Book of Titus - Ch. 3, v. 5

Philippians 3 and Titus 3:5 as the Basis for Salvation by Mercy

Alrighty guys, why don't y 'all turn with me to Philippians chapter 3 this morning. I'm going to re-read the passage that we ended on last week. I want to literally pick it up where we left off. Give y 'all a reminder of kind of where we're at.

And if you want, you can go ahead and turn to Titus chapter 3 as well. We'll immediately go there as soon as we read this passage. But I'd like to start in Philippians chapter 3 as just a little bit of review from last week.

And while y 'all are turning there, again we're getting very close to kind of the final. This is the final doctrinal theme of Titus for the most part. When you guys will see in the salutation, Paul still kind of hints at a couple of things we'll look at when we get there.

But this is kind of the final big significant doctrinal teaching that Paul is passing on to Titus. And we're getting very close to the end of that. And so we're right where verses 3 through 8 really are kind of where that is at, where Paul gives us the foundation for his call to obedience in all of these specific areas that we've seen throughout the epistle.

You get to the first couple of verses of chapter 3. You see this call to obedience to government, to the magistrates, to be meek and gentle to all men. He's giving us the foundation for this. So that's kind of where we're at.

I got it. Okay, so Philippians chapter 3. Let's read this passage together and then we'll pick up back in Titus.

Paul says,.

We are the circumcision which worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. Though I might also have confidence in the flesh, if any other man thinketh that he whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more.

Circumcise the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as touching the law, a Pharisee, concerning zeal, persecuting the church, touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.

But what things are gained to me, those I counted loss for Christ, yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do count them but dung or trash or garbage or refuse, that I may win Christ and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith, that I may know him, in the power of his resurrection, in the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death, that by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.

Not by Works of Righteousness but According to His Mercy

Now, if you'll flip right back over to Titus chapter 3, we see that in the very first phrase of verse 5, Paul is reminding us of how important it is to be like him in this area. And what I mean by that is to understand that an understanding of salvation, an understanding of God's mercy only comes through recognizing that it is by grace alone and not through any form of what we may perceive as righteous living.

It's interesting, when you read what Paul just said in Philippians, you have to remember the righteousness he's talking about, the obedience he's talking about, all of these things he's talking about is from the perspective of a Pharisee, not Jesus.

So he's saying, according to the Pharisaical order, I was blameless. I kept the law perfectly, which wasn't true, because he tells us in Romans 7, he was actually covenanting the whole time. But according to the Pharisees, he was blameless.

According to their order, he was as good as it gets. And he's saying it doesn't matter how good it gets, how good you get in the eyes of men, it's all dung if you don't understand that salvation is actually of the Lord.

So you get to Titus 3, 5, and look what he says. Not by works of righteousness which we have done. So in Philippians chapter 3, we get a very good example of what that kind of righteousness looks like.

The righteousness that we have done, if we do good at it, which is in and of itself would be kind of a marvel, it would still be nothing but garbage, according to the Apostle Paul. So, as he is setting the tone here, as he is giving us the basis for our obedience to the Lord, for why we do what Paul is telling us to do, in verse 4,.

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 Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior.

Now, just like how Paul's perfect righteousness in the eyes of his fellow Pharisees, and that's the part you need to emphasize there, his perfect righteousness in the eyes of the Pharisees, just how that fell grossly short of bringing him salvation, the same is true of every effort worked up by any human being ever.

So this wasn't unique to Paul. Paul is making the point that it doesn't matter how high you set the bar, and man, the Pharisees set it really high. In fact, they intentionally set it as high as they could so that they could be the only ones that were blameless based upon their order, based upon their rules, because they wanted to be holier than the rest of those around them by design.

They wanted to be able to condemn and to judge based upon the laws they invented, the commandments of men is how Paul puts it in Colossians 2. They wanted to be able to hold everyone else accountable to that because they kept raising that bar slowly every year to the point where they were the only ones that could keep it.

