Is God’s grace really for everyone?

Yes. In Galatians 2:1-10, the Apostle Paul shows that God welcomes outsiders into His family by grace, without making them earn it. In this study, Dr. Toby Holt explains why this was such amazing, unexpected good news.

For centuries, the Jewish people and the Gentile, or non-Jewish, nations were bitter enemies. So it shocked many to learn that God planned all along to bless “all the families of the earth,” just as He promised Abraham. Paul brought along Titus, a Gentile believer, as a living test case. The leaders in Jerusalem did not force Titus to be circumcised or to keep the Jewish law — proof that faith in Jesus needs nothing added to it. As Holt puts it, the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

Questions this study answers:

1. Did God always plan to save people from every nation? Yes. God’s promise to Abraham was that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him. Welcoming outsiders was not a backup plan; it was God’s design from the start.

2. Who were the Judaizers? They were teachers who said that believing in Jesus was not enough, and that people also had to be circumcised and keep the Jewish law. Paul resisted them because they were adding human rules to God’s free grace.

3. Why does Paul say there is no “first class” and “second class” in the church? Because everyone is saved the same way — by grace through faith in Christ. There is no room for ranking people by race or background, for in Christ there is “neither Jew nor Greek.”

“Yet not even Titus who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised.” — Galatians 2:3 (NKJV)

Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt is the President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, a Reformed seminary in Colorado Springs. He is known for clear, down-to-earth Bible teaching, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio.

Listen and go deeper: This is Part 3 of the ten-part Galatians study. Find the whole series, along with verse-by-verse studies of other books of the Bible, at newgeneva.org. To support this teaching ministry, visit newgeneva.org/give.

For centuries, there'd been conflict between the Israelites and the Gentiles. And because of that, it was very difficult for some Jewish Christians to accept their Gentile counterparts. In today's study of Galatians, Paul will talk about the grace and salvation that Christ brought to Jews and Gentiles alike.

If you had spent years in prison. If you had spent years in prison, if you had spent years behind bars, and then someone let you out, someone let you free, someone opened the doors, ushered you out, and for the first time, you felt the sun beating down upon your face. For the first time, you breathed the free air, so to speak. If this were to occur after a lifetime spent in jail, that you were to be freed, you would feel great in that moment. You would feel the relief wash over you. You'd feel freedom, and you'd be excited about it. But what if,

