Our New Testament reading this morning that I'll be preaching on in just a minute is Romans 7, 7 through 13. It's on page 943 of your Bibles in the pew, if you'll follow along as I read. What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means. Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it, killed me. So the law is holy. and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Did that which is good then bring death to me? By no means. It was sin producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. This is the word of the Lord. Would you pray with me? Father, we thank you this morning for your word. Thank you this morning for your law, which shows us the way that we should go and We confess with Paul this morning that often we find that the law is not easy to follow, but rather incites in us all kinds of sinfulness. We pray, Father, that as we look at this passage, as we tease it out this morning, you would help us to understand why that is. Help us to know what we are to do when the law excites sin in our hearts. Do this, we pray, for we ask it in Christ's name. Amen. As Mr. Clapp said earlier, I'm Andrew Shank, I'm the RUF campus minister at Western Carolina University, just over the border into North Carolina. I went to Reform Theological Seminary in Charlotte, and after that was an assistant pastor at Hilton Head Presbyterian Church down at the very bottom of South Carolina. I was the minister of miscellaneous there. We had a youth pastor and a music pastor and a senior pastor, and then everything else fell on me. One of my jobs there was working with young adults in the congregation and often got the question, How do you know when you're growing up? How do you know when you've really arrived and become an adult? And they said, is it when you have kids? I said, well, no, not really. Is it when you buy a house? Well, no, not really. Well, Andrew, when is it? It's when you buy prescription sunglasses, which I may need in a minute because of the sun blaring through these windows. So I've got these handy just in case. After being at Hilton Head Press for three years, me and my family came to do RUF at Western. Carolina. I went to NC State and did RUF as a student there, did the RUF internship at Virginia Tech, and love the ministry. And I'm very happy to be working for it and ministering to college students. I'm married to Trish. We have two daughters. Sophie will be five on Tuesday. Maggie turned two this past Sunday. My wife has a cat, and our family has two goats, Mr. Tumnus and Prince Caspian. And students love all of those people and animals that I just mentioned. We have students at our house often and my family loves it and our students love my family very well. Well, that's a little bit about me. Let's turn our attention to God's word in Romans chapter seven. In this passage, Paul obviously is talking about the relationship between the law and sin and it makes sense that he would need to clarify some things because up to this point in the book of Romans, he said some surprising things about the law. He says in chapter five, verse 20, the law came in to increase the trespass. In chapter six, verse 14, he says we're not under law, we're under grace. Earlier in chapter seven, he says we've died to the law and we're released from the law. It seems that Paul has this negative conception of the law that leads us to a natural question, is the law sin? And right off the bat in verse seven, Paul takes that option off the table. What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means. That feels a little sterile. In the Greek it's meganoita. It might be something like no way, Jose. Or are you kidding me? Of course not. No, the law is not sin. Okay, Paul, the law is not sin. How are law and sin related? And Paul gives three answers to this question in our passage this morning. The first, the law identifies sin. It identifies what sin is. Look again at verse seven. Paul says, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet. Before diving too deep into this passage, it will be helpful for us to clarify what Paul means when he says law. What is he talking about? If you're familiar with the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 19 gives these three categories of law in the Old Testament. The first is the civil law. This is the kind of law that's applicable to Israel as God's chosen people, as them living in a land under his rule with a king. It includes things like the role of the king and the work of scribes punishments for particular sins, and these laws no longer apply to us because we don't live in theocratic Israel. We don't live under a king who's in relationship with God. But we don't ignore these laws. The principles behind these laws still apply. For example, we don't deal with oxen and donkeys anymore, most of us. I have a couple goats, but I don't trade them. But the principles of restitution, of what happens when my ox bores your ox, those principles still apply. Really the civil law is an application of the Ten Commandments to their cultural moment, to their life together. For example, they were commanded in Old Testament Israel to build a low wall around their roof. How many of you have low walls built around the edge of your roof? Most of you probably don't. I would venture to say that none of you do. Well, that law is an application of the sixth commandment, don't