Life in the Spirit (Romans 8:7-17)

Today's gospel reading is from Matthew chapter 13, verses 1 to 9 and 18 to 23.

Matthew 13:1–9

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea, and great crowds gathered about him.

So he got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd stood on the beach, and he told them many things in parables, saying, A sower went out to sow.

As he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them.

Other seeds fell on rocky ground where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil.

But when the sun rose they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away.

Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.

Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

He who has ears, let him hear.

Hear then the parable of the sower.

When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart.

This is what was sown along the path.

As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy.

Yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arise on account of the word, immediately he falls away.

As for what was sown among the thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.

As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it.

He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Friends, let's confess our faith in the words of the Apostles' Creed.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Amen.

And now as we turn our hearts to the Lord, let us pray.

Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants, and that we may receive what we ask.

Teach us by your Holy Spirit to ask only those things that are pleasing to you through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you in the same Spirit lives and reigns forever and ever.

Amen.

Amen.

And Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be always pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer.

Amen.

So I'm spiritual, but not religious.

Have we ever heard these words before?

I'm not talking about myself, by the way.

But have we ever heard these words before, this phrase?

I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious.

I think it's it's it's trying to communicate a self-understood truth, right?

I don't belong to any particular organized religion, but I do try and cultivate a spiritual life of my own, or at least I try and find my own spiritual way.

What I've never heard is the opposite.

I've never heard someone say, I'm religious, but I'm not spiritual.

It seems like a bit of a contradiction in terms, doesn't it?

Spiritual, being spiritual seems to be a necessary condition for religion, but it doesn't necessarily work the other way around.

Here is the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 8 getting to the heart of the spiritual life.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

He's been laying out in the last number of chapters the gospel for us, that we who are justified by faith have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

We have new life in Christ.

We've been brought from death in Adam to new life in Christ, and baptism is the sign and symbol of that new life in Christ, being joined and united to Him.

We recognize Romans chapter 7 that we struggle with sin on an ongoing basis, but the power of sin is broken.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

Now, here in Romans chapter 8, Paul is laying out what this new life in the Spirit, being united to Christ, is like, and it for Paul is a deeply spiritual life.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

One author, Michael Downey, writes in Christianity Today, about 25 years ago, he writes this.

I think it's still prevalent or very, very important for us today.

He writes this that Christian spirituality is nothing other than life in Christ by the presence and power of the Spirit, being conformed to the person of Christ, and being united in communion with God and with others.

Spirituality is not an aspect of the Christian life, it is the Christian life.

I'll say that again.

Spirituality is not an aspect of the Christian life, it is the Christian life.

Here's my concern sometimes, friends.

Sometimes my concern is even if we don't identify as religious but not spiritual, sometimes, certainly in my own heart, I'm content with the outer trappings of religion.

I'm content to sort of show up and do my part.

But so often I really struggle to cultivate a deep, rich inner soil that Jesus talks about in his parable.

I struggle to cultivate good soil that's receptive and responsive to God's word.

That's receptive and responsive to the work of God's Holy Spirit.

Do you ever feel that way?

Do you ever feel sometimes like your dry soil?

I think there's good news for us today, friends.

The good news is that the heart of the Christian life is the life of the Spirit.

And the Spirit for us wants to impart life and life abundant.

Christianity is a life lived in the Spirit.

And today we're going to ask, what does that look like?

I think Paul wants us to see two things.

What does life in the Spirit look like?

It looks like two things for Paul.

And there's many different ways we go about this, by the way.

There's many different directions we could take that question.

And depending on the denomination or which church you're at, you'd probably find it's taken in this direction and not that direction.

Today we want to investigate what Paul has to say.

Bottom line, he's been talking about what life in the Spirit is like.

Bottom line, here is the evidence of the Holy Spirit's work in your heart.

Here's his ongoing, grace-based effort in your heart, cultivating your soil.

Here's what life in the Spirit looks like.