say, 10 seconds after you were out those doors, breathing the free air, feeling the sun, what if 10 seconds later, someone came in and laid shackles upon you once more and ushered you back into your jail cell, and the iron bars drew shut once again? You'd feel terrible. You'd feel horrified. You'd feel like this was just a tease, what you had received. You'd been misled into thinking that you were free when you were not. This, in a nutshell, is what was happening in Galatia. Paul had come into the churches in Galatia, and he had preached the freedom that we find in Christ. He had said we are set free from bondage to sin and to death and to all the horrors of this world. We've been set free. We have liberty in Christ, is what he had preached, and we receive it through faith alone, through grace alone, in Christ alone. He had preached this message, and then he'd left town, and what had happened? Well, again, the equivalent, the spiritual equivalent of 10 seconds later, the Judaizers had come in. And they had said, "Well, that's good and that's great that you have faith. That's important. It's good and great that Christ did what he did, but don't forget the law of Moses still applies. Don't forget that the ceremonial aspects of what we did before for all the centuries are still applicable. Don't forget to be circumcised. Don't forget to honor the feast days. Don't forget to do any number of other things on top of that which Paul told you. Don't forget to do these things because these things are essential. They're important if you are to be a first-class, first-rate citizen in the Kingdom of God." Paul had preached freedom from the law, freedom from sin, freedom from death. The Judaizers had sought to make captive the people to the law once again, whether it was one law or a thousand, the principle was the same, that faith plus keeping this law or that law or these laws or those laws, that that was necessary if you were to be saved. Now, in the case of the Judaizers, we can look at that and go, "Well, that's silly. It shouldn't work that way." But I tell you, that principle exists in cultures and even in brick buildings with crosses out front to this very day. Let's pick an easy example. Let's pick something outside of Christendom, so to speak. The Jews, even in our present day, if you were to ask a Jew, "What must I do to be right with God? What must I do to be saved?" Well, I hope you've got some time to listen to the answer because it'll take a while. There are a lot of things. There's a lot of hoops you have to jump through in order to have right standing with God, and they'll tell you that. An Orthodox Jew will tell you that. What about a Roman Catholic? If you were to ask a Roman Catholic, "What must I have to have confidence in this thing, to have assurance of pardon, assurance of salvation? What do I have to have?" Well, faith is a good starting point, but they'll start to add things. You have to be baptized. You have to keep this sacrament and that sacrament. You have to confess. You have to go and chase and kiss relics. You got to have indulgences, all these different things. There's any number of different things that other worldviews, other religious worldviews add on top of the idea of faith in order for you to have security with God. To Paul, it was simple. To Paul, it was this. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and if you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. It was simple, it was straightforward, and it was over and against the prevailing view of those in his age or ours that always seeks to add works on top of faith. Paul contended against it in his day. We contended against it in our own as well. Let's dive into our text, see how he contended, what his argumentation was, what the principles were that he planted his feet squarely upon. Let's look at verses one through two, and then we'll work our way through the balance of this text. Verse one. Then after 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and I took Titus with me. Don't forget that last part. It's going to be central to our study. I took Titus with me, and I went up by revelation, and I communicated to them the gospel that I preach to the Gentiles, but privately to those who were of reputation, lest by any means I might run or had run in vain. All right. A lot can happen in 14 years. In 14 years, a lot can take place. In Apostle Paul's case, 14 years had gone by since that time when he was converted on the road to Damascus. Fourteen years had gone by between that time and the time of the second visit to Jerusalem to meet with the other apostles. Now, during that time, Paul had grown in his faith and his understanding and his ministerial gifts and the like. He had certainly grown. There is some debate, for those of you who've studied the book of Acts, whether the visit that we're looking at in these verses corresponds with what you'll find in Acts 11 or Acts 15. I'm persuaded it's Acts 11, but Paul went up to Jerusalem on a number of occasions, and sometimes we try to figure out exactly which one. I think it's Acts 11. With that said, whatever the case, when Paul went up to Jerusalem, his intent was to meet with the apostles. His intent was to meet with the apostles, with the church leaders, and to share with them some of his experience across these 14 years, to demonstrate and tell them what God had done through him in the Gentile nations. You remember, Peter and the others had focused their ministry primarily on sharing Christ with their fellow Jewish brethren. But Paul had been commissioned of God to go afarTo go to the Greek, to go to those in Corinth, and Ephesus, and Philippi, Thessalonica, and the like, and share the gospel with people who didn't understand Christ and who didn't understand the Jewish background from which Christ came. This was Paul's ministry, and it had borne great fruit. It had borne great fruit, and so when he talks to the apostles, he's saying, "Look, guys, what God has done.

Look what He's done through me." That it was mind-boggling, the outreach of this gospel message. Now, in order to demonstrate the fruit, in order to prove to the apostles what was happening,

Paul brought someone with him. He brought Barnabas, but he also brought Titus. Now, who was Titus? Well, Titus we know to be a Gentile from the region of Crete. He was a Greek. He was a non-Jew. He was a Gentile or goy of the Hebrew term. This was not a Jewish convert. This is someone from a Gentile nation. This was someone who was uncircumcised and yet a believer in Christ Jesus. Now, why did Paul bring Titus? Why did he bring Titus? Well, we weren't in his head. We don't totally know this. But we can perceive from the text that Titus was sort of a test case. Here comes Paul, he's going into Jerusalem. He hasn't been there for a great period of time. And along with him, he brings Titus. He brings this Gentile. He brings this Greek. He brings this individual that was outside of the Jewish covenant and promises, outside of the Jewish context and community, and he brings him straight into the heart of Jerusalem, where people would recognize that he was different, recognize that he was someone other than one of their own, and he would bring them to the apostles, and he would present Titus to the apostles as proof of God's Christ outreach into the Gentile nations. And Paul might have wondered, how would the apostles receive Titus?

