God's Love (Romans 5:1-11)

We can't pretend that there's not suffering. We can't pretend there's no trouble. We believe, we actually understand why things are so bad and so corrupt and so painful. It's sin. It's our sin. But we have to realize something. The Bible doesn't say if you suffer as a Christian. The Bible says when you suffer. Christians actually should be expecting suffering and should be training themselves to be ready. See, suffering does something. It shows us what we truly love, what we truly worship, and how we worship. It reveals our hearts. So today we're going to meditate on God's great salvation so that We rejoice in Christ even when we suffer. We're going to meditate upon the great salvation we have in Christ so that we always rejoice in Christ, especially when we suffer. If you look in your bulletin, your order of worship on page nine, you'll see there our sermon is from Romans 5, one through 11. That can be found on page 942. If you don't have a Bible, please take the one in front of you. Our passage is found on page 942. We believe that the words of life are contained in the scripture before you. Please take and read. Our passage begins a new section in Romans where we've discussed a number of things that are important for us to review. Romans 1, 16 and 17, that's the thesis of Romans. We're justified by faith. The gospel is the power of God to save sinners. Paul then goes from Romans 1.18 to 3.20 to make sure we realize we need salvation. We all are without excuse. We're all idolaters. We all go after our own way and it's against God apart from His grace. No one is righteous, not even one. And then if you look with me to 3.20, Chapter three, verse 21. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. There's no distinction. All have sinned, fallen short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift to the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith. Friends, we need salvation and God has provided it in Jesus. Chapter four shows the importance of faith through Abraham. And now chapter five, I want you to see important words. Therefore, since. We have been justified. We're gonna start looking at the benefits of salvation. Chapter five begins a new movement in Romans where he's established we're in need of salvation. He's established God is able to save in Christ by faith. Now we're gonna start looking at what it means to be saved by faith. The benefits. Since we have been justified by faith, We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. I want you to see something. I want you to see the outline here, that important phrase, page nine on the order of worship. In Christ, in Christ, in Christ, in Christ. As we look to our passage, you're going to continue to hear this phrase, through Christ, with Christ, in Christ, through Him, in Him, through Him, over and over again. Salvation is centered in what Christ has done for us. Every blessing from the Heavenly Father comes to us in Christ and is received by faith. As we look to the passage, I want you to see, therefore, since, verse one, also verse nine, since therefore we've been justified. He's already established justification. We've been declared righteous. We're not righteous. But God in the power of His Word declares us righteous. Since therefore we've been declared righteous, we have these benefits. Peace, hope, love, reconciliation. This is just the first 11 verses of the benefits. We're going to go through Chapter 8. The benefits of salvation are great. It changes who we are. We have to see something else that's repeated here is the word rejoice. Christians are supposed to be people who rejoice. In Christ we're justified, so we rejoice. In Christ, we stand in grace, so we rejoice. In Christ, we're saved from God's wrath, so we rejoice. In Christ, we've been reconciled with God, so we rejoice. In Christ, we see His great love for us, and so we rejoice. Hear these truths as I read chapter 5, verses 1 through 11. And I want you to see the sections. In Christ, we have peace with God, verses 1 and 2a. In Christ, we rejoice in hope, as 2b through 5. In Christ, we have assurance of God's love, verses 6 through 8. And there's an important transition here. Notice the 4. The hope we have is built upon the foundation of God's love. And then verses 9 through 11. In Christ, we rejoice in our reconciliation. hear the word of the Lord. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings. Knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame. Because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, Much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you for this word you've given to us that speaks so clearly. You have justified those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ, your son. You have crushed him for our iniquity. You have given us new life. You satisfied your wrath. Help us, Lord, to be a people that rejoice. in this great salvation you have provided for us. Help us, Lord, to be a people that rejoice in this peace, in this hope, in this reconciliation, and even in our suffering, knowing that you, the glorious one, are bringing about your will in us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. As we walk through this, Well, Romans, beginning in Chapter 1, the gospel, he's