The Spirit and Salvation | Titus 3:3-8
Brian Hedges | May 4, 2025
Let me invite you to turn in your Bibles today to Titus 3. 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus in your New Testament. Titus 3; it’s before Hebrews, if you have difficulty finding it. It’s a short little book. You can also read the text on the screen here in just a moment.
Today we’re continuing in a series we began last week called “The Spirit and His Work.” We began last week with this quotation from Billy Graham, who said that we have two great needs as human beings. We need forgiveness for our sins, and we need goodness, and God meets those two needs through his two great gifts, the gift of Calvary and the gift of Pentecost—the gift of his Son and the gift of his Spirit.
We could say that all of salvation really comes down to these two great gifts, the Son of God, given by God for us to accomplish our salvation; and the Holy Spirit, sent to apply that salvation to our hearts and lives.
This morning, we want to dig into this passage of Scripture, Titus 3, to think about the Spirit and salvation. What is it that the Spirit actually does to save us?
So Titus 3; we’ll read Titus 3:3-8 and then look at three things from this text together. Titus 3, beginning in verse 3. Paul is writing, and he says,
“For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.”
This is God’s word.
Now, this is one of the great Pauline snapshots of the doctrine of salvation, where he gives us a summary of some of the things that God has done through Christ and through the Spirit to bring salvation into our lives. There’s much more here than we can cover this morning, but I want to focus especially on the work of the Spirit. What is it that the Spirit does in our lives to save us? I think we can work through this passage by looking at three things:
1. Why We Need the Spirit’s Saving Work
2. What the Spirit Does to Save Us
3. The Resulting Changes in Our Lives
1. Why We Need the Spirit’s Saving Work
So first of all, why we need the Spirit’s saving work. Now, did you notice as we read this passage that it gives us kind of a before and after picture of the Christian? You’ve seen these online—you’ve seen before and after pictures, right? Before someone goes on, you know, a weight loss program or signs up for Beach Body or whatever, and then there’s the promised after. “This is what you’ll get if you go through the program.”
The Bible also gives us before and after pictures, but it’s before Christ and then after Christ. It’s before you’re a Christian, after you’re a Christian; before you experience the work of God’s Spirit bringing salvation into your heart and life, and then after.
Here’s the before picture in verse 3, and it shows us why we need the Spirit’s saving work. Notice what Paul says, and notice that he includes himself in this. He says,
“For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.”
It’s not a very pretty picture, is it? This is a picture of someone who is not only disobedient to God, this is a picture of someone who is enslaved. They are absolutely in bondage to their passions and to their pleasures. This is someone who is driven by their desires, and it’s someone whose relationships are falling apart as a result.
Notice he says we were “passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.” This is a picture of someone without Christ and without the hope of the gospel and without the transforming work of the Spirit in their lives. And friends, this is a picture of every single one of us before we became Christians. This is what we were by nature. This is what the world is like.
All you have to do is pay attention to what’s going on in the world around us and you see this every day. You see people hated by others, hating one another. You see people living in malice and envy and so on, and it’s all rooted in this fallen, depraved relationship with God.
Now, this is only one of a few places in Scripture that gives us this portrait of life outside of Christ, life before Christ. I want to read a couple of other passages to you, to kind of fill out this picture, because we need the various metaphors that the Bible uses to describe what we were and why we need the Spirit’s saving work. So here’s another passage, Ephesians 2:1-3. It says,
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—” Of course, he’s talking here about our great archenemy, Satan, the devil. “—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh.” Okay, so that corresponds with Titus 3. Enslaved to passions and pleasures, we lived in the passions of our flesh, “carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” This shows what God’s verdict is on such a lifestyle. It means that we are subject to the wrath of God, the judgment of God.
Alright, one more picture here, Ephesians 4:17-19. Again, this is similar, but the language is slightly different, and it’s just filling out this picture for us. So Ephesians 4 says,
“Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.”