Paul's walking with Titus. They're going into Jerusalem. It must have crossed Paul's mind. What's Peter going to say when I introduce Titus, when I introduce this Gentile, this man from a pagan nation who also loves Jesus? What's Peter and James and the others going to say? Are they going to make my friend Titus jump through any hoops, do anything, perhaps be circumcised in order to prove that he's really one of us? What are they going to do prior to welcoming him into the church? Well, let's find out. Let's see what they did. Let's look at verses three through five. Verse three. "Yet not even Titus who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised." Not even Titus who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised. "And this occurred because of false brethren secretly brought in who came in by stealth to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage." Remember, there was folks who had gone into Galatia who were adding things on top of the word, on top of the gospel, that ended up bringing people back into bondage to the law. Some were saying that circumcision was a must. It was a must. It was a must. You had to be circumcised. It was great if you had faith, but you had also to be circumcised. There were some who were doing this, looking to bring people back into bondage to the Old Testament ceremonial law. Paul knew this, and he wanted to see whether the apostles would do the same thing. And in verse three, he says, "Not even Titus was compelled to be circumcised." He's writing to the people in Galatia, and he's saying, "Look, I brought my friend Titus to the apostles in Jerusalem. If ever there was a time and ever there was a place where a Gentile convert to Christendom, you would think would be compelled to be circumcised, if indeed that was godly and biblical, it would've been here, and it would've been by these guys, the apostles.

But that's not what they did.

That's not what they said. Not even Titus, despite being a Goyim, despite being from a pagan nation, not even he was being compelled to be circumcised. If he wasn't compelled to be circumcised, then you in Galatia, what are you doing? What are you doing compelling others to be circumcised? If this one went straight to Jerusalem, met with the apostles, and they didn't tell him to be circumcised, how dare you listen to these Judaizers who are saying something different? They're saying something different than I've been telling you all along. They're also saying something different than the apostles, the other apostles, have been telling you."

If ever there was a situation in which a new convert from a Gentile nation might have been pressured to be circumcised, it would have been in this place and at this time with Titus.

But that's not what happened. And the reason why it didn't happen is because the apostles knew that it would add nothing.

Peter, James, John,

they knew that circumcision would add nothing.

There's no work that you can do that can add anything, an ounce to that. That can add anything to the perfect and atoning work of Jesus Christ. Nothing you can do. Even in our own days, one of the greatest frustrations, even in the modern church, is that there are denominations that do just the same thing. That add other things. They say, "Well, you can believe, and that's great, but you also have to do this. You have to be baptized. It has to be immersion by water." You can add any number of things, and they can sound godly. And yet, if you add something on top of faith alone through grace alone as the means by which we access God's kingdom, we're wrong. It's good to have fruit that demonstrates we're saved. It's good to be baptized. It's good to do those things which are appropriate and are biblical, and yet the minute you start saying that you have to also do this, this, or that, whatever those things might be, and add it on top of the work of Jesus Christ, you're preaching another gospel.

And that was Paul's-- Remember a couple of weeks ago, that was his contention. He opens the book to the Galatians and saying, "This is what you're doing. You're adding something to the gospel."

And he says, "I don't care who comes and tells you to add something,

be it myself, another apostle, be it an angel from heaven. If anyone comes in and adds something to that, adds something to the broken body and shed blood of Jesus Christ that we apprehend through faith alone, through grace alone, if anyone adds anything to that and says you must believe it, anathema.

Let such one be accursed because that is not the gospel."Paul's point is consistent throughout the book of Galatians. It's consistent throughout all his letters. It's consistent throughout all the scripture. It's consistent, and yet culturally, it was hard

because in the first-century context, Christendom was coming out of a Jewish expectation and centuries and centuries and centuries of traditions. And in fairness, it's not easy to shift gears on some things.

