The Confusion of Law and Gospel, From Young Calvinists to Social Justice

The Gospel, Social Justice, and the Central Message of Christianity

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter Podcast. I am John Harris, and today we have a very important guest and a very important discussion because we're going to be talking about the central message of Christianity, the Gospel.

What is the Gospel? What is not the Gospel is probably even a better question for today, but I have with me Pastor Mike Abendroth, and he's published a number of books. I'm not going to read you all of them.

One of them is Jesus Christ, the Prince of Preachers, and a number of other ones. You can find them, I'm sure, on Amazon, but Pastor Abendroth has been the senior pastor at Bethlehem Bible Church in Massachusetts since 1997.

He's a graduate of the Master's Seminary, and he has a doctorate in expository preaching from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. You can go to NoCompromiseRadio .com if you want to hear more from Pastor Mike.

Pastor Mike, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it.

John, I'm glad to be on the show. I listen to all your shows and am happy to talk about this important subject. They used to have the old Christian book distributors quarterly sale up in Peabody, Massachusetts, and they had a dollar rack, and you get all kinds of books for a dollar.

I think those books that I've published are all on that rack. Oh, so maybe don't go to Amazon,.

Find a good garage sale or something. Yeah, no, that's good. One of the reasons I actually like you a lot, just from a personality standpoint, is you don't take your degrees so serious. You're a very accomplished man and accomplished theologian, and you've helped me in recent weeks think through some things that I think were possibly holding me back in my own theology, my own just resting in the gospel, but yet you're a humble guy, and I love that about you.

Thank you for being humble. Thank you for just breaking it down for working class people, which I think is so important.

Well, John, one of the things I've noticed just in light of what you said, of course, when I'm standing in the pulpit or we're talking about the Lord and His word or on a radio show, we want to be honoring Him and not just slapstick and stuff like that, but outside of the pulpit and outside of serious counseling sessions or something, we're just regular people, frail, sinful people.

I used to think, John, that when the Lord called pastors teachers, maybe they were the strongest, maybe they were the most spiritual because they had the lead, but in fact, when you look at the Bible and see what qualifications are for leadership, of course, I think it tied us in 1 Timothy, but probably the Lord uses the weakest people to get maximum effect so He gets all the glory.

So I think it's just a good dose of reality for all of us because we're not all that. Yeah. Amen. I want to start off with an area.

That's familiar to my audience because we talk about it so often. I think most of my podcasts, not all, but a lot of them concern the social justice movement. And of course, right now, we're in a context in which this is pretty much stealing all the headlines.

And so I want to kind of reverse engineer. I want to start with that and talk about the gospel in relation to what I would say is probably a corruption of the gospel. And then I want to go kind of back to how did we get here?

What kinds of things have been corrupting the gospel that led up to this moment? So I'm going to read for you a quote and then get your reaction. This is something I found last night. And I find quotes like this all the time from social justice proponents within broader evangelicalism.

And this is from the Jude 3 Project. It's a blog by Joshua Crutchfield. And for those who don't know, the Jude 3 Project has interviewed Matt Hall and Walter Strickland and Sean McDowell just recommended them.

And so here's just a sample. Not only reconciliation, but also reparations, restoration, and repayment are central to the gospel and a responsibility we've inherited by choosing to follow Christ. And one more sentence here.

As a black Christian working locally on the ground and interested in the complete liberation of all black people, I'm calling on the white church to seriously consider what 21st century reparations from the church would look like.

So I want to just ask you, is that the gospel? Is that central to the gospel, reparations in a political sense?

Reconciliation, Reparations, and the Gospel of Grace

John, I don't know really where to start when he said something about reconciliation. If he were to talk about 2 Corinthians 5 and to think, you know, we were born enemies and God is thrice holy. And so there's this huge chasm of difference and we need to be reconciled, right?

It's not God to be reconciled to us contra the hymn of Charles Wesley, but we need to be reconciled to God. And that's only through peace through the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't even think he meant that.

When he talks about reconciliation, I think in my opinion, it all has to do with this racial issue. At the center of the gospel is not reparations. It's not repayment. It's not any other word that starts with an R.

It's not social issues. Or even I think as J .D. Greer said recently, the center of the gospel or the gospel starts with justice, something like that. That's right. He did say that as a direct quote. Yeah.

