Three Lessons Grace Teaches Us (3)—Live Righteously - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2024

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live righteously in the present age.
Titus 2:11-12

Three Lessons Grace Teaches Us (3)—Live Righteously
The second grand lesson which grace teaches me as to my practical life is to live righteously. This contemplates me not merely in the inner circle of my own moral being, but in the midst of the circumstances and relationships of the scene around me, that outward world in which I am called to live and move from day to day. My divine Teacher instructs me not only as to the government of myself, but also as to the government of all my transactions with my fellow man.

Here, too, I am to remember that my teacher is the grace that saved me. I must never forget this. If the resources of philosophy or the energy of a strong will might enable me to exercise a kind of inward self-government, so also the principles of a lofty morality, or that pride which rejects a wrong action, might lead me to seek the maintenance of an unblemished reputation in all my transactions with my fellow men. But all this leaves me unsaved. Philosophy cannot save me and therefore it cannot teach me. Morality cannot save me and therefore it cannot teach me.

It is "the grace of God" that alone can save me, and it is that same grace which alone can teach me. Hence, if I see a person who professes to be saved giving way to bad temper, indulging in passion, or enslaved by a habit, I infer that this person has not learned practically the first great lesson of his divine Teacher. And if I see a person professing to be saved, yet not guiding his affairs with discretion, but getting into debt and indulging in extravagance, I infer that he has not learned the second great lesson of his divine Teacher: lessons of holy self-government and practical righteousness.

C. H. Mackintosh