Titus chapter two, and we're
going to read from verse 11. For the grace of God that bringeth
salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that denying
ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously,
and godly in this present world. Looking for that blessed hope
and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour,
Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem
us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people,
zealous of good works. These things speak and exhort
and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee. There are two things that ought
always to amaze and humble us as the Church of the Lord Jesus
Christ. The love of God towards us and the sacrifice of our Saviour
for us. And I say that these two things
ought to amaze and humble us, because it is only those who
understand and view, who have been taught the particular and
distinguishing nature of both the love of God and the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ, who understand that the love of God
is not a general love, and that the death of the Lord Jesus Christ
is not a universal death for the benefit of everyone. So that
when we read, God commendeth his love towards us in that while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, we understand the particular
nature both of the love of God towards us and the sacrifice
of the Lord Jesus Christ for us. and we ought to be amazed
that the Lord Jesus Christ loves us and died for us. These two
great revelations provide for us the why and the how of our
salvation. For love's sake, God formed a
plan of salvation and gave his only begotten son to die for
us. innocent blood being the price
of our redemption from sin and our reconciliation with God. For love's sake, the Lord Jesus
Christ voluntarily gave his life for our cleansing and for the
atonement of his people. As Isaiah says, bearing our grief,
carrying our sorrow, taking our place. And Paul says, becoming
sin for us. And today I want to return to
something very basic and foundational in our understanding of the gospel
of God. And it is simply this. Why did
the Lord Jesus Christ die? Now, when we think about that
question, we can use words, good words, biblical words, biblical
themes, words like substitution, words like satisfaction, words
like representative and vicarious, words like atonement and expiation,
all good biblical themes. But today I prefer to use Paul's
language to his young friend Titus. And I want you to note
with me the plainness of his words, to rejoice with me in
the simplicity of the truth that he set before Titus. And he encouraged Titus to declare
in his own preaching capacity to those over whom he had charge
and to whom he was called to minister. And it's this that
we read in the 14th verse of Paul's letter to Titus, chapter
2. There he says, our Saviour Jesus
Christ, taking the final few verses of, the final few words
of verse 13, our Saviour Jesus Christ gave himself for us. gave himself for us, that he
might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar
people, zealous of good works. And it's that little phrase which
took my attention, that little phrase which entitles our thoughts
this morning. Himself for us. And the first thing that I want
us to see today is that it is the Lord Jesus Christ who gave
himself for us. I wonder if you noticed there
that it was our Saviour who gave himself. Paul says in verse 13, He says, our saviour, Jesus Christ,
who gave himself for us. Now, the important point to notice
there is that the Lord Jesus Christ did not become our saviour
when he gave himself for us. He didn't become our saviour
on the cross. Far less does He become our Saviour
when we believe in Him, when we trust in Him, when we are
converted, when, as some people say, we give our hearts to the
Lord and Jesus becomes our Saviour. That's not what Paul says. Nowhere
near what Paul says. Paul says our Saviour Jesus Christ
gave Himself for us. He was our Saviour before He
gave Himself. Indeed, He gave Himself because
He was our Saviour. And this is such an important
point because the Lord Jesus Christ was set up from all eternity
as the Saviour of His people, the Saviour of His Church. This
was the great covenant purpose for which the Lord Jesus Christ
came into the world. This was the great covenant purpose
of God's plan of salvation, the purpose of redemption, to save
his people, those that had been given to him, those for whom
he was set up eternally as the saviour of his people. He came into the world to save
his people from their sins. So he was the saviour before
he came into the world. He was the saviour before he
went to the cross. He was the saviour before he
died and he is our saviour before we ever come to confess him as
Lord. He doesn't become our saviour
when we trust Him. He is our saviour from eternity. And we see when we trust Him. We see when we are given eyes
to see. We see when we are given faith
to believe. All that He has done for us as
our everlasting saviour. For this reason, the saviour
was set up as the saviour of his people. He died on the cross
because that was the way that salvation would be secured. And we notice that it was Christ
himself himself for us. The Lord Jesus Christ, as our
Saviour, did not ordain or arrange or decree or send forth another
to do the job that had to be done. He did not command an angel
to go in his place. He did not send a prophet. He
did not redeem his people with silver or gold. but he saved
us with his own blood. He redeemed us, he atoned for
us with his own blood. God became a man. The eternal God, the Lord Jesus
Christ, that one who was set up as a saviour from all eternity,
became a man, entered into our time, our world, our flesh, in
order to secure and save his people. He gave himself willingly. And that's one important point
that we should always remember. The Lord Jesus Christ's life
was not taken from him, but he gave himself for us. His death was the plan from the
beginning. It didn't go wrong. It didn't
get out of control. It didn't get out of hand. Rather,
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ and the shedding of His blood,
because we're told without the shedding of blood there is no
remission for sins, the shedding of His blood was purposeful.