It looks like a greater awareness of yourself as a debtor to God.

You are in debt.

And we're going to talk about what kind of debt that is, and we're going to talk about why that's good news.

You're a debtor.

We're going to come to a greater awareness of this as a reality in our own hearts.

That's the first thing Paul wants us to see.

Here's the second thing he wants us to see about living life in the Spirit.

Living life in the Spirit means that we are children of God.

We are debtors and we are children.

If nothing else, life in the Spirit, life lived and cultivated in the Spirit, looks like a life of greater and greater awareness of ourselves as debtors and children.

So let's explore what that means.

Let's recognize, by the way, that the stakes are really quite high.

Paul really minces no words here.

Verse 13, Paul writes that this is a matter of life and death.

Death in the flesh or life in the spirit.

And for Paul, there really are no other options.

Just like we talked about a few weeks ago, there's either death in Adam, our old nature, or there is new life in Christ.

This is a matter of eternal significance, friends.

What is life lived and cultivated in the Spirit look like?

Let's explore that.

Let's look at number one.

Life lived in the Spirit means we come to a greater and greater awareness of ourselves as debtors.

Verse 12, Paul writes this.

So then, brothers, we can say, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.

For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if you live by the spirit, you will live.

That's eternal life.

That's abundant life.

So, debtors, what does it mean to be a debtor?

The first thing that I think when I when I read these words is I think, gosh, Paul, being in debt, isn't that a bad thing?

I mean, many of us know the real the very real reality of being in financial debt.

It's something that limits us, it's something that crushes us, it's something that uh that confines us.

How is being a debtor a good thing?

Well, we live in a culture, I think, of debt.

Financial debt, yes, but I think even more broadly, we live with a uh an understanding, an implicit understanding, that we are in constant moral debt to strive to do the right thing.

I think that's part of the impulse in cancel culture, which is a bit of a phenomenon that I've been watching play itself out in the last number of weeks.

The I I think at the at the root of cancel culture is this idea, and by the way, cancel culture is when someone has said something at some point in time that doesn't conform to the morality and ethics of our culture, and now we're going to we're gonna stop listening to that voice.

We're gonna cancel them, so to speak.

They're no longer gonna be heard or seen.

The impulse there is that we all of us owe a debt to our culture to do, say, and think the right things.

And the truth is, friends, we might not agree with what those things are.

We probably shouldn't in every aspect in our Christian life of as disciples.

But the idea is we owe an ongoing debt to do and say the right thing.

And the truth is that's the same logic that Paul has right here for our own life in Adam.

We owe a constant debt to do the right thing, and yet we who are in the flesh, we who are in this fallen state, cannot please God, is what Paul writes.

So here we are, unable to do the right thing, and that leaves us in a sort of cancel culture, a culture of stri of failing to do the right thing, and yet being unable to receive forgiveness.

That's where cancel culture ends up leaving us.

Paul wants us to take us further.

He wants to see the glorious light of the gospel being shone on our own failure to live up to the debt we owe to do the right thing.

So here Paul shines the light of the gospel.

He says that we owe a debt, not a debt according to the flesh, is what he says in verse 12.

That's not a debt we owe to live in accordance with Adam, to strive to do the right thing, to think the right things, to say the right things all the time, to strive in our own power and self-will to do the things that pleases God and the things that are right by others.

We don't owe that kind of debt.

That's a slavish kind of debt, isn't it?

That's a brutal kind of debt because that is a debt we can never repay.

That's a sort of canceled sort of debt, isn't it?

It's a debt that will never result in forgiveness or absolution or freedom.

No, we don't owe a debt according to the flesh, an insurmountable or irreconcilable debt.

We don't owe a debt that leads to condemnation in Adam.

No, we live a debt to the Spirit, who is life, who by his life gives us life.

We owe to God a very different kind of debt in Christ.

We who've been brought from death in Adam and into life in the Spirit through faith and through justification in Christ now owe a debt of gratitude.

