Nobody arrives at this by being defiant. That is the first thing to say and it is the thing everybody gets wrong.
The picture people have of a man who leans on grace is a man with a smirk. Somebody who has worked out an angle and is enjoying it. A younger man, probably, getting away with something and pleased about it.
That is not who this is. This is a man who is tired.
He has tried. That is the whole background of it. He tried for years, in whatever way he knew, and it went the same way every time, and at some point he stopped and made a private arrangement in his head that has held for a long while: that it is covered, that it does not register with God one way or the other, that the whole thing is settled and he does not have to keep opening it.
And the reason he made that arrangement was not so he could enjoy anything. It was so he could stop bleeding.
There is a sentence about grace that gives it a verb, and the verb changes the arrangement.
The sentence has two halves
Here it is, in the King James Version:
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. (Titus 2:11-12)
The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. That is the half everybody knows, and it is enormous, and it is unconditional in its reach.
Teaching us.
Grace is the subject of that participle. It is the thing doing the teaching. Not the law, not a preacher, not a program. The same grace named in verse 11 is the one instructing in verse 12.
That is not the bill arriving after the gift. It is a description of what the gift is. Grace, in this sentence, is not a legal status a man files something under. It is an active thing that is at work in a person.
Which means the arrangement he made, where grace is a lid he put on a box, is not describing the grace this verse is describing at all.
You have something at work in you rather than a lid on a box, and you were never handed a filing system. Titus 2:11 says grace has appeared and Titus 2:12 gives it the participle teaching us, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a return of your old resolve who does what that verse describes.
What it is not, said in the plainest possible way
Paul saw the question coming and asked it himself, in the middle of the biggest passage about grace in the New Testament.
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? (Romans 6:1-2)
God forbid. That is the strongest negative the translators had.
But look at the reason he gives, because it is not the reason anybody expects. He does not say we must not because there would be consequences. He does not say we must not because God would be angry.
He says how shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?
The argument is about what is true of the person, not about what is permitted. It is closer to asking a man who has moved out of a house why he keeps driving back to sleep in the yard.
And that is aimed exactly at a tired man, because a tired man is not asking whether he is allowed. He stopped asking that years ago. What he needs to know is whether anything is actually different, and Romans 6 says something is.
You are dead to it rather than merely forgiven for it, and you were never left in the same condition with the paperwork changed. Romans 6:2 argues from what is true of the person, and it is His Spirit who makes a statement about status something a man experiences rather than only agrees to.
Why the arrangement gets made in the first place
It is worth being honest about the mechanism, because a man in this condition has usually been described to himself as cavalier and he knows that is not it.
Here is what happens. He brings the same thing to God twelve times. Something happens, or nothing happens, and then it comes back. And each round of that costs something, and by round eleven the bringing itself has become the painful part, not the thing.
So he stops bringing it. And he needs a way to stop bringing it that is not despair, and the word covered is available and it is genuinely a Bible word, so it gets used for that job.
It is not rebellion. It is a man protecting himself from a hope that has hurt him repeatedly. And Paul, of all people, describes the same territory in a sentence that has been badly misused:
Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. (Romans 5:20)
Much more abound. That is not permission. It is arithmetic. Whatever the size of the thing he has been filing, the supply on the other side is described as exceeding it, which is precisely what a man who has run out of hope needs stated as a quantity.
You have a supply described as exceeding the thing and you were never in a contest your history could win. Romans 5:20 says where sin abounded grace did much more abound, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a fresh burst of effort who administers that.
And if the tiredness has gone past tiredness, if it has reached not wanting to be here at all, that is not a thing to hold alone. A doctor, a counselor, somebody you trust who will pick up the phone. In the United States the 988 crisis line answers day and night. Nobody is asked to carry that by himself.
What it cost, which is why it is not a shrug
And the reason grace cannot be indifference, said in the same short letter, three verses on:
Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. (Titus 2:14)
Who gave himself for us.
That is the price, and it is in the same paragraph as the teaching. Whatever grace is, it is not a shrug, because a shrug is free and this was not.
That matters to a tired man in a way it does not matter to anybody else. If the thing he has been filing away is genuinely nothing to God, then he is nothing to God either, because a person who does not care what you do has usually stopped caring about you. The cost is the proof that the indifference he has assumed is not what is going on.
And Paul says how it worked in his own life, and he says it about the hardest working man in the New Testament:
But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. (1 Corinthians 15:10)
Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. The labor is real and it is credited to grace. That is the whole arrangement in one line, and it settles the question of whether grace produces passivity by pointing at the most productive man in the book.
You have grace that cost Him something and you were never dealing with indifference. Titus 2:14 says who gave himself for us in the same paragraph as the teaching, and it is His Spirit who makes a price paid two thousand years ago the reason a man can bring something back.
So take it out of the file and bring it as itself.
Grace is given a verb in that sentence. It teaches. Which means it is not a lid, and a man who has been using it as a lid has not been abusing anything, he has been using the only tool he had left after a hope kept costing him.
You are not being asked for another round of trying and you have not been indulging anything. The written word says grace appeared teaching us in Titus 2:12, which puts the work on grace rather than on the man, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than your recovered willpower who does the teaching that verse describes.
And what you have been filing was never a matter of indifference to Him. You have a grace that cost Him Himself and you were never dealing with a shrug. Titus 2:14 says who gave himself for us in the same paragraph, and Romans 5:20 says where sin abounded grace did much more abound, which is a quantity rather than a permission.
Nothing here promises the thing resolves this year. The man with the index card says it is not resolved and says so plainly. What is promised is that grace is active rather than a category, and you were taught by it rather than covered over by it (Titus 2:12, Titus 2:14), and it is His Spirit rather than your stamina who makes naming one thing out loud a receiving.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over your own condition is genuinely yours, handed to you and never invented. Scripture gives grace a verb and the verb is teaching, and the same paragraph says the one who gave grace gave Himself, so speak to the word you have been using as a lid: you have standing to address it because Scripture addressed it first and did it without contempt for a tired man. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own opinion, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is Titus 2:12 and Titus 2:14 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not the effort behind your saying, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Word covered that I use as a lid, you are not what grace means. The Word of God says grace appeared teaching us, which makes it a thing at work rather than a lid on a box.
- Verdict that God is indifferent to me, you are finished in the name of Jesus. Scripture says He gave Himself for us, and a price like that is not what indifference looks like.
- Father, where sin abounded Your grace did much more abound, and that is arithmetic rather than permission. I receive what Your word says in Titus 2 and Romans 5, and I am naming the thing out loud today instead of filing it.
Titus 2:11-12
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