And Jesus says this, Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least, least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. It’s interesting to read sometimes about the routines of Fortune 500 company CEOs or people who were very successful and able to accumulate a lot of money in life and are responsible for large organizations. And I was reading an article about some of these people, and it’s incredible the self-discipline that so many of them have. They get up extremely early on the dot. They’re like robots about it. Wake up at the exact same time. It’s the exact same routine every day. They know exactly how every second and every minute is allotted. I was reading about Elon Musk. He’s in the news a lot. He’s the CEO of two companies. And so he’s saying he doesn’t eat breakfast. He takes a five-minute lunch. He works 80 to 100 hours a week, sleeps only six hours a night, and must do email while spending time with his kids. So that is incredibly demanding. And I’m not sure I could be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, especially at the sacrifice of working while trying to spend time with my kids. It’s a demanding lifestyle. Last week, we talked about the certainty of discipleship. There are certain things that if you truly are a disciple, they will be actuals. They will be certain of your life. You certainly will embrace your identity as a disciple, and you certainly will look like a disciple to the people around you. That is a certainty of discipleship. But Jesus talks about discipleship here in this passage in terms of demands. There are demands on us if we’re going to follow Jesus, if we’re going to come into His way of life, if He’s going to come into our lives, if He’s going to be Lord and Master. He demands we do certain things. He demands we be a certain way. So the question for us if we’re calling ourselves disciples of Jesus is this. Can we meet the demands that Jesus would put on His disciples?

And are we able to meet them and live up to them and so be called a disciple of Jesus? What are those demands? That’s what I want us to consider this morning.

Look back at verse 17. Jesus says,

So think about Jesus’ ministry up to this point. I know we’re going in slow motion, but what we’ve learned in Matthew up until now, Jesus to this point in His ministry, He’s done a lot of radical things, hasn’t He? It’s talked about Him healing people of diseases, healing afflictions. So Jesus is able to do instantaneous miracles, give people their sight, take away epilepsy, take away leprosy. Jesus does radical things. Jesus does radical things, but Jesus also said a lot of radical things. Jesus carried on John the Baptist’s message of repentance. For the kingdom of heaven is at hand, He said. Jesus is teaching the Beatitudes that we just finished, and He’s going on to finish the Sermon on the Mountain. So often the crowds are absolutely wowed by Jesus, by what He is able to say. So it would seem like, I think to anyone in Jesus’ day, that Jesus is a radical revolutionary.

But He’s not. He’s got a massive following. He’s got influence with the people. He has power. He has power that no one can reckon with. And His teachings, the Scriptures say, have a certain authority and conviction that the other religious leaders, they don’t have in their teachings. So it would seem Jesus is showing the people, hey, here’s a whole new, different, brand new way of life. Here’s a very different religion altogether. Because Jesus, the way He sounds, the way He acts, the way He talks, it doesn’t look like the keepers of the Jewish way of life. It doesn’t look like the teachers of the Jewish way of life. His words, His words and His way appear to be at odds. They seem to be opposed to the law and its keepers. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t have so many problems with them, but they always do.

But Jesus wants the people to understand that nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus says, I’m not here to abolish the law, to destroy it, do away with it. Rather, Jesus says, I’ve actually showed up to do this, to be the fulfillment of the law, Jesus says, I am the law’s intended end. So know what Jesus says precisely why He has come. Jesus did not say, I’ve come for this main reason, and oh, I’m also going to be taking care of the law and the prophets, or I really showed up here, but I got this side gig to fulfill the law. Jesus said, the reason why I came from heaven is just this, to fulfill the law and the prophets. Jesus says, that’s my only mission. I want you to think about that word radical. Because the word radical, it’s relative. It’s relative to what’s common to people. I mentioned a few weeks ago how Darcy asked, how did people get around before cars and as well horses, and we had that whole conversation. When you think about when you would have seen an automobile for the first time at the turn of the 20th century, that would have been radical. Here’s a buggy with no horse. That would have been a radical thing because it’s so different. No one sees it as different when you see someone drive down the road in a car because it’s now what? It’s common. Same thing with the internet. It’s not radical to get all the information you could ever want in one moment. That’s common. Telephone. Talk to someone on the other side of the world. That’s not a big deal anymore. That was radical though when it happened because it was so different. So what Jesus is saying is radical to them, not because it’s actually radical. It’s radical to them because they made Judaism something it was not supposed to be. It was radical. It was their form of Judaism.

Their Judaism was zealous rules. Their Judaism was crazed nationalism. And largely, that’s their leader’s fault for making it so. But what Jesus said and did was not radical. According to one, His person is God. Whatever God says is going to be amazing to hear and authoritative and true. He’s God.

And, of course, God has power to do whatever He wants to do. But secondly, and more important to our passage, what Jesus is saying and doing is not, not radical in terms of the actual law and prophets because Jesus was always the intended end. When God gave Moses the law of Mount Sinai, Jesus wasn’t a plain bee like, Hey, Moses, here’s this law and the prophets are going to come after. Oh, down the road, this isn’t working out. So, Jesus, could you go down there and fix stuff? That was never it. God’s intention in design when He gave Moses the law, even before He gave Moses the law, is that Jesus Christ, would show up someday and He would manifest the law in its fullest form by His obedience to all that the law says and by clarifying what the law truly and really meant, what the people failed to see it to be. So, Jesus was always the sum total of the law and Jesus was always the sum total of everything the prophets ever said about someone who will come to redeem Israel and to redeem mankind. What’s that mean? It means this. Jesus is not a radical. He’s not a radical revolutionary. He didn’t come to start something brand new. He didn’t come to start some new way of life. Jesus came to fulfill the law and the prophets so that we could have a true religion and a real and true way of life. So, see this then. Whatever Jesus says is common to who God is because Jesus is God. Whatever Jesus says and does is common to the law and prophets because Jesus Himself is the law and the prophets’ greater significance.

