A Greater Sickness X: Proof of the Cure | Behold Your God Podcast

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Welcome to the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Teddy James, content producer for Media Gratia joined by Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church, New Albany and author of the

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Behold Your God study series. Now, this is the final episode,

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John, of our series on the greater sickness. It's what we've titled it across this whole series.

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And in the very beginning, we started this because of the coronavirus. Everybody was really scared of this new novel virus that's come out.

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Not sure about what the best treatments are, the best methods for therapy, and all these different kind of things.

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We know it's highly contagious. We know a bit of how dangerous this is.

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So that pointed us to Ralph Venning's The Sinfulness of Sin or the other title, Plague of Plagues.

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The Plague of Plagues, written right after the bubonic plague, one of the really bad outbreaks of the bubonic plague.

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So let me encourage you, if you missed any of those really early episodes, go back and check that out. But today we're looking in our final episode of this series on kind of a part two to evidences of the cure.

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And so last time we looked at a lot of them. John, what evidences are we looking at in this episode?

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Yeah, we're gonna hit a number of new ones. And again, we're gonna have to do this in a pretty simple way.

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So word pictures, they kind of stick in our mind to summarize a lot of passages of the

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Bible in a pretty short amount of time. So let's think about last week. There was an empty grave and there was a man who was out of the grave walking away from it.

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There's a new life raised with Christ. There's a new you, renewed, reborn, new creature.

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There's a new realm that he lives in. What good would it be to have a second chance in life and even to be a new man with things on the inside changed if I was still under the same old master in that same miserable realm?

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A new realm of grace. The new ruler is the king of love. A new relationship to his rules.

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So not new rules, but a completely new approach to it. Those are things we want to talk about today.

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So the man lives in a new country. And again, so he's not under the same old master, not in the same miserable situation.

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He has a new address. One way you could say it is this, every Christian has two addresses. One is more important than the other, but we do have two.

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Think of what Paul wrote to the Colossians, to the Christians, to those who are in Christ, in Colossae.

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So you have two addresses. I'm in Christ and that's the defining address.

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Where do you live? Sometimes where you live kind of defines you. When my father went to seminary, we moved from Ohio down to the

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Memphis area, so he could go to seminary when I was a teenager. On a seminary guy's paycheck, we couldn't live in anywhere nice in Memphis.

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So we lived in a place called West Memphis, not as nice. And then West Memphis had a good side and a bad side.

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The west side was the nicer side. The east side was the not nice side. So we lived on the east side.

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And so, you know, we lived in the wrong, like, where do you live? Oh, you live there?

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Like that defines you. Like you don't live in the right place. You don't live near the country club, you know, all that.

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But as a believer, being in Christ just changes everything. And we'll talk about some of that.

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And that's primary. So I live in New Albany, but that's not nearly as important as the fact that John Snyder has, by the unexpected kindness of God, been given a different address.

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I am not in Adam and all the failure and emptiness of living for self, but I'm in Christ, united to everything he did as my mediator, as my representative, being allowed to share in the impact of all of that.

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So new realm in Christ. Think about it. That means there's a new king.

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I tried to live for myself before Christ. I thought I was king. I wasn't really a king.

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I was just a puppet in the hands of sin and its lies. But I thought I was a king and I made a terrible king.

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You know, I made bad decisions. I didn't protect myself very well from danger. I certainly didn't provide for myself.

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I was always wanting more, always scraping around in the world's garbage pile to see if it could make me happy this time.

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But when you think about living in the realm in Christ, then the king is

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God himself. We're not autonomous. We are ruled by someone else, not sin, but the king of love.

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We're not on our own to provide for ourselves. God has engaged himself not just to rule us, but to provide for us and to protect us and to bring us all the way home safely.

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And I wonder if we've ever stopped and thought about, you know, what a happy thing that is. If you're in a country and let's say that you're just a perfect person, all right, that those don't exist.

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But let's say that you live a perfect life. But you're in a country where the government is very imperfect and the decisions they make are made so poorly that no matter how well you do at business, no matter how well you do at raising your kids, at loving your wife, your life is constantly impacted in a negative way by the bad choices your country's making.

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But if you think about the rule of Christ and the happiness that ought to be there, when we just step back and think, okay, if Christ is my king, what do

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I have? I have in this God -man, I have all the wisdom of God making decisions in the country that I benefit from.

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I have all the power of God implementing those decisions. I have all the knowledge of God.

