Three Motivations for Living for Jesus

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. - Titus 2:11-14

Before I became a parent, I used to think that I was pretty easygoing, and that I didn’t really have a lot of rules. Maybe the basics: be kind to others, pick up after yourself. That’s it. But I find the longer I’m a parent, the more rules I keep finding out that I have. And the thing is, for the most part I think they’re pretty decent rules. So I found out that I have rules like eat all your supper quickly or it will get cold and it won’t taste good. Or, don’t run out into the street, a car might hit you. Or, don’t run backwards into the table—you might hit your head, and that’s where your brain lives. By the time she was about 5, my daughter started to realize that when she follows these rules life is actually pretty good, and when she doesn’t she usually ends up having an accident and gets hurt. And she actually started to notice this pattern for herself. So I started asking her, “Hey kiddo, do you feel like I’m a mean dad who’s always giving you rules?” And she said, “No I don’t think that, you give me rules because you love me because you’re my daddy, and you don’t want me to get hurt.”

In Titus 2:11-14 the Apostle Paul has just finished giving the believers at Crete a whole list of instructions for daily life. Now maybe he's anticipating an objection here, like “I thought we were free in Christ. This seems like a lot of rules. Why should we do all this?” And Paul points out here that God’s rules come out of God’s character. It’s because of his grace that he gives us instruction. The Puritan author Richard Baxter once pointed out: 

“If any [believer] should be discouraged at the number of duties and directions set before him, [He should] consider, 1. That it is God… that imposes these duties: and who will question his wisdom, goodness, or power to make laws for us and all the world? 2. That every duty and direction is a mercy to you; and therefore should not be a matter of grief to you, but of thanks. They are like the commands of parents to their children, when they tell them to eat their meat, and wear clothes, and go to bed, and eat not poison, and tumble not in the dirt; and be careful not to cut your fingers, and [be careful around] fire and [don’t drown in] water. To leave out any such law or duty, would be to deprive you of an excellent mercy… A student is not offended that he has many books in his library; nor a tradesman that he has a store of many tools; nor the rich at the number of his farms or flocks. Believe it, that if you bring not a malignant quarrelsome mind, you will find that God has not burdened, but blessed you with his holy precepts, and that he has not appointed you one unnecessary or unprofitable duty; but only such as tend to your content, and joy, and happiness.” - from A Christian Directory, Part 1, Introduction

So the grace of God gives us instructions for life. Consider how, to one person who is lost and has messed up their whole life, finding out that God’s Word contains rules and instructions would fill them with gratefulness. “Wait, God’s given us instructions for life? Where?”

OUR FIRST MOTIVATION: THANKFULNESS FOR HIS GRACE

Titus 2:11-12 says that "the grace of God... trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age." It’s God’s grace that teaches us, continually, every day. It’s because of his grace that we have the ability to deny the old way of living, and to press on to live in a new way for God. If our being right with God were all up to us, we would either get discouraged and give up, or we would become proud. But the grace of God teaches us that sin is serious (because Jesus died for sin) and also that he has taken our shame away (because Jesus died for sin). So grace becomes the only way for us to press forward and to continually live for him, without either giving into discouragement or else self-protectively denying the seriousness of our sin and moving forward in arrogance and pride. We show that we trust in God when our lives are marked by (a) not denying the seriousness of our sin, and (b) continually pressing forward in hope. And so Paul says that it’s the grace of God that teaches us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives. 

Now I thought Paul Washer, who’s been a really influential preacher in my life, had a really good definition of what it means to renounce "ungodliness and worldy passions." He said ungodliness is “any attitude or action that demonstrates a lack of reverence toward God and shows a contempt for God’s law.” And so this is an attitude that has to be unlearned. And then he says worldly desires “are desires that are substitutes for God and his will. And they are desires that are telling the world that for us God is not sufficient and God is not satisfying. That is what worldly desires are.” And those worldly passions are disordered desires for anything that comes in the place of God—whether that be romantic relationships, or money, or anything else that causes you to run after it and deny God’s instructions and end up hurting yourself. Instead we need to put our focus on God alone. God alone has appeared, bringing salvation for all people. God alone gives us his grace. God alone gives us good instructions that we can build our lives upon. God alone. 

If we receive his grace, and trust in him, and accept his salvation, then his grace trains us—not just to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, but to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age (Titus 2:12). All the commentators, at least as far back as John Calvin, have pointed out that self-controlled describes the life that we live to ourselves, upright describes the life that we live towards other people, and godly describes the life that we live to God. So the life that God promises us, by God’s grace, is a life well-lived towards ourselves, towards others, and towards God.

OUR SECOND MOTIVATION: HOPE IN HIS FUTURE APPEARING

According to Titus 2:11 and 13, we stand between two appearances of Jesus: it says "the grace of God has appeared... [we] wait for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ." The first is an appearance of grace, and the second is an appearance of glory. Here we are right in the middle. We have received God’s grace, and we look forward to Jesus’ second appearance in glory. But Paul uses three words to describe the hope of the future appearance of Jesus: it will be blessed, it will be glorious, and it will be great.

Why is Jesus’ second appearance “blessed, glorious, and great”—why is it something that we should desire? While he was preaching on Titus 2:11-14, Pastor Tim Keller said this: 

"The second coming is good news for those whose lives are filled with bad news. If you are a slave in Pharaoh’s Egypt or in the southern United States in the early nineteenth century, or if you’re an Israelite in Babylon, or a Kosovar exiled in Albania, or a woman in a culture where when the husband is mad at you he can lock you in a closet or call up his buddies and threaten to have them [beat you up], if you’re a Christian in a region today where AIDS is devastating populations, you don’t yawn when somebody mentions the return of Jesus. The [arrival] of the kingdom depends on the [arrival] of the King, and the [arrival] of the King means justice will at last fill the earth.”

We look forward to the day when Jesus will come back. His return means the end of oppression, and division, and politics, and brokenness, and pain, and depression, and loneliness. His second appearance is blessed because we will be blessed when Jesus returns."

OUR THIRD MOTIVATION: A NEW IDENTITY IN HIS REDEMPTION

Finally, Titus 2:14 says that Jesus has given us a new purpose and a new identity. He "gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous to do good works." Just like Paul narrowed down from “all people” in Titus 2:11 to "us" in 2:14, we can read this passage and narrow it down a little further. “Jesus gave himself for us” — Jesus gave himself for me. He died for me. Our blessed, and glorious, and great God and Savior Jesus Christ—he was betrayed, and whipped, and beaten, and mocked, and crucified with thieves and criminals for me. Why would he do that? The answer is, he did that to redeem us, to purify us, and to adopt us and make us his very own. Who are you in Jesus? Are you stuck in your sin? No, Jesus has redeemed you. Are you held down by shame? No, Jesus has purified you, you are clean from any shame that anyone might try to use against you so that they could hold you down. Are you alone? No, you have been adopted as Jesus’s own possession into his family.

SUMMARY

This is why we follow Jesus: (1) because his grace makes us grateful; (2) because his future appearance gives us hope; and (3) because his sacrifice gives us a new identity and purpose.

May you be motivated to live for Jesus,
-Sean