“Of Him you are in Christ Jesus.” That is, by the grace of the same God you have now been called into the faith of Christ. By His beneficence you are children of Jesus Christ and members of His blessed society.
“Who became for us wisdom from God.” That is, Jesus Christ revealed to us the good pleasure of His pre-eternal Father, so that through His Gospel and divine revelation we might know the true God.
This beloved Son of His, Jesus Christ, has been presented to us by God as our righteousness. By perfectly fulfilling the law of God, and by His suffering and death, He merited for us from God the Father the remission of sins, justification, and salvation.
This beloved Son, Jesus Christ, was presented for us unto our sanctification. By His Blood He cleansed all our sins and granted us the Holy Spirit, Who by His grace regenerates and sanctifies us.
This beloved Son of God the Father, Jesus Christ, was given by God for our redemption and deliverance. For He is that greatest Mediator, Who redeemed us by His most precious Blood from eternal condemnation.
Man can do nothing without God toward his blessedness. The merit of Jesus Christ alone makes him perfect. “Of Him you are in Christ Jesus, Who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”
If a man follows the voice and exhortation of the saving grace of God, he immediately receives the word and begins to cease from sins.
“The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly, righteously, and piously in the present age.” So Paul preaches to Titus (Tit 2:11-12).
The first saying of the Apostle Paul forcefully instructs us that our Lord Jesus Christ, by His most holy and priceless merits, obtained for us everything that belongs to the blessedness of fallen man.
When we knew nothing of the way of life, He became for us His Wisdom. When we were sinners, He became for us our Righteousness.
When we were an abomination before God, He became our Sanctification. When we were subject to eternal condemnation for our sins, He became our Redemption.
“Of Him you are in Christ Jesus, Who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” But lest anyone conclude from this that human free will is wholly destroyed in the work of our salvation, turn our reasoning to the following observations.
First, no human merits, neither power nor the free will of men, can add anything worthy to our redemption. They can contribute nothing, neither at the beginning, nor in the middle, nor at the end.
Of course, man could sin, but he could not again justify himself before the judgment of his Creator. He could lose all his original blessedness and destroy his innocence, but he could not again find the beauties he had lost.
He could kill himself, but he could not make himself alive again. He could subject himself to the devil, but he could not deliver himself from such grievous slavery at all.
Can a dead body show the activity of a living man? So it is with men, who all, according to the assurance of the divine Paul, have become dead in their sins (Eph 2:1, 5).
Can they, being dead in soul, help themselves? We could do nothing toward our creation, because it was impossible for us to create ourselves.
We must draw the same conclusion concerning the work of our redemption. Since we have no ability or strength, how can we contribute anything to redemption, sanctification, and then regeneration?
The work of our redemption is regarded as greater than creation. If man had been able to redeem himself and justify himself, then in this case he would have shown himself more powerful than if he could have created himself.
The Son of God became man in order to restore everything lost in Adam and to make alive again everything that had died in Adam.
From this it is sufficiently clear how powerless, infirm, and wholly insufficient for his own deliverance man became in Adam.
Second, this truth is explained by the likeness of the Gospel parable. It sufficiently suggests how the poor man, having fallen into the hands of robbers and having been wounded by murderers, could not help himself (Lk 10:30).
The faithful Samaritan had to bind up his wounds, lift him up, bring him to an inn, and deal with him as a physician deals with the sick.
The wounded man allowed everything to be done with him as it pleased his physician, the Samaritan. A man who has fallen into sin must act in a like manner, if he wishes to restore his lost blessedness.
Here the suffering sinner must allow Jesus Christ alone to act upon him and must be at peace. Our Lord Jesus Christ must cleanse and bind up his wounds, and pour oil and wine upon them.
Man, being in his sinful infirmities, must surrender himself wholly to the divine will of his Deliverer. If he does not refuse to fulfill all this, then without doubt Jesus Christ will help him.
Third, here man, having been endowed by the Creator with freedom, gives it into perfect obedience to God.
As soon as man, subjected to sinful infirmities, repents of the sins he has committed and by the help of God’s grace turns to God, he abandons his perversity and grieves over his transgressions.
He permits his physician, Jesus Christ, to wash and cleanse his sinful wounds with the sharp wine of the Law and the sweet oil of evangelical consolation.
As soon as this happens, Jesus Christ by His grace produces faith in him, and also all the fruits of saving faith: righteousness, peace, joy, consolation, and blessedness.
He renews him and works in him both to will and to do according to His good pleasure (Phil 2:13).
Fourth, to cease from sin is not within man’s natural powers. Holy Scripture calls the natural man a slave of sin (Jn 8:34), sold under sin (Rom 7:14).
By his nature he can do nothing other than sin, as the prophet Jeremiah affirms exactly: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good, having learned evil” (Jer 13:23).
Fifth, what action does the grace of God that has appeared, saving all men through the Gospel, produce in us, about which the Apostle writes in Tit 2:11?
