Jeff Durbin- Union With Christ & the Body | Sermon 06/05/2022

It's an honor to be with you. Praise the Lord for what he's doing here in this church and among his people. I'm just honored to be here with you. So I am going to try to lay down some foundational essential things from scripture that I think provide a grounding and a foundation for joy in life, peace in life, freedom from anxiety, worry, fear, no fear of death, all of that, but also talk about what that means for our identity as believers in Jesus Christ, which ultimately is everything, our identity.

Who are we in Christ? And then leading from there into what this means now for us within the body. This is an amazing thing that God has done here to raise up a church like this around Salt Lake City to win this entire state to Jesus Christ and to put it under his feet, which is the ultimate goal.

It's an amazing thing. But there are things that I want to encourage you as the people of God to consider and to value and to submit to as believers because this is a new church plant. And when we look at something like this, we say all glory to God, praise God, but what gives us a foundation for joy in the midst of doing a work like this?

And what can we do as followers of Christ to guard ourselves from the common schemes of the enemy when it comes to church planting and growing? Because I want to say this before we read the text in terms of like why a message like this.

By the way, I'm going to try to go from Romans 3 to Romans 12 today and some of Colossians. So I'm hoping to have you out of here by sunrise. It's important because I don't believe that the enemy has much concern, much concern with the kind of Christian faith that is not out in the public square, with the kind of Christian faith that is not dedicated to God's word, is authoritative over all things.

I don't think the enemy is overly concerned with the proclamation of a Christ who doesn't have all authority in heaven and on earth. I don't think the enemy is overly concerned with a church that has no pursuit of godliness and holiness.

I don't think that the enemy is overly concerned with a church that has really very little concern with the full transformation of the world around us. I don't think the enemy is overly concerned with a church like that.

I know that the enemy is certainly concerned with the kind of people that prize his gospel and his word and the authority of Christ over all things as supreme and ultimate. The enemy is certainly concerned with a church like that.

Now we're not in any way boasting in and of ourselves. We're saying if you believe these things, just know that you have a target on you from the enemy. And I've seen amazing works of God in my state, in my own context, and around the world who have received similar attacks from the enemy.

And I'm gonna try to sort of shield you, protect you as a young church that has so much potential for gospel success in the world around you. I'm gonna shield you from the kinds of things that are common attacks of the enemy.

And much of it is dealing with personal sin. But let's start. Romans chapter six, we'll start there. Don't worry, we're gonna start in Romans 3 too. You guys, if you've at all been blessed with a ministry of apology at church, you know I have sins in the area of time and keeping on time.

And I promise you that I don't care. So yeah, it's 4 .35 right now, okay. All right, so let's go to Romans chapter six. This is sort of the substance, a portion of the substance of what I wanna communicate as your brother and as a minister of the gospel today.

Romans chapter six, verse one. Hear now the word of the living and the true God. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Thus far as the reading of God's holy and inspired word, let's pray together. Father, I pray that you would bless today the proclamation of your word and the teaching of your word all to the glory of Jesus Christ.

We pray that you'd bless us, all of us with the ability to see and hear. Lord, renew us in our minds, transform us. Use this work that you've called out of darkness and into light for your glory and kingdom.

Use it to bring transformation to the world that abounds to exaltation and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray, Lord, that you protect this church. Protect us from our own sin, our own pride, our own strife and envy.

Protect us. Lord, grant to us the grace and the strength to hate our sin and to put it to death as people who have been made alive and guard this precious work from the onslaught of attacks of the enemy.

We ask, God, that you would do a work here within this body that would leave a lasting legacy for the kingdom of the Messiah. In Jesus' name, amen. So let's talk about the grounding of our hope. The Apostle Paul here is sort of midway through a discussion to the church at Rome.

Now, if you don't know the book of Romans, I encourage you to get to know it, read it a lot, get to understand it. And the reason why that's important is every word of God is pure. Every word of God will bless you.

It'll be something that transforms you and renews you. But Romans is actually Paul's systematic explanation of the gospel. He starts from A and goes all the way to Z. So the Apostle Paul hasn't yet gotten the opportunity to go and minister to the church in Rome.