murder, right? Because don't murder basically just means protect and promote the flourishing of human life. And so in that case where they would use their roof as an extra room of their house, it was kind of like their porch. It would be nice and cool in the evening and you'd go up there and hang out. it was prudent and protected life to build a low wall around so your toddlers didn't go running around and jump off the roof. Today, a similar application of do not murder to our cultural moment might be don't text and drive. Don't disregard the lives of the people in your car and the cars around you by paying more attention to your phone than to the road. So the civil law is the first type of law that we find in the Old Testament. The second is the ceremonial law. This includes things like how to become clean after touching blood, what to do with lepers, how priests should dress and be ordained, and all the things that went on with worship at the temple. These particular laws no longer apply because Christ has come in fulfillment of these laws. Read the book of Hebrews sometime. It tells over and over how Christ is better than the temple, how Christ is better than the sacrifices, how Christ is better than the priests because he's the fulfillment of all of them. But we don't ignore these laws. The principles behind them still endure. They help us understand who Christ is and what he did. Touching blood no longer prohibits us from coming to worship, but the fact that the holiness of God demands that we be pure in his presence still very much applies. So civil law, ceremonial law, and finally the moral law, summarized in the Ten Commandments. These laws are binding on all people at all times and never pass away because they're rooted in the character of God. Right? Our God is the Lord of life. He's the Lord and giver of life and therefore he commands us not to lie. Not to, sorry, not to kill. He's a truthful God and he commands us not to lie. He's a faithful God and he commands us not to commit adultery. This is what Paul has in view when he talks about the law. He's talking about the Ten Commandments. He's talking about the moral law. And because the law reveals the character of God, what he loves, what he hates, what he's like. Because it reveals that, it identifies what sin is. The law does not create sin, it identifies it. Imagine that you're in your house in the middle of the night and you wake up And you really just have to have a drink of water. And you think to yourself, I've lived in this house for a long time. I know where things are. I'm going to get from my bedroom to the kitchen without turning any lights on. Because I don't want to wake up my wife. I don't want to wake up the kids. I don't want to make too much noise. So I'm just going to get to the kitchen without turning on any lights. What inevitably happens? You step on a Lego. You stub your pinky toe on the dresser. Like you think that door was open, but it wasn't, and so you bang your forehead on the door. Like something gets in your way, and of course, you don't safely make it to the kitchen. If you had turned a light on, maybe you would have woken up somebody in the house, but probably not, but you would have made it safely. It would be ridiculous for you to say that those things weren't there because I couldn't see them. In the same way, the law comes in and illumines the house and lets us see what sin is. It doesn't create hazards. It identifies them, it doesn't create sin, it identifies it. So simple application of this, don't let anything other than the word of God identify sin, define sin. Culture will try to do this, right? Our culture today tries to take things out. Extramarital sex, that's not that big of a deal anymore. Homosexuality, that's okay. Gluttony of possessions, of binging on Netflix, of whatever it is, those things are all fine. Things are added in. Intolerance. Don't judge. Be green. But the culture does not get to define morality. Only the Bible does. It's not just the culture that tries to define sin. We, in the church often, intentionally or not, unintentionally or not, try and define sin. We try and define it for ourselves. It's just a little white lie. It's not that big a deal. It's saved an argument. It's not that big a deal. We try and define it for others. You don't listen to Christian radio? You haven't read the Chronicles of Narnia? You voted Democrat or you voted Republican? Like, how can you even be a Christian? But we don't get to define morality. Only the Bible does. The law identifies what sin is. But it goes one step further and it identifies us as sinners. Look at verse nine. Paul says, apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. Paul's saying here that it was through the law that he came to the realization that he himself was a sinner. Before the commandment came, he was fine. Ignorance is bliss. He was alive and sin was dead. If you asked Paul the Pharisee about the sin in his life, he would have said, sin, what sin? I'm fine, look at all the Christians that I've killed. Like I'm working really hard for God. But when the commandment came, it identified him as a sinner. Ignorance might be bliss, but it's a dangerous bliss. Paul's confidence in his holiness, his righteousness, his own efforts to keep the law all crumbled. And he says all of it is filthy rags. Again, the law didn't make Paul into a sinner. It only identified