Imago Dei Series: Renewed in Christ - The Image Restored Part II

Alright, we're going to invite you to take your Bible and go to the book of Colossians, chapter 3, Colossians 3.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

We're continuing in our Imago Day series, The Image of God.

And last week we started something that I said we couldn't finish that evening.

And we laid a foundation.

We laid a foundation about how God takes the image that was originally given to us as we were created, that was lost in its purity in the fall, that's had its implications even in this fallen world, and that is displayed to us in all of its glory in Christ Himself and how that's renewed in us in salvation.

And so last week we began to look at that, and tonight, hopefully, we'll finish it.

Last week we laid a foundation.

Today, hopefully, we can build the house and even put a roof on the top of it.

So we'll see how that goes.

And not to repreach what we talked about last week, but we looked at three different aspects of how God renews the image in us.

And first, we said that the people of God are a new creation.

If anyone's in Christ, the old is gone, the new is come.

And we said that God doesn't ask a dead man to act like he's alive.

We said the purpose of God for every believer was to bring us into conformity with the image of God.

It says in Romans chapter 8, verse 29, that we who were predestined have been predestined that we would be in the image of Christ Himself.

Romans 8:29

And so that glorious chain of redemption, which we'll look at a little bit later, is there.

And then we talked about the means of that transformation by looking at 2 Corinthians chapter 3.

2 Corinthians 3 · chapter mention

And there we saw that as we gaze upon the glory of God in the new covenant, that the Spirit is operative to transform us from one degree of glory to the next.

As we gaze at Christ, we find ourselves being made conformed to that image.

And so we looked at the process.

Um sorry, we looked at the initiation of it.

We also looked at God's intent and the means of it.

And so this evening, we have three other points that we're going to look at.

We're going to look at the process of how we're brought into the image of Christ, the power that works within us, and then also the completion of that transforming work.

And so tonight we're going to close the loop that the God who made us alive is the same God who is reshaping our daily life now, that he's the God who sustains our transformation throughout our life, and that one day he's going to complete what he has started.

And that every step along the way in that journey is fueled by the grace of God.

And I think it's going to be a very wonderful and helpful perspective as we look at God's word this evening.

So let's pray together.

Father, as we come into this time in your word, we want to acknowledge you to know that what you're doing is real, that the power that is being worked within us is not ours, but yours, and that we might do so with a great degree of encouragement, that the completion is certain because it's your determination.

And Father, I pray that we might hold all these truths together, that we wouldn't lose one of them and find our walk with you exhausting.

But as we see these things, to know that you who began a good work within us is the same God who not only sustains it, but will bring it to completion.

And Lord, we look forward to that day and give you praise for it already in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

All right, so let's begin by looking at the process of God by which he brings us into conformity with Christ.

And so we're here we are in Colossians chapter 3, and I want you to look bring your attention to verses 9 and 10.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

He says there, do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old self with its practices, and have put on the new self.

You're being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator.

Now hold your hold a finger or a ribbon or whatever you need there, and go back just a few pages to Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

And there I want us to look, beginning in verse 22, at something that is very, very similar.

It says there, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God's likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.

Now, when you look at these two passages of Scripture, and knowing that Ephesians and Colossians hold a lot of commonalities, it might sort of conjure up in your mind this idea that Paul is saying exactly the same thing.

Maybe a little change of words, but he's basically saying the exact same thing.

But if you look at it very carefully, there's some nuances and some layers there in there that are different, and the differences do matter.

And so I want us to look at this.

So let's look at the Colossians one first, and then we'll go back to the Ephesians one.

And when you look at Colossians there, in verse 9, there's a verb that's translated there, and you can see it in the CSB.

It tells us, since you have put off the old man.

And that word since speaks to us about something that's already done, that it's a completed action, and that it's decisive.

This is already taken off.

And in the Greek there's a prefix to it that intensifies it.

So this taking off of the old man is not a loosening of your tie or maybe just a slipping off of your jacket.

This is talking about somebody who's taking a garment and just ripping it right off and casting it aside, and it's not going back on.

It's that kind of idea.

