For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age. (Titus 2:11-12, ESV)
Every golf swing starts somewhere. Whether with your shoulders or your hands or some other first action, sooner or later you have to stop the waggling and start the club back. This first movement away from the ball is the one that many teachers call your “trigger.” Without it, you will literally go nowhere.
In the spiritual life presented throughout Paul’s letters in Scripture, grace is the trigger. Grace initiates so much.
Both first and foremost, grace triggers salvation. If the common condition of humanity is one of separation from God and his holiness by our nature and enactment of sin, then the common need of humanity—if we are to be reconnected to God for the sake of life—is salvation. And if we hold firmly to the teaching of Paul in Ephesians 2:8-9, then we must say unreservedly that salvation cannot be produced on our own. It is triggered by the grace of God, enabled through the shed blood of Jesus as our perfect sacrifice. If you want to live beyond the breathing, you must allow for God’s grace to bring salvation to you.
But we would be in error to say that salvation is both the beginning and the end of grace’s work, just as much as we would be in error to say that the takeaway represents the full golf swing. Grace triggers so much more.
If we are to be the true champions of grace, heralding its wonders to a world that needs it, let us be champions of all that grace ignites in us.
In his pastoral letter to Titus, Paul wrote that grace also triggers training unto godly living. That godly living includes: (1) the renunciation of ungodliness and worldly passions, (2) self-control, and (3) uprightness (the Greek is no more specific than our own English as to the meaning of this last word, suggesting generally that we do what is just and proper).
Ideally, such a list does not move us toward what we might call mechanical religious living, any more than we want our knowledge of the desirable positions along the route of a golf swing to produce a halting, mechanical swing. What we want, with our golf swing and in our lives with Christ, is fluidity. What we want, ideally, is for godly living to become “second nature” in us.
Theologian N.T. Wright helps us here by reminding us that “second nature” in any endeavor never comes naturally. It is layered into us through practice. Sometimes obedience will feel anything but natural (like new moves in a golf swing!). But if God’s grace has triggered in us the desire to be like him, then we will persist at taking up the specifics of his word so that we might become increasingly practiced at honoring him in our own words and actions. This is the training for godliness that grace also triggers.
If we are to be the true champions of grace, heralding its wonders to a world that needs it, let us be champions of all that grace ignites in us: salvation and its revamping of us as truly new people in Christ.
—
Jeff Hopper
Originally published April 14, 2011
Copyright 2011 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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