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I have this God with infinite love, infinite patience, infinite faithfulness.

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Never ever able to break His word. I have this God in all places at once.

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He's omnipresent. I have Him in all times. He's eternal. You know, so if I had a perfect ruler like that in an earthly kingdom, what a happy place that would be to live in.

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But we have that spiritually. So in Christ, one of the evidences that I am cured is that I live under a completely new king.

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And I live under a completely new rule, not just a new ruler. And the rule, Paul says in Romans 6 and Romans 5 at the end and then into Romans 6, we're not under the law anymore, but under grace.

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That is, the law is not standing over me, condemning me and telling me I'm ruining my life and that I'm doing it again and you failed again.

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You know, you think about being married to Mr. Perfect. Now, that sounds like, you know, we, you know, our wives might jokingly say it would be nice to be married to Mr.

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Perfect. But would it be nice to be married to the one perfect human if they weren't also merciful?

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What if they were like the law? They are perfect. There's no provision for compassion. There's no room for mercy, for mistakes.

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So they just follow you around and they're perfect. But because you're not, their entire life is devoted to, they have to point out where you're imperfect.

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Pointing out your failures. Yeah. So that's the way the law was. But now we're under grace.

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We're under the love of the king who satisfied the law on our behalf when

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Christ obeyed the law perfectly. It's not that the law has been set aside. It's not been ignored.

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It's been fulfilled. And having been fulfilled, one way the old writers describe it is it no longer comes to you.

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The law doesn't come to Teddy James from the hand of Moses to condemn you and drive you to a savior.

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The law comes to you from the hands of Christ to say to you, now that now that Christ has obeyed the law perfectly,

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I am satisfied. And I don't hold that over you, Teddy, because you're in him. So you are treated as one who's kept the law perfectly.

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But now in this new life, if you want to know how to live in a way that expresses love to the king, this is the path.

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And the law lays out this beautiful path, the happiest life, the life where we can live in a way.

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If we say, I want to show my love to God, how would I do that? Well, the law. How do

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I live in a way that pleases the Lord? So the law becomes a guide from the hands of Christ rather than a condemning, you know, threatening thundercloud from the hand of Moses.

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I've never heard this taught really quite as well or as deeply. Several years ago,

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John, you preached through Romans here at the church. And there was an illustration that you used there that has really stuck with me since that time.

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And it's the one of the maid marrying the guy. And she begins to follow the or she does the rules now out of love.

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Yeah. Yeah. I wish I could take credit for that. But I can't because it actually is from a man named

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Stuart Oliot, still alive, still preaching. And he has written a number of commentaries, very simple, very pruned down to just helpful stuff.

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Stuart Oliot gives a gives a picture of this, you know, that really describes what's different now about the

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Christian and the law. So there's not a new set of rules. Why not? The law of God is the visible expression for us in in moral codes and ethics.

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It is the visible display of God's moral beauty. Here is the cleanness of our

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God expressed in this kind of world with these kind of people. So we don't kill.

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We don't lust. We don't steal. You know, we don't worship other gods. Why? Because of who

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God is. The law is an expression of God's perfection, filtered down into our everyday life.

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So because of that, I believe that the law doesn't change when we become a Christian. It is fulfilled as a means of righteousness.

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But it but it still has a function. It now guides me. This unchangeable perfection in God is still being displayed in the law.

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And so the law becomes a helpful guide. Now, one way to one way to express the difference is the

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Old Testament prophetic passages where they say in the New Covenant, Jeremiah talks about this, you know,

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Ezekiel in the New Covenant, the law will be written in your heart. So think about it. Before you were a

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Christian, the law was like your parents telling you to behave yourself. So it's like God hanging over you saying you've got to behave.

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I mean, that's how we view it. So the law is like a straitjacket. That's an external thing that someone put on the outside of me to keep me from going in the wrong way or doing the wrong things with these hands and feet.

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But now the law is written on the heart, a new heart, soft, responsive, and love to God has caused his law to be written within.

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That is now, as Paul says, the love of Christ constrains me, not

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Paul's love for Jesus. Certainly Paul loved Jesus, but Paul said Christ's love for me constrains me. The Greek word for constrain is the same word that they use for putting blinders on a horse that's going to plow so that he wouldn't always be looking right.

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It just keeps him focused so that the furrows could be nice and straight. The love of Christ for the believer, when we are living in the awareness of what the

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Bible says about that, and by faith we grab hold of that, it's like a pair of blinders that keeps us from wasting our time chasing after the emptiness of sin.