It's talking about something that's already happened.

At conversion, at the moment of your union with Christ, you were ripped out of the old self.

You were taken out of Adam, and you were put into Christ.

You were brought into a whole new realm, taken out of the kingdom of darkness, brought into the kingdom of light, transferred into the kingdom of the Son that God loves.

This is that kind of decisive movement of your person.

And so Paul here is not commanding the Christians to do something that they haven't yet done.

He's reminding them of something that's already been accomplished since you have put off the old man.

Now, take a look at verse 10.

And there things shift a little bit to what's happening in the present.

It tells us there, you are being renewed, and I've skipped a little bit, and I hope you notice that.

So the decisive action is past, but there is an ongoing process in the present.

Now I want you to notice what I passed over, that you have put on the new self.

That too is a decisive action that's already happened.

And so, sandwiched in between this having put off the old man and in having put on the new self, there is within the middle of this an ongoing process of renewal.

And notice how that happens.

It's stated with this beautiful precision: it is toward the full knowledge, according to the image of the one who created it.

Now, does that not resonate with our Imago Day series?

We're going right back to Genesis chapter one.

We're going all the way back to that moment of first creation.

This image that we've talked about has been fractured by the fall, distorted by sin, is now being restored.

And it's not being restored by human effort, it's being restored by God's divine activity, in which He's progressively bringing us into the full knowledge of God, into the image of what humanity originally was meant to be.

Now, with that in mind, let's go over to Ephesians for a second.

I wish I could stay there longer, but we can't.

Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 22.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

There are three infinitives there, and I know I'm causing some of you to remember the bad days of your English grammar lessons there, but they describe the same sort of condition.

First of all, the putting off of the old self, decisive, the putting on of the new self, decisive, but in the middle again, standing there is the engine of the whole process.

Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

No longer decisive and done, but now continuous and ongoing renewal.

The putting on and the putting off are positional realities.

You have put off, you have put on.

They are the grounds of your conversion.

And the renewal is the daily progressive outworking of what is already true about you in Christ.

You might remember last week I talked about a lady who grew up in a commoner's home.

She was unused to the courts, separate from the things that were happening there in the royal house.

She had no understanding of its ways and its manners.

And the prince comes out of the castle and he finds her and he marries her.

And as soon as she said, I do, and he said, I do, she is now a princess.

She doesn't know the manner of the court, she doesn't know the ways around the castle.

She doesn't know the language.

All she knows is the way she grew up.

And yet she is someone completely different.

She is now a princess.

She is part of the royalty.

And the rest of her life is learning how to take on what she already is.

She's learning to be that princess.

And this is what this is talking about.

We have been moved away from the old man, the old self, the in Adam, the kingdom of darkness.

And now we've been brought into the kingdom of light and the kingdom of love, the kingdom of Christ.

We have been put into Christ, the new man.

And so here we find ourselves being renewed.

Now I want you to notice with close scrutiny just how precise this is.

Look at what it has to say.

It tells us here that we are to be renewed in our minds.

The spirit of your minds, the attitude of your minds.

This is the place of the battleground.

This is the theater, if you will, of transformation.

This is where it happens.

It's the mind that still operates according to the old patterns of thinking.

And as they're confronted by the truth of God, begin to take on the new patterns of thinking into the realm in which we've now been placed.

It is in the mind that the deceitful desires of the old kingdom still ring, and our ears, sadly, are too attuned to what it used to tell us, and we would listen to.

And there it is, crying over the walls into the new kingdom.

And he's saying, Tune your ears to the knowledge of God in your mind.

The process of sanctification starts there.

It's not behavioral modification by simply practice this and then you'll do it.

It's about spiritual renovation that begins in our thinking.

It is the Spirit of God through the Word of God in the interior thoughts and understandings and mindsets of the believer that were changed.

This is why Romans chapter 12 says this: Do not be conformed to this age.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

Don't be pressed into its mold, but rather be transformed by the renewing of your what?

Mind.

Your mind.

So let me give you just an echo out of the Old Testament.

We don't need to turn there, but in Zechariah chapter 3, there's one of the most striking scenes in Old Testament prophecy.