Now, you put all that together, and it’s not a pretty picture. Here’s a picture of someone who is enslaved, they are darkened, they are alienated from God, they’re separated from the life of God. Their hearts are hard and calloused. They’re greedy, driven by the desires of the flesh. In one word, they are dead. They’re dead to God. They’re dead in their trespasses and in their sins. In other words, they’re entirely without spiritual life, entirely without what the Bible calls eternal life. They’re without God and without hope in this world.
Now, when you read descriptions of people who are lost, such as those descriptions we just read, it would be easy, I think, for some of us to think, “Oh, yeah, of course. That’s what the world is like. That’s what immoral people are like. That’s what people who don’t keep their basic commitments, you know, they’re not committed to their families, they’re not committed to church, they’re not really good citizens, they’re not really good neighbors—that’s what the immoral people—that’s what the people out there are like.”
But what I want you to see is that the Scriptures say not only that this is what the obviously wicked people are like, but this is also what religious people are like if they are without Christ.
I want to just compare this with one other passage of Scripture now, and it’s a story. It’s a story that many of us will be familiar with when a very righteous man, a very religious man, a very moral man sought out Jesus to have a conversation with Jesus. This man was a Pharisee. He probably fasted a couple of times a week, he probably gave at least ten percent of all of his possessions. He probably prayed several times a day. He knew the Bible, he was religious. But Jesus said that he also was in deep need. This is in John 3. It says,
“Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. [He was probably on the council of the Jews, the Sanhedrin.] This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’”
Nicodemus doesn’t even understand it. He doesn’t even understand what Jesus is talking about. He’s like, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” He’s missing the truth that Jesus is teaching him. So Jesus answers in verse 5,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”
What Jesus is essentially saying to Nicodemus is that, “Nicodemus, you’ve got to start all over again. You can’t enter into the kingdom of God—you can’t even see the kingdom of God—merely by human work or human ingenuity, human performance. You need something divine, supernatural, a miraculous intervention. You have to start all over again. You need to be born from above. You need to be born of the Spirit.”
Friends, that’s what we all need. That’s what every single one of us needs if we are to have this eternal life, if we are to experience the saving work of God.
I think one of the great illustrations of this in literature is C.S. Lewis’s theological fantasy The Great Divorce. How many of you have read The Great Divorce? Let me see your hands. Okay, that’s a lot of hands in this room. That’s great. If you haven’t read it, you should read it. It’s a short book; you could read it, you know, on a leisurely Saturday afternoon. You could read this book in just a few hours.
It is the story of a busload of ghosts from hell who take an excursion into the borderlands of heaven, and they are given an opportunity to stay if they want to. Now, it’s not trying to teach anything about post mortem salvation, salvation after death. It’s a fantasy novel, but it’s illustrating for us the human condition.
What’s so interesting in this book is that one by one, the ghosts, even when they are faced with the glories of heaven, one by one, all except for one choose to get back on the bus and go back to hell, because they can’t bear the weight of the glory of heaven, and because they refuse to let go of their petty jealousies and their pride and their greed and their insecurities and their resentment. Only one of the ghosts, and him only through a painful process of purification, sanctification, he’s the only one who actually stays.
It’s illustrating for us just how impossible it is for human beings, apart from a spiritual transformation, to even have a desire for God, a taste for God, a love for spiritual things. It’s absolutely impossible! You can’t see the kingdom, you can’t enter the kingdom, you can’t even desire the kingdom apart from the work of the Spirit of God.
There’s a great little devotional book, a book of prayer, that I highly recommend. It’s called The Valley of Vision, and it’s a collection of Puritan prayers and devotions. There’s one prayer in particular that’s titled “Regeneration,” and it’s really all about what we’re talking about this morning, in the form of a prayer. Here’s just a portion of it. I slightly updated the language for you, but this is essentially it. This Puritan said, “I was dead in iniquities, having no eyes to see you, no ears to hear you, no taste to relish your joys, no wisdom to know you.”
