Christ has Absolute Authority

As I've continued to meditate and think about our passage this morning, which declares, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. I continue to remember an event back when I was in college. I was out sharing the gospel, and I was in a parking lot. I really do not remember why I'm in this parking lot where I'm at, because I'm out in the middle of the parking lot. But a lady gets out of her car and starts walking, and so I decide I'm going to walk next to her and talk to her about Jesus. And as soon as I woke up, she must have figured me out. Because she said, I know, I know, do not handle, do not, all right, she said, I know, I know, do not have sex, don't drink, don't smoke. I know, I've heard it myself. And I kind of was taken aback. Kind of? Yeah. Christians aren't supposed to do many of these things if they're outside of the will of God, according to scripture. But that's not really what it's all about. But she caught me off guard so much, I kind of just retreated. I didn't know what to say because what I should have said is that it's not about what you don't do. It's about Christ. It's so easy for us to convey a message that being a Christian is about what we do or do not do. Really, it's about Christ and what He has done. I think it's easy for us to convey that message that Christianity is about what you do and do not do because we think oftentimes we come into God's fellowship into salvation through Christ, and then it's our works that keep us there. It's a great temptation to depend upon what we do and what we abstain from. This morning, we're going to look at Paul's warning against Christians to trust in their own actions and their own works. Our message is quite simple. We must trust Christ alone to purify us. We must trust Christ alone to purify us. Our passage really has two main parts. The first part is the first three verses, 20 through 22. It's a rhetorical question that has a condition in it. If with Christ you have died, why do you continue to submit to the human traditions and regulations? It's a very important condition. If you have died with Christ, everything else changes. The second main part is a contrast. These regulations, they appear wise, but they're really of no value. They do nothing to actually fix the carnal desires with which are really plaguing and hindering you. Let me read our passage in its entirety as we begin. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, as if you were still alive in the world, then why do you submit to regulations? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to the things that are all perishable, perish as they are used, according to human precepts and teachings. These regulations have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severing the body. They are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. We see this connected to the previous passage, which is a warning. Do not let anyone judge you. Do not let anyone disqualify you based upon these human regulations. Here Paul is repeating already that it is about Christ, our identity with Him. Earlier, they were wanting to be circumcised in addition to Christ, and He's saying, no, it's the circumcision of Christ that purifies you. Here again, we see it is Christ with whom we die, and He is all we need. Our passage is built upon the two main parts of the verse. First, verses 20 through 22, I summarize that with, Christ has freed us to trust Him alone. Christ has freed us. to trust Him alone. And then secondly, Christ alone can purify us. First, let's look at verses 20 through 21. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, as if you were still alive in the world, then why do you submit to the regulations? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to the things that all perish as they are used, according to human precepts and teaching. Again, this if clause is everything. If you have died with Christ, that changes everything. It gives us a new identity. It gives us a new purpose. It gives us a new way of understanding God and ourselves and our relation to this world. The entire argument of Paul is built upon Christ being God himself, the creator and sustainer of the world, and the head of the church, the only one who has the authority and the power to actually forgive sins and purify sinners. If you have died with Christ, why are you still submitting to the ways of this world, to human regulations? It's a question we have to always ask ourselves. We have to constantly be reminding ourselves, we have died with Christ. That is our identity. That is who we are. Everything in this world is trying to distract us from that primary identity, but we must be constantly reminded and reminding ourselves that that is our identity. The first thing we see here is that our identity is in Christ. If with Christ you died, what does it mean to die with Christ? First, his death replaces ours. In the garden, God told Adam and Eve, if you eat of that fruit, you will die. And of course, that meant physical death, but also meant a second death, the judgment that comes from God. See, we are all dead in our sins. We are all unable and incapacitated to actually respond to God and to give ourselves life. We cannot resuscitate our own dead heart. We are dead and that means that God's wrath is against us. We are guilty before God. We are offensive before God. We cannot go into God's presence as we are sinners. But His death replaces ours. When Jesus Christ died on the cross, the Father poured out His wrath against all of our guilt, against all of our