It was their full-time job was just trying to keep these rules that they invented. Some 613 laws, some of them were legitimately from the law of Moses. Many of them were invented by their own pharisaical order during the 400 years prior to John the Baptist.

Coming on the scene after Malachi wrote the final prophecy of the Old Testament. So what Paul is saying is, look, if that falls grossly short of the glory of God in bringing you salvation, any effort you ever try to bring to the table will likewise fall short.

Our works of righteousness, which we have done, if we have even tried to do them, will always fall short. As Paul tells us, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Romans 3. That was just as much true of the Pharisees as it was the worst pagan in the world at the time.

With regard to salvation and what is deserving of hell, there is no difference between the Pharisee and the temple prostitute. Now that, of course, they would have called blasphemy. This is why they tried to condemn Jesus by eating with sinners and publicans and harlots.

Because they thought that they were on a different plane. But in reality, they were no different. In fact, they were worse because in their minds, they were righteous and not in need of a savior. In the mind of the publican, in the harlot, in the sinner, they knew they needed a savior.

So they were the ones actually on a higher plane than the Pharisees were, but the Pharisees didn't recognize that they were totally blinded. And that's why Jesus, in kind of a sarcastic way, said, I didn't come to save the righteous.

I came to save the sinner. A physician doesn't need to heal those that aren't sick. You don't think you're sick, so I didn't come to heal you. I came to heal those that need a physician. Did you have a thought back there, Dad?

Yeah, I was looking at that. It's interesting.

Of course.

Right.

Any moralistic religion you can concoct in the mind is all about self-glorification. It doesn't matter if it's a Pharisee. It doesn't matter if it's a Jehovah's Witness. It doesn't matter if it's a Mormon or a modern Orthodox Jew or Islam.

If it is a works-based anything, it comes back ultimately to self-glorification because if I do it better in this area than you do, I'm a better person. And so that's what Paul was pointing out is it was all for personal gain.

It was not for the Lord, and that's why he eventually got to the point where he counted it all loss. And on from there. And so, yeah, super interesting things for sure. Again, Paul, in this little bitty phrase we see at the beginning of verse 5 here, not by the righteousness, not by righteous works which we have done.

That is just a very brief summary of something that he has talked about in great detail over and over and over and over again. All throughout Romans. All throughout Philippians. It's in Galatians. It's in Ephesians.

I mean, it's probably in every single epistle he wrote. Sometimes more brief than others, and here we just happen to have a very brief account of it. But it's all there. And so, what is he saying here?

He's saying rather than it being works of righteousness that we have done, in the very next phrase, look what he says, it was according to his mercy he saved us. So think about that for a second. We've got to remember the big point that I kind of want to drive home as we near the end of this study.

Because Titus has been full of instruction, of imperatives, of Paul telling Christians, you need to do this. You need to live this way. One of the things we have to drive home as we get to the end here, because Paul is driving it home himself, is that the basis for this obedience is the mercy.

It's not, Paul is not saying you need to be obedient so that you can then understand God's grace and mercy and things like this. He's saying it starts with the mercy. It starts with an understanding of grace.

It starts with an understanding that we were just like the world, as he put, remember verse 3, we were once foolish and then malice and disobedience, all these things. That was us. He wants us to remember that we are not like that anymore because of mercy, because of grace, as we'll see in a second, because of regeneration.

And that is the basis for your obedience. If you ever reverse that and you try to get to the joy, you try to get to the grace, you try to get to the mercy through obedience, it will be, it'll fail every time and it will leave you feeling, it'll leave you feeling somewhat shallow, ashamed of yourself, not good enough, all of these types of things.

But the reality is after we have been saved, after we have been converted and we now have the righteousness of Christ in us, we are good enough because of him. It's not because of us ourselves, so don't get me wrong there, but because of the positional righteousness we stand in, that is what gives us the joy that then leads to obedience, to follow God's word and his commandments and his instructions and the things that we see the apostles sharing over and over and over again.

So I really, again, I want to drive that home. His mercy is the basis for our obedience. We are obedient to his word, we're obedient to his commandments, to his instructions because he was merciful to us.

