Grace That Trains, Not Just Covers

Servants of righteousness are still unfinished people. As the children's song says:

"He's still working on me
To make me what I ought to be."

That is where the last chapter left us.

One reader hears the word unfinished and immediately thinks of everything he should have learned by now. The same temptation returned. The same correction was needed. He obeyed slowly, or failed again, or came back to God carrying a confession that has become painfully familiar. If grace were truly at work, he thinks, surely he would not still need so much teaching.

Another reader is willing to be unfinished indefinitely, provided no one asks what grace is forming in him. He says Christ has forgiven him. He says his sins are covered. Any expectation that his life should now be taught, corrected, or changed feels like an intrusion upon the freeness of the gift.

The first man mistakes continued instruction and daily struggle for failed salvation. The second reduces salvation until it requires no instruction or growth at all.

Scripture permits neither mistake.

The problem is not that grace pardons. It does. Christ does not partially forgive the repentant sinner and leave the remaining debt to be paid through improved behavior. His blood does not need our obedience to make it sufficient.

The problem begins when pardon is made grace's last word, as though the grace that forgives has no intention of forming the life it has forgiven.

Grace does not choose between receiving the guilty and teaching them how to live. It does not clear the record and then withdraw, leaving the rescued person either unchanged or dependent upon his own strength.

The grace that saves is the grace that trains.

The Grace That Appeared

Paul writes to Titus:

“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,
Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;
Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;
Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.”
— Titus 2:11–14

Paul begins with grace bringing salvation. Before he speaks of what must be denied or how anyone should live, grace has appeared and salvation has come with it.

Then the same grace teaches.

Paul does not move from grace into a different arrangement where the believer must now form himself. The subject of the sentence has not changed. The grace that brings salvation teaches the people who receive it.

That connection matters here, in the letter itself. Paul has just addressed the conduct of older men, older women, younger women, younger men, and servants. His instructions reach patience, love, speech, fidelity, self-control, and ordinary behavior. Then verse eleven begins with “For.” The practical life he has described does not hang in the air as an independent program of improvement. It rests upon the appearing of saving grace.

This teaching is more than information. Grace does not merely explain which life is wrong and which is right, then leave an unfinished person staring at the lesson. It trains. It corrects. It brings truth into practice until a person learns to say no where he once consented and to live differently where he once followed another desire.

Its instruction has both a denial and a practice.

Denying ungodliness and worldly lusts.

Grace teaches a real no. Not a polite disagreement with sin while it remains undisturbed. Not sorrow that never interrupts the practice. Ungodliness and worldly desires are not merely covered and kept. Grace teaches the rescued person to refuse their claim.

But denial is not the whole lesson.

We should live soberly, righteously, and godly.

Grace does not only remove an old direction. It forms a new one. It trains judgment, conduct, desire, speech, and ordinary faithfulness into the shape of a life lived before God. The lesson reaches what a person refuses and what he practices, what he leaves and what he begins to do.

And Paul gives this training a time: “in this present world.”

He does not postpone every expectation of godliness until the believer is beyond temptation, conflict, and weakness. Grace teaches here, in the world where old desires still speak, obedience still costs something, and the learner still needs mercy.

That does not mean every lesson is mastered immediately. Teaching assumes that something remains to be learned. Training includes correction, repetition, practice, and return. A command you had to hear twice is not therefore a command you never heard. A lesson learned through confession and renewed obedience is still grace's lesson.

Slow growth is not no growth. Repeated temptation is not settled consent. A dry act of righteousness does not become unreal because it arrived without emotional force.

The question is not whether you have completed the course. It is whether grace is still permitted to teach you.

Paul then turns the learner's eyes forward:

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.”

Grace has appeared bringing salvation. Christ will appear in glory. Between those two appearings, grace teaches us how to live in this present world.