offense, so that that is no longer against us. That is why we can now go bold into the throne of God, because we are no longer counted as sinners. Our sins have been counted against Christ. His righteousness has been counted towards us. That's what we can now call the sons of God. When we die with Christ, His death replaces our death. He is judged in our place. He is our substitute. Secondly, His death renews us. He not only died on the cross, but He rose again. His death gives us new life. Not only are we counted as innocent, now we're counted as righteous. If we have died with Him, we will live with Him. He becomes our Lord. He becomes our Master. Related to this, His death frees us to enjoy Him, honor Him, and love Him. He becomes our Head. As Paul says, and Jesus says in many places, we all have a Master. Our Master is either on sin, human regulations, or Christ. Christ becomes our master. Christ becomes our head. Christ becomes our authority. You do not become lawless when you become a Christian. As Paul says in Galatians 6, now we are called to obey the law of Christ. But we do so because He first claims us, He forgives us, He cleanses us, He pours out His love upon us, and that creates in us a love for Him. When we love Him, we want to obey Him. Christ directs us back to living the life that God created us for. The life that God created us to enjoy. When we are Christ, He frees us from having to obey foreign laws, foreign masters, and foreign authorities. He alone is our authority. Now Christian, have you died with Christ? Is Christ your Savior? Is Christ your head? If so, are you enjoying the benefits of Christ or do you constantly feel the temptation of burden to fulfill other regulations? Are you burdened today with regulations that you or someone else has laid on you that are not from Christ? See, He is our Shepherd. We know His voice. We should be able to test every regulation that comes down to us and see if it is from God's Word, if it is in harmony with His Spirit. The first thing we have to ask you, are we burdened with something that Christ has not put on our shoulders? Is your identity burdened with fulfilling an ideal vision of being a spouse, a mom, a dad, or an employee? Are you seeking contentment in Christ? See, our first relationship, our first identity marker, our first thing we have to always remind ourselves of is that we are Christ. Then you're a healthy husband. Then you're a healthy wife. Then you're a healthy dad. Then you're a healthy mom. It's so easy to put these other roles and other regulations ahead of that primary identity marker. It's easy because, well, your wife or your husband or your spouse or your parents, they're right there in front of you. We have to constantly remind ourselves that Christ is at the right hand of the Father, and He's our Savior, and He has called us to a new life. Another question to help us think about is the identity marker of Christ is really what defines us most. It's keeping up the appearance of having it all together exhausting you. Are you exhausted because there's a certain appearance you're supposed to have? This is the arena for that exhaustion. Did you have to dress a certain way? Act a certain way? Make sure your kids are behaving a certain way? Are you exhausted by keeping up appearances? Are you trying to please someone else into what you think are their imposed regulations? Are you coming to worship Christ freely? As Ron serves us up so well, worship is looking at His worth. It's not trying to make sure people think we're worthy of being here. It's coming to express how worthy Christ is for our hearts. for songs and for our prayers. If you're not a Christian, we're talking about the burden of Christians. I want to go ahead and tell you, you are burdened today. Whether you feel it or not, you are burdened with guilt. I hope you do feel it. I hope you feel an overwhelming burden right this minute with guilt. Because if you have not trusted Christ, your sins are weighing heavily upon you. And it's not just your sin, it's the wrath of God that is weighing heavily upon you. You can release that weight. You can be free of that weight. You can be free of your sin. You can be free of its consequences. It's only by trusting Christ. It's only by believing that Jesus Christ has died to wash you clean of that sin. He has died to take upon your sin the wrath of God so that you no longer have to be under its burden. I pray that if you are burdened, you will not leave here today without talking to me or someone else about that. The second thing we see in this verse, really the other main focus, if with Christ you have died, then you no longer should be obeying the other laws. It's our temptation to obey human regulations for righteousness. were constantly tempted to obey human regulations for righteousness. Paul said in this verse that if Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world. The ESV actually takes some liberty here. It's the word spirit is not in the text. It's actually rudimentary principles or elemental things. It's kind of the same thing as ABCs, the most basic elements. I'm not sure if it's actually speaking of spirits here. I think it's actually speaking of those basic elements of human religion. We can see this again in chapter 2, verse 8. The basic parts that man creates are always rules and regulations. Whenever we create something, it's always regulating. It regulates you by limiting what you can do. Human religion will always regulate, and it will always make us think we must obey something in order to be pleasing to