That was our state. That was our condition. For some of you this morning, that may be your state and your condition right now. You don’t have a taste for this, you don’t desire this, you don’t want this. You’re here for some other reason, but not for this, not because you desire God. This is why we need an intervention, a transformation, a powerful, mighty work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives.
2. What the Spirit Does to Save Us
So point number two, what then does the Spirit do? What is it that the Spirit does to save us?
As I said in the introduction, all of our salvation could be broken down into the accomplishment and the application of salvation. Salvation is accomplished by the Son; it is applied by the Spirit.
Within the orbit of the Spirit’s work are many different things. We don’t have time to talk about all of them this morning. We could talk about how the Spirit convicts us of sin. Jesus said that the Spirit would come and convict people of sin and righteousness and judgment.
We could talk about the Spirit of God indwelling our hearts. Jesus said the Spirit, or the Comforter, the Advocate, he is with you and he will be in you.
We could talk about how the Spirit is the Spirit of adoption and how assurance of salvation comes because of the witness of the Spirit in our hearts and lives.
I’m not going to cover any of that this morning. We could talk about the whole work of sanctification and how we live the Christian life in the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s actually the sermon for next week.
What I want to do is just focus on one aspect of the Spirit’s work, and it’s this great theological word that we see in Titus 3:5, the word regeneration. Regeneration. Let me give you a definition, and then let’s break things down into four clarifications so that we really understand what regeneration is. What I want to try to do is clarify the nature of the regenerating work of the Spirit, of new birth, so that we don’t confuse it, because I think a lot of people are confused about what regeneration is, what new birth is, what it entails. So I’m going to give you four statements to help clarify it.
So first of all, a definition. I’m just going to borrow here from J.I. Packer. This is from his little book Concise Theology. Packer says,
“Regeneration is a New Testament concept that grew, it seems, out of the parabolic picture-phrase that Jesus used to show Nicodemus the inwardness and depth of the change that even religious Jews must undergo if they were ever to see and enter the kingdom of God and to have eternal life. [We just read that passage, John 3.] Jesus pictured the change as being born again. The concept is of God renovating the heart.”
Now just stop right there. Have you ever done a home renovation project? Maybe you’ve even flipped a house. Have you ever taken a house all the way down to the studs, where you replace the drywall, you pull out the carpet, you put in new carpet, new tile, new flooring, you paint all the walls, you move walls around, you install new plumbing, you change out the wire—you do everything. I mean, you completely renovate the house. It looks like a brand new house, doesn’t it, because it’s a work of renovation, of renewal.
That’s what Packer is saying this regeneration is like. The concept is of God renovating the heart, the core of a person’s being. How does he do it? “By implanting a new principle of desire, purpose, and action, a dispositional dynamic that finds expression in positive response to the gospel and its Christ.”
That’s a pretty good definition. Here’s what Paul said.
“But when the goodness and lovingkindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our Savior.”
So let’s clarify. What does this mean? I want to say what it is and what it isn’t, and four different ways to help clarify the nature of new birth.
(1) First of all, new birth or regeneration is a spiritual transformation, not a momentary decision.
Sometimes new birth is confused with walking the aisle, or with praying a prayer, or for making a decision for Christ. Now, don’t misunderstand me. Everyone who’s born again will believe in Jesus Christ; and a genuine, heartfelt, enduring faith in Jesus Christ is one of the indisputable marks of someone who is born again. But don’t confuse the outward action with the inward and spiritual transformation of the Holy Spirit. This often happens in an evangelistic context when people are encouraged in an emotional moment to walk an aisle, to come forward, to pray a prayer, and then assured, sometimes on the spot, “Congratulations! You are now a member of the family of God. You’ve just been born again.”
Listen, even Billy Graham, who was the person in the twentieth century who most popularized the invitation system—even Billy Graham in his book on the Holy Spirit says that there is a difference between walking the aisle and the actual work of the Holy Spirit in someone being born again. Those are not the same thing.