eager to preach it to the church. The gospel is God's power to save. And one of the things we still have to make sure we're clear about, we are unrighteous in our thoughts, our words, our actions. We are unrighteous. We do deserve God's wrath. But God sent His Son to die on our behalf, to die so that whenever He looks at Christ, when He looks at us who believe in Christ, our sin is punished in Him. The wrath of God that we deserve is satisfied in Him. I want to begin by making it clear because we're getting the benefits of salvation. If you're not a Christian this morning, that's all you need to hear. God is righteous. We are unrighteous. He declares us righteous when we believe in a son who was perfect, who died on behalf of sinners. We need forgiveness. We need to have our sin taken off of us. So when you believe in Christ, He takes your sin away. He washes you. You can be forgiven. That is the gospel. That is the power of God to save you. Please do not leave here today without talking to someone about that. If you're a Christian, we're gonna start talking about who you are supposed to be. In many ways, we're actually talking about who you are. I like to quote A.W. Tozer who says, what you think about God is the most important thing about you. There's truth to that in that the way you think about God, it does change everything. It filters through in all that you do and all that you are. The way you think about God, it affects everything. But there's one thing that's more important. What God thinks about you. What God actually says about you is so significantly more important than what you think about him. So what we're going to look into today is what He says about us, that the beauty of God's Word is He makes it so clear so that we know who we are based upon what He thinks. That's the truth. So now we're going to be looking at what God says about us who believe in Christ. First, in Christ, we have peace with God. Here again, verses one through two. Notice again, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Him, that there is no other way of salvation, there is no other hope, it's in Christ and Christ alone. Now, peace is a key theme throughout all Scripture, and it's really tied to rest. The last song we just sang really captured that we find perfect peace and rest. Peace is not chaos. Peace is not fighting. Peace is not suspicion. Peace is not worry or anxiety. Peace is when all things are the way they're supposed to be. Now, we live in a world that is not the way it's supposed to be. There's death. There's deception, there's murder, there's lies, there's our idolatry. Peace is when all of our relationships are put in the proper way. When we relate to God properly, we relate to one another properly, we relate to this world properly. You realize Genesis 3 describes how everything lost its peace? We rejected God. We lost a relationship with one another. The next chapter, a murder. We lost our peace with creation. God is restoring peace. Peace is when we have all our relationships in right order. There's nothing worse than having a relationship with somebody who is unpredictable. Have you ever had a friend where you show up to school and you don't know who it's going to be that day? Is it going to be the person who is mean to you and picks on you or is it going to be the person who wants to treat you like their best friend? There's nothing more, more, more frightening and lacking peace and chaotic than trying to figure out, am I going to be accepted or rejected today? God does not intend for us to have that kind of worrying relationship. He wants us to know if you believe in Christ, you have peace. It's clear. It's absolute. He's steadfast. Peace is something that we all get. The world is longing for peace. We all talk about peace. Musicians sing about it. Politicians promise it. Beauty pageants, everyone gets so pretty to wish for it. Everybody wants peace. Some people say we need to talk more to get peace. Some people say we need bigger guns to get peace. Some people say we need to get rid of religion to get peace. God says you need to repent and rejoice in Christ to have peace. This is one of the hard realities. It's easier for non-Christians to unite together peacefully in projects against God than it is for Christians to unite together in peace for God. Why is that? The world is supposed to see that we're not like them. They're supposed to see we're united in joy and rejoicing because of what Christ has done for us. The Tower of Babel, that's easily built in this world. The church, it seems like it's always in question. There's always a battle. It's because we lose our rejoicing in Christ. Our primary problem is always a God problem, and therefore the peace we need to first see is peace with God. When God promises peace, he says, God no longer holds your sin against you. because Christ has taken it. When we have peace with God, we know we've been forgiven of every sin, future, present, past. Every sin is forgiven. We need to realize something here is that there's two different kinds of peace we need to think about. There's legal peace and relational peace. Legal peace always precedes relational peace. God declares you righteous and forgiven. And then we get to enjoy that relationship that is