What’s in a Greeting?
continued
Pastor
Joe Fuiten, December 18, 2005
Titus
2:11-15 (p 844) “For the
grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. 12 It teaches us to
say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live
self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13 while we wait
for the blessed hope-the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus
Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to
purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is
good. 15 These, then, are the things you
should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone
despise you.
Last
Sunday we spoke of the controversies surrounding Christmas greetings. To
contrast the absurdities of secularists today who object to saying “Merry
Christmas,” we looked at biblical greetings and perspectives. We looked at a
couple of the angelic greetings as well as that of the Apostle John in his
Gospel. In John’s Gospel the key phrases
are twofold. First, “in the beginning
was the Word,” and secondly, “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among
us.”
I would like
to carry that discussion a little farther by allowing the Apostle Paul to weigh in.
First, by way of background, it helps to
know that the earliest church did not celebrate Christmas in any special
way. For them, the birth is almost
incidental. The birth of Jesus is
related to the ministry of Jesus. Today,
we separate the two. If we tied them
together we would have people walking through
The ancient Church connected birth with mission. So the real beginning was Epiphany which was
the announcement of his ministry. For
them, his birth and the starting of ministry was really the same thing. The
early church understood the meaning of birth.
You cannot separate birth from life and destiny. Jesus had a destiny from birth and so do
we. Christmas led somewhere. It led to the cross. We get a little sense of this in the 12 days
of Christmas which are the twelve days starting on Christmas Day and ending on
Epiphany. Birth leads to mission.
If the Apostle
John sees the Word, then the Apostle Paul sees Grace. For Paul, the appearance of Jesus is the
“Grace of God that brings salvation.”
Just letting the sentence speak for itself we can note several things.
First, that it
is to “all men.” Not that all men will
be saved, but grace that brings salvation has appeared to all men. If everyone will be saved, then Jesus coming
serves no useful purpose. The truth is,
some will be saved and some will be lost.
It would help us to know some details about that.
Second, it is
about salvation. This is the way that
Paul would see Christmas. It is about
all people coming to a knowledge of Jesus Christ, the grace of God. This salvation, or grace of God, teaches us
certain things, some of which he enumerates.
It teaches us
to say “no” to ungodliness and worldly passions. The word “ungodliness” is the Latin word
"impietas," which the apostle gives in the Greek as "asebeia,"[1] which in Hebrew is
"resa.". "Resa" is the sin of failing to honor God by not believing,
trusting, fearing him or not surrendering to him, not allowing him to be
God.
When Paul
wrote to Titus that the Grace of God taught us to say no to non-religion, every
Roman in the entire
Of all the
Roman public virtues, this is the only one that Christianity essentially
modified. Christians taught that “godliness”
or pietas, is properly directed toward Jesus Christ, not the gods and goddesses
of the pantheon. Otherwise it remained
largely unchanged as a Roman virtue.
To summarize
so far, this is Paul’s approach to Christmas.
The grace of God, Jesus, came to bring salvation. As his first order of business, he taught us
to avoid saying “happy holidays.”
Instead we should honor God. We
should believe in him, trust him, surrender to him, and allow him to be
God. In Paul’s view, the secularist is
worse than the Pagan. At least the Pagan
recognizes something beyond himself. The
secularist only has himself, and that doesn’t do much to create a civilization.
When he adds
“worldly passions” that is more usual.
Ungodliness deals with our relations with God but “worldly passions”
deal with our relationships on this earth.
Whether it is the egregious sin or the failure to honor God, these are
the things for which Jesus came. Some
people deny that really need forgiveness.
But if they don’t need forgiveness, then God treated a patient who
wasn’t sick. Such people must not need
salvation. They are the quintessential
“ungodly” denying the need for pietas. But Paul thinks the grace of God applies to
all people, not just those who think they need it.
The opposite is
“to live self-controlled, upright and
godly lives in this present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope-the
glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 14 who gave
himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a
people that are his very own, eager to do what is good. 15 These, then, are the things you should
teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you.”
The appearing
of the grace of God, Jesus, results in us saying no to secularism and sin and
yes to godly lives. All of this is in the context of the blessed hope, the
glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. The Greek word that Paul uses for the
appearing of Jesus is epiphaneia.[2] In Latin it would be advent. The birth of
Jesus is not as important as the Epiphany at the
As wonderful
as that first Christmas was, it does not compare to the Epiphany at the
Let’s bring
this down to where we live. What does
Christmas really mean to us? It means
the grace of God has arrived. That is
something we need. We know that we have
sinned. We know that we have been broken
by life and its setbacks and disappointments.
We need grace. We get wounded and
hurt. We need grace. We get sick.
We need grace.