Love Made Visible

Titus ii. 11, 12

“The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching ua...” — Titus ii. 11, 12.

HERE is a marked preponderance of practical exhortations over doctrinal statements in the last letters of the Apostle. That characteristic has led to doubts of their genuineness; but it is susceptible of a much simpler explanation. The old man addressing two young helpers, Timothy and Titus, who were sent to look after young churches, naturally gives prominence to such practical duties. His age, and the purpose of the letters, sufficiently explain the prevailing tone.

But though practice predominates, doctrine is by no means absent, and when it does appear, is remarkably full-toned, energetic, and in entire consonance with the teaching of the earlier Epistles. And it is further to be noted that the morality is clearly the outcome of the theology. In these letters, as in the whole of the Scriptures, there are neither, on the one hand, abstract statements of theological truth divorced from conduct nor, on tha other hand.

undogmatical morality. Every precept is rooted in the soil of doctrine.

So, for instance, the context has been aying down a number of very homely exhortations in reference to conduct. In the immediately precedmg words, slaves have been directed to “show all fidelity” to their masters; and to “adorn the doctrine” of their “Saviour in all thinsrs.” And these exhortations are here in my text, by means of that great “for,” based upon this grand and remarkable statement of the very inmost essence and great purpose of the whole revelation of God in Christ Jesus.

“For,” says the Apostle, “the grace of God, that bringeth salvation to all men, hath appeared, teaching us.”

We have, then, here three points to consider — the appearance of the grace, its extent, and its work.

I. — First, then, the Apostle sets forth, as the foundation of all, the appearance of the grace of God,

Now, I suppose that the force of the words of my text is often weakened to ordinary readers by the very familiarity and threadbareness of that theological word, “grace,” and we want to translate it Luto something that comes a little more closely to our ordinary phraseology and experience. What, then, is meant here by the “grace of God” that has appeared? Nothing else than this, the love of God in exercise towards creatures who, by reason of their lowliness and ill desert, might well have expected another kind of manifestation of the Divine nature. Grace, the theological term which, to many of us, sounds so cold and unreal and remote, is all throbbing with tenderness and warmth of life if we understand what it means. It means the pulsation of the heart of God pouring a tide of gracious love on sinful men, who do not deserve one drop of it to fall upon them, and who dwell so far beneath His loftiness that the love is made still more wonderful by the condescension which makes it possible. The lofty loves the low, and the love is grace. The righteous loves the sinful, and the love is grace.

Then, says my text, there is something which has made this Divine love of God, so wonderful in its loftiness, and equally wonderful in its passing by men’s sinfulness, visible to men. The grace has “appeared.” The same word is used in telling of the stormy darkness when “neither sun nor stars “had for many days ‘appeared” and then at last a rift came in the thick cloud, and the blue was seen, and the blessed sunshine poured down on the damp and desolate world. So, by some historical manifestation, this mighty thing, the love of God, has been put into concrete shape, embodied and made a visibility to men. What can that point to except the incarnation of Jesus Christ, His life and death, the cradle and the cross, with all that lay between, and all that has come after? The mission of a Saviour, in whom the Unseen has drawn near to human sense; in whom the love of God, like sunbeams caught in a cloud, has been diffused, encircled with a revealing because a veiling medium, is what Paul points to. The Man Christ Jesus, in the sweetness of His life, in the sacred mystery of His death, in the power of His indwelling Spirit, stands before us, the embodiment of the love of the unseen God. Scientists can make sounds visible by the symmetrical lines into which heaps of fiO LOVE MADE VISIBLK

sand upon a bit of paper are cast by the vibration of a string. God has made invisible love plain to the sight of all men, because He has sent us His Son, and now we can say, “That which we have seen with our eyes, that which we have beheld, and our hands have handled of the word of life, that declare we unto you.” We need that to sense love shall be made visible, in order that by spirit love shall be credible. Therefore, He has stooped from the heavens, and miracle of miracles, and mercy beyond all mercy! has put into actual outward form the sublime and soul-satisfying fact that He loves. Grace bends from the heavens to the low earth, and brushes aside the black obstacles in its path which our sins have reared.