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And it causes us to want to just keep focused on Christ and the obedience, the straight path.

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Think of it this way, think of these connections. Well, let's work our way backward. Christ said in John 14, 15, if you love me, you will keep my commandments, all right?

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Then we step back. So that's one way of saying the law is written on your heart, you want to obey, the new motive is love.

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But let's move back a step. Well, how do I love Christ? Well, we love Him if He first loved us.

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Christ loved us first, that's why we love Him in return. And when we love Him, we want to express that in obedience.

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So that's the wonderful chain, that's the engine, that's the connections, the couplings in this new engine in the heart that wants to obey

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Christ. So one of the great marks of a Christian in the new life is that he wants to obey same rules, new motive.

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Now, that brings us to the picture you mentioned. Romans chapter 7 says this in verse 6.

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But now we have been released from the law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.

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So what guides a Christian? Not that the law is hanging over me and the letters of the law, the very specific requirements are constantly shouting at me.

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John Snyder, you're out of line again. But rather the work of the Holy Spirit within producing love to Christ, that makes me want to live out that love in a way of obedience.

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So the illustration that Stuart Oliot gave, he said, imagine a very rich bachelor.

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He's an older bachelor and he hires a maid to keep his house clean while he's running around doing all of his business.

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And he gives her a very specific list for each day of the week that she comes to work, what he wants done on that day.

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Very precise. Well, after a while, he falls in love with the lady and eventually he proposes to her.

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She's shocked at first, you know, but she says yes. And they get married and they go off on their honeymoon, then they come back.

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And the first thing they do when they get back is he goes to the refrigerator, wherever it was, that he hung all the expectations every day.

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This is what you have to do to please me. And he takes them and he goes and he throws them in the trash. And he says, you're not the maid anymore.

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You're the wife. Like, I love you. And she goes and gets them out of the trash, so to speak, and puts them back up and says,

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I know I don't have to do this to earn your love, but I want to keep the house in a way that pleases you.

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So I'd like, I want to keep this list, you know. Not a perfect illustration. It's not as if God threw away the law.

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No, but that is so powerful. Right. But why does the Christian still care about the law? Because now

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I want to know how to show love to my king in a way that brings him pleasure. And if I want to know that, then there's nothing better than God's moral law.

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Yeah, and it does. I mean, it is out of that love to Christ, that love to the

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Father that we want to obey. And pursuing this holiness, I've heard so many times that people who take the law seriously and who pursue holiness, that they're just legalist.

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But that's not it at all. It is out of love. That's almost like saying, because I want to know and serve my wife more,

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I'm just being a legalistic husband. But it's not. It's because I want to honor her and love her all the more.

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Yeah, legalism is easy to define as someone who's a little more serious about the law or a certain rule than you are.

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So you're thinking of degree. So if I'm 97 percent obedient to the laws of the

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Bible, I'm legalist. If I'm 30 percent, I'm a libertarian. But if I'm 50 percent, like I'm a balanced

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Christian, you know, that's not really the picture we get when we read Scripture. Legalism ought to be defined as the motivational level.

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If I am doing this to earn God's love or to keep God's love, then I have misunderstood the whole nature of a man's relationship with God.

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I've misunderstood the work of the gospel of Christ. And I am a legalist.

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And you can be a legalist like a Pharisee who didn't keep all the law. The Pharisees, they invented all these extra laws to find ways to adapt the law to fit their lifestyle, you know.

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So, I mean, the amazing thing, how strict the Pharisees were about the Sabbath, but they made a lot of extra laws that God didn't make.

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And you might think, wow, they're not 100 percent. They're 110 percent, but actually they're more like 40 percent.

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Because the Bible gave rules for the Sabbath and the Pharisees said, well, I guess that means you can't travel very far on the

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Sabbath. So you can only travel this far on the Sabbath away from your house and still not be doing labor, you know, because you're walking.

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So what they did then was they would just sell small pieces of property or rent small pieces of property throughout a city where you could rent a little piece of property, a square foot.

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And that would be officially yours. So you could go here and to here. And so you could go throughout the entire city and never be more than, let's say, half a mile from your property.

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You know, you couldn't heal on the Sabbath because that was a violation. Yeah. You couldn't do good on the Sabbath. Right.

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So constantly adjusting the law to fit their inability to keep the law because they didn't have the

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Holy Spirit. And so really, you can be a legalist and not really be obeying the law.