He starts off this letter to the church in Rome with this very long, seven verse long sentence. Seven verse long sentence about how he's just so excited to be there and to impart some spiritual gift to them.

He is so thrilled about the work that God is doing among them. He has a deep love for this church, but he hasn't yet gotten an opportunity to be with them. And so what he does here is he gives them a letter delivered to them, inspired by God, given by the Holy Spirit of God that explains the gospel of Jesus Christ systematically from A all the way down the line.

And so the Apostle Paul is giving to them a systematic explanation of the gospel that is essential for us to understand. It's interesting because oftentimes you'll be out on the street doing evangelism in the public square.

You might be talking to, say, and since this is the context we're in, you might be talking to Latter-day Saints or Jehovah's Witnesses and you'll give them something direct from the word of God. God says here and you just read it.

Like, for example, the conversation I had with the returned missionaries in Provo the other day, where I just quote the verse and they say, well, that's your interpretation. I just read it. I just read it.

Well, no, you read it with your understanding. I'm reading the words of God. God speaks with clarity. And it's interesting, as you have these engagements, you'll often find that as you're disputing and arguing, when you give the word of God to someone like that, they'll say, well, we can't really understand what God was saying there.

I mean, how do we really know that's what he meant? But what's interesting, and you'll find this in every one of these occasions, is the people that you're talking to are actually spending time talking to you and debating with you, assuming that they as creatures can be understood.

When they're communicating with you, they're communicating with you with the assumption that they can be understood. So this little creature with a three-pound brain believes that they have the ability to communicate with clarity in a way that God doesn't, or that he can't.

We should absolutely reject that kind of understanding of God's word. Here's the point. God speaks with clarity. He can be understood. It doesn't mean that there aren't things in scripture that are hard to understand.

The apostle Peter says that, that Paul's writing stuff that are hard to understand. He doesn't say impossible to understand. He says hard to understand, and the people who distort those truths are unstable and untaught men.

He doesn't say they can't be understood. We believe in the perspicuity of scripture. There's a big theological word for you, perspicuity. Sounds Southern. What's it mean? Clarity. We believe God speaks with clarity.

And so the apostle Paul gives us in Romans a systematic explanation of the gospel. When we talk so much about the gospel, it's all about the gospel. We need to believe the gospel. We need to preach the gospel.

We have to have some understanding of what does that actually mean. And if you want to have a grounding or a place to plant your feet and anchor to say, what is the gospel? What actually is accomplished in the gospel?

Who is Jesus Christ? What does God do in the gospel to reconcile people to himself? I don't believe you can go to any better, enter a better place in the book of Romans. Start from the beginning, go to the end, and read it every single day to understand what God has done.

And in Romans, as Paul opens up, he spends several chapters grounding the hope of the believer in his explanation of the good news. Now, this is really, really important. Everyone come with me now for a moment because there are ways that the Bible talks about the gospel that are very different.

For example, the apostle Paul, when he opens up Romans, just check it out. In Romans chapter one, as you can see, he says this, verse one, Paul, a slave of Messiah Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.

There's one way it's described. It's the gospel of God. It's the good news of God. It's also called the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom, the good news of God's kingdom promised in the Old Testament scriptures about the Messiah's rule and reign over the world, bringing salvation to the ends of the earth, spreading his dominion, putting every enemy under his feet, bringing salvation to both Jews and Gentiles, all the families of the earth returning to worship Yahweh.

That's the hope of the future, by the way. That's the hope we have in the future. But also, the gospel is talked about as just the gospel, the gospel preached by me, the gospel. And there are aspects of the gospel that are very intimate.

They are very personal. And that's what the apostle Paul deals with so much in the first couple of chapters. He talks about the grounding of our hope. Now, this is really important. Before we even start this, it's really important to actually take a moment to ask yourself the question, am I willing to be corrected?

When I read this, there's a difference between affirming that these are the words of God, those things are true, and actually being able to be corrected as a sinful creature to say, I've thought this about God, but he says that.