And I just did a little research and the gospel does have modifiers in the New Testament. And I wonder what the biblical modifiers are. Listen to these. They're so good and it's encouraging to just think about the good news.

The gospel of God, Mark 1. So it's his gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ, 1 Corinthians 9. The gospel of his son, Romans 1. The gospel of the grace of God, Acts 20. The gospel of the kingdom, Matthew 4.

The gospel of peace that is between us and God, Ephesians 6. And the eternal or everlasting gospel, Revelation 14. With the pinnacle, the gospel of the glory of Christ, 2 Corinthians 4. So when people want to talk about gospel modifiers, I like to ask myself the question, what is not modifying the word gospel?

And once you start throwing in words like social and justice and reparations and everything that goes along with it, it detracts. And here's the main way it detracts. It puts the emphasis off the work of the Lord Jesus and it puts it onto what we do.

And that's really the key to me. They'll say, yes, of course, it's because of what Jesus did. We have to do these other things. And I think they give it lip service. But really the issue of the good news, it has to be, and I know you agree with me, it has to be the work of God, the work of the Son, the work of the grace of God.

When people say things like, be the fifth gospel. So it's Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Mike are the sixth gospel, this John, without an H. That's not good news. I might like to think that sometimes I can do some things to the honor and glory of Christ Jesus, but that isn't good news at all.

So if anybody wants to modify the gospel, that's where we really have to stand up. And sadly, unlike Jude three, we have to earnestly contend for the faith that's once delivered. Yeah. Amen. Now, so I want.

To ask you this because I don't know if you see the same trajectory that I saw, but this social justice movement kind of came in right after, I guess what they call this neo-reform movement or the new Calvinism was taking the church by storm and gospel coalition is usually one of the identifiable organizations people point to.

And I saw a connection. It was some of the same people that are promoting this, we're promoting that movement. And in that movement, there's a lot of emphasis on, at least I noticed on external behavior and making sure that you're, I guess, acceptable to God in some way.

And I know I had told you once that this was something that I think I was caught up in to some extent. And I was hoping you could just talk about that for those who might be in captivity in a sense, and just thinking that they have to be so right before God because of their works in order to be accepted.

Do you see that trajectory? And can you comment.

On that a little bit? Sure. And I do think it's related. If we just think big picture on how does God accept a sinner? And again, we just think about what God calls Adam to do, what he called Israel to do in the wilderness, what he calls all of us to do.

And that is simply as created beings, we have to obey. We have to do this and live. If you think of Luke chapter 10. Problem is, of course, we don't do that. The way I teach my kids or younger people is I would say, you know what, I'm sitting on a tractor, and I've got reverse and I've gotten forward and neutral.

And then the Lord says, I want you to obey. And therefore I've got to go forward. Well, really, in reality, because of Adam's fall and depravity, I'm going backwards. And so therefore, I need to not only have my sins forgiven to get back to neutral, I need to move forward, and then obey perfectly, except that that's impossible.

And so I think what happens is, there's this culture of obedience in the warp and woof of a person. That's not all bad, because we are supposed to obey. But here's the problem. Our standards are too low.

God requires as we look at Westminster or some of the other reformed confessions, perfect, exact, entire perpetual obedience. And the way I like to remember that is, you know, those marshmallow things that you get at Easter, what do you call those?

S'mores. S'mores. Okay. What about the.

Easter ones? They look like the Easter ones. I'm sorry. I'm thinking of campfire stuff. I don't.

Know. I don't eat marshmallows. Yeah, I don't either. But I use it as an acronym. Peeps, those little peeps. Okay, I know what you're talking about. So just think about the standard of standing before God.

Perpetual, P. Exact, E. Entire, E. Personal obedience. That's what God requires. And so therefore, when we attempt in any way, shape, or form to do that, for our standing before God, we fall short. But it's still kind of within us, that residual, that desire to work, except it then eclipses the work of Christ.

You and I talked on the phone a while ago. I think the key verse, when I want to try to flush out this works for righteousness, this works to keep standing, this works to have a final justification, I think it stems from Romans 2 .13.

And a wrong view of that. And this is the passage, by the way, which I didn't tell you on the phone. If you misinterpret, children should laugh at you. That's what Calvin said. And for a long time, I had children probably laughing at me, but I don't think anymore.