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But it goes back to when we're talking about evidences. Why do you want to obey this law?

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Is it because you want to be puffed up? This is what I do. This is how serious of a

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Christian I am. Or is it because this is the God who has saved me?

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Yeah. Think about it again in the metaphor of walking. I want to keep the law out of love because I want to walk in sweet communion with Christ.

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I want to be as close to Jesus Christ as a saved man can be in this life. You know, that's why

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I pay attention to what the Bible says about right and wrong. That's one of the motives. So think about walking.

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There's a destination. There's progress. Compare that to a treadmill. Why are you on the treadmill 40 minutes a day?

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Well, because I want to be a better me. And that's one way you can use the law. I want to be a better me.

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I'm going to be a better, cleaner, more admirable person. Or is the law a path of love where you walk in communion with Christ?

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You know, two very different uses of the law. Yeah. And you've said before in a sermon, this is the path that the king has said he would walk.

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And if we want to walk near him, that is the path we must walk as well. So if we want to be near him, we walk his path.

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So, John, what's another example? Well, let's go to another one. A new man, new life, new country, new king, new relationship to the rules.

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Now, even deeper, new identity. Think of the way that belonging to Christ alters your identity.

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Now, this is way beyond physical virus cures. You can have a terrible, you can have something like cancer and the cancer is really cured.

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But that doesn't change your identity. You're still you. Um, so many things change when you get the report from the doctor, you're cancer free.

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I mean, you can think how many things change for that person who thought they had no life in front of them.

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And now they have a wonderful opportunity to live in front of them. But their identity doesn't change. They don't come out of the hospital with a new name.

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You know, think about the identity in Adam, the old you. Okay. Stranger, alien, enemy, rebel, traitor, child of the devil.

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I mean, those are descriptions of what we were like outside of Christ. Now, think of the new names.

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Citizen, friend, follower, saint, child of God.

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I mean, we've just given a sample, but the completely new thing. Think of it this way. When you come to God outside of the work of Christ, you know, before you're a

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Christian and you, and maybe you're going through a hard time in life and you're, you just kind of shoot up a prayer. Hey God, if you're even there,

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I need some help here. Think about it. You're trying to come to the throne room of the highest King that you and your, all of your family have always been at war with.

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The family of Adam is at war with God, so to speak. So mankind is born into this world, living for ourselves.

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And unless God rescues us from that, we just live the rest of our lives in some measure living for ourselves. And though we wouldn't like to describe it that way,

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Paul describes it as being, you know, an enemy of God, being opposed to God, opposed to his restrictions, opposed to his claims.

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So I come to God outside of Jesus Christ. I come to God with the wrong family name.

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I want to talk to God. I need some help here. Imagine, you know, in an imaginary way, what if the angel meets you at the door of the throne room of God and says, what's the name?

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Well, I'm a son of Adam. No son of Adam comes in here. If you're still with Adam, you're from the wrong family.

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You've got the wrong name, man. You can't come in here with that name. But when Christ rescues us and we're united to him,

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Christian, saint, child of God, you know, adopted, friend of God, and so we come and we may feel very unworthy.

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God, I've had such a miserably selfish day. Who am I to speak to you? But I have nowhere else to go.

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You're my King. And we're met at the gates. What's your name? I'm Christian.

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You know, I'm Christ's. Come in. So a new identity is fashioned through working with, through belonging to Christ.

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So I want us to read a passage that contrasts two different people, the believer and the unbeliever, and the way they're surrounded by different crowds of people, right?

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TJ, you want to read from Psalm 5? Yeah, Psalm 5, this is amazing. For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness.

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No evil dwells with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all who do iniquity.

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But as for me, by your abundant, loving kindness, I will enter your house. At your holy temple,

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I will bow in reverence for you. In the multitude of their transgressions, thrust them out, for they are rebellious against you.

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Verse 11. But let all who take refuge in you be glad. Let them ever sing for joy, and you may shelter them, that those who love your name may exult in you.

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For it is you who blesses the righteous man, O God. You surround him with favor as a shield.

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Okay, so two different pictures. Because God is holy, no evil dwells with him. The boastful don't stand before him.

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He hates all who unrepentantly do iniquity. Now, then he says this.

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But as for me, the believer, by your abundant, loving kindness, I will enter your house. So here's the first picture.

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Those that belong to Christ, one evidence is that they belong to Christ is they can enter the presence of God by faith.