There is no other ground of certainty that God is love but the fact that God’s Son took human form and died for us and for our salvation. Apart from that we are left to forebodings, hopes dashed with fears, wishes thrown back upon themselves in a tangle of perplexity whether they will ever be fulfilled; but if we can turn to that life and that death, and look at them from the point of view from which the Scripture looks at them, as visible embodiments of the invisible love, then we can be sure, and we can be sure by no other means, that God in very deed has a heart of love to each of us. There are other ways of coming within sight of that great truth, but these are all imperfect, roundabout, subject to all manner of limitations and contradictions and doubts. But the “grace hath appeared,” as the sun rises on the earth, in Jesus Christ. “God hath established” — or proved — “His lovd to us in that whilst we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” Is there anything else to which you can point and say, “By that I am more certain of God’s love than I am of my own existence “?

II. — Secondly, notice the universal sweep of this grace.

I do not need to do more than explain that the true relation of clauses in my text is not given in the Authorized Version, but is found in the Revised Version. What the Apostle says is not that the grace of God has appeared to all men. That is not true; it was not true in his time, it is not true to-day. And if it were true, it is nothing to the purpose in the present context to dwell upon the appearance to all men. But it breaks the whole flow of the sentence, and makes it inconceivably clumsy, that he should say, “The grace of God has appeared to all men, teaching us.” The words, therefore, are much more naturally connected with the other portion of the verse, and should be read, “The grace of God, that bringeth salvation to all men, hath appeared.”

It brings salvation to all men. It does not follow from that, that all men take the salvation which it brings. I should say of a medicine that it was a universal cure, meaning thereby that it was capable of curing all, and that it was offered to all indiscriminately, without being supposed to say anything whatsoever concerning the actual numbers who took it, and who thereby were cured. And this “grace,” this manifestation of the Divine love, has stamped upon it its destination for the word and has no limitations, nor is there any side of it which, to any human heart, turns but a phase of darkness. It is light all through, it is light all round, it is light for every eye, it brings salvation to all men; whether all men take the salvation that it brings or no.

Notice the underlying theory of a universal need that lies in these words. The grace brings salvation to all men, because all men need that more than anythinof else. In the notion of salvation there lie the two ideas of danger and of disease. It is healing and it is safety; therefore, if it be offered to all, it is because all men are sick of a sore disease, and stand in imminent and deadly peril. That is the only theory of men’s deepest need which is true to the facts of human existence. There are plenty of shallower diagnoses of what is the matter with mankind, and therefore of less radical and drastic cures offered. I have not a word to say against any of them, which, in their places, and for the purposes to which they may wisely be confined, are good and wholesome for mankind. But we want to dig far deeper than the shallow husbandry of agriculturists who have no tools but education, culture, reformation of manners, and alteration of the conditions of society, can ever reach. All these things are needed: God forbid that I should say a word that seems to cast any kind of a slight upon any of them, but I want them to come as consequences of something far deeper and more thorough, and I desire that we should all feel that no such superficial clearings up and smoothings will deal adequately with the deep-seated diseases of humanity. You may do much for a man, but you cannot “save” him unless you deal with the corruptions of his heart. And my old-fashioned, narrow belief is that there is nothing that will deal with these except this — “The grace of God hath appeared.” Get a man to believe that, and all the rest will come, if he is a wise man and rightlj guided.

I am not preaching a Gospel that has no care for other than the deepest needs, but a Gospel which, dealing first with the deepest needs, then evolves satisfaction for all wants, and has in itself a power o rectifying everything that is wrong. The universal medicine is the Cross and Him that hung upon it, and all men need that, because all men are sick with n sickness which ends in death, the sickness of sin and of separation from God.

III. — Lastly, notice the great work of this grace made visible.

It seems to be a wonderful descent from “the grace of God which bringeth salvation to all hath appeared” to “teaxihing us.” Is that all? Is that worth much? If by “teaching” we mean merely a reiteration in words, addressed to the understanding or the heart, of the great principles of morality and conduct, it is a very poor thing, and a tremendous come-down from the Apostle’s previous words. Such an office is not what the world wants. There is plenty of first-rate teaching in the world, without Jesus Christ and His grace. If men and nations go to the devil their own wicked, wilful way, it is not for want of teaching. But to try and cure the world’s evils by teaching, in that narrow sense of the expression, is something like trying to put a fire out by reading the Riot Act to the flames. You want fire engines, and not paper proclamations, in order to stay their devouring course.

