Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / What Makes the Training of Grace Christian Titus 2:11–15, Part 2

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What Makes the Training of Grace Christian Titus 2:11–15, Part 2 · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Speaker 1: This is part two of Titus two eleven to fifteen.
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  Speaker 1: For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for
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  Speaker 1: all people, training us in order that, having renounced on
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  Speaker 1: godliness and worldly passions, we might live self controlled, upright,
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  Speaker 1: in godly lives in the present age, waiting for our
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  Speaker 1: blessed hope, even the appearing of the glory of our
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  Speaker 1: great God and savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for
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  Speaker 1: us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify
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  Speaker 1: for himself a people for his own possession, who are
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  Speaker 1: zealous for good works. Declare these things and exhort and
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  Speaker 1: rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you. So
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  Speaker 1: we're going to look mainly at what does this involve.
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  Speaker 1: How does train God's people? How does bringing salvation for
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  Speaker 1: all effect? Training? Effective training in God's elect So God
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  Speaker 1: teach us how we are trained for living upright, godly,
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  Speaker 1: self controlled lives in the present age. I assis in Jesus name, Amen.
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  Speaker 1: So grace appears, bringing salvation for all. It is sufficient
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  Speaker 1: for all, and it is effective through this training for
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  Speaker 1: God's elect And the reason I mention God's elect rather
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  Speaker 1: than say merely for all people who believe. Which is
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  Speaker 1: true is because, first of all, Paul says, Paul a
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  Speaker 1: servant of God, God and an apostle of Jesus Christ,
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  Speaker 1: for the sake of the faith of God's elect. This
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  Speaker 1: book is about God's working on behalf of the elect
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  Speaker 1: through the gift of faith, and that faith is a
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  Speaker 1: gift for the elect. As Paul says here in one
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  Speaker 1: Timothy one fourteen, the grace of our Lord overflowed from
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  Speaker 1: me with faith. Grace came to Paul and gave him faith.
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  Speaker 1: It also gave repentance, as it says in two Timothy
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  Speaker 1: two twenty five, God may perhaps grant them repentance leading
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  Speaker 1: to a knowledge of the truth, that they may come
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  Speaker 1: to their senses and escape from the stair of the devil,
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  Speaker 1: having been captured by him, to do his will. So
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  Speaker 1: grace grants faith, grace grants repentance, and thus this grace
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  Speaker 1: is sufficient for all people. Anyone who believes will be
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  Speaker 1: saved and experienced this training onto eternal life. But it
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  Speaker 1: is effective, that is, it actually produces what it demands
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  Speaker 1: in the elect. Now, how does this training happen? And
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  Speaker 1: in this session I want to step back and get
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  Speaker 1: the big picture and then look at the details in
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  Speaker 1: the sessions to come. Because if you jump straight say
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  Speaker 1: to zeal for good works, and you say it trains us,
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  Speaker 1: so be zealous for good works, that's the training. You
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  Speaker 1: got a trainer, her name is Grace. You meet at
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  Speaker 1: the gym and she says, be zealous for good works.
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  Speaker 1: That's not Christianity. I don't care if it's rooted in Grace.
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  Speaker 1: If you jump straight from Grace to training to good works,
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  Speaker 1: you don't have Christianity. So what is the training here?
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  Speaker 1: What's this regimen that brings us to a life of
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  Speaker 1: God honoring zeal for good works? And it has at
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  Speaker 1: least seven steps. I'm just going to point out the
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  Speaker 1: steps really quickly. Number one, I'm going to take them
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  Speaker 1: in the order that they happen by jumping to the
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  Speaker 1: next text in chapter three and getting the big picture.
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  Speaker 1: Along with this text, Christ gave himself, so Christ dies Christ.
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  Speaker 1: The death of Jesus is self giving is the root
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  Speaker 1: of all successful training. If you pass over he gave
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  Speaker 1: himself for us, then there is no hope that this
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  Speaker 1: training will produce Christians. May produce legalists or hopeless people,
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  Speaker 1: but it doesn't produce Christians. So number one, Christ gave himself.