One reason in our church why we don’t do a “come forward” invitation every Sunday is because we don’t want people to confuse the work of the Spirit in their hearts with an emotional response or a response in the moment that may not last.
Now, we want you to respond to the gospel. Every week the sermon is, “Look to Christ, trust in Christ, turn from your sin and believe in Jesus.” That is the message of this church. That’s the gospel, to trust in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. Respond to that. But it’s not the response that you do at an altar at church. This is the work of the Holy Spirit and its abiding effects.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones one time told a story—Lloyd-Jones, of course, was that famous Welsh pastor in the twentieth century; he pastored a church in London for years. He told a story from his early ministry in Wales, where he had preached powerfully on a Sunday night, and there was a man attending who was not a Christian. The next day, Lloyd-Jones ran into him in town. And the man said, “Oh, pastor, there’s such a wonderful sermon. It’s too bad that you didn’t give an invitation! If you had invited me to respond last night, I would have come forward.”
Lloyd-Jones said, “Well, it’s not too late. Why don’t we stop now? Why don’t you trust in Christ right now? Why don’t you become a Christian right now?”
He said, “Oh, no. No. But if you’d asked me last night, I would have come forward. But I don’t want to now.”
Lloyd-Jones said, “My dear friend, if what happened to you last night doesn’t even last for twenty-four hours, I’m not interested in it. You don’t yet see your need for Christ. You don’t yet see your condition.”
See, this is what I’m getting at here. We’re not talking about just a momentary decision but a deep spiritual transformation. You have to be born again. You have to be born of the Spirit. You have to have something happen in your heart that lasts for more than just twenty-four hours, more than just a moment. It’s more than just a spiritual high at the end of a church service. Regeneration is a spiritual transformation, not a momentary decision.
(2) Number two: regeneration or new birth is an inward cleansing, not an outward washing.
Okay, the passage says, “God saved us, not because works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration.” What does that mean? “The washing of regeneration.” What’s the washing?
Many commentators, even good commentators, have said, “Oh, that’s a reference to baptism. It’s the washing of regeneration. It’s the labor of baptism or it’s the baptismal pool. And baptism is the regenerating sacrament.”
They would say the same thing about John 3, when Jesus says, “You must be born of water and of the Spirit.” They say, “That’s baptism. You have to be born of the water baptism and of the Spirit of God.”
I think that’s a mistake. I think it’s a mistake, and I think it’s missing the Old Testament background to both Jesus’ and Paul’s understanding of the work of the Spirit.
Here’s the background. It’s the great prophet Ezekiel, in Ezekiel 36:25-27. He’s giving us here the words of God, who says, “I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new Spirit I’ll put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”
This is a spiritual cleansing. It’s an inward work of the Spirit of God that cleans up our hearts and our lives. It cleanses us from our idols, and that gives us a new heart, a heart that desires God.
We know even from the New Testament that baptism alone is not sufficient for anything. In Acts 8, Simon the magician is baptized. He’s baptized, and then he tries to buy the power of the Holy Spirit, and Peter rebukes him for trying to obtain the gift of God with money and says, “Your heart is not right in the sight of God. You are in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity.” He’s been baptized. He hasn’t been regenerated. He hasn’t experienced this.
This is important, because sometimes people confuse this. I’ve met people across the years that live in our area, maybe live in the neighborhood or so on; I tell them the church I’m a part of, and they say, “Oh, yeah. I was saved by Larry Whiteford at that church.”
Now, for those of you don’t know, Larry Whiteford was the founding pastor of our church. I knew Larry. Larry was a good man; preached, loved Jesus, baptized a lot of people. But Larry Whiteford didn’t save anybody, and being baptized by Larry Whiteford didn’t save anybody, any more than being baptized by Brian Hedges saves anybody. I baptized people who’ve fallen away. Baptism isn’t what does it! The preacher isn’t what does it! Church isn’t what does it! You have to be saved by Jesus through the Spirit, where the Spirit does something in your life that doesn’t just fade away in time, but it has a lasting and abiding effect.