I repent. I believe that. Or in your own internal monologue, this is where it gets intensely personal. How many of you this week have felt like God was an absentee landlord, like he's far off, that he's distant, that he couldn't really love me that much?

There's no real depth of love for me. I'm such a failure. I can't get this right. I'm constantly face-planting. I'm not always joyful. I'm kind of anxious. I'm rebellious. I'm angry. I have lustful thoughts.

And because of that, you think, these promises couldn't possibly be for me. If there was an exam, a Christian exam, I could check the boxes. I know how to give all the right answers and say A, B, C. I'll get all the right answers, 100 on the exam.

But the truth is, while I affirm these truths as those are true, I actually believe myself in my own inner monologue over God virtually 90 of the time. I tell myself things constantly that are just simply not true about God's love for me, about the promise I have and hope I have for the future.

All those things, they have to be dealt with right now as we open the text here and talk about a grounding of our hope as a church. This is, for the moment, highlighted for me. I received a message from somebody this week.

And it's difficult for me because I get so many messages, just an onslaught of messages on a daily basis, sometimes Pastor Wado messaged me, I won't even see it, and he has to message again because it just gets buried.

And oftentimes I try to really only respond to messages from people that I know or from church members, otherwise it'll be a full-time job just responding to strangers, right? And I have to care for my family and my church first and foremost.

But I happened to see a message from someone that I didn't know. I actually opened it, maybe by accident, and it was somebody who was really struggling in a different state from me. And this is a person talking about cutting herself and possibly committing suicide.

And that was something I needed to take seriously. And so I immediately put the pastor headgear on and went right in to make sure I could minister to her, make sure she wasn't gonna hurt herself. And the first thing I asked her was, what church do you go to?

And she didn't have a church. Well, obviously you're struggling. You're disconnecting yourself from the very organism that God uses to actually bless and heal. So I talked about, let me find you a church.

And so I looked around her area and Googled, and I found a good church for her connected to a pastor. But I kept getting messages all week from this young woman talking about the fact that I'm just such a mess.

I have blown it. I'm not, I shouldn't even go to church. God couldn't possibly love me. And my response to her was, read this passage. Read these promises from God. And she kept resisting and resisting.

Every time I would give her verses, I would say, well, I know you're saying that, but actually God says this. Here's what his word says here. And she kept resisting and resisting. And finally, I just said to her with a serrated edge, I said, so here's the deal.

You're telling yourself things right now, and God says things right now through his word. And your words are contradicting his words. So either Jesus is the liar or you're the liar. Which one do you think it is?

And she said, well, I'm probably the liar. I said, yes. So here's the thing. You have to be willing to say, I am so prideful. You can be the most pious, mature believer in the world, but there's some pride there.

You gotta confess to it or you're never gonna heal. You have to be able to say, I'm wrong, God's right. And let his word heal you. And so as we go through this, there's one way you can do this right now.

I can read through the text. You can all do the yeas and amens and hallelujahs, and you can say, yes, that's all to the glory of God. God says that. And never actually be changed yourself. Because deep down, you're so prideful and so resistant to actually say, God is right and I am wrong.

I'm believing him over me from now on. And so as we go through this text to talk about the grounding of our hope in Christ, it's important to ask the question, do I really believe that? Do I believe it, right?

Because one last thing as we go into the text, very important. James says, even the demons believe and tremble, right? Like even the demons believe and tremble. What's that mean? They know all those things about Jesus are true facts.

They know it's all real. Like demons believe all that is true about Jesus. They believe it. Not in terms of trusting in Jesus for themselves, but they could pass the theological exam and they could pass the theological exam better than all of us.

They've been around for longer than all of us and they've seen a lot more than us. And so even the demons believe and tremble, they accept all these things as true in scripture. That's true. They affirm it intellectually.

That's true. But they don't believe it. They don't trust in Christ. They don't turn to it. They don't receive it as, that's true for me. And so as we go into this text and talk about the grounding of our hope, it's important to ask the question, do I actually trust this over myself?

Do I believe his promises about eternal life and his forgiveness in a way that actually transforms me into a person that has joy in God, even in the midst of trouble? Into the kind of person that rejoices in the Lord always.