That keeps Christian training from becoming a project of moral self-improvement. The hope ahead is not finally a better version of ourselves. It is Jesus Christ. Grace trains a people whose faces are turned toward Him, learning now to live in a way that agrees with the Lord for whom they wait.

Then Paul gives the ground beneath the whole lesson:

Christ “gave himself for us.”

Before the denial, before the sober and righteous living, before the zeal for good works, He gave Himself. The learner's progress did not persuade Him to do it. No record of successful lessons called forth the cross.

He gave Himself “that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people.” Grace is not indifferent to the iniquity from which Christ redeems. Nor does Christ purify a people so that they may finally belong to themselves. They are a people for Him—claimed by His self-giving and being formed for His purposes.

Peculiar does not mean that strangeness itself is holiness. It names possession: a people especially His. Grace does not train them so that they may qualify to become His people; Christ gave Himself to redeem and purify them for Himself.

They are “zealous of good works.” Not because their works purchase a place among His people, but because His grace does not leave His people without a new direction. The gift comes first. The life answering the gift is real.

The grace that saves is the grace that trains.

A People Still Being Formed

But if grace trains, the frightened reader may now wonder whether every slow lesson has placed him on probation.

Paul answers that fear in the next chapter of the same letter:

“But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour;
That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
— Titus 3:4–7

There is the appearing again. There is salvation again. And Paul removes our works from its ground: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us.” We are “justified by his grace.”

The lessons do not keep the mercy merciful. Progress does not renew justification each morning.

The song had it right without knowing how right it was. Still working on me was never still deciding about me.

If Christ's correction still brings the failure into the light and turns you toward mercy, do not conclude that His pardon was incomplete. If the lesson has been slow, do not measure life by the speed of your progress or the force of your feelings. If you have failed and brought the failure into the light, do not mistake your need for mercy for an eviction notice.

Correction can be painful precisely because grace will not flatter us. It may expose the excuse we preferred, return to the place we hoped the lesson had passed over, or require practice after the first attempt failed. That discomfort is not a second condemnation laid upon the person Christ justified. Grace can oppose what harms the redeemed person without withdrawing the mercy by which he was received.

Scripture sends the needy believer toward grace, not away from it:

“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”
— Hebrews 4:15–16

The throne of grace has mercy for failure and help for the present need. Grace does not stand at the front of the room naming the lesson while withholding what the weak require to learn it. Christ knows infirmity, and His people are told to come.

A slow learner is not the same as a refusing learner.

The slow learner may hesitate, fall, confess, ask for help, and practice the same lesson again. His weakness is real. So is his return. The response may be dry and trembling, but grace's instruction can still reach him, name the wrong, and turn him toward what is right.

There is, however, another way to call ourselves unfinished.

A person may say that everyone needs grace while protecting one part of life from everything grace teaches. He calls the sin covered, then makes covered mean untouchable. Christ may forgive it, he imagines, but Christ may not contradict it. If correction reaches that place, he renames correction legalism. If grace teaches denial, he explains why this desire must be exempt.

That is not merely a lesson learned slowly. It is a refusal to let grace be the Teacher Titus says it is.

The issue is not that temptation returned or that change has taken longer than you hoped. The issue is what happens when grace names the matter. Do you bring it into the light, seek mercy and help, and return to the lesson? Or have you decided that forgiveness means you never have to be taught here?

Has covered become untouchable?

Do not answer with every failure you have ever known. Name the lesson presently before you.

Complete these two sentences honestly:

Grace is presently teaching me to deny ______.

Grace is presently teaching me to practice ______.

Then take one concrete step in that lesson. Let the denial be actual and the new practice visible today.

Do not take the step to earn the gift, renew the verdict, or prove what every remaining year of your life will contain. Take it because the grace that saved you has not abandoned you to your old direction.

The grace that saves is the grace that trains.

Titus has held salvation and training together in the same grace. The next question is what this whole gift actually is.

That is where the next chapter begins.

Up Next:

What You've Actually Been Given (Chapter 13)