But it is to be noticed that the expression here, in the original, means a great deal more than that kind of teaching. It means correcting, or chastening. It is the same word that is employed, for instance, in the well-known phrase, “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,” and when Christ from Heaven says, “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten.” It implies the notion of correction generally by pain, at all events of discipline, of something done, and not merely something said, of a process brought to bear on the sensitive nature. And such a work of correcting and chastening is a worthy work for “the grace that appears.”

Why is it that teaching is not enough? Because men do not go wrong for want of knowledge, but for weakness of will and strength of passion. And, therefore, what is needed is not mere illumination, but a sound eye. What is needed is not the declaration of truth, but some power that will weaken passion, that will strengthen conscience, that will supply motives for action, that will dominate and sway the corrupt and captive will. And if the grace of God, the love of God in its exercise towards inferior and sinful men, who need salvation because they are in danger and sick of a sore sickness, is to do anything, it must “come with a rod.” For all growth in holiness and purity, for all acquisition f nobleness and virtue, for all living after the pattern of Jesus Christ, and according to the will of God, there must be suffering, and scourging, and smiting and sore pains, and much sharp cauterizing and amputation, or else there will be no healing and no growth. It needs a great deal of courage to bear being sanctified; we need a great deal of willing submission to very sharp and drastic treatment in order to be healed of our diseases. Our Physician has in His great medicine-chest balm and bandages for all wounds. But He has also a terrible array of gleaming blades with sharp edges, and of materials for cauterizing and burning away proud flesh. And if ever we are to be made good and pure, as God wants to make us, it must be through a discipline that will often be agony, and will always be pain, and against the grain. For the one thing that God wants to do with men is to bring their wills into entire harmony with His. And we cannot have that done without much treatment which will inflict in love beneficent pain.

Of course, the correction, which is spoken of in my text, is not that which befalls a man by reason of the difficulties or sorrows of outward life. The Apostle is speaking of the chastisement which the love of God that has appeared brings with it. That is to say, in all true contact with Jesus Christ there will be an element of correction that teaches us our evil, and that thwarts many of our inclinations. No man can live beside that Lord without being rebuked moment by moment, and put to wholesome shame day by day, when he contrasts himself with that serene and radiant pattern and embodiment of all perfection. And no man can receive into his heart the powers of the world to come, the might of an indwelling Spirit, without that Spirit exercising as its first function that which Christ Himself told us it would perform. “When the Comforter is come He will convict of sin,” and it is never a pleasant thing to be taught how bad we are. The eye-salve, dropped into the eye, may help to bring clear vision, and to take awav disease in time, but its

6Q LOVE MADE VISIBLE.

first effect is smarting agony. We must be willing to accept that if we want to be cleansed and made pure. So, dear brethren, since there is no growth in hoUness without pain and self-denial and discipline, and since there is no blessedness without growth in holiness, let us open our hearts for the chastisements, the rebukes, the bitter-sweet of Christ’s presence within us, and of His Spirit’s work. And let us be thankful if our hearts tingle beneath the rod and we sometimes feel the pain of necessary self-denial and mutUation. Surely it is better to be separated from our sins than to be parted from our God. Surely it is better to be joined to the Lord, and one spirit with Him, than to be tied, as men were in the horrid punishments of old, to a rotting corpse, our own evil self, and to breathe its poison and die. Horses in a stable on fire will not let themselves be led out, and so they are burned. “Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding.” Let God, with gentle, though it may sometimes be with painful, violence, draw you away from that which is drawing you away from Him. Do not say, “I had rather die than have the right hand, that is so dear, cut off.” “It is better for thee to enter into life maimed than having two hands, to be cast into hell-fire.” So let us pray,” Search me, O Lord, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me; and lead me in the life everlasting*