Little background for those of you new to the Bible. The apostle Paul is the kind of person that can be in a dungeon that he can't even stand up in, in chains, in darkness, and write a small letter that can't stop talking about rejoicing.

That can't stop talking about joy. That can't stop talking about what Pastor Wade talked about a moment ago, to live is Christ, to die is gain. He writes that, if you didn't know, that little letter, he writes that in a dungeon, in chains, in a place where he could barely stand up.

Joy, joy, joy, rejoice in the Lord. I don't know, I don't know what I want to do. If I want to stay and bear fruit with you, it just means it's fruit for Christ, or I want to weigh the anchor and sail away to be with Jesus.

I don't know what I want. To depart and be with Christ is far better, but if I stay here, it's good for you. I don't know. I'm twisted between two positions right now, and the whole time you think and reflect on what he's saying, you have to remember, it's a man writing in a dungeon who says that he is constantly on the run.

He's been beaten times without number. He's being lowered out of windows. He's constantly under siege from false brethren. He's been like lost at sea. I mean, this man has endured everything, and he's like, rejoice in the Lord always.

Don't worry about anything. How? How does a person get to a place like that, where you can be in the midst of death, and disease, and pain, and sickness, and fear, and all the rest, and you can still say, I love you, Lord, and I'm loved by you, God, and I know your word is true.

Do you see? It's very important to allow yourself right now to get checked, to go past all the God face and the Christian ease. God face is that face where like, you know, you're traveling down the road coming to church, like, you know, you've just had a little thing with you and your spouse, right?

Like you're at each other's throats, and you're trying to find a leg to pull off one of your children in the back seat, and then you pull into church parking lot, and all of a sudden, it's like, ah, super spiritual, right?

You come in, hello, brother. Hello, sister. God is good. Praise the Lord, right? Right? You gotta learn to take that off. Take it off. Take it right off. Right? Take off the God face. Stop with the Christian ease and all the Christian language and actually allow yourself to be checked to say, do I actually believe that?

Does it cause me to rejoice? Because God is saying that that's true of me in Christ. So Romans chapter three, grounding of our hope. I'm not gonna read every verse to go over everything, but I wanna provide a foundation here.

Romans chapter three, the Apostle Paul spent the last three chapters with an indictment upon all of humanity. Get this, and you'll get everything. It's an indictment that man-made religious systems do not believe.

Man-made tradition, man-made religious systems do not believe this. I don't care the God. I don't care the religious text. I don't care the religious ritual and garb. Man-made religion has the same testimony about mankind.

Yeah, maybe you're a little messy. Maybe you've blown it a bit, but you're not that far gone where you can't pull yourself up and obey enough and become righteous enough. It's very rare for man-made religion to say, that you don't need the grace of God, right?

Like we need it somewhat, but we still sort of have to work together with it to get right with God. We can become righteous somehow through obedience, through maybe temple ceremonies, or going door to door, or whatever the religious system says.

It's all basically the same story. It's up to me to become righteous enough and obedient enough so that God can accept me. And in Romans chapter three, the Apostle Paul has spent three chapters basically saying, here's the deal.

All of humanity, all of humanity knows a true God, doesn't want to know the true God, suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness. They switch God for idols, which is a fantastic explanation for every religious system in the world.

Why, if there's only one God, why are there so many different religions? Romans chapter one, because we all are made in God's image, made from the same God. We know the same God and we don't want to know him.

And so we'd rather have the creature or the thing that looks a lot like us instead of the real God. And Paul says, so people switch God for a false God and they start doing things that are perverse with their own bodies, their disobedience of parents, their enemies of God, to which you have, of course, Romans two, the Jewish person lurking in the background saying things like, that's right, Paul, you get those Gentiles.

And what they don't realize is that Paul has really given this indictment to all of humanity. And Paul then goes after the Jew and says, you think you have the law and that somehow justifies you. If that was the case, you would have to do the things in the law in order to be justified by it and you don't, do you?

And the Apostle Paul basically does the first century version of Ray Comfort, right? You ever seen Ray Comfort? My friend, Ray Comfort, love the man. He's sweeter and better in real life than he is on YouTube.