Here's what Romans 2 .13 says, for it is not the hearers of the law who are just before God are righteous, but the doers of the law will be justified. And what a lot of people do in evangelicalism, this neo-Calvinism that you were talking about in the last generation or so, they'll say, you know, you have to have a lot of works, or some works, or quite a few works, and you have to treasure God a certain amount, desire God a certain amount, have him be your Lord a certain amount.

And that kind of helps you along, except that's really law light. Romans 2 is in the section condemning everyone. This is not a sanctification verse. That's Romans 6 and 7. This follows the heels of Romans 1, where the Gentiles are without righteousness.

Now chapter 2 moralizers are Jews or people who think they're good. You're not any better. So he says in Romans 2 .13, you can't have any righteousness unless you are perfectly obedient. So this is the rich young ruler going home because he can't fulfill the law.

That's right. That's right. So what happens, I think, what we do, John, is we say, what's that passage about? Well, it's about you have to be willing to yield your life, to surrender your life, to submit all areas to the Lordship of Jesus.

Now while that happens in the category of sanctification, we believe in sola fide, faith alone. No antecedent requirements. You don't clean up your life in order to come. God justifies the ungodly, and therefore the issue with the rich young ruler, Jesus, essentially showed him that very passage.

That's insightful of you. You have to perfectly obey. You want to get in by your own works. What must I do to be saved? The legal answer is perfectly obey. The gospel answer is the Lord Jesus will obey in your place if you'll trust in him.

Law and Gospel Distinctions in Sanctification

Okay. Now I know some people when.

They hear this, they're going to say, hold on a minute. You're talking about one purpose of the law, obviously, which is to condemn humanity and show us that we're in sin and need a savior. But isn't there another purpose?

Doesn't the law also guide us into obedience with Christ? What do you.

Say to people who would bring that up? Sure. I would say I agree with you, and it does, but just please don't confuse categories. We don't want to commingle those things and get something that's not gospel news that's good or law do something.

You get what I think Michael Horton called gospel, right? You get this blending or this co-mingling. We do believe in good works. As Luther said, you're saved by faith alone, and that faith isn't alone.

But we have to be able to distinguish between the ground of our salvation and the evidences are fruits. And once they start coming together, your insight on neo-Calvinism is essentially a reverting back to Rome, where you've got to have a certain amount of sanctification to keep your justification or to get it or to have final justification.

So really, when we ask these questions, we have to start thinking law, gospel, we have to start thinking, what does God require for perfect obedience? And I think neo-Calvinism falls short of that. Because technically speaking, historically speaking, just because you believe in the sovereignty of God, you're not a Calvinist.

Just because you're a five pointer doesn't mean you're a technical Calvinist. I'm glad for people that believe in sovereignty. I'm glad for people that believe in the five points of, you know, answering the questions of their monsoons.

That's great. But that's not, I think Janice, Janet Mefford said yesterday, something about she sees the theme of Calvinism, with a lot of these social justice warriors. And I think it's true, but it's not Calvinism's fault, obviously.

By the way, James Boyce, we can make people mad on our shows. James Boyce once preached a sermon, Jesus was a Calvinist.

Only James Boyce could pull that off. Yeah, yeah, a little bit of presentism in that one. I want to ask you, just for some illustrations on this, because I think, you know, at this point, in our interview, there's people that are probably listening, thinking to themselves, yeah, that resonates with me.

You're right, there was something in that neo-Calvinism. I'm going to take just a minute and just give you personal testimony. So I had to read, it was required in seminary to read David Platt's Radical.

And I'm just using this as one book, because there were a number of other ones that had the same theme. But in Radical, I almost felt, when I was done reading it, that I did not sufficiently hate the American dream enough, and love people who are impoverished enough, because I was living, well, I was at seminary, I was living in Wake Forest, a suburb, you know, it was pretty nice there.

And so I thought, I'm not following Jesus. And, you know, they're giving these to all these middle class kids that aren't actually really doing what the book recommends. And so there was a burden of guilt, I saw in others around me as well.

And I knew there was something wrong with that. But I think most of us didn't know exactly what it was. Because look, there are passages where Jesus says to sell and give to the poor, which we just talked about being in the wrong category.