And friends, those of us who've experienced true forgiveness know that this is a very real kind of debt.

In fact, it's it's just as real as the kind of debt that we've experienced when we've failed someone or you know, or or we experience the crushing kind of financial debt.

It's a very real kind of debt, a debt of gratitude, isn't it?

But it's a totally different kind of debt.

Instead of a limiting and crushing kind of debt, it's a freeing kind of debt.

It's a joyful kind of debt.

It's a life-giving kind of debt.

Paul writes this in chapter 8, verse 3.

We looked at this last week.

He writes that by sending his own son, God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.

What's Paul saying?

He's saying that Jesus on the cross has taken our flesh and paid our debt for us.

That's a whole new kind of Paul game.

That is, that's a freedom in Christ.

Where once we were left in a crushing and insurmountable debt in Adam, now we experience a freedom.

But we do experience a debt of gratitude.

By the Spirit you will live, is what Paul says in verse 12.

We experience new life.

The Spirit of Him who has raised Christ from the dead now dwells in us.

We've experienced a resurrection kind of forgiveness, and we wait for that day when we will experience a physical resurrection and enter into the kingdom for eternity.

What a remarkable debt that is.

That is all God's grace at work in our lives, friends.

Now we owe a debt of gratitude, a debt that turns us around to praise and worship this God who has saved us.

You are the God who saves us, worthy of all our praises, is what we sing.

So what's Paul saying?

It's a pretty remarkable thing.

The gospel doesn't leave us debt-free, but it does give us a whole new kind of debt, doesn't it?

Not a crushing debt, a debt in Adam, but a new debt in Christ, a debt of gratitude, a debt of joy, a debt of love that inspires us to follow after him.

So we can sing with the hymnist that Jesus paid it all, and all to him I owe.

Wait, do I owe something or did Jesus pay it all?

Well, yes is the answer in the gospel.

Jesus has paid it all.

He has fulfilled God's, he has satisfied God's wrath on your behalf and on my behalf.

And now the debt we owe is a debt of gratitude.

So, friends, if if we come to church on a Sunday or we come in our prayers without a sense of gratitude, and and you know, our feelings wax and wane.

That's that's a normal experience.

But friends, if if we don't have a consistent sense of ourselves as debtors, when we approach God in Christ and have a sense of just how much he has done for us, just what an unbelievable act of love he has accomplished on our behalf on the cross, the kind of things we cannot do for ourselves, if we don't recognize this, then maybe it's it's cause for some self-examination.

Sometimes we we fall into the trap of thinking, well, I'm a pretty decent person.

I I can see why God would want to save me.

He'd want to hang out with me for the rest of eternity.

So the Bible's pretty unapologetic.

In Adam all die, but in Christ all will be made or all will be brought to life.

This is an overwhelming act of God's grace.

And so now the Christian life becomes a life characterized by gratitude, by overwhelming thanksgiving and praise for this God who's brought us from death into new life by his Holy Spirit.

And now that's the same kind of gratitude, that debt of gratitude that inspires us to live in love with one another.

Because if we've received such an overwhelming blessing and grace as to have our debt paid, now we want to see that gratitude and life and love spill over into our community.

Paul will write in Romans chapter 13, he'll write, owe no one anything.

Romans 13 · chapter mention

That's the same word in Greek, owe no one anything, except to love one another.

For the one who loves one another has fulfilled the law.

That's what Christ has done on our behalf.

He's fulfilled the law, the righteous requirement of the law, on our behalf.

He's paid our debt in Adam to God so that now we live with a debt of gratitude in Him, a debt that inspires us, a debt that calls us to be disciples.

So, friends, we're invited to recognize ourselves as debtors.

That's what the Holy Spirit will prompt our hearts, posture our hearts to recognize that we are in fact debtors at the altar of grace.

We are nothing but recipients of his grace.

But we're invited to be more than debtors, by the way.

We're invited not just to be debtors who come before God, we're invited to be children who come to be a part of God's family.

