God Our Savior

“But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”- Titus 3:4-7

This passage is such a great layout of what the gospel of Jesus Christ is and how it should affect our lives. If you look before these verses in verse 3 you will read about all the things that the Christians being spoken to once were. They were foolish, they were disobedient, they were slaves to their own pleasures and sought to look out for themselves, they hated other people. Any one of us can identify with some or all of these things. Before Christ captures our hearts we all live life for self and we are all enslaved by doing so. We must protect us. We must satisfy ourselves. We must get what we want, do what we want, go where we want. We compete with others and we become envious of others and we can be angry at others who have what we don’t. This sin in our hearts can be acted out in any number of ways. But then there’s this phrase. “But God…” “But when the goodness of God our Savior appeared He saved us.”
God has made a way for us to be saved from our sin. God has become our Savior in the person of Jesus Christ. As we believe in Him and trust in Him He washes us and renews us. This means that He cleanses us from all our past sins so that they no longer stand between us and God, and then by the power of the Holy Spirit He renews us and makes us a new creation so that we will no longer walk in our old ways. He does this not because of anything we have done, but because He alone is righteous, and in His grace He has given us the righteousness of Christ. We often want to earn our salvation and we want to be able to say that we must have done something to gain it. It is hard to accept that it is a completely free gift of God but no works of ours could ever be enough, no matter how righteous those works are. We simply cannot measure up against God who is forever holy and just. But be assured that this free gift removes the burden of having to earn anything. It means we have nothing to prove. We need only let the Spirit work in our lives and we need only rest in the grace and love of Christ. Our good works and our changed life is proof of our salvation, but they come about by the Holy Spirit working in us. Rest in the mercy of Christ today and contemplate the work He did for you on the cross and the work He does in you even today. And if you haven’t done so already, ask Him to cleanse you of your sins and to show you who He is, that you may hope in His endless love and grace and be His forever.