Grace of God in Christ

3 March                                                                                                            Grace of God in Christ

Read Titus 2:1-15 and reflect on the passage.

Titus 2:11 is the kind of sentence that starts revolutions. It was spoken into the world by Paul, whose life and mission was centered on this core truth; God is on the move bringing grace, forgiveness and life to all people. It can be hard for us to understand how much that insight has transformed the world. In the ancient political and religious environment that obsessed with gender, class, nationality, ethnicity, tribal identity and religion, Paul preached to all people—confident that the work of Christ had opened wide heaven’s gates. Through Christ, grace came rushing out of heaven like a river over-spilling its banks.

In the Kingdom of God, gentiles dined with Jews. Slaves and slave masters bowed together in prayer. Privileged Romans knelt beside the people they had conquered. All of it was possible because the grace of God offered salvation to all people. Today, God still moves to all people. God moves in neighborhoods we don’t drive through and in countries whose names we don’t know.

We have the opportunity still, which Paul had first, to be champions of this indiscriminate grace—calling any and all to know the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

Questions

1. Is there anything in your identity or past that makes it hard to believe that God can freely offer you grace?

2. Is there any person or group you have a hard time believing God can save? How might Titus 2:11 change your view of them?

Prayer

God of radical grace, help me to know and experience Your forgiveness, and help me be a conduit of Your grace.

—Aaron Thompson

Jesus gives us eternal life

9 January

Scripture Reading

Read Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7 and reflect on the passages.

Here’s a truth from how Titus portrays eternal life that is both troubling and comforting—eternal life begins now and lasts forever. This truth is troubling because we are not living one kind of life now that will suddenly and completely change after death. Instead, Titus tells us that Christ’s salvation brings about a change of life in this present age that is just a foretaste of the age to come. Our life now is an appetizer on the banquet table of heaven. Which raises the challenging question, “How does your appetizer taste?” How’s the eternal life that you’re living today?

This truth about eternal life is comforting because it promises us that life today is brimming with promise which will be made full and complete in eternity. We love others now in part, and then in full. We know God now in part, and then in full. We experience the love of God now in part, and then in full. The very best parts of life with God will be brought to fullness and completion when Christ finishes his work once and forever on the day of glory.

Eternal life with Jesus begins today and lasts forever. Praise God!

Questions

1.      How does your appetizer taste? Are there pieces of how you are living now which are out of place at the table of God?

2.      Which piece of life now are you most excited to experience as full and complete in heaven?

  

Prayer

God who gives eternal life, forgive me for when I fall short of the life You call me to, and fill me with hope for the life You will provide. Amen.

—Aaron Thompson