Okay, well, we have made it to Thursday. The week is winding down. I hope that you've had a good week. I hope that you are remembering that this coming weekend, we have Father's Day coming up on Sunday, and so I hope you're going to treat your dads right this weekend. I hope that my bunch is remembering that it's Father's Day. I'm pretty sure that none of my children are watching this, and so it's not going to do much good to remind them. But anyway, We are continuing to look at our big questions and answers for the week. The big question is, what benefits do Christians share in this life? And the answer is, the effectually called share justification, adoption, sanctification, and the other benefits that either go with or come from them. Our second big question is, what is justification? And the answer is, justification is God's gracious pardoning of our sins and accepting us as righteous because he counts the righteousness of Christ as ours. Justification is received by faith alone. And then our memory verse for this week comes from 1 Corinthians 6, 11, and it states, and some of you used to be like this, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. I think last week, for some reason, when I was reading 2 Corinthians 5, or excuse me, yesterday, I think for some reason I was reading 2 Corinthians 5, I stated that the memory verse was held within that, which it's absolutely not. It's from 1 Corinthians. But anyway, that won't be the first nor the last mistake I make. And so today we're going to be looking at Philippians 3, verses 7 through 11. We read there in Philippians 3, verse 7, And of course, there's the Apostle Paul. Remember, he's in prison when he writes Philippians, and he really writes more personally about himself in Philippians than maybe any other book other than maybe the pastoral epistles. But there in verse 7, we read, Everything was gained to me, but everything that was gained to me I've considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things, and I consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering, being conformed to his death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead." And so we read in that passage there, We read the Apostle Paul really as he's in prison, and he's struggling, and he's doing without things, as he's separated from his loved ones, as he's unable even to fulfill the mission that he believes God has given to him to take the gospel to the nations. He's talking about all these things that he's basically given away or these things that he had to let go of, you know, his pride and self-sufficiency based upon his lineage, based upon his Jewish heritage, his learning and his knowledge as a Pharisee and all these things that he had, all these things going for him from a worldly perspective. But compared to the benefits of knowing Christ, those things are nothing. You know, our big question is what benefits do Christians share in this life? And there are many Christians, I'm afraid, because we don't necessarily in our culture have to give up that much from a worldly perspective in order to come to Christ. We forget. a wonderful and how glorious this salvation is. I don't mean that we forget it like we don't know it. If you know the Lord Jesus Christ, you've experienced forgiveness of sins, and you comprehend what it is to be adopted into his family. You don't forget it, but maybe we just sort of set it aside in the day-to-day and the mundane things of life. We're not really thinking about what we've given up and how it compares to what we've gained in Christ. And so I want to challenge you to really think on that today. This idea that those who are affectionately called, those who have been saved, share justification. That means when God looks at us, he sees the righteousness of his son, Jesus Christ. The righteousness of Christ has been given to those who have faith in Jesus Christ. We've been adopted. So we're sons and daughters of the most high God. We have an inheritance waiting for us there with Him. Sanctification is another benefit, which means we've been set apart for God's purposes, not our own. We now can be used in the Father's service because we've been sanctified by the presence of the Holy Spirit. When we were regenerated, the Holy Spirit brought us to life and set us apart. And so we are able to be used by God. And then also, many other benefits. You know, we think about being part of the body of Christ and being part of the family of God and experiencing the freedom from guilt and, you know, in the forgiveness of sin. We could go on and on and on. These benefits that we have in Jesus Christ of this great salvation that we have in him. And so I hope you'll think on those benefits today. I hope that your heart will be filled with thanksgiving. God bless you. And you have a great Thursday.