The Power of the Cross

Okay, so for the past several weeks, we've been in the series in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, talking about kingdom community, the kind of unity that God describes

His Church ought to be exhibiting. And in the past few passages, we've seen a focus on this contrast, this dichotomy between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of man.

The wisdom man divides and the wisdom of God unifies. And what is really the difference between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of man?

Paul begins to answer that question in this passage. In this passage, he offers an answer, and the answer, the difference is power.

The wisdom of God has power. So I'm going to begin reading in 1

Corinthians 1, 18, but our passage this morning that we'll be looking at in detail is 1

Corinthians 2, 1 through 5. So let's begin at 1 Corinthians 1, 18.

And please stand for the reading of God's word. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning

I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe?

Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both

Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For consider your calling, brothers, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise,

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God, and because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the

Lord. And now we begin our text for this morning. And I, when

I came to you brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified, and I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling.

My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the

Spirit and the power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

Amen. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, this morning

I ask that you would bless the preaching of your word. I pray that you would be with me as I speak, that I would speak your truth and that I would speak it clearly, that I would not speak more than your truth.

God, I pray for those in the pews that you would open their ears so that they would hear and that these words would transform them by the power of your

Spirit. And I ask that the power described here would be present in this congregation today as words which are not on the face of them, especially appealing or attractive, would have transformative power in our lives as you are working in us.

In Jesus' name. Amen. So I'd like to start off with a question.

Do you know what a sermon jam is? I'd like an actual show of hands. Has anybody seen a sermon jam or know what that is?

Okay. My wife, that's it. Okay. So a sermon jam, you can watch these videos online.

There are little clips of sermons, maybe three minutes out of a sermon or five minutes, with music in the background.

And maybe they have the words of the sermon put up in a bold font so you can read it as it's being said.

And it's very moving, you know, because they take this most moving part of the whole sermon and they add music and they add those words so that you can follow along real easily.

And you watch this and you hear the music and it's just so moving. And you've become very persuaded by what's being said.

Now, the interesting thing about this is you can do this with anything. A show of hands again.

Has anybody heard of the Buddhist philosopher Alan Watts? Does that name ring bells? Okay. Anyway, people have done this with his speeches, right?

Very moving because of the music, etc. But when you stop and you think about what's being said, it's contrary to reason.

But because of the format, because of the form, it just sounds very wise and very persuasive.

And this is a real problem. It leads people to recognize that they can be easily deceived, they can be easily persuaded by the form the truth is presented in, not necessarily the truth itself.

And they can't be quite sure whether or not what they believe is right. And this has led a lot of people to feel that, well, maybe we just can't know.

Maybe with small things like 1 plus 1 equals 2 and how to do my job, I can know the truth.

But with these big things, we just can't know. Do you know people like that? I've met many people who don't think that they can know the truth when it comes to religion or worldviews that have statements about what truth really is.

And it's a matter of unity as well. It's a matter of unity because as people are persuaded by these different things, by the different forms, the forms themselves have more of a stake in the truth than the truth itself.

And as Paul addresses this, he addresses it speaking of the wisdom of God and the wisdom of man.

And he contrasts these two and he points out the wisdom of God has power.

It has power to change lives so that it's distinguished from the wisdom of man that's found in forms and persuasive in many ways.

But the wisdom of God, which the truth of the gospel, not on its face attractive, not on its face appealing.

Our hero is a man who died a shameful death. Those who are saved in Christianity are not those who have any particular merit.

It's not the rich. It's not the smart. It's no particular merit in them. Find any other religion where this is the case, where it's not something that person has done or earned that puts them in the right or gets them in favor with God, but rather their standing in what

God has done for them as it is in Christianity. It's not something that has much face appeal, but God has designed it that way intentionally so that it is not the form of the truth that people find persuasive, but the truth itself that transforms them to be persuaded.

We're going to look at this passage and we're going to see this contrast between the wisdom of man and the power of God in the gospel, the power of the cross.

