The Grace of God has Appeared

Titus 2:11-14:
This week I want to come back again to these verses in Titus. We remarked last week that this passage has long been associated with the liturgy of Christmas Sunday. The wording of the verse invites us to contemplate the wonder of the incarnation - the Grace of God has appeared, it has been unveiled to us in the incarnation of the Son of God. In this one shorthand phrase, the grace of God has appeared, Paul is summarizing the promises of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: his promise to renew the covenant, to bring the good news of salvation to all peoples. On Christmas Sunday we considered the context in which Paul wrote these words. Good history and tradition point to Paul writing this letter to Titus who was planting churches on the isle of Crete. In the religious traditions of Crete it was claimed that the Greek god, Zeus, had been a man before he was a god - a man who lived and died in Crete and whose tomb was known. This great man was made into the god Zeus after he died, promoted to deity, because of his great deeds of benevolence as a human being among the Cretans. Into this culture which knew this religious story of how Zeus came to be Zeus Paul brings the gospel of the God who reveals himself in Jesus. The connection between deity and humanity, arguably a universal human longing and which was so fancifully imagined in the Cretan story of Zeus, is met by the proclamation that the great creator God has taken on human flesh, "the grace of God has appeared". Whereas the story of a man who is promoted to deity because of acts of benevolence is met by the proclamation that God lives to freely give himself to others, "he it is who gave himself for us" in order that those who know him and grow in his grace may become a people who come to resemble God's son in their thoughts, desires and actions.

New Testament commentators have also wondered whether Paul's interesting way of talking about the grace of God being that which trains us to become more like Jesus ("the grace of God has appeared..... training us...." 2:11...) might also be worded with the Cretan context in mind. Earlier in the letter he cites the 6th century Cretan philosopher and poet, Epimenides, who said of Cretans that they were always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons" (Titus 1:12). The description of Cretans as vicious brutes, or as wild beasts - as some translations have it and as Epimenides said it - liars, and idle bellies is certainly confrontational language but it is not the language of one who demonizes those who are outside the community of faith. Rather, Paul with the motivation and heart of an apologist and evangelist, cites a voice from within the culture who cries out against moral bankruptcy in order to establish a contact point between the gospel and the culture. The gospel message from Paul and the other evangelists in the New Testament always clearly points out that sin is the heart condition shared by all of us and that no one is any better than anyone else. Moral bankruptcy and beastliness is the way of the human heart apart from God's grace. It is to this shared human condition that the grace of God comes, to train us and make us new. It was not uncommon within the religious mind of the ancient Greek speaking world to think and speak about moral formation accompanying the passage of boyhood to manhood where the "wild beasts" are tamed and formed into men. In the ruins of the city of Gortyn (the Cretan city which Christian tradition holds to be the first site of Titus' missionary activity) there is found in the iconography of one of the temples a goddess holding in both of her hands wild beasts. In her hands they are perfectly tame. Among the votive offerings to her are little statues of young male warriors - wishing from her to be tamed, disciplined or trained into manhood. We, of course, don't know if Paul or Titus would have had this specific thing in mind when they spoke together of the grace of God and its power to tame the beast in all of us but we do know that it would not have been uncommon in that thought world to talk about moral formation as training received from gods and goddesses. And so Paul the evangelist and Paul the apologist come together to suggest and answer this question: by what or who and how can the beast be tamed? By goddesses or gods? By a man who became a god? Paul says no. The beast is tamed through the power, love and grace of the God who became a man so that human beings could become more like God: God's grace has appeared in Jesus Christ, "training" human beings to become more like the God who gave himself for us.

Questions for discussion:

1. We have suggested above that we should not demonize people who do not share our faith no matter how offensive we might find their moral life and choices. Name some bad things that come from demonizing people, especially those who are do not share our faith? Perhaps in your answer, think about what it might do to you, and what impression it might give about Christ and Christianity to those on the outside looking in.

2. The grace of God training us to renounce sin and embrace God's love and life suggests a process of interaction with God's grace over time and suggests that we must stive to be disciplined in our "training" regimen. What does it mean to be disciplined with regard to our participation in God's gracious provisions? Can you think of discipline without either cringing on the one hand (for those of us who are not terribly disciplined by nature) or without, on the other hand, being proud and self-congratulatory (for those of who are very regimented by nature)? How do grace and discipline dance together so that love is what is felt?

3. Is it a comfort to you to think of our connection with God as resting on God's gracious provision in the incarnation rather than imagining that we need to reach up to God in order to have a contact with the divine? How can this profound truth encourage you when you are deep in the throes of temptation's darkest hour?

4. By what impoverished means do we try to tame our beasts? What sort of means do we employ instead of God's rich grace in the gospel? How can we more surely abandon those impoverished means and rely more fully on God's grace?