The Holy Spirit witnesses to us that we are debtors, but we are children of God as well.

Verse 14, Paul writes this for we have all, or pardon me, for we all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father.

So a couple of things right off the bat.

Paul in our translation here, the English Standard Version, writes, uh, and he does write this in the Greek, that we are sons of God, that he's given us a spirit of adoption as sons.

So the first question we might ask is, Well, why isn't Paul saying sons and daughters if he's talking in the plural?

And that's a fair question asked.

You'll you'll might find other translations that will include sons and daughters.

Why is it that in our translation here it says sons?

Well, this is a probably a part of a broader conversation about biblical translation and interpretation here.

But when we approach the Bible, I think it's important to approach Paul's words on Paul's terms.

Sometimes we want to make the Bible conform to our own language, but really it's, I think it's our responsibility as disciples to enter into Paul's own thought world a little bit and try and understand what he's conveying in the context that he's conveying it.

Is Paul trying to say that sons and men have a privileged position in the life of salvation and the life of the church?

No, in fact.

I think he's saying quite the opposite.

Paul is addressing men and women alike in this Roman church, but what Paul is expressing by talking about a spirit of adoption as sons is that we've all of us been given equal rights of inheritance in Christ.

It's just a reality that in the first century, inheritance would always go to the firstborn son.

That's just the way it was.

And I think it's a very good thing that that's not the assumption that we make anymore.

But what's Paul writing when he writes to men and women alike that we've received a spirit of adoption as sons?

He's saying that we all of us in Christ have received the right of eternal inheritance, eternal life in Christ.

There is no male or female at the foot of the cross, is what Paul will write in Galatians chapter three.

We are all of us saved and caught up in the life of the Spirit together, and we are all made inheritors in Christ together.

This is wildly inclusive.

I know it's it's easy to read these words and think, wow, Paul is being so patriarchal, androcentric.

I really think this is a wild and uh characteristic inclusion of all men and women in the life of the church and in the life of salvation.

We all of us have inheritance rights.

So what is it that we inherit?

Verse 15, Paul says that we do not receive a spirit of slavery.

We do not receive a spirit of slavery or fear.

Now that we're in Christ, we receive quite the opposite.

We receive confidence, we receive peace, we we receive life.

Friends, I wonder if sometimes, or for some Christians, a spirit of slavery and fear is as far as we get.

I think that's a spirit that recognizes, perhaps recognizes that yes, we are debtors in Christ.

God has done this overwhelming thing on the cross to save us from our sins.

But gosh, I guess that that means that I really need to do my best to strive for perfection, right?

God has done this overwhelming thing for him, so wow, now uh now I I really I've got the obligation to do each and every thing that I need to do for God.

I mean, how could I do anything less given what he's done for me?

How could I stand before him in, you know, when in at his judgment seat and say anything less?

Sometimes I wonder if in our Christian life we we only get as far as a spirit of fear, a spirit of obligation, a spirit that assumes that God is holding our salvation over us, dangling it as it were, like a carrot, saying, you better try a little harder, you better jump a little higher, so to speak.

We've not received that kind of spirit, is what Paul says.

The truth is, I think even in my own life, part of my own story is is I understood that God has done this overwhelming thing in saving me from sin and bringing me to new life, but gosh, God has done a such an enormous act.

I better, I better do the same.

I better follow suit.

And friends, that's that's a spirit of of of slavery and fear, a spirit that f fears God's judgment, a spirit that that assumes God is is ultimately against me, because wow, he's he's really gone above and beyond.

How can I do anything less?

This spirit brought me to to Bible school.

Because I thought that that's what you really do if you're going to be serious about your obligation to be a disciple.

You're going to go and you're going to study God's Word.

And it was at Bible school, by God's grace, that I started to come to grips with this overwhelming reality that God has not just made me a debtor in Christ, that I now have to live the rest of my life taking up my cross.

He's brought me into the family as a beloved son.