Wisdom of man and the power of the cross. He's going to go back and forth a little between them. He's going to explain that the power of God is a much more certain foundation than the wisdom of man, and the wisdom of man here referring to the form that something is presented in, the style of argument, not necessarily wisdom itself, wisdom being, of course, something that is always good.

So, let's begin with verse one. And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.

So, Paul here talks about the time when he came to the Corinthians originally. He says that he came proclaiming the testimony of God.

The testimony of God refers to God's testimony about his son.

It refers to the gospel, that in raising Jesus Christ from the dead, God testified this was his son.

This was a way for salvation. He says that he did not declare this with lofty speech or wisdom.

You know, he didn't have impressive vocabulary. His oratory was not anything too profound.

And once again, this is not speaking of wisdom in the sense of actually being something wise.

Of course, the gospel is wise, and the whole rest of the chapter is going to talk about how the gospel is wise.

But it's not a wisdom that's immediately recognized. It's not conventional wisdom. You know, you can think that when you see

Paul talk about the wisdom of man. You can think conventional wisdom. And, like I said, he goes back and forth between talking about the power of God and man's wisdom.

So, let's skip down to verse three. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling.

So, when he says weakness, this could refer to some physical ailment. This could refer to Paul's blue -collar work, which would not have been highly thought of, given that he was a teacher.

This could be his relative poverty. It could be a lot of different things. It's not quite certain, but it's some weakness about him that makes the message not all that appealing.

You know, when you see someone and they have high standing, they're a strong person, you have a greater tendency to believe them.

But God chose Paul, in this particular circumstance, to not be one who is especially strong.

Not be one who immediately invokes confidence in this person that, yes, this is a person

I want to believe. It wasn't anything in Paul that made the gospel so believable to them.

And he says, in weakness and in fear and much trembling. Now, upon a first reading, you might think, oh, well, maybe this is talking about the fear of God, because, you know,

Paul knows that fear of man is bad, fear of God is good. However, given that he's talking about his flaws in this passage,

I think he's really talking about a real anxiety he faced. And if you look at Acts 18, when

Paul first arrived at Corinth, God had to appear to him in a vision in order to convince him not to be afraid, that he could stay in Corinth.

So we have actual confirmation from Acts 18 that this is talking about a real anxiety that Paul felt when he first arrived in Corinth.

Once again, if you think about the people you find most persuasive, you know, they're the people who stand upright, very confident, and they just command so much confidence in what they're saying.

And just their confidence, you know, is contagious, and it bleeds into you. Now, I don't think that Paul doubted anything that he taught, but the way he's presenting it with anxiety would certainly keep people from believing based on that.

It must be based on something else. Then he continues, "...and

my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom." And as other translations say, not in persuasive words of wisdom.

Once again, wisdom here referring to conventional wisdom, referring to the style of argument that would have been readily understood and agreed on, the style of oratory, etc.

This is not how Paul is presenting things. Rather, he's presenting things very plainly.

Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Now, this leads to some serious obligations for people if this is how the

Gospel shines the best. For pastors, or for preachers anyway, the obligation is not to put the emphasis on any wisdom

I have to offer or any particular style that I have. You know, I'm a particular person, God has made me the way

He is, so certainly some of me is going to shine through in the way that I speak. But, if the focus is on that, on me, instead of on the

Word of God itself, that's a problem. People need to steward their gifts in the way they present

God's truth. Additionally, it has some obligation on churches in the way they run their ministry.

You notice we don't have any special lights, we don't do the thing where you have special music at the end of the sermon.

As the pastor's wrapping up his most moving statements, you don't have this other thing persuading you, tugging at your emotions.

Now, there's nothing absolutely wrong with having special lighting, there's nothing absolutely wrong with having music.

However, we don't want to be caught guilty of persuading someone by the form of the truth rather than the truth itself.

We don't want to be... Yeah, this is a precaution we take, this is not to do that.

And then for someone who's listening to a sermon, someone who's listening to a message, the obligation is to recognize your weakness, to recognize that there's a real danger in being led astray by the form that the truth is presented in rather than the truth.