And yet it was essential, and Paul knew that it was hard but necessary. For he had said, "I'm a Pharisee of the Pharisee, a Hebrew of the Hebrews. I studied the law. I was zealous in all these things, and yet I understand that the law was fulfilled in Christ. If you don't yet get it and you still think you're being saved through law keeping, you are wrong.

You're undermining the gospel." This was his message to the Galatians and to everyone else he ministered to. And Titus was this wonderful case study that they all could learn from if they would pay attention. All right, let's look at verses six through 10. "But from those who seemed to be something, whatever they were, it makes no difference to me because God shows personal favoritism to no man. For those who seemed to be something added nothing to me." In other words, when I went to the apostles, when I went before the learned men, when I went and shared what I was doing and what was going on in the Gentile nations, they did not add a thing to the gospel I was preaching. I wanted to double-check and make sure I wasn't running in vain, that I wasn't doing something that would be viewed by my peers in ministry as unright or unbiblical. They added nothing to it.

"On the contrary, when they saw the gospel for the circumcised had been committed to me, as the gospel for the circumcised was to Peter. When they saw the gospel for the uncircumcised, for the Gentiles, was committed to me, and the gospel for the Jews was committed to Peter. For he who worked effectively in Peter for the apostleship to the circumcised also worked effectively in me towards the Gentiles. And when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that had been given to me, they gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised." They to their Jewish peers. "They desired only this, that we would remember the poor, the very thing that I was eager to do." The apostles, the other apostles, verified and validated what Paul was doing.

And their only sending grace or sending words was, "Remember the poor as you minister. Share the gospel by all means. Share it from the highest to the lowest. Remember the poor." And Paul says, "That's in my heart, too. That's in my heart as well." Now, we've used the word Gentile on a number of occasions this morning. What does that mean? Who are the Gentiles that we hear so much about? I'm looking at them. The Gentiles are everyone who's non-Jewish. If you ask a Jew what a Gentile is, a Gentile, goyim, the Hebrew word, is everyone who is not Jewish. It's all those from what you might have called, especially in antiquity, the pagan nations. Now, historically, what relationship did Jews and Gentiles have? It varied from none to terrible. They didn't have really any real formal relationship. The Jews and the Gentiles didn't have any real formal relationship, and at times, the relationship that they did have was terrible. As Goliath bellowing insults into the Jewish camp, Goliath the Philistine, and all of his later-day peers. The relationship between Jews and Gentiles was bad typically. Now, on the one hand, it was bad or nonexistent because God had told the Jews at the outset, he said, "Look, I'm calling you out of the world. You are my own special people." He told this to Abraham. There's a message given to the patriarchs and to the rest of the Jews. He said, "I'm calling you out of the world. You are mine. You are my special people. Jacob, I have loved. Esau, I have hated." He called them to himself, and because of that, he says, "You have to be careful." He says, "If you start intermarrying with the Philistines or the Moabites or any number of folks outside the covenant community, you start doing that, what's going to happen? Pagan foreign practices will come in." Jezebel, the worst queen in the history of Israel, was a pagan, and she brought with her pagan practices and pagan gods. She wasn't the only one. Any number of other occasions. Solomon married a bunch of pagan wives from foreign nations, and they brought pagan gods. When Israel, when they had treaties or relationships or the like with other nations, it typically ended up bad for Israel. It typically ended up bad because what it did was it polluted or corrupted their faith and their trust in the one true God because other gods, lowercase G, came into the picture. So it was bad. It was bad, bad, bad. And God said, "Don't marry outside of the covenant community. Don't become allies or rely or trust in them instead of trusting in me. Have nothing to do with them," by and large was God's message to Israel during the old covenant. Well, guess what? The feeling was mutual. The Gentiles, for their part, the pagan nations, the Philistines and the Amorites and the Hittites and the like, the Canaanites, there was no love lost. They didn't like the Jews either. There was continually animosity between God's people, those called out of the world, and those who remained in the world. There was continuing animosity between these two, and across the centuries, the Jews felt that opposition. They felt that oppression. They felt the oppression that came with being in bondage to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians.