Zechariah 3 · chapter mention

Joshua the high priest is standing there before the messenger of the Lord, and right next to him is the accuser.

Okay?

Imagine that.

The high priest standing before the messenger of the Lord, and the accuser right next to him.

And Joshua the high priest is standing there clothed with filthy clothes, it says in verse 3 of chapter 3 of Zechariah.

And that word filthy is not like you got some spaghetti stains on your shirt.

It is a rather vivid and disgusting image because what the filthy clothes are are excrement.

He is soiled with excrement all over his high priestly clothes.

This is a comprehensive defilement and is an image to represent the people of God represented by the high priest that are covered with the overt smell and appearance of their sin.

It's odious, right?

And what does the Lord tell him to do?

Uh, here's a tissue.

Uh, could you clean yourself up before you come in here?

Does he tell him to do that?

Not at all.

He doesn't tell Joshua to clean himself up, he doesn't hand him a basin and a towel and saying, here's where you need to go get things changed.

He tells him this in verse 4 take off your filthy clothes.

And then he speaks directly to Joshua in that same verse and says, This I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with festal garments, wedding dresses, wedding attire, the celebratory whiteness of celebration and enjoyment.

And moments later in verse 5, a clean turban is put on his head, and he is clothed while the messenger of the Lord is standing by.

There's that putting off, putting on picture right there in the prophet.

Now notice it was God doing it, removing the stench and the sight of the filthiness of sin, and giving him the clothes that were right for being in the presence of God.

In the early church, this imagery was actually practiced.

In ancient baptistries, and they found this in an excavated baptistry in Ephesus, archaeologists had found robing chambers right next to baptismal pools.

And what would happen is baptismal candidates would literally take off a robe and then step into the water of baptism and then come out of the water and be clothed with a white robe.

Right?

And the architecture matches that.

They would have the dressing rooms, the baptismal pool, and the robing chamber.

There they found that in archaeology in Ephesus.

So when Paul is speaking here, I wonder if that practice wasn't already in place during the New Testament era.

If it was, these people would have really understood exactly what Paul was saying, having already put off the old man and having already put on the new, now that I'm dressed in the white robe, I'm learning to live according to the dress I have.

And here we are tonight.

Some of us know that that old garment has been removed.

We are a new creature in Christ.

But we also know that when Tuesday arrives, there's the possibility of those old patterns of our life reasserting themselves.

We get on the road, we're headed to work, and that guy cuts us off.

And we've got a few words we're used to saying, and they come rushing to our head.

The old ways of thinking, the old reflexes, the old anxieties, the old self-reliances, they surface.

And when they do, you wonder, am I changing?

Is this process actually happening?

Think about it this way.

A patient goes in and they have a major surgery, and they've had a hip replacement.

And the surgeon is already done to work, the old joint has been removed, a new joint has been put in, the surgery is done, and the surgeon is saying it's a success.

And as soon as you stand up, you will go, Oh, that hurts.

What is it that's happening?

The muscles haven't learned to cooperate with the new joint yet.

They're still used to trying to compensate with the weaknesses of the old joint.

But now that the surgery is there, it's done.

And that old limp reasserts itself.

And it's not because the surgery hasn't happened, it's because the muscles need to be trained to move according to the new joint.

And so the physical therapist said, Let's get you moving, let's get you walking, let's get those muscles attuned to the new you.

That's sanctification, if I can use that as an analogy.

The decisive acts have been accomplished.

You've been united with Christ.

Your old self has been stripped away.

You've been brought into the new self, who is Christ, and the renewal is ongoing.

It's daily and it's sometimes painful, but it's always the purpose work of the Spirit.

He is conforming you to what is already true about you in relationship to your position with Christ.

And the implications of this is not simply the Christian life waiting for a future deliverance from sin, or a matter of pretending that the struggle with sin doesn't exist, but it's a matter of seeing that renewal as it's already underway.

So if you're a new believer, you shouldn't be surprised by the gap that you know of what's true of you and what you're going to experience in your daily life.

There's a lot of new renewal of your mind that is going to be taking place.