Have you ever lied? Have you ever looked at the woman with lust, right? That thing. Well, Paul basically does the same thing there, first century version, where he's like, you tell people not to steal, you steal?

What's it do? They go, well, yeah, I am actually a hypocrite. I am actually guilty of violating God's law. Paul's point in Romans three is to bring it to a crescendo where he says, Jews and Gentiles all understand you're all in the same place before God, whether you're Jewish or you're Gentile.

There is none righteous, Paul says, no, not one. There's weight to that. You gotta receive that. Because if somehow you think that you can climb to God through your obedience and your righteousness, that just eviscerated that position, takes the legs right off of it.

There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none who does good. There is none who seeks after God. Where's Paul getting this from? He's not inventing it. He knows his Bible. He knows the Old Testament scriptures.

He's pulling together a katina of verses from the Old Testament revelation to show his audience that this has always been the testimony of scripture. Nobody is righteous in God's eyes, nobody. No one does good.

No one fears God. And that's why you need Jesus. That's why the condescension of God in the flesh, because nobody is righteous in and of themselves. And so that's why you need the Savior. And so Paul, giving a grounding for our hope, after he says in 3 .18, there is no fear of God before their eyes, he says this, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

What's that mean? The law is given to shut you up. Right? I mean, what's the law gonna do to the sinner when they stand before God in judgment? What's it gonna do? Condemn them. Indict them. But look, God, I did this.

Yeah, you did it as a rebel against me. It was just activity. It wasn't obedience. But look, God, at this one time, I had the opportunity to sin and I didn't do it. And then the rest of that day was sin upon sin upon sin upon sin.

And James 2 .10 says, whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet stumble in one point, he's guilty of all of it. Because the law of God is a unit. If you break a piece of it, you've destroyed the entire thing like throwing a small pebble through a big window.

Right? No big deal. It's just a small hole. You've destroyed the thing. It has to be replaced. And the law of God doesn't actually justify or declare anyone righteous. No one will be declared righteous by the law of God because we're all sinners, because we're not good, because we're enemies of God, because we're rebels.

That's Paul's whole belief. And he says in Romans 3, verse 19, that the whole world may be held accountable to God. So is the law just for Israel? This is a big one. It's gonna come up maybe later in a test, okay?

So get ready. By the way, get those tests ready, Luke, at the end. You're not leaving before an exam, ladies and gentlemen. We'll see how much you're paying attention, especially you kids. Think about that.

The law is given to shut you up, to close your mouth, to show you your sin, and it's given so what? The whole world may be held accountable to God. Whole world, whole world, not just Israel. The law of God applies to all of life and all of mankind.

And the text says, for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. Stop for a moment and let's get this grounded. This word justified clearly in Paul's context is legal in nature.

He uses it later to say, who is he who condemns? God is the one who justifies. How are you gonna be condemned when God is the one doing the justifying? He's putting God in the judgment seat as judge with a declaration, justified, declared righteous.

Love that word. Embrace that word because that word is everything. And Paul says that nobody will be declared righteous in God's court through the law. It won't happen. Nobody will. For by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

It won't be because of law for Jew or Gentile. It will only be because of grace. And so Paul goes on to explain how is it that God can declare someone righteous who is not actually righteous in themselves?

And he gives the beautiful story of the gospel. Christ, and it is intensely personal. If you trust in Christ, if you've turned to him in faith, this is you. You're in this story. It says, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who, what?

Believe. For all who believe. For there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift. I've said this often as I do this text. I think it's very important to get it.

Paul is basically stuttering here in the Greek when he says here and are justified by his grace as a gift. It's the same thing. A gift is gracious, right? So basically Paul is saying this. Christians, you are declared righteous by God as a gift gift.

Not just as a gift. It's as a gift gift. Unmerited favor as a gift. Not by works. You didn't earn it. You're not righteous. The law won't do it for you. And God did it through Jesus as a gift gift. And he says through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

That word redemption is weighty. It's weighty. And they would have understood it then. Redemption, this terminology here has to do with taking something and making a payment and it's a complete payment that releases it so now it's owned.