It was intentional. It was for this reason that He
came to do the will of His Father in the salvation of that people
that had been committed into his hand and into his care. He himself came and died for
us. And there we see that there is
a particularity. The Lord Jesus Christ did not
give himself for all mankind. He did not die for all men and
women. He did not die for everyone in
the world, but rather he came and died for us, Paul writes
to Titus. He gave himself for us. Our saviour Jesus Christ gave
himself for us. His elect, the chosen people,
those that had been committed into his care. I don't know the entirety of
what it means that he gave himself In so many ways the Lord Jesus
Christ gave himself. Gave himself in his submission,
gave himself in his obedience, gave himself in his taking upon
himself the limitations and restrictions of the flesh. gave himself in
entering into that mediatorial role where he subjected himself
and submitted himself and humbled himself to his father to do all
the will of his father. But oh, this fact is plain, that
he did it all for us. We know that Christ's sacrifice
was motivated by his eternal love and mercy. Ephesians 5.25,
Paul writes there that Christ loved the church and gave himself
for it. For the church, for his people,
for us. The Lord Jesus Christ gave himself
for us. It is such a simple, yet a beautiful
statement. and there is so much theology
thought about, there are so many words spoken, there is so much
research done, there is so much speculation made, theory and
ideas in men's minds down through the ages about what was done
at the cross, what was accomplished at the cross. Let me tell you
what Paul says to Titus, his young friend, he says, Our Saviour,
Jesus Christ, gave himself for us. Such a beautiful statement. It speaks of Christ rising up
from his throne of eternal glory, from his eternal realm of heaven,
standing up and coming forth, coming forth into this world. and now taking the place of his
people, standing up for us in the place of his elect as our
substitute. And I cannot think of anything
clearer. May this be our confession. May this be our testimony. May this be the revelation of
our knowledge as God gives his eyes to see and ears to hear
that Jesus Christ our Saviour gave himself for us. Gave himself for me. He is our Saviour. The next thing
we are told about the Lord Jesus Christ's great sacrifice is that
it was directed to this end, that the Lord Jesus Christ might
redeem us from all iniquity. Now that little word there, redeem,
it just means to buy back or to recover by the paying of a
price. In 1 Peter 1, verse 18, we're
told there that we're not redeemed with silver and gold, with corruptible
things, things that pass away, things that rust and grow old.
We're not redeemed with corruptible things like silver and gold,
but we have been recovered. We have been bought with the
precious blood of Jesus Christ. And that's what the Lord Jesus
Christ accomplished when he gave himself for us. He redeemed us. He bought us back. He was paying
a price when he died on the cross. He was paying the price of his
life's blood. That is how we are to understand
and interpret that great work of redemption on the cross. That
when the Lord Jesus Christ hung there, a great transaction was
being accomplished. He was paying. the debt of our
sin, of our rebellion, of our transgressions. And he was paying
that with his own life's blood. He redeems us, we are told, from
all iniquity. And our iniquity is our sin.
Iniquity is the things that we do that make us guilty before
God, that earn our punishment, that bring us into judgement. And our sin ought to have been
carried upon our own shoulders and upon our own head and borne
in our own souls. but it was placed upon the Lord
Jesus Christ. Our sin ought to bring us into
judgment, but the Lord Jesus Christ stepped into our place. He took our place, and he died
in our place, and he shed his own life's blood for our redemption
and for our iniquity. He took the sentence, he bore
the punishment, he carried the suffering, I'm sure you remember
some of the Old Testament stories that we've read together of how
animals in the Old Testament were sacrifices on an altar and
that was a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ's coming and of
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. But all those animals that were
killed, all those animals that were slain sacrificially in the
Old Testament, they couldn't take away our sin. They were
just a picture of the coming of Jesus Christ because it was
only Christ, only that perfect Lamb of God that could take away
the sin of His people. Hebrews chapter 10 verse 10 says,
we are sanctified or we are forgiven, we are cleansed, we are made
holy through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once
for all. Jesus Christ on the cross offered
himself for us, gave himself for us, offered himself as a
sacrifice to God on our behalf, that we might be sanctified.