God. Now, many of these regulations may be well-intending, but they're always dangerous. It creates a do-not religion. A religion that just says you cannot do this, this, or that. That's what that lady was in the parking lot was conveying. She had heard of Christianity. It was a do not religion. That's how I was raised. I thought Christianity was just a group of people that committed to not do certain things. It never appealed to me because I wanted to do those things they constantly wanted to regulate me from. I was a sinner. My heart was bent towards all kinds of sin. No matter how much they told me not to do it, that really just made me want to do it more. Because I was never told about Christ. clearly and sufficiently. Those rules and regulations did nothing for my heart. It was only when I heard Christ and heard of His love for me and His death for me and His resurrection that my heart was then changed. Then God's law became beautiful. But the law without Christ is nothing but burdensome and nothing but dangerous because it creates in us self-righteousness. That self-righteousness keeps us from God and it keeps us from enjoying Others. All I heard was do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. This kind of religion is built upon a fear of the material world. Really, it's a fear that you might enjoy it too much. It's a fear that looks out in the world and they see the abuses of the world and they say we've got to keep ourselves from that world as far as possible. The problem with this is that it can keep you from glorifying God. A religion of regulation keeps you from glorifying God. Because God created all things. God created them for good. God created our senses, our sights, our hearing, our smell, and our taste to enjoy His good creation. The tendency for regulating religion, for man-made religion, is to stop up the senses. Gate them up because we see people too absorbent, too much indulging in the things of this world. See, he talks about the things that they perish as soon as they're used. This is the food we eat. These are the flowers we smell. These are the flowers that we walk around in the great multitude of topography and trees and plants we love. God created this world for us to enjoy. To keep ourselves from those things, keep us from enjoying God. So, there's a balance that needs to take place. Not a medium. We don't need to find this healthy medium, enjoying and not enjoying. We need wisdom from God. Martin Luther compared a new Christian to a drunk peasant on a mule. He's always colorful. The peasants The drunk peasant gets on the mule and he starts heading home and he's leaning over too much this side and he falls off. So he gets back on the mule and of course then he leans over this side so that way he doesn't fall off on that side but of course leaning too far over here he falls off on that side. As Christians we constantly are battling between abstinence and indulgence. We're constantly swayed towards absolute Absolute absence or absolute indulgence. We need wisdom from God on how we can be focused on Him, loving Him, enjoying what He's created enough to glorify Him, but also making sure we're not indulging in it. We have a culture that's absolutely indulging in all things. Our culture is licentious. It has a license to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, however it wants. We need to be careful not to overreact. Our culture aggressively abuses God's good gifts. And while we need to be able to say, no, that is not the way you look at marriage. That's not the way you're supposed to look at alcohol. That's not the way you're supposed to look at the things in this world that God has created. We are supposed to say, we are not supposed to overreact. They are aggressively abusing God's good gifts. We must be careful not to overreact. See, it's easy to be zealous about what we are not. You can look at the last elections. They really don't say they're for much. They're more against something else or someone else. It's easy to rally people to say we're not for them. It's always easy to rally people against something. They're rallying people for a call. To rally people for Christ, that's much more difficult than rallying people to be opposed to something. We need to be more committed and interested in who we are for rather than what we are against. Here's a question to help us think about our own convictions and the way we live. Are we more zealous for the things we avoid or do we avoid them because of our zeal for Christ? Are we more zealous for the things we avoid, or do we avoid them because of our love for Christ? See, a love for self-righteousness avoids things. So, that builds me up, because then I can look down on you and say, you're not avoiding those things, you're not religious. If I have a deal for Christ, then I avoid those things, and it really promotes a love for Christ. How can we know if we're over-regulating ourselves? How can we know if we're over-regulating others? First, when a particular practice is in question, we should first ask, does Scripture speak to the particular topic? God's Word is sufficient. God's Word is clear. Anytime there's a particular practice that we are convicted over or someone questions us about with regulations, we should look to God's Word. Does God's Word actually regulate something? Secondly, we should look to see if God's Word provides wisdom in that particular area. An example of that, a couple of the sermons that I was, in the commentaries I was studying, they used Charles Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon is the greatest Baptist preacher to ever live. He may be the greatest preacher to ever live. We have a great corpus of his sermons and they're all brilliant. And Charles Spurgeon loved a cigar. You can go to Southwestern Seminary, at one point, I don't know if it's still there, but there's a picture of Charles Spurgeon. And he's missing two fingers. He's missing two fingers because those two fingers were holding a cigar. And Southwestern Seminary could not put that in their foyer. Someone asked Charles Spurgeon once, you know, why do you smoke cigars? He said, because I enjoy them. He said, do you not think that, you know, it's sinful? And he said, no, it would only be sinful as an excess. Well, when would it be an excess? Well, when I was smoking two at a time. I think Spurgeon read a lot of Luther. We can look at cigars. Scripture doesn't speak to it. Scripture doesn't actually regulate it. We can look at wisdom. The body is a temple. We can look at that and we could say wisdom could regulate it. But we need to be careful not to over-regulate where Scripture does not regulate. If you don't understand the Word or you cannot find wisdom for it, you should also seek counsel. Another question, is what I'm enjoying going to promote a greater love for God? The end of everything we do, the end of everything we're supposed to say and do in this world is to love God. That is the chief end of man, to love God. So there's a practice in question. Ask yourself this, can I do this and it will promote a greater love for God in me? Or can I do this as a way of expressing my love for God? Is the particular activity or the particular thing under regulation, is it going to keep you from loving God if you do not do it? Or if you do, will it actually promote a love for God? Can I do whatever the thing is in question as an expression for my love for Christ and as a way to grow my love for Christ? There's another key word in this passage I want us to focus on before we move to our next section here. And that is the word submit. The word submit. We are called to submit to Christ and His authority. Submitting is what you do to a master. As we look at Colossians, the great summary passage is that Christ is all we need. We need to want nothing else. That's our theme verse, our theme statement for Colossians. Here we can actually focus in and say Christ is all we need. We need to submit to Him alone. Regulations is the best way to get us off track. Submitting to human regulations is the number one way Satan wants to keep Christians off track. One way is to get us to love our sin. That's one clear way that Satan and the demonic powers, they want to keep us off track. Get us to get involved in a sin that completely takes away our confidence, completely takes away our desire and our love for Christ. But if that doesn't work, divert our allegiance to something that appears good. Divert our allegiance to rules and regulations that man has made that then builds up in us a self-righteousness. See, every Christian will begin to love the law and we'll all begin with the law. But if we take our confidence away from Christ and we put it in what we do in our obedience, we're eventually going to start adding to it. Because when we start putting our confidence in what we do and how we obey, the law is never sufficient. We have to keep adding to the law and adding to the law because of our confidence in what we do, we need to make sure we're doing more and doing it better. We need to be careful in how we look at the law. The law is what we obey because of Christ's love for us, not what we obey to earn His love for us. A key question for reflection here is, are you a Christian because of what Christ has done? or because of what you do. Someone asks you, are you a Christian? How are you going to respond? Are you immediately going to respond, yes, of course I'm a Christian. I don't do this. You're going to say, I'm a Christian because Christ has died for my sins. Is being a Christian about your obedience or His obedience on the cross? Finally, in the first point, our freedom is in Christ. Our freedom is in Christ. This passage is all about freedom. Christ is our head. He's our authority. We now have freedom to worship Him alone. Freedom from all of the rules and regulations. We can look at other ways Christ has freed us from this passage. He's freed us from death. Death has lost its sting. Death is no longer scary because we know when we die we will now see God face to face because Christ is going to usher us right into the Father's presence. We're free from the power of sin. This is clear from Romans 6. We no longer have to obey that master. It constantly tempts us and tries to trick us into believing it is Lord over us. It's constantly present in us, but it no longer has authority over us. A greater power has loosened those chains. We're free from self-righteousness. We no longer have to worry about being good enough. I should rather say we should no longer worry about being good enough. The constant temptation is to wonder, am I good enough for Christ to love? That is something we all will constantly ask ourselves, and we have to be reminded we were never good enough for Christ to love. We've always been sinners in need of His love and His grace. I recently found an introduction to an article by B.B. Warfield, and he's describing the essence of Christianity, and this is really the best way, I think, in how he defines Reformed Christianity. We'll put this in the Evangel. It belongs to the very essence of the type of Christianity propagated by the Reformation that the believer should feel himself continuously unworthy of the grace by which he lives. At the center of this type of Christianity lies the contrast of sin and grace. And about this center everything else resolves. This is in large part the meaning of the emphasis put in this type of Christianity on justification by faith. It is its conviction that there is nothing in us or done by us at any stage of our earthly development because of which we are accepted to God. We must always be accepted for Christ's sake or we cannot ever be accepted at all. This is not true of us only when we believe. It is just as true after we believe. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing, nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter. No matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in Christian behavior may be, it is always on His blood and righteousness alone that we can rest. There is never anything that we are or have or do that can take His place, that can take a place along with Him. We are always unworthy. And all that we have or do of good is always of pure grace. Though blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heaven, heaven lies with Christ, we are still in ourselves just miserable sinners. miserable sinners saved by grace to be sure, but miserable sinners still, deserving in ourselves nothing but everlasting wrath. That is the attitude which the Reformers took and that is the attitude which the Protestant world has learned from the Reformers to take toward the relation of believers to Christ." We must always remember that we were, are, and will always be absolutely dependent upon the grace of Christ. It's so easy to think about what we've accomplished, how much farther we are down the road than we were ten years ago, if we remember that it is only by God's grace we've made any progress in fighting against our sin. It's only by God's grace that we are in any better state of loving and caring for others. Let's look at our second point, our last verse. Christ has purified us in a way that our obedience cannot. Verse 23, These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity of the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. These regulations, they only appear wise. They are not wasps. They only have an appearance of wisdom because it looks at something in the world and says, look how people abuse it. Let's regulate it. Let's keep ourselves from it. And I thought about what are the things that we so easily regulate. Well, there are actually things that are, I've been over-regulated throughout all of Christian history. There are two particular things that God has given us for our good that always tend to be over-regulated. The first is relationship. Our relationships with one another, friendships. God has created us to enjoy friendship and fellowship with other people. For some reason, Christians have often seen relationships as burdensome. A notable example that everyone likes to cite is Simeon Stylitus. He is the monk who, he was in the monastery, he was trying to pursue God, and a monk was someone who wanted to be able to be in a quiet place, with a regular lifestyle, so that he could contemplate the things of God on a regular basis. Well, Simeon was a very popular monk, and so people constantly came to his door knocking on it, asking for advice, asking for wisdom, asking for prayer. Well, Simeon got sick of all the disturbance from his pursuit of God. And so, he went on to the desert. And people still followed him there. And so, then he built a pillar. People still kept talking to him. He couldn't remove himself far enough from all these people. And so, he continued to get a higher and higher pillar until eventually he was on a pillar tens of feet high, living. People would bring him food and water to take it up there. But that was his way of removing himself from all people because they were a burden. Now, I have an appreciation for a monastic life in the sense that I, well, my primary studies were in Augustine and Gregory and Basil, and they were all monks. But to contrast them with Simeon, Augustine, we can just take him, he was pursuing a lifestyle of a monk. He was pursuing a lifestyle where he was going to be in a cave and he was going to be alone with his Bible and prayer and thinking about God and enjoying Him and delighting Him without all the problems of people. And then God changed his heart. God called him to a church. God called him to be a pastor. And we are very blessed in that because he recognized that God did not intend for him to live alone in a cave. God intended for him to live with other people. He stopped seeing people as a burden. He began to see people as a way of loving God. He began to see our relationship as a way that we're supposed to be glorifying God. Too often, we can think of people as being in our way. People don't want to be part of a church because other people slow them down. You think Christians who you're supposed to partner with, they're not going to be able to run the race as fast as you. Or they constantly have problems that you then have to deal with. The truth is we're all sinners and we all have multiple problems that we're not even aware of and we need one another to be working in our lives to help us with them. See, God called us out of the darkness not just to be blessed. God called us out of the darkness to be a blessing. God called Abraham out of paganism to be a blessing to the world. We're not supposed to just take God's blessings. We're supposed to be agents of God's blessings. That means we help other