Could you just maybe illustrate that, maybe give some other illustrations of what does this look like in someone's life when they're.

Confusing categories and having a burden of guilt on them? Right, well, with Platt, it's interesting that you felt that because I think a lot of a lot of other people felt that burden. And you feel the burden when I think you see the law or it's presented apart from the law giver.

Remember, that's exactly and I'm not saying Platt is satanic, don't get me wrong, I want to finish my thought on this. But remember what happened in the garden. Satan was saying to Eve, and then, of course, Adam was there with her.

You know what these these restrict these bind these this rule isn't any good. But if they just would have realized, you know what, this is coming from a loving father who's given me everything and give me a wife and he's generous and he's gracious.

And these are for my own good, and his glory and my pleasure and all these things. And so what happens is if we're not careful, and we begin to blend law and gospel, we start seeing the law from a hand of a God who says, I expect perfect obedience.

Right? So let's just think big picture for a second. God is a judge. And he's a creator and he wants obedience. And so we have to perfectly obey. Well, now that Jesus has obeyed in our place as Christians and forgiven our sins and has been raised from the dead.

We have the same law, because God's immutable and his holy nature has the laws are the same. But our relationship is different. Our relationship to God is now of father and son. So where before the Fifth Commandment don't commit adultery.

If you have one bad thought sexually, of course, you stand condemned. James chapter two, verse 10. But now when we struggle with sexual sin, it's not if we disobey, we are going to be kicked out or something.

No, it's our father. And we may get chastened, of course, and we want to honor him out of gratitude. That's true. But I think what Platt ends up doing is he ends up confusing God as judge and God as father.

Because when you have sanctification jammed into justification, you're always thinking, am I acceptable? Do I measure up? Can I do enough? He talks about living the gospel a lot. We don't want to talk that way.

You can adorn the gospel, but you can't live the gospel. Jesus, who could live the gospel, said to all of us, preach the gospel because it's good news. And when Platt says things like the gospel evokes unconditional surrender, that's one of the things he said in the book.

If it's in the sanctification category where we want to unconditionally surrender, fine. But there's a reason why sola fide is sola fide. It's not sola surrender. It's not any of these kind of things we talk about submission.

It is knowledge, assent, and trust. And we can just rest and trust and rely on the finished work of Jesus, which I'll stop now, but it totally relates to assurance. Because if you combine these categories and you see God essentially as a judge, you are going to have no assurance.

And so how do you get assurance? Do more. Do what the celebrity says. Try harder. What do you do when someone comes to.

You, which I'm sure you've had as a pastor, and let's make it a younger teenager who is now going through the changes that come with adulthood, and they say to you, Pastor. Mike, I messed up the other night.

I looked at pornography, and now I'm wondering, am I even a Christian? I know I love Jesus, and I know He's my Savior, but how could I have done that? What do.

You say to someone like that? Well, before I think like I do now, that is with some of these strict categories of justification and sanctification, which by the way, one will always follow the other, but they're different.

Before I really came to an end of thinking that I was so righteous on my own through cancer and some other things, I would have met with a man for 60 minutes, and for 55 minutes, I would have said, this is what the Bible expects.

How can you call yourself a Christian? This is how you need to stop this in the future. This is how you need to make amends. And you know what? I would still tell them those things, but here's how it would be different.

The final five minutes of the old mic would be, I love you. The Lord loves sinners. Let's pray. But now what I do to people that I think are really Christians and who have sinned, I was going to say struggle, but maybe it's not a struggle.

Maybe it's not some lapse or fall, but they really did sin. I talked to them for about an hour of the Lord Jesus and what He has done and what His life is like, and not one sin, not one lustful look, not one foible error, a shortcut.

I mean, just not even one. And when Jesus was tempted, of course, in Matthew 4, we always look at it and say, how do you overcome temptation? Hide God's Word in your heart. It's good to hide God's Word in your heart, but Matthew 4 is so much more.

We're sitting there watching Jesus, and if He succumbs, we are so lost. Your eternal life is riding in the hands of Jesus, your captain. Will He make it? Adam tempted in the garden, failed. Eve tempted in the garden, failed.

Israel tempted in the wilderness, failed. David on a rooftop, failed. We fail. Can somebody live up to the commands and demands of God? Jesus, I think you can do it. And of course, He overcomes Satan.