Not because we have to do those things to get the mercy, but because the mercy came first, we do these things. That was Paul's point and it was the point of most of the New Testament. But just as God ordains the ends, so where are we at so far in verse 5?

Not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us. So there's salvation by mercy. Just as God ordains the ends, which is the salvation itself, he also ordains the means, as we've said so many times.

And in this very succinct passage, Paul sheds some light on how God's mercy was delivered to his people. So we know there was mercy and we know that because of that mercy there was salvation. How was the mercy delivered to his people?

The end was his mercy being delivered and the means was this. Look at the next phrase in verse 5. The washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost. The end is salvation by mercy. The means to get there is the washing of regeneration and then the renewal of the Holy Ghost.

We'll break down these two phrases as we go, especially that last one. We'll talk about regeneration a bit now. But there are two very important phrases here and we'll look at them in turn. What is regeneration?

And in what way does it actually wash us? When you all think of the word regeneration, which is a pretty interesting term in English, just as much as it is in the Greek, what comes to y 'all's mind when you think of regeneration?

What's the first thing? If you were just to define it in a slightly more simple wording than the large kind of packed word of regeneration. Kind of like regrowth. Kind of regrowth. Is that what you said, Pop Pop?

Renew.

Yeah. A synonym for the new birth. Yes, I would agree with 100 of those. It encompasses all of that. So all of that would absolutely be correct. Regeneration, what it is, is it is describing a new life where life comes from, literally, life comes from non-life.

That is the ultimate connotation that the term carries. From death to life, it's being made alive, being born again. That's a familiar phrase, isn't it? Born again, regenerated. It's receiving a new, and to use another interesting phrase, a circumcised heart.

This is something Moses talked about. It's something Paul talked about in Colossians. These are different phrases, different ideas we can think of. And the reason I mention these other familiar phrases, born again, being made alive, receiving a new heart, the reason it's good to remember some of these, like Ashton said, synonymous phrases, synonymous ideas, is because the word regeneration, because that's typically the word we would use when we're talking about that doctrine, the word regeneration only pops up twice in the whole New Testament.

And only one of those times does it pop up in the context of salvation, and it's right here in Titus. The only other time the word is used, and I'm talking about the Greek term, of course, is when Jesus talks about the renewal of all things at his return.

He uses the term regeneration there. It's the same term. That's not in the context of salvation per se, at least individual salvation. Maybe you could argue it's salvation of the cosmos, and to that I would agree.

But with regard to individual personal salvation, right here in Titus is the only place in the Bible that refers to regeneration in this context. And so it's important for us to remember these other phrases that, like Ashton said, could be considered synonymous because even though that word is only used once in this context, the doctrine is all over the place.

The doctrine of regeneration is all over the New Testament. It's all over the Old Testament too. And we'll look at a particular passage here in just a moment. But just to give you a brief survey of how this pops up, the frequency with which it pops up, and just for the sake of time, we're not going to look at every single one of these passages because it would take a number of weeks, but I want you to think about it.

In John 3 and in 1 Peter 1, we learn that we must be born again. That's regeneration. Of course, we know the scene with Jesus and Nicodemus. It is amazing. Like I said, you could spend weeks just on that one passage.

And then the apostle Peter recalls back to that story at the very beginning of his first epistle and tells us we need to be born again. That's regeneration. In Galatians 2, Paul says that it is Christ that lives in him.

When we are regenerated, this new life comes about. One thing that happens is the living Christ within us. Jesus says in John 14 that, I will send the Comforter, and through him the Father and I will make our abode within you.

And I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but that's near the end of John 14. So the Father and the Son both have their abode within our bodies, the temple of God himself, through the Holy Spirit. So we literally have the Trinity living within us.

All three persons of the Godhead live within us through the Spirit. According to Jesus in John 14. In James 1, we learn that Christ brought us forth. In other words, he birthed us. That's regeneration.

It's worded differently. It doesn't use the term regeneration, but it's the same thing. The entire epistle of 1 John provides proofs of being born of God. That's regeneration, to be born of God, to be regened, to be rebirthed.

