And Father, thank you for this day you've given to us when you've guarded us from harm and danger, when you have encircled and enfolded us in your presence as we have worshipped you and waited upon you. for every heart that you have lifted up from dark places and every spirit that you have subdued in humility, we give you our thanks and praise. And as we draw towards the end of this peril of a day, we pray that you will lace it as a pearl on a necklace around our necks that the beauty of Your presence, the wonder of Your grace, the superb illumination of Your truth may cause us to shine as lights in a dark place. We pray as we now give ourselves to the study, the hearing, the meditating on, the chewing of Your Word. We pray that whatever needs we have as we come that you will so speak to us that we will be caught up in your conversation, and as our own hearts dialogue with you about our own needs and struggles, we pray that you would point us afresh to the all-sufficient grace of our Savior Jesus Christ. So meet with us, Lord, in Your Word and speak to us by its power. This we pray together for Jesus our Savior's sake. Amen. Please be seated and turn, if you will, in your Bibles to the seventh chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans. And to the fourteenth verse, Romans chapter 7, beginning to read at verse 14, and you'll find this passage, if you want to follow along in the English Standard Version, that's our church Bible here, you'll find it on page 943, Romans chapter 7 and on page 943. And here we continue our studies now of a number of months of Paul's great letter to the Romans. Let's begin to read in verse 13, where Paul is answering a question that has been raised, first of all, by his teaching in chapter 6, verse 14. Sin will have no dominion over you, Christians, since you are not under law but under grace. That, as we have seen now on a couple of occasions, was a statement that would have penetrated the Jewish mind with horror. no longer under the law. And we have discovered on a number of occasions in Romans how Paul's teaching on the law was distorted, how, in fact, towards the end of the Acts of the Apostles, he was arrested chiefly for having believed to have preached against the law. And it sounds as though he is when he says to Christians, you are no longer under law. And what he's doing in chapter 7 is explaining the real significance of the law in the purposes of God and in the life of the believer. And he comes eventually to this, referring to the law, 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." In other words, the law is not sinful, verse 7, and the law is not evil. but it exposes sinfulness. It brings evil to the surface, and in our sinfulness we rebel against God's law. For, he says, we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now, if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. So now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me." So, I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand, for I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin." I've said now I think once or twice that studying Paul's letter to the Romans is the spiritual equivalent of climbing Mount Everest. And if you're going to climb Mount Everest, one of the things that you need to do is to establish a series of base camps. Mount Everest is not a 300-foot hill that you decide to go up just for a morning's exercise. As you climb Mount Everest, you make ascents, you establish base camps, you make further ascents, you establish further base camps, and from those base camps, you keep ascending that giant mountain until eventually you reach the summit. And we have seen that in some ways the Apostle Paul does this in his letter to the Romans. he establishes positions very briefly, and then he climbs the mountain. He comes back to base camp. He climbs the mountain further, and as he climbs the mountain, those base camps that he has established earlier on, as it were, become the foundation stones for his exposition of the inestimable riches of the grace of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. But in parallel to trying to climb Mount Everest, I imagine, there are some particular aspects of the ascent that are unusually challenging. And in this Everest of Paul's letters, we have come to a particularly challenging climb in chapter 7 and verses 14 to 25, which Paul almost ends by crying out, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? There are so many views of these verses among wonderful commentators that I sometimes wonder if the Apostle Paul is crying out in heaven, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of commentators on Romans 7, 14 through 25? And you only need to read it with any kind of sympathy and empathy to understand why it is that the best of Christian minds, as they've come to these verses, have wrestled with the sheer profundity of what the apostle Paul is saying, and at times the apparent contradictions in what he is teaching in Roman. that this Apostle Paul somewhere in the early to mid-fifties should be writing to Roman Christians, seeking to encourage them to embrace Jesus Christ and all the riches of the gospel. It comes almost to the end of a section in which he is crying out about his own wretchedness. And