So regeneration, new birth, is a spiritual transformation, not a momentary decision; it is an inward cleansing, not an outward washing.
(3) Number three, it is a new creation, not just a reformation of the old creation. In other words, it’s not simply moral change. It’s not simply behavior modification. In fact, it’s not your works at all, because the text says, “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”
It’s a work of renewal. This word “regeneration” is actually a very powerful word. It’s only used two times in the New Testament. It is the word palingenesia. It’s a complex Greek word—palin, again; genesis, beginning. Of course, it’s our word for the beginning of the first book of the Bible. So it is a new beginning.
It was a word that was actually used by the stoics to describe the cyclical rebirth of the world. It seems that both Jesus and Paul—Jesus uses this word in the Gospel of Matthew to talk about the renewal of creation at the end of time, and Paul uses it to talk about the renewal of a human being in the middle of time, when the power of the new creation invades his life and makes him new. That’s why Paul can say in 2 Corinthians 5, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
This is something more than a mere behavior modification. Listen, behavior modification is great. Some of you need to modify your behavior. Children often need to modify their behavior. Psychologists help us to modify behavior. It’s a good thing. If your behavior is bad, modify it. Change it. And the Spirit of God will certainly bring about behavioral change, but you can modify your behavior and your heart be left untouched. You can change around the old without having really been born anew.
What we need is something deeper than a change in behavior. We need a deep and profound transformation of our hearts, and it is so profound that the Bible says it’s a brand new creation. It is as much a miracle as what God did when he first spoke light into the darkness and created the world. And now he speaks light into the darkness of your heart, and he creates something new in you.
(4) Number four: regeneration or new birth is the beginning of new desires, not just new beliefs.
Beliefs are important. Christian doctrine is important. Believing the gospel is important. But as John Piper has said, the problem with the devil is not his theology, but his desires. You can have the right theology, the right doctrine, the right beliefs; if you don’t have desires for God, then you don’t have the Spirit of God.
Jonathan Edwards, the great theologian of the Great Awakening—we might even call him the theologian of the Holy Spirit—Jonathan Edwards said,
“The first effect of the power of God in the heart in regeneration is to give the heart a divine taste [or sense], to cause it to have a relish of the loveliness and the sweetness of the excellence of the divine nature.”
He famously used the illustration of honey. He said, “I can describe for you what honey is like, but I can’t give you a taste of the sweetness of honey.” For that, you have to actually taste the honey, a drop of honey on your tongue. Then you have a knowledge of the honey that’s different than anything you can read in a book.
I can tell you about theological truths and spiritual things and explain doctrine and all that—I can do all of that. I can’t give you a love for it. I can’t give you a taste for it. I can’t make you desire God and see him as good and beautiful and powerful and worthy of your worship and adoration and affection and trust. That’s the work of the Spirit. That’s what the Spirit does in our hearts and lives.
I think some of the greatest illustrations of this come from that eighteenth-century evangelical awakening of which Jonathan Edwards is a part. Here’s just a little snapshot of it. Three of the great figures in this awakening were George Whitefield, John Wesley, and Charles Wesley.
George Whitefield was actually the first one to come to Christ. They’d known each other. They were in Oxford, they were at the Holy Club; and listen, these guys were more religious than any of us will ever be. They were more disciplined in spiritual disciplines than any of us will ever be. They were more zealous in good works than any of us will ever be. I mean, if you look at them externally, you would think these are wonderful Christians. But they were legalistic, they had no assurance, they had no real love for God. They were essentially killing themselves, almost killing themselves through their attempts to make themselves right, to earn favor with God. George Whitefield literally almost died from fasting so much he almost fasted himself to death.
Someone gave him a copy of a little Puritan book called The Life of God in the Soul of Man, written by Henry Scougal, and that book was God’s instrument to turn Whitefield around. It happened in 1738.
