The annual Association Seminar took place in January at Warboys Church. Alan Taylor was the speaker and about sixty people from the churches were together to listen to three seminars and to enjoy one another's company.
It was a very good occasion. We are very grateful to the church at Warboys for hosting the event and to Alan Taylor for working so hard to prepare a series of talks which were very helpful to everyone present.
A report of the seminar has been prepared for Grace magazine. It can be read here.
Alan has kindly made available his notes.
“The Gospel: All of grace, for all of life.”
Introduction: This is not a seminar on ’Evangelism’, or, ‘Preaching the Gospel’, or even on ‘Guarding the gospel’. It is rather an emphasis to Christian believers as to exactly what has happened to us through receiving the gospel, and how that is to affect us for all of living and for the rest of our life.
Titus 2:11-14, & 3: 3-7 It is to the Christian believers all this is to be stressed. How do we know this? See 2:15 and 3:8. This emphasis was perhaps what Paul was referring to in 1:5. in addition to appointing elders.
Sitting with Titus, hearing what Paul is emphasising, it would be something like this: ‘Never forget what the gospel of salvation is all about. NB v4, 5. Expand on it, revel in its experience, and build all the rest of your life upon it.’
# I. What exactly is being emphasised, to the believer, in terms of the gospel? Look at Titus 3: 3-8. Note three emphases: Regeneration [5] [re-birth], justification [7], and all down to God’s grace [4-7]. Let’s approach these three in a slightly different order and make it into four points! [1] Justification, or standing and status.
[2] All of grace.
[3] Regeneration.
[4] All of grace.
[1] Justification, or standing. V7
He gives us a new standing with God.V7 God declares us righteous in Christ, through His sin-bearing death on the cross. It’s not the intention in this seminar that we now, at this point, move into a long and detailed lecture in systematic theology on ‘Justification by Faith Alone’ etc.
But let me simply re-emphasise the components of the biblical teaching: Guilt & condemnation before God. the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. our sin and guilt put to His account; His righteousness imputed to our account; When we come to Him in faith alone.2. Corinthians 5: 21
[2] All of grace. Verses 5, 7Romans 3: 21-26, etc. We realise why this is the heart of the gospel that has been entrusted to the church to preach and to communicate to all nations:
Because this is the only way, through what He does for us in the gospel, that God saves us. Saves us from condemnation, from our own guilt, from an eternity of hell. See v4, re-emphasised in v5. The great obstacle we come up against in communicating this gospel of grace is the pride/self-righteousness of the human heart. See v5. This is the real reason for rejecting the Cross of Christ. Illustrate: the rail tunnel in the Eiger & the door in it onto the mountain 3000’ up. A way of escape rejected.
Why is this to be stressed to the church? V8
§ Because the default setting of the human heart is self-righteousness, and pride.
§ Because this is also the danger, after God has saved us, of mentally reverting to ‘religion’. And is this the brand of Christianity we want to show to our unconverted friends?
§ We were accepted by a holy God through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Do we think that somehow we eventually ‘graduate’, and in our sanctified lives and increasing knowledge and maturity [and perhaps our calling to pastoral/missionary service] and acceptable to God now for these reasons?
But salvation means more than ‘having been justified by His grace’ (7), however. It also includes the ‘washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit’ (5).
[3] Regeneration. This text takes some figuring out! ‘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, ….’ [ESV]
‘washing’ (loutron) is almost certainly a reference to water baptism. All the Early Church fathers took it in this way. Calvin, also, says he has no doubt that there is at least an allusion here to baptism. This does not mean that Paul or they taught baptismal regeneration. Baptism rather is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, namely the washing away of sins, and of the new birth by the Holy Spirit. Care must be taken of not confusing the sign (baptism) with the thing signified (salvation).
It is through the power of the Holy Spirit that God inwardly regenerates an individual, or gives them new birth, making them a new creation. And it is by the same outpoured Spirit that He continues to renew that individual ….. as He sanctifies us.
These two works of God are parallel and concurrent. Salvation includes both. We must never confuse justification and regeneration, and we must never separate them.
[4] All of grace.
The grace of God comes to us in the PERSON of Jesus Christ. Lets move to Titus 2: 11ff“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, …’ [ESV]. Revised Version is similar.
§ Possibly it could be referring to the message of the gospel ‘appearing’ in Crete, but more probably is a reference to Jesus Christ - His Nativity,
§ appearing’ – epiphaneia , ‘revealing’, to be viewed’ v11, 13, 3:4. Used in N.T 4x for 1st Advent, 6x for 2nd Advent. Both here in 11-13
§ ‘glorious appearing’ – better, ‘the appearing of the glory of …’.