He's brought us into the family as a beloved children of His.

We're not just debtors who are obligated to live as disciples.

We are children who are delighted to spend our life in the love and joy and intimacy of a renewed relationship with our Heavenly Father, who loves us, who gathers us to himself.

I think there's no better picture of this in the New Testament than the parable of the prodigal son, who goes into the far country rejecting his father, but realizes in the far country he can't make it on his own.

He's going to come back, and what's he going to ask for?

He's rehearsing his speech in his head, isn't he?

He says, I'm just going to ask to be a servant my father's house, because at least they get three square meals a day, right?

He comes and approaches the father from a distance, and the father runs to meet him and throws his arm around him.

He does as it were, he readopts his lost son.

This son who is lost is now found.

The son who's dead is now alive.

He brings the son back into the family.

And friends, that's our experience in Christ.

Our Heavenly Father has not given us a spirit of slavery or fear.

He's given us a spirit of adoption.

We're brought back into the family, as it were.

God delights to hear our prayers.

God delights in us.

And he has delighted in you.

And he desires for you to know that love and to share that love in the perfect union of the Holy Spirit.

This language of slavery is not accidental.

It kind of brings up in the minds of these Romans Christians the experience of God's people in Egypt, where they were in bondage, day after day, slaving away.

That's not our experience as Christians.

Our experience is not a vigorous religion, rigorous law-keeping to earn it before God.

Our experience as Christians is a life of confidence and love before our Heavenly Father.

We've been given a spirit of adoption by which we cry, Abba, Father, which is about as intimate a word you could get for your father in Aramaic, Abba.

It's nothing to do with a Swedish singing group, by the way.

It's that Aramaic word for Papa, right?

No one else calls a father papa except for that close, familial, domestic relationship.

Papa, father, Abba, Daddy.

It's complete intimacy and trust with God that characterizes us as Christians because He's committed to us.

He's compassionate towards us, and He pours onto us a rich, fatherly love.

And that's what the Spirit testifies to us, isn't it?

The Spirit testifies to us that we are children of God, sons of God, with full inheritance rights in him.

Jesus teaches us to pray, our Father who art in heaven.

And each and every time we pray that prayer, we are reminded that our Heavenly Father is not just some abstract, disinterested, you know, kind-hearted deity who lives way up wherever.

He's our very intimate and close Heavenly Father who loved us in Christ, loved us so much that he gave us his only Son, who gave himself for the life of the world to gather us to himself.

Now when we pray these words, our Father, when we address God as Father, we recognize, as John Stott writes, the words are not ours, or pardon me, the words are ours.

We're using these words, but the witness is the Spirit.

The Spirit witnesses to our hearts that we really, truly, fully, completely are God's beloved children, and there is nothing that will separate us from the love of God that is in Christ.

So what does all this mean for us?

What do we do with it?

I guess I want to share a story.

My parents are on the Zoom call right now, and uh so I get to embarrass uh embarrass them just a little bit.

I well, I hope not too badly.

It's a it for me, it was one of my earliest experiences of grace.

So here I was, I couldn't have been older than three years old.

For some, it's funny when these memories stick in your head.

Do you ever find that?

Why do I remember that about being three years old?

But anyway, but this was one of my first experiences of grace.

So here I am, three years old, and I'm tearing up around the house, up and down, whatever I'm doing.

And I remember knocking over this enormous house plant right in the middle of our living room.

And of course, the dirt just gets everywhere.

And I knew what dirt did to a carpet at that age, right?

And so I stopped dead in my tracks, and I remember just bursting into tears, bawling my eyes out, because I knew I was in for it.

I knew that I was toast.

That's it.

There's no way, right?

I better find, you know, a new mailing address, right?

And so here I go, I go tearing up into my room, and my mom's upstairs and she's doing mom stuff as she does, and she sees me bawling my eyes out as I make my way into my room, and she catches me in the hallway and she asks, What's wrong?