It was two years later before John Wesley had his famous experience in the Aldersgate Street Bible study, when he said, “My heart was strangely warmed and I felt that I believed upon Christ and was born again,” and so on.
It was actually two or three days before that that Charles Wesley, the brother of John, had his experience.
So you had Whitefield, then you had Charles, then you had John. You had the great preacher, the great organizer (that was John), and the great poet of the Great Awakening.
Charles Wesley, partly through the witness and the preaching of Whitefield, partly through the encouragement of a Moravian brother named Peter Bowler, on May 21, 1738, a Pentecost Sunday, came to really understand and embrace the gospel. He was born again, and two days later, he wrote a hymn about his conversion. The biographer Arnold Dallimore believes that it was the hymn we sang this morning, “And Can It Be,” with these words. Now, listen to these words again, knowing a little bit of his experience. Here’s this religious guy, working himself to death but an utter failure in ministry, absolutely without joy, without peace, without any real hope, without any assurance of salvation; and then he comes to a genuine faith in Christ, he’s born again, and two days later, he says,
“Long my imprisoned Spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night.
Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray;
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light!
My chains feel off, my heart was free;
I rose, went forth, and followed thee.
Amazing love, how can it be
That thou, my God, shouldst die for me?”
Has that happened to you? Has something happened to you where you know that you’re loved by God and that by God’s free, unmerited, undeserved grace—not because of any works that you’ve done at all, but because of his grace given to you in Christ and through the Spirit—that you see that your sins can be completely and fully forgiven and that by grace, you can be accepted by God, a son or a daughter of God? The Spirit has invaded your heart, given you a new orientation, a new desire for God, changing you from the inside out. That’s what the Spirit does.
3. The Resulting Changes in Our Lives
What are the results in our lives? Point number three, real briefly, the resulting changes in our lives. I’ve already hinted at some of them: new desire for God, life in Christ, new joy in Christ, faith in Christ—all of these things. There are so many changes. Really, everything in the Christian life flows out of this. The rest of the series is going to be exploring the various dimensions of that, the Spirit’s work in our Christian lives and through the Word and in prayer and in the church and in mission.
Let me just point out a couple of things from the text this morning. Look at Titus 3:7-8.
“So that…” Circle those words, alright? Those little words are important. That’s giving us a purpose clause. It’s telling us the reason why we were saved by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit. “So that, being justified by His grace,” that’s another great theological word we don’t have time for this morning, “we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” And then verse 8, “The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.”
What’s the resulting change in the life of a person who has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit? You get a new hope. You become an heir, with the hope of eternal life, a new hope. “We are born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” 1 Peter says. You have a new hope, and you are called to a new lifestyle. Verse 8: “Teach these things so that they will be devoted to good works.”
Now, as you notice that earlier in the passage Paul goes out of his way to say you’re not saved by doing works of righteousness? That’s not what saves you! But here he says, if you have been saved, if they have been saved, you teach these things so that they will be devoted to good works. Good works have a place in the life of the Christian, but not as that which saves you. They are what you devote yourself to in response to the God who saves you by His grace.
What do those good works entail? Well, go back to Titus 3:1-2. Just two more verses. I’m almost done. This is what begins the whole passage, okay? I didn’t read this at the beginning, but this is very characteristic of Paul, who never gives us theology in a vacuum. He never gives us theology in the abstract. He’s always dealing with a pastoral situation. He’s dealing with a problem in the church, or he’s teaching a way to live in the church, and the doctrine comes in, the theology comes in to motivate and inspire and encourage and empower us to live in the way God’s calling us to live.
Here’s the reason. He says, “Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient,” and so on, “but God,” in his lovingkindness, in his mercy, and his grace “has saved us through the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit.”
Paul is telling them this because he wants them to be good citizens. He wants them to be good neighbors. He wants them to be better employees. He wants them to be better family members.