To be led astray by the style of argument that you find most persuasive, to the confidence of the one who is speaking.

You don't want to be led astray by these things and you don't want to... for that to be your focus.

There was a famous preacher in the very early centuries of the church named

Chrysostom, and that name means golden mouth or golden tongue. He was such a good preacher that he got this name, golden mouth.

And he would get frustrated with his congregation because he could tell that they were more fixated on his excellent oratory and not the actual truth itself.

He said this, Deeply did I lament that you so earnestly and eagerly listened to your fellow servant who now addresses you.

Who now addresses you. You know, this isn't a message he's really preaching. Thrawing to each other and remaining to the last, but when

Christ was about to appear in his holy supper, that the church should be deserted, you depart without benefit as if you had listened to a player upon a harp.

So here they are being entertained by the message, focused on the form of the message, but not a focus on the actual truth.

And the Lord's Supper is something they don't care about. They absent themselves from it, or they're checked out mentally.

This is something to be aware of, that we should be compelled by the truth of God rather than the form that the truth takes, rather than the form that it's being presented in.

You know, my day job has to do with copyright law. I'm not a lawyer myself, but I've been interested in copyright law for a long time, so occasionally

I find myself talking to other people about copyright law and its intricacies.

And, you know, there's this thing called the Fair Use Doctrine in U .S. legal code. It basically allows for use of copyrighted works without special permission for things like commentary or parody.

So, for example, you know, you'll see often that books quote other books, right? Books quote other books, and they'll quote a paragraph, but at what point does it become too much, right?

If you quote a whole chapter, is that still okay? If you quote the whole book, have you then violated copyright?

What's that line? And it's not clearly stated. There's some parameters, but... But anyway, sometimes

I'll be talking with someone and they'll ask me, well, would this be legal? And not speaking as a lawyer, but I'll tell them, well, it depends on who has the more expensive lawyer.

And that's really a lot of times the true answer to the question. And this,

I think this resonates with me here because you can persuade someone of almost anything if you have the right style of argument.

And if you manage to tug at their heartstrings just right, we need to be aware that that is a very real danger.

And there needs to be something else other than the form or the presentation of the argument. You don't want to invest your life savings into magic beans to find out they weren't so magical after all.

And so, in contrast to the wisdom of man, Paul talks about the power of God. So let's look at verse 2.

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

So when he says he decided to know nothing, that doesn't refer to the knowledge that he actually has.

It refers to the knowledge that he's imparting to others. So he knows things around them, but he's talking about the limitations of what he is imparting to them.

It says, know nothing among them except Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ being the center of our faith, who

God sent to earth to become man. Now, once again, there's a common misconception when people read this verse that what

Paul is saying is something along the lines of I only taught you the basics. I didn't teach you much more than the basics.

And people find confirmation of that in the next chapter where where he says that I filled you with milk and not solid food.

However, I think it's a mistake to read this particular passage that way. Because Paul says elsewhere in Acts 20 -26 that if he did not declare the whole counsel of God, then he would have blood on his hands.

Paul is a man who did not ever restrict himself to preaching the full counsel of God.

What's going on here instead is that he is not adding to the testimony of Jesus Christ with additional decorations that people might find attractive.

That he is focusing everything on Christ. In Luke 24, on the road to Emmaus, after Jesus had been resurrected, he explains to his disciples that all the truths of the

Old Testament all relate to him. They are all designed to point forward to him. And so, when

Paul says that he knows nothing among them except Jesus Christ, he's not saying that he's that he's skipping some parts of the

Bible or not teaching more than the basics, but that he is ensuring that he keeps the focus on Jesus Christ because that is where the focus ought to be.

Once again, this has this has implications and obligations for us. For ministries, that they keep their focus on Jesus Christ.

For those evaluating a ministry, that they evaluate it by the focus on Jesus Christ and not necessarily how the ministry makes them feel, not other things they like about it, but whether or not the focus is on Jesus Christ.