reconciled. Justification is the beginning of salvation because it's there that God says, I no longer hold your sin against you. I count you as innocent. And then we actually get to enjoy again a relationship with God. Legal peace leads to relational peace. We enjoy relational peace because God has said, I no longer count your sins against you, I count them against my son. Now let's be friends. More than that, now you can be my beloved son. You can be my beloved child. Peace is when God says it is well. I want you to notice something else in the text here. Through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace. So it's a gift and we stand in it. Peace is a position. It's a place where we stand. We're not working for it. It's a gift. It's a position. Our assurance comes from what God has said. And secondly, peace is meant to be experienced. God has saved you to truly rejoice in the peace you have with him. Are you currently rejoicing in your relationship with God? Christian, do you confess faith in Christ and rejoice and have a thankful heart and honor him in worship? Or are we grumbling and complaining? Or are we bored? You see, Christ purchased our peace with His blood. Christ purchased rejoicing with His life. That is a high price to pay for us to look at it and say, I think I'm bored now. I'm not satisfied with that anymore. we have been purchased by His blood to enjoy and experience a new relationship with God. Are we rejoicing? The second point we see here, in Christ we rejoice in hope, verses two through five. So we have that position granted to us, that's peace. And now we see the action. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our suffering. Now rejoicing in the hope of God's glory, that hope is when we were expecting something that is not yet ours. The glory of God when we see Him as He is. Let's play a game to try to capture this. What's on your bucket list? What are the things that you think you just have to enjoy before you kick the bucket, before you die? Those are probably the things that are most threatening to your true worship of Jesus Christ. Your desire to rejoice in things on this side of glory are most likely the things that are most keeping you, most likely keeping you from rejoicing fully in Christ. So we don't kick the bucket. We live forever. If you're a Christian, you actually believe life gets better when we die. That's why after the Lord's Supper, we say, come Lord Jesus, come quickly. This world is not mine. I'm an alien. If you're satisfied with this world, you haven't truly understood what Christ has purchased for you. Another analogy. Are you pregnant with the glory of heaven? So whenever a mom gets pregnant, she starts putting the house in order, right? Start nesting, you put the nursery together. She has hope of something that is not yet, but is coming. So the house starts putting in order, she's excited, she's making sure everything's ready for when the baby comes, she is ready and prepared. The baby's not there yet. Christian, we are supposed to have the same kind of certainty and hope and excitement of the glory that is to come, that our lives should be putting everything in order in anticipation for the glory that is to come. How much of your life decisions are marked by the fact that this is not your world anymore? The world to come, Christ in His final state of glorifying us, that is what we're working for. There's an old horrible saying, are you so heavenly minded that you're no earthly good? I don't even know what that means. There's no way you can be too heavenly minded. Are you so earthly minded that you're no heavenly good? Are you so earthly minded there is no enjoyment and expectation of the glory to come? Or to be rejoicing of the hope that is still yet to come? Now what's actually most provocative in this passage isn't the rejoicing in the hope of the glory to come, that promise. Verse three, not only that, but rejoice in our suffering. Paul here is saying rejoice in the promise of what's to come, but also rejoice in your present. And the present is marked with suffering. We are to rejoice in our suffering. Just let that sink in for a moment. Rejoice in suffering. Sounds crazy. Why would anybody rejoice in suffering? Well, if you're a believer, you see that suffering has a certain effect. We need to ask why we rejoice, how do we rejoice. First, what does it look like? Rejoicing in suffering is not this. It's not when you hear a prescription, you say, yay, I get a root canal. Yippee. Sorry for those who are dentists. No one likes a root canal. It's not looking at the suffering in itself and saying, yay, I get to enjoy that. No, notice what the text says following that. Knowing. that suffering produces endurance, that endurance produces character, and character produces hope. First, what does it look like? What follows is important because suffering leads to endurance. When suffering happens, we're under pressure. And that pressure starts to squeeze, and it's actually starting to squeeze out what's inside. And so it starts revealing idols. It reveals the things that we really hold on to. It reveals the things that, the curses that lie deep in our heart. When we're suffering and we're suffering and rejoicing, we're supposed to be saying, Christ, I trust