basically the question Christian commentators have tried to solve from these verses is the question, is Paul speaking here as a Christian believer or is he not? Is Paul speaking here as a Christian believer or is he not? Because there are some things in these verses that you would think only a real Christian believer would be able to say. that he delights in the law of God. For example, do you know any non-Christians who actually delight in the law of God? And yet there are other things, this puzzle that he has become to himself, this sense of the power of sin in his life. Is this not Paul the non-Christian speaking? And as you try and puzzle these things out, you come, I think, a little to understand why this passage has proven to be so difficult for Christian interpreters throughout the history of the Christian church. When you find yourself faced with a difficulty, think about the analogy of climbing Mount Everest. When you find yourself with a difficult climb, I imagine what you do is you say to your companions, let's get back to base camp and let's think about it from base camp. Let's see where we have reached. and we understand what has been accomplished here in our climb, then perhaps we will be able to have a perspective on this difficult part of the climb that will enable us to ascend, if I can put it this way, through the glaciers of Romans 7 into the land of Romans 8. And the big picture, the base camp that we've established is clear enough. The gospel is the power of God for salvation, and it's needed because we lack power and we are condemned before God. This is the whole thesis of the first three chapters. that the righteousness of God is revealed from heaven in terms of His wrath against all ungodliness and all unrighteousness. And by nature, we are condemned by God's law, we are under His judgment, and we are gripped by the power of sin. And then Paul comes in, you remember, in chapter 3, verse 21, and especially in 3, 24 and 25, to say, but God has provided salvation for us. that whereas we were under the wrath of God, Jesus Christ has become a propitiation for our sins, and all God's wrath against my sin has been exhausted in the cross of Jesus Christ. Thank God I am no longer under His wrath, and I have been delivered from it. Not only so, but Jesus Christ, who is the propitiation for our sins, is also, Paul says in 3.24 and 3.25, redemption from sin. And so, he has taught us that though we once were under the dominion of sin, sin was our master, our king, our tyrant, our employer, all the picture language that Paul uses in Romans 5 and 6, now in Jesus Christ we have died to the dominion of sin. We are no longer under its dominion. and we are set free to live for a new King, the Lord Jesus. And yes, as Paul in 3.24 and 3.25, there is not only propitiation in Christ and redemption in Christ, but there is justification in Christ. As I have said before and wish to say again, Our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross was the ultimate multitasker for our salvation. He saves us from God's wrath. He saves us from the dominion of sin. And He saves us also from the condemnation of the law. And so, we come, says Paul, through Jesus Christ to be justified by faith. But he has been pointing out something very interesting to us, particularly in chapter 6, that while we are delivered from the dominion of sin, we are not yet delivered from the presence of sin. And so there is a kind of, as our confessional faith says, an irreconcilable war that takes place in the life of the Christian believer. delivered from the dominion of sin, but not yet delivered from the presence of sin until final glory. And so long as these two things are true, Paul says our great calling in life is to fight against sin. As he will say in chapter 8 verse 13, to put sin to death. And by God's grace we do this in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are able to do this, as he says in chapter 6 verse 14, because we are no longer under the law, we are under grace. So long as you are under law, condemned by the law, you can never fight against sin. But when you're under grace, you are set free to fight against sin." Now, says Paul, this doesn't mean that the law is sinful, that the law is evil. No, rather what I've discovered, he says, is that the law of God shines upon the pollution of my heart, and as it shines upon the pollution of my heart, the odor of my sin rises through my whole life. And as long as I live, that law that shines upon the pollution of my heart can never deliver me from that pollution. It was never given to deliver me from that pollution. Now those of us who are Christian believers, when we are witnessing to people and people say to us, I'm going to try harder, I'm going to keep the law, we say to them, you'll never be saved by keeping the law. You'll never be saved by keeping the law. because the law doesn't have the power within it to effect what it commands. Only Jesus Christ has that power, and so you need to come to Jesus Christ, and He will give you the power to serve Him for His glory. Now, all of this Paul has established, that the law from which we have been set free so that we might be married to Jesus Christ, the law that shows us our sin is not in itself sinful. And verse 