He says, Jesus Christ and him crucified on the central aspect of the gospel that Jesus Christ was crucified for sin.

Everyone is born a sinner. Everyone has sinned in God's eyes and is deserving of death and is only through Christ's death in place of those who believe that anyone can be forgiven, that anyone can be right with God.

And this is the central thing that we come together to celebrate. This is the message that saves.

Now I think Paul is doing something special here. Because why didn't he say, I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him resurrected.

Right? There's a focus on the resurrection later. Why wasn't Jesus Christ and him glorified?

He's intentionally speaking about the crucifixion because the crucifixion and maybe we've lost touch culturally with it, but the crucifixion was shameful.

He is pointing out that his focus was on the shameful aspects of Christianity.

He is not trying to make Christianity more palatable to people by focusing on the things that they want to hear.

He is open and transparent about all the things that people would find shameful and unattractive.

He's there in weakness, with fear and trembling, with no special speech, simply giving them the testimony of God that Jesus Christ has died for the sins of those who believe.

Obligations. Obligations once again. When we share the truth, there's a tendency and a temptation to share it in a way that de -emphasizes truth that might be too unattractive.

There's a lot of there's a tendency to do that, and I'd argue that a lot of different apologetic methodologies, you know apologetics being defense of the faith, a lot of different apologetic methodologies are designed exactly to do that.

And some people have done that even to the point of actually distorting the truth, not just de -emphasizing aspects of truth up front that are too unattractive, but even distorting them.

Oh, you don't have to believe that Adam was a real human being. Oh, you don't have to really believe that there's anything wrong with homosexuality because in our culture today, that's just too unattractive.

All truth is God's truth, and there is power in it even if it's not even if it doesn't have that outward appearance of attractiveness, even if it's not on its face appealing.

And he continues in verse 4, In my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but in the demonstration of the

Spirit and of power. When he says of the Spirit here, he's referring to the Holy Spirit, the third person of the

Trinity, the three persons of the Trinity are the Father, the Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. And the

Holy Spirit, one of the things that Jesus accomplished when he died on the cross and rose again and ascended to Heaven is that he sent down the

Holy Spirit in full measure to help the Church, to assist the Church, to empower believers, to resist temptation, to live as we ought, to believe as we ought.

But then moreover, the Holy Spirit changes people who don't believe so that they might believe.

You see, the Bible makes it clear that belief in Christianity is not just a matter of intellectual assent.

It's not just a matter of getting through some roadblocks so that someone can affirm this truth.

It's something much more than that. Romans 1 says that we are all designed by whatever, not designed, we are all corrupted so that we do not affirm

God's truth, so that we reject him and we do not submit to him. And we come up with all our different clever ways of doing that, and some might do that even under the pretense of Christianity, even under the pretense of believing who

Christ is, etc., and yet not truly submitting to God. So here's the thing, if you've been persuaded by the external form that the thing was presented in, and you don't necessarily have the truth itself, because apart from the

Holy Spirit's work, apart from the Holy Spirit's power to change you so that you actually believe and understand in a way that's not subject to a changing understanding, not subject to a new understanding that you might be introduced to by someone else, apart from that you don't have real saving faith.

Apart from the Holy Spirit's power, there is no real saving faith. And that is the power it's talking about.

We need to expect and anticipate this power. If you have not experienced that power in your life, if you have not been transformed by the

Holy Spirit so that you love God, so that you know his goodness and have been empowered to resist temptation, you do not truly know him.

And it is good reason to, as you examine, to question whether or not you truly know him.

We ought to expect the Holy Spirit's power as we read his word in the

Bible. If we don't expect his power, we won't come to this book often, because well, there's not a whole lot that's exceptionally exciting about it, apart from the power that it has to change our lives.

You know, I'll mention this as a kind of a side remark.

It bothers me a little when I hear a teacher teaching on the epistles and they'll stop and say, look at Paul's masterful arguments.

Look at his masterful arguments as he, you know, as he weaves together this logic.