And that gap there is not an evidence that you're not converted, it's the evidence of what God.

Is bringing you into more and more each day.

If you're a mature believer and you feel kind of stuck or stale, or perhaps feeling like renewal isn't actually happening, don't think of it like regression, but God making it aware that he is drawing you further than where you're at.

That he loves you just as you are, but he loves you so much he won't keep you as you are.

He will bring you into conformity with Christ.

And so he calls us to press into the scriptures, to allow the word of God to adapt and to change us, to confront those settled patterns.

And so what you can do is get into the word and pray this.

May the word have its transforming effect in me as I read it.

May it renew the spirit of my mind.

May it give me new desires and increased inclinations and a longing to be drawn more and more into the likeness of Jesus.

Now that is the process.

Now we want to talk about the power that is there.

So let's go to Galatians chapter 5.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

Galatians chapter 5.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

If the renewal of our mind is the engine of sanctification, and the putting off and putting on describes the daily shape of our Christian life, then where does the power come from?

That's the question we're going to answer.

And one thing we need to know is that information alone is not transformation.

Merely knowing something doesn't change us, and we know that.

But look at Galatians chapter 5 and verse 22.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Against such things there is no law.

Now, before we go any further, I want to draw a contrast here by taking a look at verse 19.

Paul there, which he has just finished talking about in these verses, lists what he calls the works of the flesh.

Now, do you hear a difference there?

Works of the flesh, plural, multiple, fragmented, disjointed acts of rebellion, and they're listed there.

These are produced actions, works, effort-based, scattered, disjointed.

But when Paul turns to the what the Spirit produces, he does not say fruits of the Spirit.

He says fruit of the Spirit.

One unified, organic, interconnected reality.

This is not a list of nine separate qualities where you could say, you know, my self-control's doing pretty well, but my goodness, my gentleness needs some help.

He's not saying that.

What he's saying is, this is the fruit of the Spirit with nine expressions, but it's one action because you don't get love without joy, and you don't get patience without gentleness, and you don't get self-control without faithfulness.

They all come together.

They grow together because they come from a single source.

And that source is not us.

The source is the Spirit of God dwelling within us to produce his own life in display of the character of Christ in our daily experience.

Now feel the difference between the two.

The flesh works and it produces sin.

The spirit produces fruit, something that grows organically from a life that is not our own.

The difference between works and the fruit of the spirit are like the difference between a factory and an orchard.

Right?

You go into a factory and you labor in the still mill and you go behind a machine and you stamp out the products, and you come out of there exhausted.

And the products are your sin.

But you go into an orchard and you don't make the fruit happen.

Yes, you might tend the soil and water the roots, but the life of the tree is what produces the fruit.

This is the fruit of the Spirit.

It's not a product of our discipline.

It is the evidence that God's life is flowing through us, and He is producing His fruit.

Now, hold on to that thought.

Let's go just a couple pages away from Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

Philippians 2.

Verse 13, 12 and 13.

And Paul gives here us the theological architecture that holds this together for us.

Therefore, my dear friends, just as you've always obeyed, so now not only in my presence, but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

For it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to his own good pleasure.

This is one of the most carefully balanced statements in all of Paul's writings.

And if you lean too heavily one way or the other, you're going to distort it.

It has to be held in balance.

And what we find out here is that there's genuine human responsibility, that we are to be active in working out our own salvation.

Salvation and sanctification are sanctification, it's not passivity, it's not quietism, it's not sitting in your chair waiting for God to do something to you.

And it's certainly not what I heard in a church in Southern California where someone said, God put him in a trance for three days and he came out sanctified.

It's not that passive.

But when it comes to the ground and the foundation and the reason for that imperative for us, we are told this for it is God who is at work in you.

That energy that leads us is God's.

And what that energy does is it produces the willing and the working.

When you stop and you sit with someone and say, Let's pray now, that prompting is God's active working in you for his own good pleasure.

When you say, I want to change this action or this habit or this thought or this pattern in my life, even if the change feels slow, even if it feels like failure more than success, the very desire and the movement toward that is God working his work in you to both will and to work according to his good pleasure.