And so I'm, you know, I'm blubbering, right?

And I'm barely getting the words out.

But I remember saying, you know, I knocked over the the you know the plant in the living room.

And I remember my mom put her arm around me, and and you know, I don't remember the exact words she used, but I remember she's she said to the point, that's it's okay.

That's okay.

That's not a uh we s I still love you, that's okay.

And and friends, that that for me that was a powerful experience of of grace.

Yes, we cleaned the plant up and and you know, and and we we made that, but in that moment, when I thought that it was over, when I thought that there was, I could get no further from my mother's love, from that parental love, here in that moment I needed that experience of grace, and that's what my mom communicated to me in those moments.

And maybe there's been times in our own life where we've received those moments of grace from our parents, from our friends.

We've we've received those words of assurance, of forgiveness, of love that reassure us of who we are, that we can bank on those things.

Friends, that's the word that Paul has for us.

We can bank on our Heavenly Father's love.

On our worst day, when we've knocked over the biggest plant we could in our own lives, when we have messed up in a way that we never thought we could, we can still hear our Heavenly Father's voice calling us back to recognize who we are in Christ.

You are a beloved child of God.

You are forgiven.

It's going to be okay.

In the Spirit, we can rest assured of our Heavenly Father's love.

But, friends, our Heavenly Father's love doesn't stunt our growth.

You know, it doesn't just pat us on the back and leave us be.

It calls us into that wonderful discipling life of growth.

We now can go and we can pick up the soil, as it were, with our Heavenly Father.

We can experience that forgiveness, and now we can grow in trust, and we can grow as disciples, and we can grow into the abundance of a cultivated life in Christ.

Paul writes that if we're children, then we're heirs.

We have an inheritance, provided that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.

That's the promise, that we will one day experience the fullness of our relationship with God and glory.

And yet here we are plodding away, experiencing that life of this of suffering in this at the foot of the cross.

We're called to be disciples who take up our cross and follow after him.

Maybe we experience rejection, maybe we experience opposition, maybe we experience slander, or maybe our hearts get broken.

We experience that suffering to one degree or another.

But friends, the life of discipleship, the life of picking up our cross and following after Jesus is a life that ultimately results in glory, a life that ultimately results in the fulfillment of that relationship with God as his beloved children.

So we pick up our cross and we follow after him.

What does life in the spirit mean for us?

Paul wants us to see that life in the spirit means that we recognize we are debtors to God.

He has poured out his overwhelming love on the cross and brought us from death into new life, and now we are inspired by gratitude to follow after him and to give our lives to him.

But it doesn't just mean that we're debtors.

We don't just have a spirit of slavery and fear.

We are children of God, beloved by him, gathered to our very Father's heart, and he pours out his love for us in Christ by the Spirit, assuring us that we really, truly are sons and daughters of the Most High God.

That's the remarkable thing about the gospel, isn't it?

It cuts us down to size and makes us feel like royalty at the same time.

We are debtors.

We've been cut down, that's who we are.

We've been claimed by grace, and yet we are sons and daughters of the most high God.

That's who we are.

On our best day, on our worst day.

That is the life of the Spirit working in us.

So, friends, let's rest assured of our life and confidence in God.

Let's pick up our cross, knowing that we who suffer with him will also be glorified with him.

We who are debtors are made children of God in Christ.

So, Heavenly Father, we are overwhelmed by your love for us.

Teach us each and every day to grow an awareness of that abundant love you've poured out for us in Christ.

You've brought us from death into life.

Lord, inspire us to do good works.

But Lord, draw us near to your heart.

Give us not a spirit of fear.

Perfect love casts out fear, and that's what we've experienced in Christ.

Any fears we might experience right now, Lord, we hand over to you.

We hand over to your cross.

We lay them at Jesus' feet.

And we pray, Lord, give us a spirit of courage.

Give us a spirit of assurance, knowing that you are our Heavenly Father who loves us.

All this we pray through Christ our Lord.

Amen.