This saving grace, preached to all men, teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires. That is, the grace of God comes to us through the preaching of the word of God.
This grace instructs us, that is, reminds us, teaches, draws, awakens, moves, and persuasively exhorts man to lay aside sins and cease from sinful inclinations.
This exhortation of God’s grace, in the preaching of the divine word, agrees with the inward testimony of conscience. It assures man inwardly and outwardly that he is doing wrong.
It assures him that he must abandon sinful impulses and inclinations if he wishes to be eternally blessed, since all sins are contrary to God and to human conscience.
Sixth, therefore one must conclude that if man follows this inward suggestion and exhortation of God’s grace, receives the word, and does not reject the teaching of the divine faith, he begins to cease from sins.
Then divine grace produces everything in man, that is, faith and all its fruits. This action of God’s grace is likened to light beginning to shine in darkness (cf. Jn 1:5).
As darkness cannot illumine itself, so man by his own nature cannot give himself even the least enlightenment. The God-inspired Psalmist assures us of this: “You will light my lamp, O Lord. My God, You will enlighten my darkness” (Ps 17:29).
A man will stretch out his eyes in vain if the sun does not illumine him. So also the grace of God, and Jesus Christ Himself, the clear Light, appears to all men.
He shines upon all who sit in darkness and the shadow of death (Lk 1:79). He enlightens every man coming into the world (Jn 1:9), that is, He reveals Himself to all, offers grace to all, and appears to all.
He is the Light of the whole world (Jn 8:12). He shows all the way to life, goes before all, and walks before the sheep as the good shepherd (Jn 10:4).
But this is on the condition that the man darkened by darkness himself desires to make use of this divine light. It is on the condition that the sheep themselves freely heed the voice of their Shepherd.
They themselves must follow their Shepherd on the path by which they ought to go. Jesus Christ, as the good shepherd, sought all of us as wandering sheep, and to this day seeks us daily when we stray and persuasively draws us to Himself (Lk 15:4).
He runs after them. He loves us and by His love is disposed toward us as a Bridegroom toward His beloved bride.
Yet this is with the assurance that we ourselves desire to receive His gracious love, desire to drive sinful darkness away from ourselves, and resist sinful inclinations ourselves.
Seventh, when we merely hear the word of God, that is, the teaching of the divine faith, it persuasively instructs us that we must either cease from sins or subject ourselves for them to eternal condemnation and perdition in the age to come.
Then, inevitably, when we recall all our past deeds, we are assured both by the true word of God and by our own conscience that all this is indisputable justice.
Although God in His mercy promised all of us the forgiveness of sins by grace alone, He nevertheless set this promise under the condition that we turn to God.
Thus Ezekiel writes in his prophecy: “If the lawless man turns, he shall live and not die, and his iniquities shall no longer be remembered” (Ezek 18:21).
Here the prophet of God clearly affirms that the forgiveness of sins is joined together with repentance. So also speaks the pre-eternal Son of God: “Whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16).
But faith daily resists the old man, overcomes the flesh, enslaves it, and makes it obedient to the spirit. That is, it converts man, destroys and quenches sinful inclinations in him, and cleanses the heart from impure passions.
This is saving faith, which turns away from the world and its desires (1 Jn 2:15-16), from sins and the devil.
This is the most true and essential faith, which turns to Jesus Christ. Against the innumerable debt of sins, it seeks rest and delight for the soul only in the Blood, death, and merit of Christ, without any human merits.
If anyone draws contrary thoughts about this work of our redemption, he has a most deceptive and false faith.
That is, if he reasons and affirms in his thoughts that God wishes simply to forgive man his sins without any condition, even if man does not restrain himself from his sinful inclinations, then he is deceived.
Such a man can never be blessed until he ceases from his sinful passions.
Eighth, in this way God produces repentance and conversion in man through faith. God alone begins, continues, and completes our blessedness, but on the condition that we do not willfully resist God the Holy Spirit.
The stiff-necked Jews once resisted Him in this way (Acts 7:51). In the work of our salvation we must allow Jesus Christ to deal with us as a physician deals with the sick.
The physician first describes to the sick man his illness. Thus God also reveals our sins to us in His Law.
The physician tells the sick man what he must abstain from and what he must lay aside, so that His medicine may always have its power and action.
So also God suggests to each in His Law what we must abandon, so that the most precious Blood of Christ may act in us. Without this, this priceless medicine will be useless for us.
Ninth, as soon as man ceases from sins by the power of the Holy Spirit, the grace of God immediately begins to produce new gifts in him.
Without this, man by himself is not capable of thinking about works pleasing to God and saving, much less of doing anything in agreement with the law of God (2 Cor 3:5).
From this one must justly conclude that every good produced in us does not come from our own powers, but is the action of God’s grace.
The divine Paul testifies to this: “Not I, but the grace of God which is with me” (1 Cor 15:10). Nevertheless, all this is imputed to us solely from the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ.
THEOSIS