§ Incarnation … 3:4, 6 “The New World’s soldiers came to harvest the fruits of victory without, as the British saw it, having endured their share of the Old World’s pain” [ Max Hastings, ‘Armageddon’ p2.]
Not so our Jesus! Hebrews 4:14ff
“Light of the world, You stepped down into darkness”
# II. How exactly is all this going to work out in all of life?
The germination of a bean seed; shoot that grows is not separate from the seed, but emerges from it and is part of it. So the gospel of salvation is not something that just drops us into the kingdom, and from there we are left to our own devices. How we live grows out of the experience of the grace of God in salvation. We are not to be passive in all this of course. Galatians 5: 25.
This is what Paul wants Titus to hear, and then to stress to others.
Look again Titus 2: 1-10, and then Titus 3: 1-3, etc.
Older men, older women, young women, young men, slaves, and all believers (3:1, 2). NB v10b – “… attractive, or ‘adorn’.” At every stage of our life, our natural lives, whatever age, self-control is emphasised, and responsibility of being role-models.
How can we live like this? Go back to the germinating bean again.
God’s gift of grace in salvation is also a new birth – the indwelling of the Spirit of God, a new dynamic; wherever we go, whoever we are, whatever our situation, at whatever age we are at – this is the reality of the Christian believer’s life.
Christian living is not simply trying to live a good life, a moral life. That again is religion. “I obey and then I’ll be accepted”. Gospel life is “I’m accepted in Christ, and therefore I obey”. The first Christian missionaries (in Acts) never simply exhorted people to live according to Biblical, moral precepts. They exhorted them to be changed from the inside out through faith in the crucified and risen Christ.
If all this is true of us as new creatures in Jesus Christ, then -
§ It is true of us as we live in this world, in the society and culture which is our environment.
§ SOCIETY: the people, the families who live in the cities, towns, villages of the nation; the laws that govern them, the economics that affect then, the relationships and inter-relationships of people and the authorities, the businesses and work situations and the lack of work, and the resulting social standards of the relative poor, affluent, rich and mega-rich. 1. John 2:15 – ‘the world’.
§ A society’s CULTUREis a “set of practices, attitudes, values, and beliefs which are rooted in common understandings of the big questions – where life comes from, what life means, who we are, and what is important in what we spend our time doing in the years allotted to us.” [based on Keller]Everyone has some assumed answers to such questions, and every set of answers shapes culture:
the way we treat the material world the way we relate the individual to the family the way we handle sex, money, power the way we make decisions and set priorities the way we regard time and skills the way we regard life and death,
Let’s unpack some of the applications of this as they mix and mingle together.
[i] There will inevitably be a clash of values, a clash of worlds. The gospel of grace in Jesus Christ brings us into His kingdom and His kingdom (rule) into our lives. Christian values will be kingdom values.
[ii] In our individual lives, and in family lives, we must renew our thinking to everything that is and has been a part of our culture. This renewing of the mind [Romans 12] is coming out of the experience of salvation, out of the gospel of salvation, as the result of the grace of God working in our whole person. So we need to think about
- the Gospel and work, - the Gospel and wealth, - the Gospel and vocational skills, - the Gospel and sexual relationships, etc.
The gift-nature of these things (unrecognised by the unconverted) makes us accountable to God. E.g. Wealth. Money can exercise power over us, and we are in danger of idolatry – sin is making good things into ultimate things.
[iii] What are we going to do and not do, when as the church we are not together in one place but out in our homes, work places, and neighbourhoods? Illustrate: the new family in the street, and their cat who sits at the window and looks out on a alien territory. Are we sufficiently spiritually robust to venture out of the Christian zone? How will Matthew 5:13, 14 become effective if we are isolated from society?
I don’t have to become a sinner to identify with unbelievers – I am already a sinner. But I don’t have to sin to identify with the unbeliever, for I am a redeemed sinner in Christ and indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
[iv] God has made us new by His grace to serve Him where He places us. He it is who has given us skills and interests. It is His prerogative alone to takes us and call us out of that job or profession, and into a particular Bible-ministry in a ‘full-time’ way. But I believe strongly that we should not devalue, unintentionally or otherwise, the work /vocation that is ours outside of the ‘church zone’.
We pray for the school teacher who has been obedient to the Lord’s calling and gone to teach in a ‘missionary’ situation in another culture and nation. Likewise, we pray for the doctor or nurse who is working in a ‘missionary’ situation in another country. That is good and our responsibility. But what about prayer for the Christian teacher battling on in a comprehensive school in one of our cities or towns? What about prayer for the Christian nurse or doctor working in the NHS in UK? Are they just ‘working’, or are they in their work and life-witness serving God?
Quote from John Newton:
“I am not what I want to be, I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world. But still, I am not what I, at one time, used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.”
