you because their righteousness is actually nothing more than a whited sepulcher and so yes
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Jesus absolutely kept the law externally perfectly but inwardly perfectly as well which all people have to do if you want to get to heaven by works and see this is even modern orthodox
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Jews, Dennis Prager you can listen to him in interviews and he will just without a blink talk about the reality that of course you know if you um evil doesn't take place in the heart you can't accuse someone of an evil thought.
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You can't accuse someone of being evil even if they have an evil thought or an evil desire in their heart. He will go so far as to say or he has gone so far as to say that you know pornography you know there isn't really any harm being done because you're not committing an action it's just something that you are consuming inwardly that's the pharisaical view of the law is that it is only external and Jesus totally turned that upside down which
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Moses did too but they missed it and then they added their own laws some 613 of them throughout those 400 years of silence there were some things they did that were from the
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Mosaic law much that they added and that's why Paul says the commandments of men in Colossians chapter 2 um so Jesus was reminding them the law must be kept externally of course but don't forget the internal, don't forget your heart when you lust after a woman you've already committed adultery with her, when you hated your brother you've already murdered him, you've already violated those commandments and without without the heart of flesh it is physically impossible to keep the law according to God's expectations with the heart of flesh here's what happens we aren't saved by the law, we're not saved by works we aren't kept saved by works but something does happen with this malleable heart of flesh and that is all of the sudden even in our corruptible bodies we have a desire we have a desire to do whatever is pleasing in the sight of God to whatever end that may be and when we enter the millennial kingdom and when we enter our glorified bodies that can't sin any longer guess what we will do keep the law perfectly it says in the prophecy of Isaiah that in the millennial kingdom when
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Jesus is on earth people on the coast lands will be searching for the law of God so the law of God will be operable in the millennial kingdom for people that don't need it but desire to keep it because they are regenerated they have a heart of flesh they have a desire to be obedient to God's moral statutes and things like that and so that's what
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Jesus that was his point in the sermon on the mount was preparing them for this reality telling them what it takes you want to do it by works okay you got to exceed the righteousness of the pharisees how are you going to do that we can only do it if somebody else does it for you gives you their righteousness and Jesus is the only one that could ever do that so yeah absolutely the inward aspect of keeping the law is equally as needed necessary for salvation as the external and that's why we had to have
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Jesus do it for us it was an impossibility without his life his 33 years on earth those 33 years of him keeping the law was just as necessary as his death on the cross because that's what made him a blameless sacrifice was that he did what
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Adam failed to do the first Adam failed the second or the last Adam more specifically restored everything and again in the eyes of the father all of redemption has already been made complete and sealed with that work even though there's still some things in time taking place before it all is consummated
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Jesus is returned so a lot of big stuff there any other thoughts y 'all have before we dismiss I guess
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I better go ahead and dismiss we're already a couple minutes past the hour heavenly father thank you so much for this wonderful day thank you for bringing us together and allowing us yet another opportunity to open up the pages of scripture and to be edified by them to be refreshed by them to learn some amazing doctrinal realities that give us the boldness to go out into this world and be the instruments that you would have us be in order to be a witness in order to bring people to you to bring them to their savior lord that you give us the ability through your grace and through the work of your spirit to maintain works that the world looks at and sees that we are different and sees that man