what was already true about him. This is what we see illustrated in 2 Chronicles 34, that passage that was read for us with all those complicated names. Thank you for struggling through that so I didn't have to. What we see in 2 Chronicles 34, the very beginning of the chapter, Josiah, this eight-year-old king, comes in and he gets the positive endorsement that the author of Second Chronicles gives. He walked in the ways of David his father. That means he was a good king. And what he does, what this good king does when he comes to power is he starts deconstructing all of these false places of worship. It's extensive about how he beat down the Asherah and he scattered ashes over the graves of the priests and he burned their bones and And he tore down all these pagan places of worship. And then in the 18th year, they come back home, and they look at the temple. And they say, this building's fallen into a little bit of disrepair. Maybe it's time. The kitchen's a little outdated. That shag carpet is not as cool now as it was when we put it in. We need to update the thing. It's been hundreds of years since Solomon built it. And what do you do when you need a renovation project? First, you need money. So they send people to find money. They find money in the temple. They come back, and all of the work starts. And then down in verse 14, they're bringing the money to Josiah. And what happens in this encounter is, as they bring the money to him, Hilkiah the priest brings him a book. And Josiah gets this report that the general contractors doing well, all the subcontractors are doing their work great. We found this book in the basement. It was a little bit dusty. We found it, we thought it might be interesting to you. What they found is the book of the law of the Lord given through Moses. In other words, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, the law of God, right? And Josiah, who's been doing all of these great things, who's been tearing down places of pagan worship, who's been rebuilding the temple, reads the book of the law, and he tears his clothes, and he falls on his knees, and he says, woe to us. Seek for the Lord, go inquire of the Lord for me and for those who are left. concerning the words of the book that have been found. For great is the wrath of the Lord that is poured out on us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord, to do according to all that is written in this book. Israel had lost the Bible, right? Like this is Jerusalem, the heart of God's people, and they didn't know where the Bible was. And in spite of that, Josiah's doing all of these great things, but when the word of God comes and identifies just how far short they've fallen, he's undone. And he says, plead with the Lord, inquire of the Lord what we are to do, because the law identifies us as sinners. No matter what good things we're doing, no matter what good things we've been about, when we look at the law of God, it cuts straight to our heart and identifies us as sinners. Have you had this happen to you? Have you seen your own sinfulness through the word of God? Don't ignore the word of God when it points out sin in your life. Yes, it's uncomfortable. Ignorance is bliss, but it's a dangerous bliss. Don't avoid the word of God because it points out sin in your life. Don't we do this sometimes? Don't you know people that do this who are struggling with some sin or are entrenched in some pattern of sin and over time the time they spend in the word or the time you spend in the word just diminishes and diminishes and eventually falls to the wayside because I know if I read this book it's gonna force me to deal with this thing in my heart. If you're not a believer today, if you've never let the word of God identify you as a sinner, you're in an incredibly dangerous place because you will not run to Christ unless you see your desperate need. And believers, if you're not regularly letting the word of God identify areas of sin in your life, you are in a dangerous place. Let the word of God identify your sin that you might bring it to the cross and grow to look more and more like Christ. So this is the first answer Paul gives to the question, how are the law and sin related? First, the law identifies sin. It identifies what sin is and identifies us as sinners. And it would be great. That's a very helpful thing to know. But sin doesn't just sit back and let this happen. The second thing that Paul points out is that sin abuses the law. First, sin abuses the law subtly. Look at verse eight. Paul says, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Sin abuses the law subtly. Sin subtly takes the law, which identifies sin, and through some kind of jujitsu, uses it to produce sin in us. How does sin do this? Well, it capitalizes on our natural rebellion. The essence of our sinfulness is a rejection of God's rule over every aspect of our lives. So when the law points to an area of sin, our natural sinful response is to push back at it and say, you're not the boss of me. We see a sign that says, do not walk on the grass, and we look around and maybe like, oops, I fell off the sidewalk. My students hear that if you walk under the bell tower, legend says you won't graduate from Western Carolina University on time. And so late at night when nobody's around, they like peek and dash through the bell tower. Right? You're not the boss of me. You can't tell