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VOD - Titus 2:11-12

"For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.  It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age." - Titus 2:11-12

These verses are pretty straight-forward to me and I'm glad that God put some simple ones in the Bible so I could understand them.  Let's just walk thru these though.

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people:  God is offering salvation and forgiveness to everyone.  It's not for a select few, anyone can accept this gift.  And he is just offering it, we receive it by His mercy.  There's not a checklist of tasks that we must perform in order to be saved, it's all about believing in Him.

It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions:  As Christians, we are called to be Christ-like, to be more like God.  Sometimes I think people want to overcomplicate things but if we would just exhibit the fruits of the spirit (Galations 5:22-23); love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control we can make it pretty simple.  The Holy Spirit gives us the strength to say no to worldly passions.  Temptation is not a sin, giving in to temptation is a sin.  Jesus lived a sinless life and he was tempted by Satan but resisted in Matthew 4.

And live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age:  Self-control and self-discipline to me go hand in hand.  It's not easy to keep our temper in check all the time and fight anger, or to keep from spreading the latest gossip we heard even if we don't know it to be true but we are called to be disciplined and do so.  Thought this letter to Titus was written about AD 64, God's offer of salvation still stands today.  It's still available for us to accept it and we are still called to live godly lives, now more than possibly ever before in this country.

The Bible and Christianity can be studied very deeply into theological and other study areas.  But sometimes it's good to just get a short, simple, straight-forward message and I think that's what we got right here in Titus.

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