They felt the oppression that came during exile to the Assyrians or the Babylonians. They felt and heard the blasphemy that roared from Goliath of the Philistines. They felt in Paul's own day the oppression that came from who? Which people?

The Romans.

Romans, Egyptians, Philistines, Hittites, Canaanites, Amorites, Jezebites, Babylonians, Assyrians. The relationship historically was always bad. The experience they had with these foreign nations was consistently bad. There was consistent hostility between the Jews and the Gentiles. Now, let me ask you a question. Was that hostility always going to be part of God's plan?Was it always going to be part of God's plan that there would be this hostility between Israel, the covenant community, the covenant nation, and the rest of the nations, the rest of God's people? Well, not according to what God told Abraham, the very first Hebrew. The very first Jew. You go back to Genesis 12. Remember, God called Abraham out. God said, "Of you, I will make a great people." Now remember, Abraham was an old guy. Sarah was his old wife. They had no expectation that they'd have any kids, and yet God says, "Abram, out of you will come a great people. Out of you will come a great nation that will be more than the stars of the sky, more than the sand on the beach. Out of you will come a great nation, and I will make a covenant to you and thy seed, and thy seed after thee. I'll give you great land." And most importantly, out of you will come the one, the Messiah. Out of you will become the light, not only to the Jews,

but to the Gentiles as well. This is what he said in Genesis 12. He says this, "Abram, I will make you a great nation. I'll bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you. And in you,

all the families of the earth

shall be blessed."

Now,

who are all the families of the earth?

In a word,

Gentiles.

God calls Abram out and Abraham's house out, his lineage, his descendants, calls them out. And yet, a very critical and important special way, God says to Abraham that out of you and out of one who would ultimately come from your house will become blessings that will not be limited to your house, but which will extend to all the nations.

Earlier, Jordan read from Isaiah 56. It's a prophecy in Isaiah's time, 700 years before Christ, of what would happen, the expansion of the kingdom beyond the borders of Israel.

God's intention was always that men and women like you and I would be engrafted into the true vine, that wild vines, Gentile vines, Goyim vines, would be engrafted into the healthy branch. This was always his intention. Simeon, even when he held the baby Jesus there in the temple, he knew this. This would be a light to the Gentiles.

Few understood it or appreciated it even in Paul's day. But you know what? When Titus walked into Jerusalem, confessing his faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ, there was proof.

There was proof. God's plan was no longer limited just to the nation-state of Israel, but there was now others that are being engrafted. This had even occurred in the Old Testament context. Sometimes we forget people like Ruth, Rahab, and the like, and yet here it would be widespread, this widespread engrafting of Gentile believers into the tree of faith. Now, Paul, from his standpoint, he had tried to educate and teach people about this. It was hard. Remember, this is the first century. Everyone had difficulty with these things, especially then. But he had consistently, every church he wrote to, he talks along these lines. He wrote to the Ephesians, he said this. He says, "You can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body," not lesser members, equal members of the same body, "and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel." When Titus stood before the apostles in Galatians 2, he was the literal fulfillment. He was a prototype, so to speak, a literal fulfillment of the promise that the Gentiles would be welcomed into the kingdom. If ever there was someone who could, in that context, before the song even existed, have sung "Amazing Grace," it was Titus. He who was not only lost, but who was outside of the Old Testament covenant economy, had been brought near to the throne through the blood of the one who sits there, through the blood of Jesus Christ. With that said, let's go back to the Judaizers for a moment. Remember we said the Judaizers were those in Galatia who were saying, "Well, faith in Jesus is good, but let's add the circumcision and the feast days and the things like that." Let's go back to the Judaizers for a minute. Now, the Judaizers were all for guys like Titus coming into the church. That wasn't their problem. They wouldn't have even gone to Galatia if they had a problem with that. They were okay with that. But again, they were trying to add stuff that those Gentile believers needed to do. We said before that they were trying to convert men like Titus, Gentiles. They were trying to convert them to Moses before converting them to Jesus. They were trying to make them Jews before they made them Christians. They said you have to be circumcised, and the feast days have to be part and parcel to what you're doing. There's other ceremonial aspects of the law. You do that plus the faith you're professing, you'll be good. If you don't do that, the Judaizers, some would have said that the people were outside the kingdom if they didn't do it. Others would have said that they're lesser in the kingdom. And that was the primary view that many had. Many Jewish converts looked at Gentiles, the Gentile converts who came into the church, that came to Christ. They didn't really like them, and they didn't really trust them. Why?