13, the law which is good doesn't bring death to us, it's sin that produces death. The odors of the shining of the law into the pollution of my heart are not orders that arise from the law, but orders that arise from the pollution of my heart." That's what he's saying. And then suddenly he does something very remarkable, and it really is remarkable. And perhaps you noticed it in our reading, or certainly many of you will have noticed it before. From verse 14 right through to verse 25, there is, I think, only one occasion in which Paul uses a verb that isn't in the present tense. And it's very striking because suddenly he moves from speaking about the past You notice that? Verse 8, he begins speaking about how the law sees an opportunity through the commandment produced in him, all kinds of covetousness. He was alive once apart from the law. The commandment came, past tense, sin came alive, and he died. It's all past tense, past tense, past tense, past tense. And I do believe he's speaking about himself. This is my experience in the past. but then without any preparation from verse 14 until he asks the question in verse 24b, who will in the future deliver me from this body of death? Absolutely everything he says is in the present tense. A second striking thing you will notice is this, that every personal pronoun is first person, every single one. So here are a dozen verses in which almost every verb is in the present tense, and every personal pronoun is first person. And if you looked at a paragraph like that in any book you were reading, you would assume what? First of all, this man is speaking about himself, and second, this man is speaking about his present experience. If that was the only thing you were looking at, you would be bound to conclude He is speaking about himself, and he is speaking about his present experience. Now, that is such an obvious thing and such a powerful thing that I think we would be foolish to ignore it. But when we actually read what Paul says, There seem to be things here that he says that surely make us wonder, what kind of man is speaking here? When you look at the actual teaching, look for example at what he says in verse 14. Do you notice how he says there, I am of the flesh sold under sin? Now let me ask you this question, when did you last say that? When did you last say that? I am of the flesh, sold under sin. That's a fairly radical statement to make, isn't it? Sold under sin. How does that consist with Paul in near ecstasy saying, we are delivered from the dominion of sin? I'm somebody who is sold under sin. Or just to use another example, verse 18, I know that nothing good dwells in me. That is in my flesh. I have the desire to do what is right, not the ability to carry it out. I don't do the good I want. The evil I don't want is what I keep on doing. or those piercing words in verse twenty-three, I see that there is a law that makes me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am, who can deliver me?" Well, is Paul contradicting himself here? speaking out of both sides of his mouth? Or, as some commentators have suggested, is this simply not Paul as a present tense Christian at all? Is this Paul as was often suggested when I was a youngster? Is this Paul as a backslidden Christian? Or, as some other commentators have wondered, Is this Paul from the vantage point of the gospel looking back, perhaps on the experience of an Old Testament believer who didn't have the full revelation of God in Christ and speaking about his ongoing struggles, or as others have thought, is this actually Paul describing what happened to him in that profound existential struggle that many people go through when they become Christians? Some of you probably knew it. You were awakened, and your first thought was, I have got to be better. I failed God, and now I'm going to stop failing Him. And the more you tried not to fail Him, the more you realized how miserable your attempts were, and it drove you almost to despair until you were able to cry out, oh God, I'm a wretched man. I don't seem to be able to pull myself up to your holiness. And then the gospel came in. and you said, you saw it, thank God, Jesus Christ can deliver me from this body of death. Or as other Christians have thought, and certainly this was a very dominant thought in my early Christian teaching, this is Paul the mature Christian, If you cannot describe yourself in these terms, you do not know anything whatsoever about real Christian maturity. You are still a spiritual babe. You do not really know yourself. Well, here is a thought. All of these ways of approaching Romans 7, 14 to 25 are dominated by a question. Who is this man who is speaking here? Who is this man who is speaking here? When you ask that kind of question and people stand up all over the place and offer you their suggestions, sometimes it's time just to step back and ask yourself another question, namely, is that really the most important question to ask of this passage? And I rather suggest, I think, and I will say something God willing by the end as to in what sense the Apostle Paul is speaking here, but I think it's important for us just there to say, let's just go back to base camp for a minute in Romans chapter 7. And when we do, we realize Paul doesn't have