me what to do. Because what we love is not the sin, but the rebellion. Don't you recognize this in your children? When we lived in Hilton Head, we lived in about a thousand square foot apartment that had carpet everywhere except for the linoleum in the kitchen. And there was this nice metal strip between the two, right? It keeps the edge of the carpet down, keeps it from fraying. And we said, this is great. This is a good boundary line for our daughter, Sophie, to say you are not allowed to come into the kitchen because there are hot ovens and sharp knives and dishwashers that she could crawl into and like all kinds of dangerous things for children. And so the linoleum in the kitchen, that metal stripe was the do not cross line. Now we have a piece of blue tape. on the kitchen floor for Maggie, our second daughter. But that was the do not cross line. And if you've ever set rules for your children, even young children, who can't even walk yet, you know how that goes. Sophie would be playing in the dining room area on the carpet, and she'd have just some kind of ball or toy, and she would throw it, and oh look, it bounced in the kitchen. And she'd look up at my wife, and as if she were asking, am I allowed to get that? Or she'd be rolling around on the floor and one arm flops and she looks up like, am I going to get a little hand flick? Am I going to get punished for this? She inherently, without being able to walk or speak, tests the boundaries of the law. We recognize it in our children. Do you recognize it in yourself? Augustine did in the confessions that he writes. In chapter two, he talks about a time when he committed theft, and it's a really illustrating passage. He's out one night with some friends, and he says, there was a pear tree close to our own vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was not tempting, either for its color or for its flavor. It didn't look good, and it didn't taste good. And late one night, having prolonged our games in the streets until then, as our bad habit was, a group of young scoundrels, and I among them, went to shake and rob this tree. We carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more, because it was forbidden. Such was my heart, oh God. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing, I loved my error. Not that for which I erred, but the error itself, a depraved soul falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself. This is the subtlety of sin, abusing the law through our natural rebellion so that it actually excites sin in us. Paul says, I wouldn't have known what it is to covet until the law said, do not covet, and then sin produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Sin is subtle, so keep, watch, Are you trying to teach your kids about the importance of honesty? Be on guard for deceitfulness in your own heart. Are you frustrated at your spouse's impatience towards you? Be on guard for your own impatience. This passage impacts the way we think about sin. We think about it as these little isolated acts, which it is, it's these acts that we commit, but it's also this bent of our souls towards rebellion. It's not just particular actions, but it's a disposition of our hearts. And as a force, sin acts with subtlety and it acts strategically. Look at verses 10 and 11. The very commandment, Paul said, that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it, killed me. Paul uses that phrase, seizing an opportunity. It's military language. It's the picture of claiming an outpost so that you can more effectively harass and defeat your enemy. Any Lord of the Rings fans out here? I see a couple smiles, so I'll use this illustration. Osgiliath, right? You've got Minas Tirith, the good city, Minas Morgul, the bad city, and there's a river in between. And Osgiliath is this loosely defended good city that the enemy comes they take control of and they're able to send their armies across to attack, to lay siege to Minas Tirith. It's that image of sin strategically taking an outpost so that it can defeat us. Sin is aware, alert, and ready to capitalize on any opportunity and will do so because it's your enemy. Right, do you see it like that? Do you see sin as your enemy or, like I do often, as just kind of a nuisance and a distraction? Brett, I often think of sin like a gnat or a mosquito when I'm out working in the yard. It's annoying, it's there, it's buzzing around my head, and if I get the opportunity, I'll squash it and I'll squash it good, but if not, it's just a gnat. It's just a mosquito. But sin is not a gnat. It's a lion. It's hunting you, seeking to devour you. It hides and stalks and waits, not revealing itself until it's too late for you to stop. Because sin is your enemy. So fight it, right? Fight against it. Give no opportunity to sin, the flesh, and the devil. Fight it with prayer. Fight it with watchfulness. Fight it with community. Sin is your enemy, subtly and strategically abusing the law to destroy you. So fight against it. Paul's shown us these two things about the relationship between sin and the law, that the law identifies sin, and in turn, sin abuses the law. It's not the law's fault that sin takes advantage of it, which is why Paul says in verse 12, he reminds us that the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good, but all of this should lead us to another question that Paul anticipates. Did that which is