It's yours. It belongs to you. The transaction is complete. It's over with. Nothing else is due. It's over. It's sprung out of its slavery. It's done. It's owned. And so we are justified, declared righteous as a gift by his grace through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus.

How? Whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood. That word propitiation is also precious. It's weighty. Don't be thrown by it. Don't be afraid of it. It's a big word. Has a lot of meaning and it's everything.

The propitiation that is in Christ Jesus. This propitiation is that God rightly should give to the unrighteous judgment. We deserve it. All of it. Every inch of it. All of it. And instead of actually giving us what is due to us, that judgment is diverted away from me the sinner, from you the sinner, and it is absorbed and fully exhausted in Jesus instead.

There's the whole picture of propitiation. He declares you righteous, not because you are, but actually because of the righteousness of another whom you're hiding in. The righteousness of the one who actually received in himself the penalty that was due to all of us.

And he exhausts the judgment, the justice, and the wrath of God in the place of his people completely. Now, this is very important, especially for those of you guys who have been in Christ for some time.

You might feel at times like, man, I'm a mess. You only know you're a mess because the spirit of God, right? You don't have a lot of like dead spiritual people like longing for holiness and hating their sin.

So if you long for holiness and you hate your sin and you constantly are burdened by it, welcome to the club called the kingdom of God. Welcome to those who are filled with the spirit of God. But sometimes we can be in Christ for some period of time and we can neglect these glorious truths and we can actually start walking with Jesus in such a way where we start acting like man-made religion.

Like somehow God's pleasure in me or in his love for me is dependent upon my daily performance. How good of a godly husband I am or a godly wife or a godly child. Am I loving God enough and loving neighbor enough?

Well, God must be kind of ticked with me today, right? Like I had to sort of climb my way back again. The apostle Paul knows nothing of that in the gospel, nothing. The whole wrath of God, all of it was diverted away from me and given to Jesus Christ.

And Jesus has three words for the enemy. It is finished. It's over. No more trying to climb to God through my good deeds. No, if you recognize your brokenness and your sinfulness, the call for the believer is confess and repent and rejoice over the righteousness that you have in another, Jesus Christ.

It's not your righteousness. But then Paul goes on to say, what's this all about? He says, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, verse 25, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins.

That's in his people, over time, before Christ. He had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

That's also weighty. It's also weighty because you want to know one glaring inconsistency. Get this, one glaring inconsistency of all man-made religion is in the area of justice. They will say, sure, we're bad.

Whatever the God is, or gods, they'll say, they're really good, or it's really good, or he's really good, or today in the modern, she's really good. And I'm just a mess, but I'm wrong. I blow it. I'm inconsistent.

But if I'm good enough, I can climb back. Can you imagine a courtroom like that where you have a condemned criminal in the dock, and you have the judge, and the person is truly guilty, really guilty, absolutely guilty, without question.

And the judge goes to give sentence and says, you know, you're really guilty. You've created a lot of victims here, but you know what? You're looking kind of good today. And I like your personality. And I'm going to go ahead and say, we'll let you go.

Matter of fact, you've been really nice to me during this trial as judge, so I'm going to try to view you in a different way as judge. I know there's a lot of victims over there watching the trial, but I'm just going to let you go.

What would all of us say to a judge like that? That's unjust. There's a bunch of victims here. There's a bunch of victims here, and there's a real crime here. There's real guilt here. You cannot, as a good judge, simply let people go.

Because what happened to justice? The God of the Bible, the Bible, is the only thing that solves the problem of justice with human sin. Because God doesn't simply say, I'll just let you go. He can't and remain just.

That's Paul's whole point right here. The propitiation of Christ is because God is just. And he doesn't just say to Brian, or to Wade, or to Luke, or anybody else, he doesn't just say, I really like you.

You're free to go. He can never do that. It would be a distortion of justice and righteousness. And what about the victims? No, God actually solves the problem of sin and justice and victims by condescending in the person of Christ to receive the full justice, the full weight of the wrath of God due to God's people in himself.