Christ Is Our Blessed Hope :: Titus 2:11-15
During this season of Advent, we are focusing on three of God’s Words that point us toward the coming of Christ ... Faith, Hope, and Love. Each of these words highlights a particular aspect of the season. By grace, we are saved through the God-given faith in Jesus, who died on a cross, crucifying sin, and who was raised from the dead for our justification. On account of this Gospel, God has given us hope of the resurrection into eternal life. All of this comes on account of the love of God in Christ.
Tonight our focus is the blessed hope and the appearance of the glory of our great God and savior, Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13).
1.
Can you imagine a life without faith or hope? Adam and Eve knew it. In the beginning, after God created the heavens and the earth, the sea, the sky, the garden, man, woman ... life was so very good that Adam and Eve knew only love. They didn’t need faith or hope ... God was with them ... until, that is, the serpent came along.
As the book of Genesis tells us, the serpent was more cunning than all the beasts of the field. He tempted the woman with the false hope that she could gain a greater knowledge ... godlike knowledge ... if she would only eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Thinking that this idea was good and delightful, Adam and Eve ate ... and the pall of hopelessness fell upon them. They instantly became ashamed. They began hiding in their sin, hoping against all hope that God would not see their sin ... hoping against all hope that they would not die in their sin. It was still hopeless.
As Paul tells us in Romans, it was by the trespass of that one man that death began its reign over us. But, while we were still sinners, our gracious Creator came calling anyway (Rm 5:6, Gen 3:9). He came calling, and gave us hope that he would continue to gather us and enlighten us. God does not desire the death of a sinner (v 11). That’s why he spoke the first promise that sin, death, and the devil will be crushed by Christ (Gen 3:15). He is the Lord of all hopefulness. Through the woman’s Seed, the hope that we would be delivered from death and restored to eternal life became the hope of all God’s people. In fact, Eve’s hope for the Savior became so great that when she gave birth to Adam’s firstborn son, she said, I have acquired a man with YHWH (Gen 4:1). As Martin Luther once preached, “it is as if she were saying I remember what we have lost through sin. But now let our hope and speech be of nothing else except winning this back and keeping possession of it. For I have gotten the man of God who will obtain that lost glory for us again” (LW AE 1:242).
It would still take many more millennia before the world saw the Advent of the promised Seed of the woman. First, YHWH reiterated the promise to a man named Abram, who was later renamed Abraham. YHWH took Abraham outside, and said, Look, please, to the heavens, and count the stars ... so will your offspring be. Though Abraham had no children, and he and his wife Sarah were both quite old, well past the normal age for bearing children, they held onto the faith in the promise of God. This gave them hope. Saint Paul would later write, With hope upon hope, Abraham had faith that he would become the father of many nations, according to what had been said to him (Rom 4:18).
2.
And that leads us to the blessed hope. God’s promise gives us hope because of what we have seen and touched. The Word of God became flesh ... born to the woman ... born under the law ... to redeem us all. As Paul reminds us again today ... For the grace of God has been revealed, saving all men, discipling us so that when we deny ourselves ungodliness and worldly lusts we may live temperately and righteously and godly in this present age while waiting the blessed hope and appearance of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself in behalf of us for the purpose of redeeming us from all lawlessness and to purify to himself a chosen people (vv 11-14).
It was not with a flick of his omnipotent hand that he vanquished the devil and the power of sin and death. Instead, he did that with his hands and feet nailed to a cross. Jesus crushed Satan’s head by shedding his blood for the forgiveness of sins and dying on the cursed cross. And because God is actually just and justifier of those who have the faith, he raised Jesus from the dead. And this gives us hope that we will receive eternal life too.
No longer are you and I captives to death, which is hopeless eternal separation from God. Our sin died with Jesus and through baptism, Saint Peter says, we have been given a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Pet 1:3).
And this is what we declare to you (v 15). Because Jesus is the resurrection and the life, you and I should have the unwavering hope that we will live though we die ... that sin will not get the best of us. We have unwavering hope that we will receive our eternal inheritance as God’s chosen ones. Though all the devils and demons rage against us ... though we are afflicted with every imaginable disease ... though we are assaulted by doubts and uncertainties ... As the evangelist to the Hebrews says, this hope [is] an anchor for the soul, firm and secure (Heb 6:19). Our hope is from God (Ps 62:1, 5). Nothing now can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Jesus has brought justice to victory (Mt 12:21).
As Peter often reminds us, now we can always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks us a reason for the hope that is in us. Tell the world how Jesus is the answer. Tell them they can share the same hope through the faith in Jesus by the power of the Spirit. He saved us, not on the basis of works which we did in righteousness, but in accordance with his mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our savior, so that having been declared righteous in his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life (Tit 3:5-7).
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the day is coming when Jesus Christ will be fully revealed with his Father as God from all eternity. Toward that day we strive, for that day we long and hope. So come, Lord Jesus ... in his name we pray. Amen.