This energy is God's.

We're not told to walk by the Spirit in order to get the Spirit.

We're told to walk by the Spirit because the Spirit already lives within us, and the life is already flowing into our life.

And so the Christian motivation is not one of guilt, it's not one of fear.

It's taking on board this breathtaking truth that God's life is active within us, that He is doing something, the transformation of our person.

So let me just sort of bring us into a couple places.

If we're a parent, exhausted, feeling a little thin, aware that you might have been a little short with your children this afternoon, in a way that didn't reflect the fruit of the Spirit.

The Bible doesn't say try harder tomorrow.

It says God is at work in you, both to transform your desire and to give you the strength.

Your job is not to manufacture patience within you.

Your job is to remain connected to the vine, to walk in step with the spirit, to return to Christ when you've wandered, to trust that the fruit is growing when you don't see it.

If you're a young person and you're trying to figure out who you are, what your identity is, caught in the middle of comparison traps that social media has weighed down upon your conscience, and you're measuring yourself against those curated images that aren't even real about the people that are there in front of you, you're not left to simply construct an identity.

You've already been given one.

You are in the kingdom of God.

You are in Christ.

And if you are in Christ, the Spirit is at work within you.

And if we're here tonight and we're in the middle of a season of difficulty or perhaps even suffering, when it feels like the fruit is absent, when it feels like the joy is dim, when it feels like the peace has gone, let me say this.

Fruit grows in those seasons too.

Yes, just as we have now in spring, blossoms, but there are also seasons of dormacy.

There are seasons in which it looks like the tree is dead, but that tree is not dead.

The roots are still drawing water, the life is still present, and in God's time, that tree is going to blossom and it is going to bloom and it is going to grow and produce glorious fruit.

The Spirit has not left you.

He is working even in the difficult times to prepare you for a season of fruitfulness.

And that leaves us with one more point.

The process, the power, and then the completion, the perfected image and glory.

So we come to this final movement.

Last week we started with the people of God being made a new creation.

We moved to the purpose of God so that we might be conformed to the image of his son.

We trace the means by beholding that glory of Christ in the new covenant and being transformed by the Spirit as we gaze upon that glory.

Tonight we've walked through the process, the renewal of our mind, the power of the Spirit, but now we end at our destination.

The completion.

Let's turn to first John 3 and verse 2.

Dear friends, we're God's children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed.

We know that when he appears, we will be like him because we will see him as he is.

Now notice how this builds the argument.

First of all, our present identity.

We are God's children now.

Not we will be God's children.

It's not aspirational, it's a settled present reality.

You are God's child right now, at this moment.

You're His.

But then there's a tension.

What we will be has not yet been revealed.

There's something coming.

Something coming that is connected to our present identity, that is real, and our future destiny will exceed the capacities that we have at this moment to fully appreciate.

It's beyond what we can ask or think.

However, we have some idea.

Because he says, when he appears, we will be like him and we will be able to see him as he is.

And there is that idea of conformity.

We know that we are gods.

We don't know quite all what that means, but we do know that we will be conformed to the image of Christ himself.

We will bear his likeness, not partially and then not progressively, not approximately, but fully and completely and finally conform to his image.

And we will see him as he is.

The beautific vision to see God in his glory, something that hasn't been done on earth, accomplished in an instant, when all of that process of sanctification has been realized in its complete fullness, to see him and to be like him.

Now let's go to Romans eight.

Why is this not just simply a wistful thing?

Well, we mentioned it last week, but we need to hear it again.

In verse 30 of chapter 8.

He though well begin in verse 29.

For those he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters, and those he predestined, he also called, and those he called, he also justified, and those he justified, he also glorified.

This is what theologians call the golden chain of redemption.

It starts with God in his predestination, and it moves through God's purposes all the way to glorification.

A certainty that is as certain as your justification.

And there's no break in this chain.

There's not a link that is severed.

Every single person that has been predestined, he calls, and everyone he calls, he justifies, and everyone he justifies, he glorifies.

Every single one.

There's not a dropout between predestination and glorification.