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  Speaker 1: Two what happened when he gave himself he redeemed? He
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  Speaker 1: gave himself to redeem. What does redeem mean? Redeem means
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  Speaker 1: liberate at a price, liberate from guilt and sin. In
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  Speaker 1: the case of the death of Jesus, he rescued us
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  Speaker 1: by purchasing, paying the price of his self given life
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  Speaker 1: to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for
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  Speaker 1: himself a people. But underneath that purification and that riddance
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  Speaker 1: of lawlessness is the price that he paid to satisfy
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  Speaker 1: the Father's justice and take our guilt away. Number three,
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  Speaker 1: how do we come to a experience that redemption? How
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  Speaker 1: does it come to be ours? It's available for all,
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  Speaker 1: but not all are redeemed. It is redeemed by first
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  Speaker 1: he regenerates. That's the new birth, born again. And I
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  Speaker 1: get that from a few verses later in chapter three,
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  Speaker 1: where it says, according to his own mercy, Well, the
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  Speaker 1: start at the beginning, when the goodness and loving kindness
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  Speaker 1: of God, our savior, appeared. He saved us not because
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  Speaker 1: of works done by us in righteousness, but according to
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  Speaker 1: his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal
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  Speaker 1: of the Holy Spirit. Regeneration means the Holy Spirit causes
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  Speaker 1: us to be born again. We were dead in trespasses
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  Speaker 1: and sins, and he makes us alive. That's another word
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  Speaker 1: for new birth or regeneration. If he's ins two five,
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  Speaker 1: he makes us alive. So regeneration is the third step
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  Speaker 1: in how we are trained in godliness for a life
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  Speaker 1: of self control, upright godliness, zeal for good works. Here's
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  Speaker 1: the fourth step, justification. He justifies. That means he declares
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  Speaker 1: us righteous. Once he makes us alive. He justifies us
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  Speaker 1: through faith. Now I suppose I could have put that
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  Speaker 1: here first. I'm gonna call it number five. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: I am gonna put it there, so just there's no confusion.
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  Speaker 1: He regenerates, and in regenerating he awakens or creates faith
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  Speaker 1: or hope. We know from what we've seen back in
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  Speaker 1: chapter one, verse fourteen of one Timothy. By the grace
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  Speaker 1: of our Lord. The grace of our Lord overflowed for
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  Speaker 1: me with the faith and love that are in Christ.
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  Speaker 1: Jesus grace brought about faith, and faith is the means
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  Speaker 1: by which we get eternal life Verse Timothy one sixteen.
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  Speaker 1: But I received mercy for this reason that in me
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  Speaker 1: as the foremost Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience
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  Speaker 1: as an example to all those who were to believe
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  Speaker 1: in him for eternal life. We don't get eternal life
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  Speaker 1: any other way than by believing, so faith or believing
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  Speaker 1: is brought into being. Five Now justification. We are justified
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  Speaker 1: by faith through faith that is declared righteous, and we
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  Speaker 1: see that in these in the next chapter where he
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  Speaker 1: says whom he poured out on us richly, the Holy
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  Speaker 1: Spirit poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our savior,
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  Speaker 1: so that having been justified by His grace, we might
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  Speaker 1: become heirs in hope of eternal life. This justification follows
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  Speaker 1: upon this regeneration and precedes the obtaining of eternal life.
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  Speaker 1: So step five, God justifies us through the faith that
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  Speaker 1: he awakens by regeneration. Six, we renounce ungodliness training us
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  Speaker 1: in order that, having renounced ungodliness and worldly passions, we
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  Speaker 1: live a certain way. So the first there's this negative
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  Speaker 1: sense of I'm done with the world, I'm done with
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  Speaker 1: trusting in alternative gods and alternative treasures and satisfactions. I
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  Speaker 1: now have a new faith, a new hope in God,
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  Speaker 1: I'm counted righteous in Him, and therefore I renounce and
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  Speaker 1: am done with a life devoted to sin and ungodliness.
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  Speaker 1: And then number seven step number seven is a life
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  Speaker 1: devoted two or zealous for good deeds? Here zealous for
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  Speaker 1: good deeds. Now the reason I step back and include
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  Speaker 1: that much in answering the question how does grace by
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  Speaker 1: bringing salvation train us? Is to avoid a fake religion
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  Speaker 1: flying under the banner of Christianity. It's moralistic. You go
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  Speaker 1: to church on Sunday, and what does the pastor say?
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  Speaker 1: In a moralistic church? He says, do better, do some
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  Speaker 1: more good work, show up at more services, go to
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  Speaker 1: more prayer meetings, evangelize more people, do more good deeds.
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  Speaker 1: And there's nothing Christian about it. Nothing about the death
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  Speaker 1: of Christ, nothing about the glorious event of redemption and
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  Speaker 1: price that was paid on the cross, Nothing about the
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  Speaker 1: glorious work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration, nothing about
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  Speaker 1: the awakening and the gift of faith. Nothing about the
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  Speaker 1: declaration of our acceptance with God. Apart from these good work,
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  Speaker 1: so that we might have the freedom and the boldness
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  Speaker 1: to stand with God as accepted and do good works,
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  Speaker 1: not to earn salvation. But because we have justification, all
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  Speaker 1: it does is jump from training to here. But that's
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  Speaker 1: not Christian training. Us salvation includes every one of these steps,
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  Speaker 1: and that's why I included them. So glory in your
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  Speaker 1: salvation and the effectiveness that it has because God has
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  Speaker 1: wrought it through a whole regiment of training, whose details
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  Speaker 1: now we'll look at next time.