And again, the entire epistle of 1 John, how do you know? How do you know you've been born of God? Well, he gives you all the proofs for it in that epistle. In Ezekiel, going to the Old Testament, chapter 36, we're told that we are given a new heart of flesh with the stony heart that we had prior to conversion being removed.

And all of this is regeneration. And it's all the work of God. If you want to look at this passage with me, it's just so amazing. It's an amazing prophecy in Ezekiel chapter 36. We could look at that together really quick.

Because, like I mentioned a moment ago, while this doctrine just permeates the entire New Testament, it also pops up prophetically in the Old Testament. And this is one of the more notable passages where that is the case.

It's not the only one. Moses talks about regeneration in the opening books of the entire Bible. We see the prophets bring it up. Jeremiah, Isaiah, they all reference it. But Ezekiel right here, in 36, look at verse 25 with me.

I'll read just a few verses. Really amazing stuff.

He says,.

Then I will sprinkle clean water upon you. That sounds familiar. The washing of regeneration. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse you.

Now, we have to remember, idolatry is just as relevant to us as it was to the ancient Hebrews. So this prophecy, this wasn't adding some sort of ancient sin to this future prophecy. Idolatry is alive and well today.

And we engaged in it ourselves prior to salvation in some form or fashion. But we are cleansed from all filthiness, from all of our idols. Will I cleanse you? And look at verse 26. A new heart also will I give you in a new spirit.

Now, I want you guys to remember this in a second because we're going to read Calvin in a little bit. A somewhat bizarre interpretation of this verse in Titus. But I want you guys to remember what we're reading here in Ezekiel because it'll help.

A new heart also will I give you in a new spirit will I put within you. So what is the antecedent to this sprinkling, this washing with water that's being prophesied about? A new heart and what? A new spirit.

Remember that in a little bit because it's going to be important. I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you. Remember this.

It's so important. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you shall keep my judgments and do them. So that right there is a prophecy of what we started with. After regeneration, after a recognition of God's mercy and God's grace, it gives us a desire to be obedient to his word.

All of that is unique to the new covenant that we live in, which the book of Hebrews expounds upon greatly. Let's look at one more passage, just really quick, if you want to turn to Colossians 2. Very familiar.

We just finished it up. Yes, go ahead, Matt.

I just want to point out how awesome some of the wording in that Ezekiel passage is. I've never personally seen that.

The one in Ezekiel, you mean?

Yeah, Ezekiel, but where it just says, I'll put my spirit within you, and therefore you will keep.

Yes, and let's think about that in light of another New Testament idea that the prophets saw through a glass darkly, and that the apostle Paul referred to as a mystery, and that is the idea of the new man.

So we talk a lot about the antithesis between the new and the old man. In this world, this is why a dad can— it is both humorous and absolutely true that Christians are the greatest schizophrenics. Dad has said that my entire life, and it couldn't be a better way to kind of display that picture, that reality that we have two things going on in this life.

And that's important to remember. It's not going to be like this forever. If anything, this life is the intermediate stage. You know the Catholics have purgatory? Well, really, purgatory is right here, right now.

This life is the intermediate stage between our— however we existed in the mind of God prior to our birth, there is an eternal sense in which we've always existed. There is a temporal sense in which we didn't exist until we were conceived.

It's important to remember both are true. But however we existed in the mind of God prior to our conception, then to our future glorification in the in-between, which is where we live now, we have this war between the spirit and the flesh, the new man and the old man.

So Matt, when we see this prophesied about in Ezekiel, he says, I shall make you do this. You shall keep my precepts. However, I can't remember the term he used. I will cause you to do this. The new man will do that because that's what he does.

It's who he is. He obeys God's word. He obeys God's instruction because it's who he is. And it is caused by God. He is the ultimate cause. And so you can see these just little flickers of these New Testament realities back in Ezekiel.

The new man, the washing of regeneration, the removal of the stony heart and giving us the heart of flesh, all of that is right there in very colorful terminology describing what we have here in Titus.

Yes, ma 'am.