Christians in their pursuit of the gospel, in their pursuit of the love of Christ, and we pursue the world with the gospel. The second thing created by God for our good is intimacy. It's the most abused gift in the world and it's the most over-regulated in church history. The goodness of intimacy is clearly seen by the very fact that is how we procreate. God gave us intimacy between a man and a woman for the purpose of procreating, for the purpose of actually participating in his creative power and process. There have actually been numerous cults that have seen intimacy as necessarily evil. These cults don't last more than a couple generations for obvious reasons. The problem with many Christians is they look out into the world. They see the abundant abuse of God's good gift. We overreact. We over-regulate. We become overly negative about it. God has created us to have and share a unique partnership, a man with a woman, and to have that partnership built upon an intimate relationship. The Song of Solomon, yes, it points to Christ, but the Song of Solomon is in our scriptures to teach us the importance of intimacy. It is good. We must be aware and be cautious of how our constantly cautioning our children, constantly cautioning our minds to the great perversions in the world, how it can cause us to then have a negative view. Finally, regulations cannot purifies. The main point Paul is pointing out here is that dying with Christ is how you're purified. It's the circumcision of Christ in your heart that changes you. External circumcision does nothing for you. It's not the food laws that purify you, it's your heart being purified by the Spirit through the blood of Christ. See, our problem isn't just a behavior problem. We don't need behavior training. We don't need to learn new behaviors. The problem is our heart. Our problem is our desires. We do what we want to do. Trying to regulate the heart with behavior change accomplishes nothing but frustration and self-righteousness. The heart is constantly desired. Someday this week, track all the different things you desire. You wake up, you desire coffee. You desire to get to work. You're driving down the road, you see a nice car, you desire the car. You desire to get to work on time. You desire for your boss to quit bothering you. How many different desires do you have throughout the day? We are constantly desiring. Changing our behaviors is a way to help the desires from going absolutely corrupt, but it never fixes and changes the desires. Only Christ can do that. This always desiring is why Calvin called the heart an idle factory. We're constantly desiring something. And if we're not desiring God, we're desiring things to replace God. Our desires are dead without Christ. We must be aware of that. Our desires are corrupted by nature and they need to be disciplined. They need to be purified by Christ. They need to be disciplined. They need to be healed. And a lot of times that means they need to be starved. But they also need to be fed. Our desires are fixed and changed by constantly feeding it the right thoughts, the right desires, the right truths, and also starving it. Simple obedience cannot fix your indulgences. Like muzzling your mouth, it cannot stop profanity. We cannot think that simply stopping sin is going to fix the heart. But we also can't think that we can fix the heart without stopping the sin. If your desire is always for lusting, you cannot be praying to God, fix my lustful heart, while always looking at pornography. There is a relationship between our desires and our behaviors, but fixing merely our behavior will not fix the heart. We need to seek Christ. We need to seek His forgiveness. We also cannot actively pursue sin and pray for our desires to be changed. The first thing we must do is have our identity fixed firmly and surely in Christ. We need to be constantly reminded of what His death has done for us. How His death changes everything. If you have died with Christ, you're a new man. You're a new woman. You're not just a man or woman. You're a son or daughter of God. You have a new identity. You have a new purpose. You have a new authority. You have a new power. If you want your desires to be changed, the first thing we must do is make sure our identity with Christ is clear and firm and strong. It is by believing in Him, by putting absolute confidence in what He has done, not what we do. And then, of course, it is hearing His Word and asking Him to give us the grace to obey it. We must pray constantly that God will will what He desires and then desire what He wills. We must constantly submit to the foot of the cross, expecting Him to heal us and forgive us. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Christ our King, we thank you that you are our authority. You are the head of this church. We thank you that you as our King, you died for us to set us free. No fear in death. No fear in the face of evil. Because we have you, the absolute power, the one who has absolute authority to watch over us, guide and protect us. Keep us. Keep us, Lord, in your love. Keep our hearts that are so prone to wonder. Lord, there is a treason that is constantly looking to undermine the gospel that comes even from within us. Fix us. Purify us. Protect us, Lord, from trusting in anything we do or any regulation that we create above what you've accomplished in that great day that you died for us and declared us forgiven. and declare us to be your brothers and sisters. Teach us how we can create our identity firmly and wholly in you. In your holy name we pray. Amen.