good then bring death to me? In other words, if sin was going to abuse the law in the first place, or abuse the law to bring death, why give it in the first place? Did this good thing become an instrument of death? And Paul responds again, no way, Jose. Of course not. And he points us to the third way the law and sin are related. Finally, the law exposes sin. Some of you might be thinking, Andrew, you already said the law identifies sin. Expose and identify are synonyms. You can't just repeat your points. That's not fair. Here's what I mean. Anybody remember the cartoon Scooby-Doo? of course. Everybody has seen at least one episode of Scooby-Doo and therefore you've seen all episodes of Scooby-Doo because they're all the same, right? At the beginning, the gang They're in the mystery machine and it like breaks down or crashes or they just stop at an abandoned warehouse or an abandoned factory or an abandoned hotel or school or an abandoned something, right? And it's abandoned because there's something going on. There's something creepy that's happening. And early on in the episode, they identify, oh, it's that mummy. Oh, it's that swamp monster. Oh, it's that Frankenstein. They identify the problem. But that happens in like minute five of the episode, right? After all, there's a little bit of searching and there's some sleuthing that goes on. There's usually a musical number and a chase. And by the end, the monster that they've identified gets caught, right? There's some scheme that they've concocted and it's tangled in ropes or it's tied to a chair, it's stuck in a hole in the ground. And they pull off the mask and they expose it. They expose the old janitor or the old caretaker or the old machinist or some other old blue collar worker that has been terrorizing this abandoned place, right? It's the difference between identifying that's the thing going on and exposing and saying here's what's really underneath the surface. The first thing the law does is it exposes the ugliness of sin. Look at verse 13. It was sin producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin. and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. In other words, Paul says, the law unmasks the ugliness of sin, showing its ability to corrupt and to twist and take that which is good and use it for evil purposes. Because created in the image of God, loving creation and loving beauty as he does, you can't watch something beautiful be abused and mishandled and warped and not respond with horror at the thing that causes that abuse. Right, imagine if you're in the Louvre and you're standing looking at the Mona Lisa and marveling at the expression on her face and Leonardo da Vinci's skill and somebody ran up from behind you with a knife and just slashed it to ribbons. Would you not respond with horror at the person who abused such a beautiful thing? The law exposes sin's ugliness, which makes us to be horrified at it and to hate it. This aids our repentance because true repentance involves not just sorrow over the consequences of our sin, but over sin itself. True repentance says even if there were no consequences, I hate this sin. True repentance says even if the consequences of this sin are to my benefit, I hate this sin. The law exposes the ugliness of sin, making us hate it, and it exposes our great need. Because when we look at the weight of this whole passage, it should be clear that we have a great opponent. Sin is crafty, subtly using the law against us. Sin is powerful, taking something so good as the law and twisting it. The law identifies sin, but has no power to stop its abuse. The law identifies us as sinners, but gives no power to eradicate sin from our lives. This exposes our great need. John Bunyan illustrates this in The Pilgrim's Progress. The Pilgrim's Progress is one of those great Christian works, especially in our cultural moment, right? Because Christian, this person who's going on this journey, he gets converted on like page four, and then there's like 150 pages left in the book. And our Christian culture a lot of times doesn't know what to do with that, right? Like conversion is the end of the story, and then we just kind of coast until heaven. But Pilgrim's Progress says no, there's more to the Christian life than your conversion moment. There's discipleship, there's growth. One of the things that happens along this journey is that Christian shows up at this house, and he's got someone with him called the interpreter. And the interpreter takes Christian into this room that's very old, hasn't been used in a while, and so it's very dusty. And the interpreter calls for somebody to come in, and clean up the room. So he comes in with a broom and he starts sweeping and as soon as he does, the dust in the room, it's just, it's cast into the air and Christian says he almost choked because he couldn't breathe. Christian then said, what does this mean? The interpreter answered. The parlor, this room, is the heart of a man that was never sanctified by the grace of the gospel. The dust is his original sin and inward corruptions that have defiled the whole man. The dust is that inward rebelliousness that we have. And the man who tried to sweep at first is the law. As soon as he began to sweep, the dust flew about so much that the room could not be cleansed by him. Indeed, you almost choked. This is to show you that the law, instead of cleansing