So then what I would do, back to your pornography issue, I would tell the person, here's who the Lord is. And I've done this before. And then I embrace them at the very end, and I tell them, I love you.

And then with my finger pretty hard on their sternum, I say, and don't you ever do that again. So it's changed a little bit because I think what motivates people, does the law motivate? John Murray said the law has no motivation.

The law just says, you did it or you didn't. Everybody can think about GPS these days. Let's think about how are we motivated to obey or to say no to sexual sin or lust or pornography? Is it the law? Well, we need to use the law.

Of course, it's good and holy if it's used rightly. You're in a car, you've got your GPS, and it says, I don't know where you live anymore, but let's say I was going to go visit Virginia. Okay, Albany, I said at four.

And I've got the GPS and either says, good job, keep going or turn around, you know, you turn here or something. But if I don't have an engine, I don't get there, even though I've got a GPS. And so the law is like a GPS, but the engine, the motivator out of gratitude is the Lord Jesus.

And that's why Romans 16 says we are strengthened with the gospel. So I would try to help motivate him by talking about the Lord Jesus, and then giving him the guidance from the law. Yeah, that's that's really beautiful.

And.

Certainly, you know, when you said the old Mike, I mean, that I heard teaching on this issue that is exactly parallel to the 95 the law. And then, so I think that's, that's a great word on that. I'm curious, when you evangelize, how do you do you use the law?

How do you approach sharing the gospel with someone who is not saved, without confusing categories?

Evangelism, the Law, and the Call to Repent and Believe

Good. Well, I do think because what we would call the first use of the law to show them their sin. But what are these days, I don't try to get to the Lord Jesus too fast. Here's what I mean by that. Romans three, verse 19 says, now that now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law.

And there's a purpose. What's the purpose for these unbelievers being under the law answer, so that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may be come accountable to God. Now, there's never a wrong time to talk about the Lord Jesus and what he's done.

But there is a time to make sure we really demonstrate to people from scriptures. Maybe we even talk about creation. Maybe we talk about conscience. But we tell them about sin, because they need a sin bearer and understanding some of the synonyms for sin, trespass, transgression, perversion, iniquity.

There's lots of different Hebrew words and Greek words. So I try these days to talk more about the heinousness of sin, because then they need someone, they need someone to be there in Matthew four to overcome temptation, and to perfectly win and then set his face like a flint to Jerusalem, so he might suffer and die.

So I do use the law. But here's the thing. I think sometimes it's just all law and no good news. So you hear street preachers, I was in Dublin once with my wife, and there's a huge square there. And I wanted to go get some kind of cool glasses.

I was there for a secular reason. And I saw a guy standing up on a box, a preacher's box, kind of with a little attendant, a bodyguard or something, both have suits on, dressed immaculately. And here's what I heard.

Repent, believe, turn and burn. And he was saying all these things like that, which are all true, and must be said, should be said. But he wasn't talking about Jesus. So after a heavy dose of the law, I want to make sure I tell them about Jesus, the law keeper, Jesus, the sin bearer.

So I can talk about substituentary atonement, I can talk about the Lamb of God and all these other things. So I walked up to him kind of sheepishly, I didn't want him to think I was going to attack him.

And I walked up and I said, I teach a lot of preaching classes. And I want to make sure all my students talk about the Lord Jesus to and not just tell people to repent. And I walked away. Well, he immediately figured it out, because he was in that mode of the street preaching and just law only.

And he forgot to talk about Jesus, the risen Savior. And then he said, and Jesus Christ has conquered sin and death and hell and is alive. And he's coming back. He died on the cross for sinners like you.

And I didn't do it physically, but in my heart, I was going with his courage and my theology, we make a good team.

That's awesome. So when you get to that call, you know, they call it the call, you know, the altar call that some ask Jesus into your heart, or you need to repent and trust, what do you say to an unbeliever?

How do you transition that? And when they say,.

What must I do to be saved? What does Michael? Well, this last Sunday, I was in the book of Hebrews as we're going chapter by chapter, and I came to chapter 13, verse 10. And it says, we have an altar.

It's very fascinating, because of course, for years, I blast Roman Catholics for having a non bloody, you know, sacrifice on their altar. And for years, I would critique altar calls and calling people to a place and, and here it is, we have an altar.