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Think of prayer or worship. They live before the face of God, and they are given access, all right, surrounded by his abundant, loving kindness.

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Now, here's the unbeliever, verse seven. Sorry, verse.

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Here's the unbeliever. Listen to this next verse. In the multitude of their transgressions, thrust them out, for they are rebellious against you.

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So the unbeliever is thrust away from his creator, not just isolated by himself, surrounded by all of his transgressions, his worst sins, his most bitter regrets, things he said, but he can never take back, hurts he's done, he can never make right, you know, the enslaving kind of sins of lust and greed and pride and selfishness, you know, and unforgiveness.

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He is dominated by this whole company of things that he thought they served him, but really he serves them.

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And he's thrust away from God, surrounded by his captors, his transgressions.

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Then, at the end, it says, it is you who blesses the righteous man, O Lord. You surround him with favor as with a shield.

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So, very different picture. The believer walks away from the presence of God, surrounded by God's favor, by grace, by undeserved favor, like a shield.

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And it's like all the loving kindnesses that surrounded him when he went into the presence of God follow him out.

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So, just keeping our picture in mind. Here's a man that comes up out of the grave. He looks at himself.

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He's new. I'm alive. There's a new me. I live in a new realm, a realm of love of the king.

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I live with a new relationship to the king, a new relationship to his rules. I have a new identity.

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And I have a new company of friends. I am, every morning before my feet hit the floor,

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I am surrounded by these undeserved, unexpected, unshakable mercies of God.

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So, the mercies of God new every morning. These are the friends, the pity of God, the compassion of God, the patience of God, the faithfulness of God, the strength of God, you know, the delight of God.

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They're all there. And they were there yesterday. And I lived in a way yesterday that I probably,

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I feared that I would drive them away. They'd be sick of being with me. But they show up the next day, new every morning.

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What's that mean? They don't grow tired of me. Every morning, God sends the mercies to meet me again.

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And none of them look at me and say, do I have to be with John Snyder again today? He just keeps stumbling.

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You know, he's such an embarrassment. New every morning. It's as if every morning, it's the very first time

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God's pity met you. Very first time, the mercy. Very first time, his delight, his compassion, you know, his forgiveness.

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They're freshly new every morning. So, a whole new camp of friends.

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Let me give you another thing. New wages, new man, new life, new king, new realm, new identity, new friends, new wages.

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Old master. The old master, selfishness, sin demanded everything from us.

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I mean, there was no time off. Every moment of every day that I was awake, selfishness said, look, if you want to be happy, everything belongs to me.

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You have to devote everything to self. So, every event, every relationship, every dollar, every weekend was devoted to self, really, in some way.

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And what did it pay me with? Death, Paul says. Shame. I look back on the way

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I live now. What do I have? Regret. It promised me everything.

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It stole from me. It destroyed what was beautiful. It killed. But in the new realm, the new life, we have new wages.

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The new master demands just as much. Every moment of every day belongs to him.

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Every event belongs to Christ now. Every relationship I have now is invaded by the realities of Christ.

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Every dollar, every weekend, every thought, every place I go for the rest of my life belongs to Christ.

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That doesn't sound any better until you think of the wages. Life. The kind of life that's worth waking up for.

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Clean, happy, days full of purpose, nights without regret. Abundant life.

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And it's hard to measure that. If you say, well, how much does he give? Like the bank account of the believer.

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Well, Paul says in Ephesians 1, every spiritual blessing, every possible spiritual happiness is yours in Christ.

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Well, and it's even Christ himself. Yeah. So how do we measure that? Well, T .J., why don't you read us from Colossians 2, where Paul gives us some idea of kind of trying to get his mind around the fullness there.

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Sure. For in him, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. And in him, you have been made complete.

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And he is head over all rule and authority. Yeah. So in the Greek, there's a parallel here that's not visible in the

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English. Same Greek word shows up twice. For in him, all the fullness. So you circle that word in your mind.

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Fullness dwells of deity, dwells in Christ bodily, that he's truly the embodiment, all deity, all the perfections of deity united to the humanity.

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Fullness. Verse 10. And in him, you have been made complete. The word complete is actually the same word in Greek as fullness.

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So there, he means to draw a comparison. All the fullness of God dwells in the God man. And you are full because you are drawing from this

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God man. Or all the completeness of God is in the God man. And you are made complete from that, the overflow of that completeness.

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Or as John chapter one says, that of his fullness, we have all received and grace upon grace.