any problem identifying who it is that's speaking in this chapter. because Paul's real question is actually, what is it that is the role of the law that God has given? That's his big question here. What is the function of the law? Not least, what is the function of the law in the life of the Christian believer? And it seems to me, if I can abbreviate much thought about this passage, that when we look at this passage in that way, we begin to see something, namely that there is an uncanny parallel between his teaching in Romans chapter 6 and his teaching in Romans chapter 7. In Romans chapter 6 he has said this, now dear Christians understand in Christ you have died to sin. In Christ you have died to sin, but sin has not yet died in you. And so long as that is true there is going to be battle and spiritual warfare in your life. Now, what I think he's saying in chapter 7 is this. I think he's thinking about the law, and he's saying, but in Christ, just as we died to sin in Christ, chapter 6, we've died to the law in Christ, chapter 7, verses 1 to 6. But while we have died to the law, we are very far from perfect according to the law's requirements. And so long as that is true, the Christian believer is going to, until final glory, find the law continuing to do in his or her life many of the things it actually did in Paul's life that he describes here in verses 7 through 12, namely, exposing my sins. exposing my duplicity, stirring up within me, because I remain a sinner justified though I am, delivered from the dominion of sin though I am. I remain a sinner, and sin is still present in me. And sin has not transformed itself into something pleasant just because I'm a believer. And so long as that is so, when the Christian believer looks into the goodness and holiness and spirituality of God's law, which is how Paul describes it here, isn't it? In verse 12, the law is holy, the commandment is holy and righteous and good. When I, as a Christian believer, look into the holy, bright law of God and allow it to search me out then it is surely inevitable that much that Paul says here in this chapter I will begin to say." What that means is this, that Paul is describing himself, that he is describing himself as an ordinary Christian believer, but he is not saying everything there is to say about himself. He is, as it were, saying only that about himself which he discovers when he gazes into the holy law of God that is an expression of God's character and reveals, yes, the deep contradictions even in the experience and behavior patterns of the very best of Christians. This is what you would expect from one point of view of the man who says, for all my fruitfulness I am at the end of the day the chief of sinners. Do you notice he never describes himself as the greatest of saints, but as the chief of sinners? This is a portrait of the chief of sinners, indeed a portrait of all sinners. Christian sinners too, as the law of God exposes us for what we really are, justified men and women who are, as Luther loved to put it, simultaneously sinners. And when you look at it from that point of view, not the point of view, is this Paul the mature Christian? Is this his hour-by-hour experience? By no means. Paul did not go around the ancient world crying out, O wretched man that I am. He's just told us earlier on in chapter 5 how the Holy Spirit flooded his heart and how he knew peace and joy and a taste of glory in believing. So he's not telling us everything there is to tell us about the Christian life, but he's telling us something that's very important to know about the Christian life. And that is, even as we make progress in the Christian life, one of the things that we discover as we look into the countenance of our Holy Father is that in the light of the revelation He has given of Himself in His law, and not least as that has been so beautifully and perfectly embodied in our dear Savior Jesus Christ, as we then see the light that the law shines upon our hearts that have been renewed but not finally renewed, transformed but not yet glorified. we discover the law of God penetrating into places that expose the veneers of our obedience. I hope as you grow as a Christian, that is one of the things you are discovering, that what you thought was obedience was utterly superficial by comparison with what Jesus Christ deserves. But the energy that you've given to her, let me put it this way, some of you when you stood here and pledged yourself to one another thought to yourself, it is impossible that man loved woman more than I love this woman. Now that was a sign you knew absolutely nothing about married life, wasn't it? And I hope five or ten or fifteen or twenty years later you are able to look back and say, what a simpleton I was when I see how many more reasons there are to love her and adore her and give myself to her for all that she is and has become. Now you see the same is true in the Christian life. both in the way in which at the beginning of our Christian life we say, Lord Jesus, You have absolutely everything of me, and then we discover that we hardly were giving Him anything. We were just giving Him the principle, and now He comes and He says, child, more, more. I want you all. And at the same time, at the same time we discover