You know, I guess if you're anything like me, you don't always feel
forgiven. You don't always feel sanctified. You don't always feel holy. Indeed, if we are honest with
ourselves, We never feel holy because we are constantly always
aware of the sin that resides in our heart. And even in our
souls and in our minds, we grieve for the sin and the thoughts
and the actions that we do despite the knowledge that we have of
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ for us. We don't feel holy. But
nevertheless, Paul tells us that that was the great purpose of
the Lord Jesus Christ's death, to make himself a holy people,
to bring himself a people sanctified and cleansed, purged from our
sins. And the blood that was the ransom
price of our sanctification, the Lord Jesus Christ paid in
order to deliver his people from bondage. That's the great transaction. That's the great sacrifice. Jesus' life for his people's
freedom. Jesus' blood for his people's
sin. Jesus' death for our everlasting
life in heaven. So the Lord Jesus Christ gave
himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity. And the third thing that the
apostle says here to Titus is that the Lord Jesus Christ has
hereby purified unto himself a peculiar people. He purifies
us. That was the end or the purpose
of Christ giving himself on the cross. It was to purify us, to
make us pure, to cleanse us from our sin. We sometimes use that
word purge, to cleanse, but purge and purify are connected. It is a purification by purging,
by washing. and it is the blood of Jesus
Christ that purges us or cleanses us from our sin. In Hebrews, the verse that we
read earlier, we talked about that sanctification, but this
is the same picture, sanctification or setting apart, purifying,
dedicating to holiness and purification, the taking away of our sin, and
the bringing of us into the experience of grace with God and the holiness
that comes through the Lord Jesus Christ. This was the great purpose
of the death of Jesus on the cross. He purifies us by his
cleansing blood. I wonder if you remember the
account in Matthew, it's actually in a number of the Gospels, but
in Matthew chapter eight, we read about a leper, a leper who
came full of sores, full of sin, full of his disease, and it's
a picture of sin, the disease of leprosy in Scripture. And
he came to Jesus for help. It's a picture that we have in
the Lord Jesus Christ's works and in his lifetime and the miracles
that he performed of his ability to heal and cleanse and purge. And this man came to Jesus and
he says, if thou wilt thou canst make me whole. Jesus, we're told
in verse 3 of Matthew chapter 8, put forth his hand and touched
him, saying, I will, be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy
was cleansed. And that's what this purifying
of the church is by the blood of Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus
Christ came to cleanse, to make clean, to purify for himself
a special, a particular, a precious people. And that is amazing. It is amazing that we should
be the beneficiaries of that great work of redemption. Today,
when we use the word peculiar, The Lord Jesus Christ came to
purify unto himself, says Paul to Titus, a peculiar people. When we use the word peculiar,
it usually means odd or unusual. We would maybe look at something
and say, huh, that's peculiar. I didn't expect that. That's
odd. That's not right. That's unusual. That's strange. But really, the
word peculiar is kind of getting misused when we use it like that
because it really means it's rare. It's distinctive. And in that sense, it's unusual. It's not the same as everything
else. It's valuable because it's distinctive. And it's valuable because it's
rare. Why is gold Valuable and stones
are not because gold's rare. Stones are everywhere. But peculiar
means rare and peculiar means valuable. And it's not that we
are rare or valuable in ourselves, but because the Lord Jesus Christ,
in dying for us, makes us peculiar. He makes us a rare breed. He makes us valuable and distinctive. Out of the whole multitude of
this world, He sets us apart by dying for us and shedding
His blood for us. We're a peculiar people because
the Lord gives us peculiar blessings. Blessings that don't go to everyone,
but blessings that come to his elect. We're a peculiar people
because the Lord Jesus Christ shows us peculiar truths. The world has its wisdom, the
world has its ideas, the world has its research and its imagination
and the way that it thinks about things, but the Lord's people
are given the truth of God and he shows us the truths of his
Father in Revelation, peculiar truths. The Lord Jesus Christ
loves us Peculiarly, distinctively, with a rare and a valuable love,
he cares for his people in peculiar fashions so as to distinguish
us as his own peculiar people. And we might say, well, well,
like, We might look at the Old Testament and we see there how
the psalmist wrote, and he couldn't understand why the wicked seemed
to prosper, but it's because the Lord deals with us as a peculiar
people. distinctive and in a distinguishing
way. The Lord Jesus Christ gave himself
to redeem and purify a special chosen people, and that is the
gospel. That is the good news of salvation
by Christ, satisfying every need that we have, fulfilling all
the demands of a holy God, completing every obligation that God set
before him. and setting his people free,
a payment was made, a ransom was paid, a redemption was secured
because the Lord Jesus Christ gave himself for us to redeem
to himself a peculiar people, to purge us from our sins, to
purify us from our iniquities. This is God's love in effect
for his elect people, his covenant people. And this is why the Lord
Jesus Christ came into the world. And this is Christ's love for
his church, his beloved bride. He took that people and he died
for them on the cross in order to liberate them and join them
to him for all eternity. The fourth thing that this little
verse tells us is that the Lord Jesus Christ has made us zealous
of good works. And I think that we should remember
that because sometimes people get carried away when they talk
about good works, the good works that they do or think that they
do. But do you realise there what
the Apostle Paul is saying? that it is Christ's work to make
us zealous of good works. We have no ability, we have no
desire, we have no zeal for even good works except that the Lord
Jesus Christ by his death has made us zealous of good works. Now the natural interpretation
of this little phrase might well be that we desire to do good
works After that, the Lord Jesus Christ
has redeemed us. But I don't know that that's
necessarily what we should first think about in this verse. He has made us zealous of good
works. Well, whose work is good but
Christ's? Do we not first see God here? Do we not first see the Lord
Jesus Christ here also? Is this not Christ's first good
work for his people when he died for them on the cross? That is
the good work that we are zealous for. That is the good work that
preoccupies us. That is the good work that we
constantly go back to. That is the good work that we
want to concentrate upon, that we want to hear about, that we
want to meditate upon. and we want to glean from it
all the blessings that flow to our hearts as his blood-bought
people. That is the work that we are
zealous for. John 5, verse 17 says that Jesus
answered, My father worketh hitherto, and I work. The Father worked. He worked the great plan of redemption,
the great plan of salvation, the great covenant of grace.