you. You have loved me. God, you gave me your son. You will not hold anything good from me. When suffering comes down, it's supposed to start squeezing out a true faith that I know above all else, God loves me. Sadly, too often, when suffering comes, it squeezes out other things, questions, complaints, even curses. When suffering comes, it's supposed to lead us to cry out, how long, oh Lord? God, why is this happening? And Lord, let it have its proper end. Why? Why would I rejoice in suffering? No, I want to rejoice at the beach. That makes sense to me. I want to rejoice when, you know, my team wins, because that makes sense to me. But this says rejoice in suffering because it leads to character. It leads to endurance, which leads to character. Now, endurance, the word literally means to remain under. To endure means you are underneath the pressure and you remain there as it squeezes. And as it squeezes it, it reveals how fickle we are. It reveals the kind of curses that are in our hearts. Remember Job. Job lost his oxen. Then the same minute later, he hears that he lost his sheep. Then he lost his camels. Then he lost his sons and his daughters. And then he rose. He shaved his head, he fell on the ground and he declares, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. God gives, He takes away. When we suffer, do we charge God or do we say blessed be His name? So you have to realize what God is doing with suffering is he's leading us to endurance, which squeezes us in, which helps us realize what's in there, either a trusting God to be strengthened or a fickle faith that needs to be changed so we can change our character. What God wants is worship. What God designed us for is worship. And what God is doing with suffering is to make us more faithful worshipers. because when we are worshiping God, we see His glory. Suffering also does something about our relation with Christ. It draws us closer to Him. Christ suffered the greatest suffering. He is the suffering servant. His creation crucified Him. The mouths He formed from dust, they mocked Him. The hearts He breathed life into hated Him. The hands that were meant to serve Him nailed Him to the cross. Yet our Savior suffered and rejoiced in this because He knew that God would use this suffering for His glory. Jesus rejoiced in His suffering because He trusted the Father to use it for His glory and our good. Now, we may not see the purpose of our suffering as clear as Jesus did, but if we can look to the cross and see that He uses the greatest wrong to bring about the most glory and the most good for people, we can trust that in all of our suffering, He can bring about His glory. We wait. So this is the hard part of suffering is when it feels meaningless. God says, If you rejoice in your suffering, it is meaningful because it's going to lead to endurance. It's going to lead to character, which leads to hope as my Holy Spirit is pouring out my love in your heart. Friends, we suffer and rejoice in it because we know it has meaning. It changes our character. Suffering leads to reliance on Christ. Now, when suffering happens, we usually say, God, I need you to change this. Or we tell God, we don't say it explicitly, I'm gonna start thinking about you differently. See, when God brings suffering, he wants to change our hearts, our character, the way we think. God uses suffering as a way to change us, but whenever suffering happens, we normally say, God, change everything else. And if he doesn't, we usually start changing the way we think about God. We have to be submissive, praying, God, would you bring about the change you desire in me with the suffering? Let me apply this to a particular group, youth. Youth. Everybody who's a youth, everybody who's a parent of a youth, wake up your youth. Youth. It feels like you're suffering right now, most likely, whenever you have to obey and honor your parents. I say it feels like suffering, but it really isn't suffering. It feels like suffering because you're coming into your own. It feels like they're keeping you back. They're holding you back from really becoming who you think you need to be. What they're doing is protecting you. And what you do by listening and submitting and honoring is building character. God designed it so that by submitting and honoring and obeying parents, your character is being changed so that when real suffering happens, you're godly enough to respond with worship and rejoicing. You're being trained to worship right now by your parents by listening and honoring and obeying. Endure. Let that character change take place. It's good for you. The final thing we need to see in our passage is hope. Hope. And hope does not put us to shame. The beauty of being a Christian is you're supposed to be an optimist. I don't really like that, because I'm a very good pessimist. I do not like people who make lemonade out of lemons. That kind of constant optimism and wanting to turn everything positive, it's troubling. But here's the reality is I want to say I'm a realist because I'm a pessimist, but no, the Christian optimist, he's the realist. The Christian optimist is the realist because they always have hope that God is going to bring about something good. You will not be put to shame. What that means is this, your choice to place your faith in Christ, it will be vindicated. It will be proven right. It will not disappoint. Here's the hard part. Your spouse, future or present, they disappoint. Your children, they disappoint. Your parents, that disappoint, your friends that disappoint, your church will disappoint, your pastor will disappoint. Christ will not disappoint. That choice to put all your hope and trust in Him will never disappoint. That hope is not put to shame. because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who's been given to us. Let's see more as to why that will not disappoint. In Christ, we have assurance of God's love. Notice this very strong connection. For. This is the groundwork. This is the reason. For. While we were weak, Christ died for the ungodly. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Now, I want you to see, he makes a comparison. Somebody might die for a righteous person, maybe for a good person, but here's the truth. No one's righteous, no one's good. No one's righteous, no one's good, but, while we were weak, yet even while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Look at verse eight. God shows His love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. For it's the one thing we have to be assured of. The one thing we're supposed to have certainty about is God's love for us. He's given us the greatest gift he could possibly give us, his own life, his own son. What would he ever hold back from us? When suffering happens, we question if God's good. We question, does He really love me? Why would He do this? That's why the cross must always be central to how we think because there's no questioning His love because He sent His Son to die for us while we were enemies, while we were still sinners. This isn't a leap of faith, a blind leap of faith. We step out of darkness and into the light. God has made His love so crystal clear. What we're stepping out into when we believe in Christ, it's the greatest love that's been demonstrated in the greatest way. We have to be certain God loves us. God loves us. We know that when we look to the cross. It has absolute certainty because he sent his son to die for us while we were the ones nailing his hands with our sin. It was our sin that held him there. We sing that. He loves us. The beauty of his love is it had nothing to do with us. We didn't deserve it. He didn't say, wow, look at how talented that person is, or look how good they are, I'm gonna put my love on them. No, while we were still sinners, while we were still weak, we brought nothing but our sin, and God brought his love. Job professed, you give and take away, blessed be your name. He did not curse God. We know something Job did not. Job did not know that great demonstration of love of Jesus Christ down on the cross for our sins, and yet he does not curse God, he blesses him. Christians, do we confess the cross and curse God? That is not the way it's supposed to be. We're supposed to recognize constantly His steadfast love endures forever. If you are suffering, please listen. The Bible does not ever question the fact that the world as it is now opposed to God, apart from God, it's wrong. It's bad. It's not the way it's supposed to be. Here's our problem is that whenever we suffer because of how our sin has caused this world to be so bad, we like to blame God. When suffering happens, the first person we usually shake our finger at is God. The problem is we blame Him for what's wrong whenever He's actually the only one who can set things right. We learn to stop doing this by always looking to the cross. He demonstrates his love by sending his son. He wants us to know he loves us. While we may say, I don't know if I can trust you, he's demonstrated. I sent my son to die for you. No, I love you. See, we can never, we can never recognize how faithful he actually is. because we're so fickle. We can never recognize how loving He is because we lack so much love. But the Bible assures us He is faithful, He is trustworthy, He is love. If you are suffering, the place you need to look is the cross, where God has shown us how He resolves our real problem in Christ by bringing His peace. Let's look to our last section, which continues to drive the same exact theme. In Christ we are reconciled, verses nine through 11. Notice again here, since therefore, the causal language, we have now been justified because God has legally declared us innocent by Christ's blood. Since we have been justified by the blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life? More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Paul has not really introduced anything new in verses nine through 11 that he's not already talked about. Saved from wrath, that's Romans 3, propitiation. God's wrath has been satisfied by the blood of Christ. We've been justified. Now we've been saved from the wrath of God, and now we've been given life. Again, we need to recognize that legal declaration of justification. You are innocent. You are not guilty. That precedes reconciliation. In the garden, we were cast out of His presence by grace so that His righteousness would not consume us in our sin. But now He's saying, come back. Come back and we'll be friends. Come back and you'll be part of the family. Come back because