the subtlety and the deceptiveness and the multi-layered character of the deep perversity of our sin. Now that is the reason why, if I can put it this way, When Paul speaks in Romans about the glory of being a Christian and at the same time the agony, if I can put it this way, the agony and the ecstasy of being a Christian, ecstasy in the light of the grace of Jesus Christ, agony in the light of my sin as it's revealed by God's law, he's not saying there is a contradiction in what I'm saying. He is saying there remains a kind of contradiction in what I am. Perhaps the most powerful way for us to understand this is to place side by side what the Apostle Paul says here in Romans chapter 7 and verse 20, "'Sin dwells within me.'" Just say that to yourself. It's true, isn't it? Unless you're either already in heaven, and it doesn't look to me tonight as though too many of you are already in heaven, unless you're already in heaven or you're an angel who has never sinned, you've got to be able to say as a Christian believer, sin dwells in me. But the thing is, if you're a Christian believer, there's something else the gospel has taught you to say, and it's this, the Lord of glory dwells in me. Remember how Paul puts that at the end of Colossians when he speaks about Christ dwelling in us as the hope of glory? These two things are true of every Christian believer. The Lord of glory dwells in him or her, and sin continues to dwell in him or her. And so long as that is true, The Christian believer, as God's holy law shines upon his or her life, is going to feel sometimes in excruciating ways. Oh, wretched man that I am, who can deliver me? So, I say again, Paul is not saying to us, Just get Romans 7, 14 to 25 into your mind, and you've got the whole of the Christian life. What He is saying to us, that as we look into the face of the Holy Father, as He reveals Himself in His law, and as the Holy Spirit uses that law to expose our sinfulness, at such times, and sometimes they are unusually heightened in our experience through failure or circumstance or sometimes under the ministry of the Word privately or publicly. At such times, we begin to say with the Apostle Paul, Lord, I can't understand this. the good that I want to do with all my heart because you have given me a renewed heart, I do not seem to do. I feel as though I am being led captive. I still feel that I am somebody who was once sold under sin, and having been sold even though I am yet redeemed, I am still a person who was sold. And until the final redemption of our bodies, about which he speaks in chapter 8, the marks, the pock marks, the wound marks, the disease marks of that remain in my life, and I battle all the way to glory, all the way to glory. so I am free from the dominion of sin in order to battle and wage war against the presence of sin. And yes, I'm free from the condemnation of the law, but the law continues to expose my sinfulness and my failure. And as I meditate upon it, it goes right into my heart, just the way Jesus uses the holy law in the Sermon on the Mount to get down into my motivations. And here I am as a Christian believer, but as the law in the hands of Jesus exposes my sinfulness. I'm crying out to Him, Lord Jesus, I belong to You, but I still fall and stumble into these sins. Oh, when will You deliver me from this body of death? And then there seems to me to be a kind of resolution of the whole thing when he says, as you notice at the end of chapter 7, so then I myself serve the law of God with my mind. But this sinful flesh of this renewed but not finally sanctified man or woman, still has sin indwelling it and feels its awful power. Now, that is a survey. I have not the foggiest idea in the world what we are going to do next Sunday night, but that is the survey. So, let me say one or two things by closing application. We need to learn that just as the law cannot justify the sinner, follow this closely, the law which cannot justify the sinner cannot sanctify the saint. You understand that? You understand as a Christian how once perhaps before you became a Christian you tried your best and you sought to justify yourself by obedience to the law. You came to understand there is no justification that way. But perhaps what you've begun to do in your Christian life is to say, well, I couldn't be justified by obedience to the law. Maybe I can be sanctified by obedience to the law, but the law doesn't have any more power to transform you now that you're a Christian than it had before you were a Christian. It's only the grace of God and Jesus Christ that can sanctify you. So you look to him and you say, Lord Jesus, give me power to please you in obedience to your word. Do you remember the illustration of that in Pilgrim's Progress when Christian comes to Interpreter's house and interpreters all these neat things in his house just to show him, fantastic things in his house to show him as illustrations. He takes him into a place, into a parlor that's full of dust because it was never swept. And the interpreter calls for a man to come in and sweep the room. The man comes in. Of course, he's a man. He doesn't know any better. He's got his brush, and he's sweeping the room, and he's sweeping the room. And what happens? The dust is all over the place, and