Or they'll look at the Psalms and say, look at this beautiful poetry of David, how he's just masterfully crafting this poetry.

Because Paul here says that the focus isn't on those things. You know, God inspired

Scripture. This is his God -breathed word. But he inspired it through man, so it has a human characteristic.

And I think some people feel that they need to admire the human characteristic the same as they admire the divine and conflate the two.

And I remember for a long time wondering if there was something wrong with me, because I never necessarily found all the poetry of the

Psalms to be so wonderful, right? I like rhyme. I like rhyme a lot.

The people who translated the Psalms into English for the purpose of our hymnal, they liked rhyme too, and so they included rhyme, even though David did not rhyme in the

Psalms. It ends up short -selling what the Bible really has to offer.

It short -sells the divine qualities, the divine truth. Yes, the

Psalms are beautiful. Yes, Paul's arguments are good, but not based on his...

the contemporary standard by which he was doing these things. David, not by the contemporary standard by which he was writing poetry.

Rather, based on the fact that God chose these men to express his truth in the form that he decided.

That is what makes these things beautiful, and these arguments wonderful. And so there's nothing wrong with you if, you know, if the aesthetic appreciation, you know, if you have concerns about how you ought to feel, how highly you ought to feel about the

Psalms. The Psalms are beautiful, but the focus ought to be in their divine characteristic, not the human characteristic of them.

You know, we also ought to come to Scripture expecting God's power as we share it with others.

You know, a lot of times we come to... we share Scripture with others trying to de -emphasize the truths that we think they'll find unattractive, or maybe we don't share it at all because we'll look foolish.

But if we expect the power of the Holy Spirit to work through the Word when he chooses, not every time, but if we expect that, then we'd not be ashamed of what

Scripture says, and we'd be open and transparent about what it says. And we'd share it willingly and eagerly.

And we ought to pray for these things. Do you want to see change in someone else? Is there someone in your life that you want to see change in?

You're not going to... you know, if the change we're talking about here is this kind of change, is it... if it's something that only

God can do, you're not going to be able to do it yourself. It's not based on how you present the argument. It's based on the

Holy Spirit, his power, working in that life through his Word.

This is something you ought to be praying for. If you want to see change in this person, you ought to pray.

You want to see change in yourself? Is there something in yourself you want to see changed? Maybe you're trying really hard, but nothing's changing?

Prayer. Pray. It's not you. It is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one who, through the

Word, will transform you. We ought to be trusting in God, not trusting in our own abilities.

It's not our own abilities to change or to change others. It's the Holy Spirit's power. And now

Paul finishes off in this final verse, explaining this contrast between the wisdom of man and the power of God and how it really represents something entirely different.

It says in verse 5, "...so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."

You know that this power of God, it changes as opposed to argumentation that does not change.

Have you ever seen one of those devices or cassettes or CDs that have affirmations for you to listen to?

So that you can, you know, on your drive to work be told that you're a wonderful person and that you're a great guy and you're smart, etc.

You know, those things don't have the power to change. They might convince you you're a really smart guy. They might convince you you're rich.

But compare that, you know, it might come in a pretty book format. It might be real attractive. Compare that to a check that's, you know, dull and plain but is for $10 million.

Now one of those actually has the power to change your life. That's the difference between the form of the argument and the truth of God and the power of the

Holy Spirit working in it. One actually changes your life. Paul is saying here that our faith does not rest in the form of argument.

It does not rest in the wisdom of man how smart the guy was who explained the gospel to you. But it rests in the power of God who changes you despite whatever circumstances you've heard the word.

I've heard of people who've heard the word in even ridiculous circumstances.

One person described to me that he was saved hearing an inebriated man repeat to him a message he had heard from someone else.

So a man who's not a believer repeating a sermon, repeating a verse, you know, and then looking up a verse and reading it to this other man.

God can work through his word by his power. It's not the person or the quality of the argument.

You see, if Paul had been at the top of his game, if he had been perfectly confident, if he had been if God had chosen a man that didn't have the particular weaknesses that Paul had, if he had been speaking with the standards of oratory that they had back then at the peak, then maybe it would be the case, and I would guess it would be the case, that Paul would have had a lot of false converts.

