Thursday
Thursday
The Two Epiphanies of Christ
The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men … while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Titus 2:11, 13
The first and second comings of Christ are here called his “epiphanies.” Epiphaneia is a visible appearing of something hitherto invisible. In classical Greek it was used of sunrise. It comes in Acts 27, in which the ship carrying Paul to Rome was struck by a terrific northeasterly gale and the sky was so overcast that for many days the sun and the stars made no epiphany. Otherwise, the word occurs ten times in the New Testament—four times in reference to Christ’s first coming and six times in reference to his second.
Firstly, there has been an epiphany of grace, that is, of God’s undeserved favor in Jesus Christ. Grace did not, of course, come into existence with him, but it appeared visibly in him. Paul now personifies grace, saying that it teaches or trains us to say no to self-indulgence and yes to self-control.
Secondly, there is going to be an epiphany of glory. This is our “blessed hope,” namely that he who appeared briefly on the stage of history and disappeared will one day reappear. He appeared in grace; he will reappear in glory. It will be “the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” There has been a long and lively debate as to whether this epiphany will be of two persons (our great God, the Father, and Jesus Christ) or only one person whose full title is “our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” Since all other New Testament allusions to an epiphany refer to Christ, the presumption is that this does too, in which case this is the most unambiguous affirmation in the New Testament of the deity of Jesus.
Thus in one short paragraph Paul has united the two termini of the Christian era. But at this point the critics of Christianity are just about ready to explode. “You Christians are so hopelessly unpractical! All you do is preoccupy yourselves with the distant past and the remote future. Why can’t you live in the present?” But that is exactly what Paul summons us to do. He spells out the duties of older men, older women, younger women, and younger men and calls on all of us to live a godly life in this present age. Why? The basis of Christian behavior is the two epiphanies of Christ.
For further reading: Titus 2:1–15