And by the way, the neat context with that is the Jewish people who are Christians and professing Christ are getting persecuted by other Jewish people, old covenant Jews. And those old covenant Jews are saying, you don't have a temple, you don't have a sacrifice, you don't have an altar.

And the writer uses good figurative language and metonym, using one word close to something else. And he says, we have an altar, we have a sacrifice. And by the way, you can't have any of that sacrifice unless you believe in Jesus.

So anyway, when it comes to altar calls, I don't call people to a place, I call people to receive Christ Jesus, I can use words like believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, I can say whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will not be disappointed.

I can say repent, I can say receive, I could say rest, there are many words and even John Owen in his great 16 volume set has has categorized a lot of these calls. But here's what I don't say. I do not say you have to stop sinning in order to come to Christ.

I say God accepts sinners, that is to say that Jesus justifies the ungodly. God demonstrates his own love toward us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And that's where I think some of our friends maybe fall into the category of thinking repentance somehow means change your life.

In order to come. Yeah, because I know many look back, I mean, I saw this in my class in soteriology when I was at Southeastern. It seemed like most of the class when the professor asked, you know, did you doubt your salvation at any point, all hands went up.

And they all had similar stories just about, you know, I was young, I prayed this prayer, I was baptized. And now I'm looking back on that event. And I'm wondering, did I have perfect repentance? Was I really truly believing in my heart?

And of course, do we ever truly 100 believe the way that Jesus, you know, believes? No. So I just think it's so destructive. When you have to think you.

Must be clean before God can accept you. That's a good point. And when I think of repentance and faith, I would ask your audience to read Sinclair Ferguson's The Whole Christ, W-H-O-L-E. He has a good section in there about repentance and faith.

And so just in summary, when you think of the Reformation, going from Rome to what the Bible teaches, sola fide, means faith alone. And then you have to think about which comes first. And of course, you can't have an unrepentant believer and you can't have a believing unrepentant, right?

So chronologically, it would happen at the same time. But as Calvin said, repentance is the fruit of faith. And so logically, faith comes first. And when we even hear words, somebody will say to me, Luke 24, preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins to all nations.

That's true. But to give you the theological word of the day, synecdoche. And I love to hear Sinclair Ferguson here, synecdoche. That's when you give one word, which can envelop both words. So when you say repent in the New Testament, sometimes the text says, and they believed.

Peter sometimes says repent, and then they say they believed. I could say believe, and then the text says they repented. So if I say one word, believe, it encapsulates repentance, because that's how we view sin.

Faith is more towards the object of the Savior. But I could say repent. But what I don't mean when I say repent is you clean up your sins. We have a free offer. And if you don't have water, come, you can buy it without price.

We don't want to have any preparationism, where the people have to do certain things in order to believe. And here's what happens. What we do is we say, well, I read John Bunyan's biography and David Brainard's biography, and for 15 to 18 months, they were laboring under their sin.

And then they believed and that's what should happen. But that's not what always happens that happened with them. But it doesn't happen with everyone. And I think, John, I could probably make a point if I said, what about a communion service?

What's that meant to do? And for most people, it's a frightening time. It's like, I got to examine all my sins. Did I do this? Should I take it? Anybody watching? The deacons handed me the and do I should I did the pastor notice?

Of course, there's an examines statement in First Corinthians. I don't doubt that. But just think about what we do with a communion service isn't a communion service supposed to follow Jesus's words when he says do this in remembrance of me?

Isn't it supposed to be about Jesus? Don't you want to come to a communion service? And I could say, John, did you pray enough this week? Did you evangelize enough? Did you have a good enough attitude?

Never. I know. So I just want to remind you, dear Christian, weak Christian, sick Christian, dying of brain cancer, Christian, stay at home mom, Christian, they can hardly open their Bible because they got six kids there.

I want you to know, Jesus prayed enough. And Jesus is actually praying right now for you. And Jesus read enough evangelized enough. He did everything adequately enough because he always pleased the Father.

And I just want you to know, God couldn't love you anymore. He couldn't love you any less because he loves you like he loves his son. And so today, we're going to remember that Jesus paid it all. And of course, our response is all to him I owe.