the heart by its working from sin, only revives, puts strength into, and increases it in the soul, even as it reveals sin and forbids sin, for it gives no power to subdue. This is what we've seen in this passage, that the law comes in and excites sin in our heart. It stirs up the dust and helps us to see, oh, this room is really dirty, but doesn't give us any power to clean it. So what are we to do? Well, Bunyan goes on. The interpreter then asked a woman who's standing by, she says, bring some water and sprinkle the room. And when she had done this, the room was swept and cleansed with pleasure. Christian said, what does this mean? And the interpreter answered, the lady that brought water and did sprinkle it is the gospel. After she sprinkled the room with water, it was cleansed with pleasure. This is to show you that when the gospel comes with its sweet and precious influences to the heart, then I say, even as you saw the lady subdue the dust by sprinkling the floor with water, so sin is vanquished and subdued, and the soul made clean through the faith of it, and consequently, fit for the king of glory to inhabit. When the gospel comes in, it actually has power to cleanse sin from our hearts. Here's another way to think about it. We live on about three acres in Webster, just north of Cullowhee, where the school is. I've got a nice John Deere riding mower that I like to ride, and Sophie likes to ride on my knee. freaks my wife out, but I do it anyway. And when we moved in, there was a lot of yard working cleaning that needed to be done, trees that needed to be taken down. And so I'd be out in the yard working with the lawnmower and the chainsaw, and I'd come in at the end of the day, because I'm a sweater, and I'd have grass clippings stuck to my face and wood chips in my hair. And I'd walk into the bathroom and look in the mirror and say, oh, I'm really dirty. And I would take the mirror off the wall and I would start to scrub my face with the mirror because that's how you get clean, right? Well, no, like the mirror just shows me how filthy I am so that I would go and like take a shower, get a washcloth and wash my face. But that's what we try to do. The law is that mirror that exposes our sin, that exposes our need. And we look into the mirror of the law and we say, wow, I'm really dirty. And what most of us do is we double down and we grab the law and we try and clean ourselves up with it. We say, I'm gonna try even harder to obey when trying has not gotten me anywhere in my 10 or 20 or 50 years of my Christian walk. Instead, what that mirror should do, what the law should do, is drive us to the gospel, drive us to Christ, the one who actually cleanses from sin. Because he's the one who perfectly obeyed the law. The law did not drive him to sinfulness. It did not excite sin in him. So don't look to the law, don't look to the mirror to cleanse you, because it can't. Instead, let the law drive you to Christ that you might find forgiveness for your sins, and then in response, the law becomes this beautiful guide of how we live in joyful and thankful response to Christ, who has fulfilled the law so that we didn't have to, so that we might obey the law to live a life that pleases him. Don't you see the power of God in this? Right, sin always tries to make a mess of things. It causes Joseph's brothers to sell him into slavery, It causes Haman to plot against the Jews, and it takes the law, this beautiful reflection of God's character, and it twists it, and it mars it, and it uses it to incite sin in us. But God is not thwarted by the purposes of sin. Sin's greatest successes end up working against it. Joseph tells his brothers, what you intended for evil, God intended for good. Haman is killed on the very gallows that he builds to exterminate the Jews. Christ's death on the cross defeats sin and death itself. Our God is not helpless against sin. We have a great enemy, we have a great opponent, but we have a beautiful guide in the law and we have an even more beautiful savior in Jesus Christ. Don't let sin's abuse of the law discourage you, let it drive you into the arms of your redeemer. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for Christ who fulfilled the law for us and who gives us his righteousness, his record of perfect obedience, and takes our sin, takes our failure, our shortcomings, our sins of omission and our sins of commission, and in this great exchange gives us his righteousness and takes our sin. And on the cross, he's punished for it. He bears the wrath of God that we might be able to obey the law not to earn your favor, not to win forgiveness, but simply as joyful response for the grace freely given by Christ. Father, it's so easy for us to get discouraged by our sin, discouraged by our struggles for righteousness. Father, I pray that you would encourage us, help us to use the law rightly, to be driven to Christ for forgiveness, and then to use the law as a guide for how to live a life honoring to him. Father, I pray that you help us to keep that order, Help us to resist the urge to obey the law to win your favor, to obey the law to win salvation, because we can't and it's already been done. But Father, help us not to rest on the fact that it's already been done. Help us to strive for holiness and new obedience and live a beautiful life for our beautiful Savior. Do this we pray, for we ask it in his name, amen.