Wednesday, March 23, 2011

April 23, 2011 (Leviticus 27; Psalm 34; Ecclesiastes 10; Titus 2)


Training is hard. Think about the various forms of training you have experienced at one time or another in your life. No doubt the times have been strenuous. Perhaps it was intense physical training for some sort of athletic event. Perhaps you exerted some extreme mental energy in trying to memorize lines for a play or get ready for a test. The principal is almost universally accepted, namely, that if one desires to succeed in any area of life that success will usually come at a cost. The simple way to say this is, “No pain; no gain.”
If this is so, and it is, why do we sometimes go about our Christian lives with little or no effort whatsoever in striving after holiness? This should not be so. Indeed, there is a great amount of effort that is involved in our striving to become more like Christ. This is what Titus 2:11-14 teaches us. The grace of God “trains” or “teaches” us to become godly people. Often we want to simply cling to “saving” grace. But “saving” grace always comes with “training” grace. Grace saves us and makes us holy. The two go together. 

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