He would have had a lot of people who would have believed at a surface level but then easily been persuaded of something else.

And so this gets back to that original question that we were asking. You know, how can you know which religion if we're all so easily deceived by these different things?

You see, Christianity doesn't rely on the persuasiveness of the individual.

It's not about some surface level assent that can be easily changed by the next person.

It's about a power, a radical transformation that actually changes someone, so that they really believe that Christ has died for them, and they know that goodness of being forgiven, and they know

Jesus Christ personally. Imagine for a moment that you're a deaf person who has been deaf from birth, and I were to explain to you what makes music beautiful.

And let's say I, you know, explain to you the science of audio and pitch, and I explain to you the mathematical properties that music tends to have, and what people generally find beautiful, and I show you some

Mozart, and I say, this is beautiful music, and I convince you. Then maybe somebody else comes, and he says, oh no, those mathematical properties, that person had them all wrong.

If you look at Mozart, you know, you can't even distinguish the notes, it's all just a hodgepodge of noise.

This is the actual way that you tell whether or not music is beautiful. Maybe that person could convince you that I was wrong, and that Mozart is just a bunch of noise, right?

There's nothing remotely aesthetic about it. Now let's say instead of doing that,

I instead took you to a doctor, and he were able to correct your hearing so that you could hear for the first time.

And as you listen to Mozart, and you hear the waves of music rush over you, and the waves of sound, and you experience the beauty of hearing this, who's going to convince you otherwise?

Who's going to convince you that this is not beautiful music? It's something you know because you have experienced it, because you have experienced its power.

See, that's the difference in what Paul is talking about here. That's the difference between being persuaded by lofty speech and wisdom, versus being persuaded by the power of the

Spirit that actually changes you so that you know, not just as a remote fact, but as an actual experience, who

God is and this truth of His love and forgiveness. There's a radical difference between those two things, and God has designed this gospel in such a way so that the focus is not on the form, that it's not on the surface level appealing.

Something else has to account for why the Corinthians believed, and it's not because Paul was at the top of his game.

It's not because the message is surface level attractive. It's not. It's because the

Holy Spirit worked by the Word to change these people, and their faith rests on that.

And this is what makes what the Corinthians were doing so awful.

They were focusing on these different men saying, I'm Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Cephas. They were focusing on the different presentations of argument, dividing, placing, in essence, by their actions, placing their faith on the foundations of these different forms of the presentation of the gospel, and not the gospel itself.

Not the power of God. Placing it on the wisdom of men, instead of the power of God. But this power, this power to change is so much better than wisdom man.

And our faith can rest in that. We can be certain that we have the truth, because we've actually been changed, because we know by experience what

Christ has done. Our faith does not rest on the wisdom man. It rests on the power of God.

And if you do not know this transformation, if you have not been transformed, call out to God today.

Ask Him to change you. He will change you by the power of His Spirit. And if He changes you, then you can join us in unity as we are founded, not on different men, not on forms of arguments that we found temporarily persuasive, but on the unshaking foundation of the power of God as He works through the

Spirit. And one day we'll be together in the new heavens and the new earth forever.

No more serpent, no more serpent to lead us astray by His smooth -sounding words persuading this way and that.

But people living in Christ's power with Him, seeing

Him face to face forever. And here as we're changed more and more into the image of Christ, we can get a taste of that more and more.

Because our faith does not rest in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God. Let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, there are many things that distract in this world. There are many things that can take our attention away and deceive us even when truth is being presented.

And I pray that our focus would not be on the presentation of the truth, but on the truth itself.

And I pray that by Your Spirit, You would work through this truth as You have said that You would, and that we would grow closer and closer in it.

And that others, as they learn this truth, as they're changed by the Spirit and joined with us, that we would be able to grow closer and closer with them as well.

And I ask that You would hasten the day when Your Son returns, and we're able to be together forever in perfect unity.