it just settles down again. And then a young lady who has much more sense comes in, and she sprinkles water on the room. And then, says Bunyan, it was swept and cleansed with pleasure. And Christian says, what's all this about? That's my paraphrase. The interpreter answered, the parlor is the heart of man that was never sanctified but by the sweet grace of the gospel." That's it, isn't it? The fellow who comes in with the broom and sweeps the dust around, he can't get rid of the dust. but the sweet grace of the gospel, the outpouring of the grace of the Holy Spirit. As Paul will come in to say at the beginning of Romans 8, what the law could not do because it was weakened through our flesh, God has done, sending His Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin and forcing to condemn sin in the flesh in order that through the Holy Spirit we might be enabled to walk in accordance with God's law. Don't look to the law to sanctify you. Look to the One who justified you to sanctify you, our Lord Jesus Christ. The second thing to notice is If you want to have a Christian life in which you have no consciousness of your own deep sinfulness, forget about it. There is no such Christian life. Actually, if we grasp that, we'd be far more gracious to one another in our sinfulness, wouldn't we, apart from anything else? And the third thing is this. What's the end result of all this? It's that Paul, and this is so important, I pray God, whenever there is a word from God among us that seems to crush us into the dust, that that word may never leave us in the dust. The gospel never leaves us in the dust. Oh, wretched man that I am! Who can deliver me? That's not the last word. The last word is, thank God Jesus Christ can. There is a staggering illustration of this in the Old Testament, isn't there? In the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 6, when the godliest man in Jerusalem goes into the temple, the greatest preacher in Jerusalem goes into the temple. and the holiness of God bathes the place. Now that's what God expresses in miniature in his law, his holiness. And Isaiah sees the holiness of God. What does he cry out? Do you remember? He's a believing prophet of God. He has been changed by the power of the Holy Spirit, but in the presence of divine holiness he cries out his own version of, I am undone," he says. And then do you notice what he says? Do you notice where he feels it most intensely? It's in the very place where God has most greatly gifted him, transformed him, sanctified him, and used him. It's not his failures in administration that make him cry out, I am undone. It's in the very sphere where God had given him his greatest and most fruitful gift, his lips, that he feels undone. I am a man of unclean lips. So, who can deliver him? Well, the burning coal from off the altar of sacrifice comes. The voice says this, purges away your sin, begins to make you clean, and he goes on to be obedient to God to serve Him for His glory. And he only saw the Savior in picture language, and we see the Savior on the cross, His dying love for us. He died in order to bring us to final glory, and we need to keep looking to Him, looking to Him. Yes, we need to feel the exposure of our sin by the holy law of God, and at times some of us, if we're going to be really fruitful, need to be crushed almost to death because we're so full of ourselves and our own plans and our own gifts and our own purposes and our own strategies and perhaps even our own usefulness. But you see, the man who has gone down into the darkness, the woman that has gone down into the darkness of their own soul and has been illumined by the brightness of the law of God, who is brought to cry out, O wretched man that I am, who can deliver me, sees Jesus Christ in His glory in a way none other ever will. And at the end of the day, that is what matters. that I behold the face of the King and I'm able to say to Him, Lord Jesus, I keep failing You. I keep discovering how deep my sin is and how much I let You down, but You are an even greater Savior than my sin abounds. Oh again, my blessed Savior, where sin abounds, make your sweet grace abound all the more." Dear ones, he is everything you need. You do not need to add to Jesus. You do not need to be paralyzed by the exposure of your sin. as long as you'll come through to Jesus, because He is a great Savior. Well, who knows where we'll be next week? We may not even be here. But as long as our hearts are crying, thanks be to God, Jesus Christ can deliver us. Whatever this week holds, that will take us to glory. Heavenly Father, thank you again and again for this day you've given to us, for the special delights we've had over this weekend of having these dear friends with us. And as we come to the end of this weekend and the end of this day, with all our hearts we lovingly commend them afresh to you and pray that this Word under which together we have sat may do us much good and that as more and more we see how wretched we are in ourselves, We pray that we may more and more see how great and glorious is our infinitely wonderful Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Fill us with trust in Him and love for Him and love for those who know Him not. In this we pray for His great namesake. Amen.