There's no casualties along the way, because it's God who began this work who is going to complete it.

Not because we're strong enough to hold on, but because he's faithful enough never to let go, which is where Paul finishes the chapter.

Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So let's finish by looking at Philippians 3.

Philippians 3.

And here we'll stop because we'll see the substance of that glorification in this passage.

In verse 20 and 21, chapter 3.

Our citizenship is in heaven, and we're eagerly awaiting for a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will transform the body of our humble condition into the likeness of his glorious body by the power that enables him to subject everything to himself.

It's not just simply a spiritual metaphor or poetic abstraction.

Paul is talking about your body.

You know, the one that aches, the one that ages, that one?

The body that bears all the marks of the fall, disease, and disability and decay, and eventually death.

That body, that body is going to be transformed.

And it is transformed into the conformity of the body of Christ's glory through the resurrection and the ascension into the heavenlies.

Your body will be made like his resurrected, glorified body.

And notice the power that accomplishes it.

The language of this will take your breath away.

By the power that enables him to subject everything to himself.

The power that holds the universe in its order.

Did you catch that?

Every single, every single element, every single molecule, every single atom, every single particle, every single subparticle that operates within the scope of God's sovereign control is the power that will transform this into the likeness of Christ.

The same power that governs the motions of the galaxies and sustains the existence of everything is the power by which God will bring you into a glorified new creation.

So there it is.

The whole story.

Genesis 1.

God created humanity and his image.

And here it is again, that image, now once again, whole, unbroken, and radiating with the very image of God Himself.

What a wonderful thing.

Sanctification is a process along the way to this movement.

It's not the end of our Christian life, it's simply part of the process.

And the scriptures tell us this: just as we born the image of the man of dust, so we will also bear the image of a man from heaven.

1 Corinthians 15, verse 49.

1 Corinthians 15:49

And in Revelation 21 and 22, the dwelling of God is with man, and they shall see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads, the image restored, and the likeness complete.

So let's just sort of pull all of today together for a second.

And think about a galler or not a gallery, but an artist's studio.

And there is a block of marble.

And the artist is standing there before the raw stone.

What does the artist see?

What no one else sees?

The finished.

Product.

Before the first chip falls, that artist knows exactly what's hiding inside that marble block.

And so the artist begins.

She strikes with a chisel.

It's not a random strike.

It's not a careless strike.

It's a precision strike.

Every blow purposeful.

Every removal intentional.

Some strikes large and dramatic.

But all of it operating on the stone as sections of it fall away.

Other strikes are fine, detailed, delicate.

And if you weren't paying close attention, perhaps even imperceptible.

But the artist knows what she's doing.

To the untrained eye, watching from the outside, you might look at the process and say, it's a pretty violent process.

Walking away with a chisel and a hammer.

But the sculptor knows what she's doing because she's already seen the finished product before she began.

And she doesn't stop.

She doesn't take her chisel and her hammer and say, that's close enough.

Because she isn't going to finish until she obtains what she started to make.

You see, God is not experimenting with our life.

And he is not going to settle for where we're at.

Because he has already seen the finished image before the beginning.

And he's going to bring that image into full completion.

That is our glorification.

That is the promise.

And it doesn't depend upon our performance.

It's because the sculptor is at work.

He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ.

Philippians 1, 6.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for this eternal hope that is ours.

That it is not based upon how optimistic we might be or how wishful we can utter our desires.

But we can hold it with a settled confidence and expectation that what you've promised you are going to perform.

And so, Father, may our heart be anchored in that.

And Lord, for today and tomorrow and the next and all the days that we have, let it be that which steadies us, even though the process of sanctification might feel painful or slow or even stalled.

Let it sustain us when we feel like the power of transformation is outside our grasp.

To know that what you started, you'll finish.

It's certain because you're faithful.

That's why you promised it.

And Father, with that in mind, we thank you that you would take us, who by our own wicked works and deeds have produced works of the flesh and have lived within them.

That you would take us, and you would desire to renew your image in us, so that we might be renewed according to the image of our Creator.

And we thank you in the name of Christ.

Amen.