In Ezekiel 36, if you go just a little bit further to verse 31, he says, Then shall you remember your own evil ways and your doings that were not good and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations.

Absolutely.

You may struggle with that old man.

Sure.

But the new man should view that old man as an abomination and loathe that old man.

We have no better demonstration of this prophecy than in Romans chapter 7, where you see Paul in that fleshly struggle saying, number one, I do what I don't want to do and I don't do what I want to do.

Who can save me from this body of death? And then he ends by saying, I thank God, my Savior. So he knew that he was saved from it. He knew he was rescued from it. And that someday he would live in a glorious body that could not sin any longer.

But in this life, after we have been converted, there will be times where we think back and absolutely we loathe the old man. Of course, and we should. It's our enemy. He tries to trip us up. He tries to cause us to sin when we are not under the dominion of sin any longer.

Romans 6 .14. And so, yes, we loathe it. It is abominable. I mean, think about us prior to conversion. We talked about this a lot when we were looking at verse 3 in Titus chapter 3. It is we were in an abominable state prior to our conversion, and we loathe that reality.

We never want to return to it. And so, again, this is all prophetic of the new covenant, the better covenant that we live within now, putting us in a position where we no longer are under the dominion of sin and we have the power to overcome it through Christ.

It's just an amazing thing. So we could spend a lot of time in that Ezekiel passage. You'll notice I only picked three verses. Part of that was by design because it could have caused a whole lot of rabbit trails we would have gotten off course.

One of these days we'll revisit it, though. But look at Colossians chapter 2. Again, these will be familiar verses to you because we just finished an exposition of these in Dad's ongoing study. But just as one more quick reminder of this doctrine of regeneration, but worded differently than regeneration, but it's still there.

In chapter 2, starting in verse 11, he says,. Where there is neither Greek nor Jew. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm in chapter 3. One second. Okay. In whom also you are circumcised, listen to this, with the circumcision made without hands.

What a weird phrase, but not so weird when you think about who Paul is, who he was as a Pharisee, and who he's talking to. He's talking to people that believed this, what was meant to be nothing more than an outside external token of a particular covenant, that being the Abrahamic covenant, and it did extend into the Mosaic covenant, too, but circumcision preceded the law.

And so because of that, there was a particular emphasis on circumcision. This was the entire thrust of the book of Galatians. In Acts chapter 15, you have the elders, the apostles, getting together to deliberate on this question.

Do Christians need to be circumcised in order to consummate their salvation? Of course, Paul and Barnabas go up and they're saying, No way, in fact, guess who they took with them to prove it? Titus, a young Greek man who was not circumcised nor felt compelled to be circumcised.

They took Titus' proof to say, Look, look at the work he's doing for the Lord, and he's not circumcised. And so in Acts chapter 15, they have these deliberations. They ultimately come to the conclusion, the elders at Jerusalem, James, I mean, these are the apostles we're talking about.

They, of course, came to the conclusion that, No, circumcision is not necessary any longer, even as a token of the covenant, because we're under a new and better covenant. So look what he's saying here.

Paul understands the mind, the Hebrew mind, his own mind, those around him, what they thought about circumcision. He says, Look, you have been circumcised with the circumcision made without hands. That is regeneration.

It's something we cannot do to ourselves, but rather is done to us. It's a very interesting Hebraic way of saying you have been regenerated. It's the same doctrine. In putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, that's regeneration.

Buried with him in baptism, wherein also you were risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, there's regeneration, who hath raised him from the dead. In you being dead in your sins in the uncircumcision of the flesh, hath he quickened, there's regeneration, brought to life, new life, regeneration.

You have been quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses. So again, the doctrine of regeneration is everywhere, even though the word itself only pops up once in the context of personal salvation.

It is because of this regeneration that we can actually approach people that act like we used to be and can do so in meekness and gentleness. If we can understand God's mercy, we can likewise be merciful in our behavior.

That's the whole point. That's the whole point of the argument that Paul is making. He is reminding us of why we need to obey the first two verses in chapter 3, and it's because we've been regenerated.