Because that was the nature to their religious practice for centuries. They didn't like Samaritans. They sure weren't going to like guys from Corinth and Ephesus and Galatia and the like, even if they did say and profess the same things. So what they did in Galatia and elsewhere is they created this tier system, this tier system where a top-notch Christian was someone like Paul or Peter, someone who was a Jew of the Jew, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, Pharisee of the Pharisees, who also was a believer in Christ. Someone who came out of the Jewish stock, so to speak, had all those boxes checked and had turned to Christ. They would've said, "Well, that's A+. That's top rank, top-ranked Christian." Gentiles from Crete who were uncircumcisedIf they were even in the kingdom, they were on the lowest floor. A number of years ago, I don't know, this was four or five years ago, we went on a cruise.

I didn't know a whole lot about cruising, and they put you on different decks on the boat. If you've ever seen "Titanic," you know how this works. They put you on different decks. We had gotten the value saver [chuckles] tickets for the cruise ship. So, we were on something that was called the Fiesta Deck. Now, that sounded good. The Fiesta Deck, that sounds pretty promising. Well, as we got on the boat and began to realize exactly where we were, we saw that first class, that was up above, all the shiny. You go on the elevator, and you look out, the doors open, and you go, "Ooh, this looks nice. Is this our floor?" Oh, no, our floor's still several below. And you keep going down, you keep looking out, and the hallways start to [chuckles] become a little more-- The carpet's a little more stained and the like. By the time you get down to the Fiesta Deck, this is no place you want to be on the boat. Now you can see why this is the value saver. The walls, there's green stuff on it, and the carpets are better there. It was an interesting experience on the cruise, but one of the things I learned right there is that this is what happens when you don't pony up for a cruise ticket. And the whole time we were on the cruise, we had to show, I forget whether it was something on the wrist or a card or something, but whether it was buffets or other things, the people who were on the upper decks, they got the free drinks, and they got all sorts of different stuff. Man alive. We were just lucky to get the midnight buffet sort of stuff. So that, and I guess a very kind of silly anecdote, that's a picture of what it's like to have a tier system. Well, in Galatia,

they were telling the Gentiles from Crete that you're on the Fiesta Deck. You might be in, so to speak, and yet you are less privileged, less esteemed than your circumcised counterparts. To Paul, that's unacceptable. That's unacceptable. That's not the way it works. To God, that's unacceptable. Any Christendom that makes room for racism is wrong. Any Christendom that makes room for classism or chauvinism, these are wrong. They are unscriptural. That's not the way it works. Christianity does not prioritize one set of believers, one set of sons and daughters of the Most High King, and make them better or worse than some other set. Christianity does not do that. And to prove the point, later on in Galatians, Paul will say it this way. He'll say there's neither Jew nor Greek. At the wedding supper of the Lamb, there's neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave nor free. There's neither male nor female. You are all one in Christ Jesus. No Fiesta Deck. You are all one in Christ Jesus. When he wrote to the Colossians, he said the same thing using different language. He said this: "There's neither Greek nor Jew. There's neither circumcised or uncircumcised, or barbarian or Scythian or slave or free, but Christ is all in all."