I love you. Now we have to see why is Paul introducing all these concepts again? Enemies now forgiven, enemies now loved. I believe it's because he's trying to help us see again. We rejoice in suffering. We rejoice in suffering because of how great a salvation we have. We rejoice in suffering because of how great a salvation we have. And so I want us to ask this one question. Are you ready for suffering? Are you ready and prepared for suffering? Is your theology strong enough? The way you think about God, what He's done, what He's said about you, is it strong enough to endure suffering? Do you recognize God's love clearly enough to rejoice in Him regardless of whatever happens? Do you trust His power to save enough to rely upon Him regardless of whatever happens. See, this matters because what God seeks to do constantly is develop a character through suffering that is always hoping and enduring in the love of Christ. We must know God, who He is, what He said about us. Now, I constantly hear, I don't want theology, I just want to know how to live. It's a false dichotomy. How to live is worship, and worship is about who God is. See, when all is well, we want a to-do list. When things are right and good, I love a good to-do list, because when I feel good, I want to feel better, and I feel better when I get things done. So we want to know, what can we do? The truth is, when suffering happens, it paralyzes us. What are you going, how are you gonna respond when you can do nothing? I brought up my response to Lisa and I's suffering, her physical suffering and how it affected our family for a reason. I was a fourth year theology student at this time. I was a good student. I knew it all. I was a very good student of theology, and I had all the right things in my head, but I responded with anger. Why? It's because I had not yet allowed the truths that I knew here to trickle down and begin to affect my desires. See, I believe these things to be true, God is sovereign, he's perfect, he's right. All things work to the good of those who love him. I believed all those things to be true, but they had not yet formed in me character that hoped. See, the classroom isn't the place where you actually learn to worship. the circumstances of suffering and the place of a church where I constantly heard the gospel. That's where my character was changed. Those truths that I had learned trickled as I was challenged, do I really believe this? Do I really believe these things in this midst of suffering? God continued to give me the promise of hope, and by his grace, he started to change that character. Sadly, I still pout, still get angry, but by God's grace, he continues to change. Now, I want to say this to make two things very clear. What you think forms your desires. what you're putting into your brain, what you're putting into your thoughts, they're forming you as a character. So what is the source that you're trusting? Is it what God says that will truly finally affect your character and make you a faithful worshiper? Or is it something else which is by definition against God? What are you allowing to transform you? Is it God's truth? or is it something against God? Secondly, you may have all the theological answers that does not mean they have taken the proper effect. You may have all the theological truth one could possibly attain that does not mean it's had its proper effect in forming you into the character we're all constantly being changed and formed as God's children. We're justified in Christ and therefore we have peace with God. We stand in His grace so that we can rejoice. We rejoice in the hope of His glory, rejoice trusting that He has meaning for our suffering. We rejoice because He loves us and that's the most sure and steadfast truth we can cling to. Rejoice because He saved us from the wrath of God. Rejoice because we're no longer enemies or beloved sons. Rejoice because we're reconciled. When suffering comes, we always want an easy out. When suffering comes, we want the right formula, we want the right thing to do, we want the right guru. Here's the truth. God says there's one thing that saves sinners. It's the gospel. What we've been talking about is the gospel. Justification, salvation, reconciliation. We go on adoption, redemption. When God begins to press in to get rid of the idols, we can only do one thing, and that is put all our hope in the truth that the gospel is the power of God to save us, to heal us, to change us. So we wait and we trust. Christian, we rejoice. We rejoice because we know He loves us. And in that, we always have hope. Will you pray with me? Father, we praise you that you are the one true God who has spoken. You've given us your light in the midst of our darkness. You've given us your love in the midst of our hatred. You've given us your own son while we were mocking and spitting and hating. Help us, Lord, to see beyond any question. You love us. because of Christ. Help us to see in Christ your great love. Let that be the unquestionable truth that we cling to, so that we hope in the promise of the glory to come. We rejoice in the glory that is to come. We rejoice even in our suffering, trusting that you are with us and you are for us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. But.