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So here's our picture. There's a new you alive from the dead, a man walking away from a grave in a new country, a new king, a new love for the law, a new identity, new companions, and new wages.

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Now, one more thing. What's not new? Well, there are a lot of things that we haven't mentioned that are not new.

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So here are some things that are not evidences. Perfect love. That's not an evidence of being a

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Christian. Perfect faith that never stumbles, you know, a heart that never gets distracted, a mind that never doubts.

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Sinless perfection. The Bible does not list those as evidences of belonging to Christ.

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Now, here immediately we get into kind of a question mark. If a Christian can still sin, which a

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Christian can, and a sinner, of course, a person that still belongs, lives for themselves, sins, how do you know the difference between the two?

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Or, how do we keep ourselves from being the kind of hypocrite that lives for ourselves and says, hey, Christians aren't perfect, we're just forgiven, you know, and yet, and you haven't changed anything.

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You just live for yourself and claim that the cross makes it okay. Well, let me give help from Samuel Rutherford.

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One quote is this. He wrote from prison. He was an imprisoned preacher in the 17th century in Scotland.

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Rutherford wrote this. To people that thought that they could use the cross of Jesus, the work of Jesus, as an excuse to continue to live for yourself and to escape hell, he said this,

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Christ will not be your mule, your donkey, to carry you and your favorite sins together to heaven.

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But another quote, another thing of advice he gave from prison, he wrote in a letter and he said this.

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There are a number of things, he said, I'm obviously paraphrasing. There are a number of things that will help you distinguish between a true and a false

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Christian. One of the things he gives is this. When your sin is your greatest grief and not your sweetest darling anymore, then you know you're a

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Christian. When a Christian sins, I hate that I've sinned against my king and I can't just continue to live in that lifestyle.

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I run back to him. I plead for forgiveness, but I also plead for strength to never do that to my king again.

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When an unbeliever sins, they may feel embarrassed and things, but really what's the problem with sin for an unbeliever?

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I can't get all of it that I want as quickly as I want without the, you know, accountability.

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I don't want to be embarrassed. I don't want to lose my funding out. Yeah, so I don't want the consequences of sin, but the problem with sin is

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I can't have as much as I want without consequences. For the Christian, the problem of sin is this. It's against my king who loved me with an everlasting love and I never want to do that to him again.

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So, not sinning, perfect sinless life is not one of the evidences that we present to people to prove we're

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Christians, but hating that we're still capable of sinning is a great evidence.

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How would you answer the question, who is God? Would you focus on what he offers? Would you focus on what he promises?

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In Behold Your God, The Weight of Majesty, Dr. John Snyder answers the question by focusing on God's attributes.

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The heart of this study is its daily devotional workbook that participants complete at home in preparation of a small group study.

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Each small group session is led by a video that has three segments. First, a biographical sketch of an individual from Christian history who was gripped by the reality of God you are studying that week.

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Second is a sermon from Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church, New Albany. Lastly, are interviews from contemporary

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Christian pastors and authors who help apply the lessons from the week. To learn more or to see what others say about Behold Your God, The Weight of Majesty, visit mediagrazie .org

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or click the link in the description below. Well, at the end of the somewhat long series on the nature of man's greatest plague, sin,

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I think, you know, a fitting conclusion would be this. When we see the majesty of God and God takes up a work like saving a sinner, when

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God Himself rolls up His sleeves and does it, we expect it to be an astonishing thing, and it is.

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So, our advice would be that no one who claims to be a Christian would settle for a

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Christianity that does not create a whole new you walking away from the grave of spiritual death, under the rule of a new king with a new love for the old law, a new identity, a new set of friends, you know, new wages, everything new in Christ.

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Don't ever settle for the kind of Christianity that doesn't match this, because if you do, you're settling for a

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Christianity that does not reflect the majesty of God. We want to end this week with a prayer by Isaac Watts.

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Lord of all power and might, soften and break this hard heart. Give me a contrite spirit.

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There is mercy with you, there is forgiveness with you. Oh, may your great mercy be displayed towards me in pardoning all of my sins and in renewing my soul.

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Give me penitence, faith, and self -denial. Bestow on me the graces of sincerity, humility, and love.

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May the love of Christ be more known and felt by me, and let it constrain me to live not to myself, but to him that died for me.

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Grant me your Holy Spirit, teaching those things of Christ to show them unto me, and daily sanctifying my heart.