In the Church of God, there is no room for the sort of man-made distinctions we make among ourselves.

There are no lesser or greater sons and daughters. There are no lesser and greater brothers and sisters. There's no context, be it skin color, classism, anything related to the amount of money you have in your wallet. None of this makes one Christian inherently better or inherently worse than another. And these distinctions, if they don't exist with God, they shouldn't exist with us. And this is why Paul would keep returning to this point

throughout his letters, saying, "No.

If the Judaizers come in these doors, and they make a distinction and say you're better or worse on the basis of some thing you've done." I was baptized by sprinkling. I was baptized by immersion. These are the sort of distinctions they were making in their day. Some we could be tempted to make in our own. In our own day, we're tempted to make distinctions. In our own day, we're tempted to see others in the body of faith as better or worse than their peers.

It's wrong, unbiblical. It should stop.

All right, with our remaining time this morning, I'd like to ask us to think of our friend Titus once again. When Titus walked into Jerusalem,

imagine how he must have felt.

Titus goes into Jerusalem. Paul's invited him along, and Titus goes, and for the bulk of Titus's life, this was not something you just ordinarily did, or at least you didn't do it and feel welcomed when you went. For Titus to go to Jerusalem, dressed as he was, perhaps his beard cut at a certain length, for Titus to walk into Jerusalem and to be identified as a Gentile, this would have given him a certain level of anxiety or a certain sense that he didn't belong. There may have been some anxiety that people would treat him as something less than he was. Perhaps even in the church, that might have been a fear of Titus as he stood before Peter and the others. Maybe that was an anxiety that Titus had.

Have you ever felt that way

walking into a new church?

Have you ever felt that way walking into a different church? Sometimes people go to church or are invited to go, as Titus went, but they're worried about how they'll be perceived because of something about them. Maybe it's the way that they've dressed.

Maybe it's the credit cards in their wallet. Maybe it's the color of their skin. Something about their background, their culture. Maybe it's sins, things they've done. And they wonder, will I be welcomed? How will I be treated? Maybe you can relate to that. Maybe you can't. But I can assure you it's not unusual.

It's not unusual, especially for new folks, those that God is reaching out to and drawing to Himself, to feel that way at times in the context of a new church. It's not unusual for those who know themselves to be wild vines, so to speak, to feel a little bit of unease as God engrafts them into the tree of faith and to wonder how they'll fit into the local church community. Although I hate to say it, sometimes churches can exacerbate these problems through their actions or their omissions. Whatever the case, we have to be intentional to show the same love and companionship and grace as Peter and James and John and the others showed to Titus, showed to this Greek from Crete, as uncircumcised as he was. We have to show that same sort of grace to others. Every last one of us, be as Jew or Gentile or man or woman, White or Black or what have you, was at one point on the outside looking in at the promises of God, and yet God drew us close. Who are we then to look down on someone else?

Who are we to look down on someone else? In God's time, because of His grace, He has called a people out of the world. He has called sons, He has called daughters, and they are equal in His eyes.

You and I are spiritual siblings of one another and of so many around the globe even this day, and we're equal in His eyes. This is amazing grace. Again, Titus walking into Jerusalem, uncircumcised, outside of the Old Testament covenant community,

and yet drawn near by the blood of the Lamb, which we'll celebrate in a few moments at the Lord's Table.

It was amazing grace. Again, he didn't know the song, but he must have felt what it was like. He must have felt the verses, so to speak. It was grace, amazing grace, that saved Titus, this Gentile from Crete. It was amazing grace that saved pagans from Corinth and Thessalonica and Galatia and Ephesus and elsewhere. It was amazing grace that saved a Roman centurion. It was amazing grace that saved a Philippian jailer. It was amazing grace that saved you and I.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see. It's been said by others that the ground is level at the foot of the cross. We're all saved by faith alone, grace alone, and Christ alone. The ground is level. And so this morning, no matter who you are, no matter what you've done, Jesus Christ's arms are open to welcome and accept you.

And so are the church's.

Let's pray.