We've been made anew. We have been born again. We're quickly running out of time, but just a couple of other thoughts here. Washing is the Greek term loutron, and this is really interesting. It literally means a bath.

So we are immersed in this thing called regeneration, loutron, washing. And the Greek term is used only one other time in the New Testament in this form, loutron. If you were to just take a shot in the dark, and I mean this isn't super duper obvious, but it's something that you all might recall to mind.

One other place in the New Testament this term washing is used. Do you all have an idea of where that might be? Or just the idea. You don't have to give me a chapter or verse, but just a concept. If you think really, it'll drive you nuts when I say it because all of you will be like, of course.

That's like, it's another, basically this word is used in the Greek in another fashion.

In one, it's used in one other place.

Is it washing someone's feet or a baptism or something?

So, not quite, although I'll get to that in a second. Because the root of this word is just your typical external bathing. But this particular form, this Greek word, loutron, is only used in two places.

One is the washing of the spirit, washing of the regeneration of the spirit. The other is the washing of the, what do you think?

The word.

Now, y 'all, the reason why I was curious if it would come to mind, and at this point you guys are thinking, of course, is because how many times have we talked about this here? Usually emphasizing the word aspect of it, we are saved by two things.

The water and the spirit. And when Dad says water, he's talking about the water of the word. Because in Ephesians 5 .26, it says this, that he may sanctify and cleanse it with the washing, same Greek term, only other time it's used, of water by the word.

In Titus 3 .5, it's the washing of regeneration by the spirit. In Ephesians 5, it's the washing of water by the word. The two-fold, it's the two-pronged approach, God's ordained way of bringing men to salvation, the word and the spirit.

We can see then that Paul's intent with his use of the term here, Lutron, is that he uses it only in the context of the word of God and of the Holy Spirit who wrote the word of God. Now, I have to say this really quick.

The root to this word, which is just luo, that is what you're referring to, Ash, which could be used in the context of washing the disciples' feet. It could be used in the term of washing yourself clean.

There is, however, let me just turn here really quick, one place where that word, the root word luo, which just means water, to be just washed with water, it is used in a very analogous context here. It's right here in Revelation 1 -5.

It says,.

And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness and the first begotten of the dead and the prince of kings of the earth, unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood. So right there, Paul, not Paul, the apostle John, uses the more generic Greek term luo, which just means to wash.

He used that term there to talk about the washing of Jesus' blood, which is absolutely a reference to regeneration as well. It's what made regeneration possible. But the only two times that luotron, the more specific term that is used in the New Testament, it's used of the washing of the word, the washing of regeneration.

Isn't that interesting? The word and the spirit are inseparable. The Holy Spirit does not operate separate from the word. And what I mean by that is at a minimum, what the spirit does will be consistent with the word.

Many times he's working through the words of Scripture. Again, he's the author of it. So you would think, yeah, he expects us to be in it and to learn from it.

That's how he speaks to us.

There are times when he can work in miraculous fashion.

Absolutely.

But it will always be consistent with the word that he delivered. So the word and the spirit are inseparable. And it's an incredibly important thing for us to recognize. Now, we have just a few minutes.

I'd like to show you all something interesting. I've got to open up my commentaries here. I want you all, just last week, I gave you all what was a pretty fantastic quote from John Calvin. You guys remember it.

It was in the context of him talking about how while kindness and mercy appeared in the person of Jesus, that doesn't mean that the Old Testament saints didn't understand that God was kind and merciful.

You all remember that? We read this really beautiful quote from Calvin's commentary on Titus chapter 3 on him describing, no, they understood this kindness and this goodness as they anticipated the cross.

You all remember that? We read it last week. Well, this is just a master class example, Calvin here, of how we must remember that the Lord blessed us with unbelievably gifted commentators. And I mean, John Calvin would be near the top.

But they are just commentators. They're not infallible. They're not perfect. It's certainly not the word of God. And right in his following commentary, after the quote that we shared last week in Ken Affirm, listen to his commentary on this idea of the washing of regeneration.