Listen: if your Christianity does not affect the way you post on social media, it hasn’t gone deep enough yet. If it hasn’t affected your political discourse, it hasn’t gone deep enough yet. If it hasn’t affected the way you treat one another as husbands and wives, and parents and children, and brothers and sisters, it hasn’t gone deep enough yet. I’m not saying that means you’re not born again, but I’m saying the outworking of the implications of the work of the Spirit in our hearts and our lives extends to every aspect of our lives. It should produce this kind of life, a life where we speak evil of no one, when we are ready for every good work, where we are not quarrelsome, but we are gentle, where we show perfect courtesy to others. We remember how foolish we were. We remember how enslaved we were, how far from God we were. We remember how much grace God has shown us. And the recognition of that inspires us to show grace and courtesy and kindness to those around us.
The implications of new birth in the Christian life are so far-reaching that it touches every domain of human existence.
Let me end in this way. Earlier, I quoted this prayer from The Valley Of Vision called “Regeneration.” Let me read you more of the prayer. This isn’t quite all of it, but it’s most of it. Let me encourage you to respond in one of two ways today. If you are a Christian, let this be your prayer, a prayer of gratitude and recognition as you think about what God has done for you and for your soul. If you’re not a Christian, then turn this into a prayer that God would do this for you, this morning, that God would do what this prayer celebrates God doing.
“O God of the highest heaven,
occupy the throne of my heart,
take full possession and reign supreme,
lay low every rebel lust,
let no vile passion resist thy holy war;
manifest thy mighty power,
and make me thine forever.
“Thou art worthy to be
praised with my every breath,
loved with my every faculty of soul,
served with my every act of life.
“Thou hast loved me, espoused me, received me,
purchased, washed, favored, clothed, adorned me,
when I was a worthless, vile, soiled, polluted.
“I was dead in iniquities,
having no eyes to see thee,
no ears to hear thee,
no taste to relish thy joys,
no intelligence to know thee;
But thy Spirit has quickened me,
has brought me into a new world as a new creature,
has given me spiritual perception,
has opened to me thy Word as light, guide, solace, joy.
“Thy presence is to me a treasure of unending peace…
O help me then to walk worthy of thy love,
of my hopes, and my vocation.
“Keep me, for I cannot keep myself;
Protect me that no evil befall me;
Let me lay aside every sin…
Help me to walk by thy side, lean on thy arm,
hold converse with thee,
That I may be salt of the earth
and a blessing to all.”
Let’s pray.
Oh Lord, we pray that you would do this in our hearts and in our lives, if you’ve never done so before; that for those who are in the darkness, in the death of sin, who are enslaved by passions and pleasures, who have no eyes to see you at this moment, we pray that your Spirit would invade their hearts, flood their hearts with light, quicken them to spiritual life, give them a desire for you and a taste for spiritual reality. Impart to them the gifts of faith and repentance and a new love for Christ. Start them on this new journey.
For all this morning who are believers in Christ, we pray for a renewal of our hope, a renewal of our hearts and our minds by the grace of your Spirit. Lord, for some of us, we’ve left our first love. We have grieved the Spirit. We have backslidden. We have fallen away in some way or another. Our hearts have grown hard, and we are not as close to you as we once were. For that we ask you, Lord, to forgive us and to renew us this morning by your grace, and to flood our hearts once again with your Spirit. Lord, we are absolutely dependent on you for every ounce of spiritual life. There’s nothing we can do apart from your grace and your mercy. So we ask you, Lord, to create in us new hearts today, clean hearts, to renew a right spirit within us, to once again draw near to us and fill us, that we might know you and walk with you and love you as you deserve to be loved.
As we come to the Lord’s table this morning, we ask you to meet with us through the Spirit, so that as we feed on the physical elements of the bread and the juice, we would, by faith, fix our hearts and our minds on Christ and feed on him, who is the living bread, the one who gave his life for the life of the world. We pray that in doing this, you would give us a deep assurance of our pardon through Christ, crucified and risen for us.
This is all the work of your Spirit. We submit ourselves now to you. We pray that you would have your way in our hearts and that you would be glorified in our continuing worship together. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