He is the one who prepared the body for the Lord Jesus Christ.
He is the one who sent him. And the Lord Jesus Christ worked. The Lord Jesus Christ worked
when he took that body, when he entered into this world, when
he humbled himself, when he went to the cross, when he died there
and bore our sins and entered into the depths of his suffering. for the salvation and redemption
and liberty of his people. John chapter 17 verse 4, I have
glorified thee on the earth says the Saviour. I have finished
the work which thou gavest me to do. Is that not the good work
that we are zealous of? Certainly it is that God's grace
brings a transforming power in regeneration and in the resurrection
and in new creation. And that in itself is all the
good work of the almighty power in the heart and in the life
of a dead sinner, converting them to life and faith. But it is Christ's work, and
it is God's work, and it is the Lord's work in us, surely, that
we hold forth as being zealous of. Let us be a people who are
known not as being zealous of our own good works, but as being
zealous of the work of Christ in us. Being confident of this
very thing, says Paul in Philippians 1, verse 6, that he which hath
begun a good work in you, will perform it unto the day of Jesus
Christ. And if we must see our own good
works here, then let it be no more than the privilege of our
service and our calling to praise and thanksgiving, our meagre
and humble expression of gratitude towards the Lord who has saved
us. I began by saying that God's
love and Christ's sacrifice ought to amaze and humble us. And we are amazed by the love
that sent and brought our Saviour into this world and to the cross. And we are humbled at the great
salvation which he has worked out for us there in his death. And these truths, these truths
of the love of God and the coming of Christ and the death of Christ
for us, these truths as they are revealed to us in the gospel,
we cannot know them, we cannot learn them, we cannot love them,
we cannot live them. until they have entered into
our soul and touched our heart, until they have drawn forth from
us a fitting response of faith and gratitude. The appropriate
reaction to these truths is that we believe them. and that we
trust in the Christ who is the way of life for his people, who
has opened that door, who has bidden us to enter into the presence
of his Father as that people redeemed by blood, that people
purified by the cleansing power of the Lord Jesus Christ's death.
These verses before us in Titus chapter 2, they show us that
salvation is all of the Lord, that his grace is unconditional,
that justification is given freely, that it is never earned, but
that divine righteousness is imputed without works and that
it is entirely at God's good pleasure because the Lord Jesus
Christ, our Saviour, has taken our place, has represented us
before his Father's judgment and before the law and interposed
himself for us and carried our sins. Our Saviour Jesus Christ
gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity
and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. Now I have no doubt that these
truths, known and believed, will change our attitude and our conduct. They will raise our admiration
for our God but first and foremost, they teach us about love and
grace and Jesus Christ who gave himself for us. We do not preach
these truths. We do not teach these doctrines
in order to make men act better or live better. We preach them
and we teach them to comfort the brokenhearted, to strengthen
the weary in the way, to encourage the downcast in this world, in
this life, and to remind our own hearts where all our blessedness
lies and where all worship and thanksgiving is due. God's love
towards us and all that flows from us. Christ's sacrifice for
us and all we gain by it are amazing, humbling truths. And they are the source of all
comfort and joy on earth to God's elect. and they are all our hope
for eternity. Paul says in Ephesians chapter
1 verse 6, to the praise of the glory of his grace wherein he
hath made us accepted in the Beloved. Amen.