What do we mean when we talk about the law and the prophets? It’s not Jesus’ fault that people are dull to grasp it, right? It’s their fault. It’s our fault.

In broad strokes, when Jesus says law and prophets, He’s talking about the whole Old Testament. But maybe I want us to get a little bit more clarity about what law and prophets may be meant to a Jewish hearer of Jesus’ time. And I want to read you a description out of a commentary. It says, God’s righteousness involves His faithful commitment, to do what is right and true. This divine attribute resulted in the establishment of just principles to guide His relationship with His people so that everyone would know the just consequences of righteousness and rebellious behavior. So, in other words, God said, Hey, look, here’s who I am. Here’s the deal. This is how you act, and it’s good for you. Here’s how you don’t act. And if you do act like that, it’s bad for you. So, Jesus graciously gave them, or God gave them these righteous guidelines for a righteous life. For a behavior through a series of written instructions known as His instruction or law. And so, if you’ve ever heard the word Torah, that’s Hebrew for instruction. That’s Hebrew for law. His purpose was not to burden His people with a second class set of legalistic rules or pedantic restricted regulations. He viewed these divine instructions as a great and glorious revelation of His character. Something that would set the wise Israelites apart from other nations. So, what’s all important for a Jew, ancient or modern? The Torah. It’s all about the Torah, or the Greek rendering of that is the Pentateuch. It’s Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They contain within them everything God’s people needed to know in the ancient world before Christ came about what it meant to live as a civil society, as a nation-state under God. How to live and worship in terms of the temple regulations. How they needed to live more, morally in relation to one another and in relation to God. So, the law was the Israelites’ holistic instruction for a right and holy life. In Deuteronomy 6, verse 16,

God says this, He says, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested Him at Massa. You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God and His testimonies and His statutes. Which He has commanded you. And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may go well with you. So, why did God give the people a law? Because He wanted it to go well with them. That’s the purpose of the law. And God really wanted them to know it. Look at Numbers 15, verse 39.

The Lord says, And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after. So you shall remember and do all my commandments and be holy to the Lord your God. So God knew the people. You guys are so bad at obeying my instructions and rules. I want you to sew tassels into your garments. So literally when you’re walking every day, you look down, you see these tassels. Oh yeah, God’s law. We have to obey God’s law. God doesn’t want us to get in trouble. He wants it to what? Go. Go well with us. And bring in the prophets here. What are the prophets supposed to do? Look at Jeremiah 9, verse 12. It says, Who is the man so wise that he can understand this? To whom has the mouth of the Lord spoken that he may declare it? Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness so that no one passes through? And the Lord says, Because they have forsaken my law that I set before them and have not obeyed. They have not obeyed my voice or walked with it, but have stubbornly followed their own hearts and have gone after the bales as their fathers taught them. So the law said, Do right and you’re blessed. Do wrong and you’re cursed. The prophets said, Hey, do right. Remember the law. Repent. Obey. You’re terrible at it. Somebody’s going to come and do what you never could do in obedience. That’s the law and that is the prophets. Which brings us back to Jesus.

Jesus said this. The fulfillment of the law. Jesus said the fulfillment of the prophets is to love God and love people. It’s the whole point of the law.

Nobody can love God and love people like Jesus. Jesus loved God and loved people perfectly, which means this. To know Christ,

who He is, is to know the love of God. It is to know what it means to love people. It is to see the law fulfilled. The apostle Paul says the law is like a guardian or some translations say it’s like a tutor. It was just there to kind of take care of you, to teach you until Christ came. But Christ has come. And so Christ did fulfill the law. And know what Jesus is saying. He’s saying just because it’s true that I’m the one who fulfills the law, don’t think for one second that you can disobey it. He says truly I say to you until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest part of the law, not an iota, not a dot, will pass away from it. So Jesus is the greater significance of the law, yes, but Jesus would warn anyone who would discard it. Jesus is saying until the end of time comes, what’s going to happen? The law stands. And if the law stands, what’s that mean? It means it’s going to continue to judge those who sin against it. So friends, if we’re in Christ, because we’ve been shown, we’ve been shown grace, we’ve been shown the seriousness of the law, it means we must be zealous to obey Jesus. We must be zealous to obey the law.

Now I want to deconstruct, and we’ve talked about this before a little bit, but we’ve got to deconstruct the Jesus that we so often get in the 21st century. Because the Jesus in the 21st century, His love means I’m going to pass by and look over your sin, but Jesus doesn’t actually pass by and look over our sin. Being a part of the church in so many ways, it means I’m going to look past offenses that you do and just accept you for who you are, but God doesn’t look past those offenses.

Church, I see church sometimes advertises a place to find purpose and to find fulfillment.

Well, church is a place to find purpose and to find fulfillment, but not until sin is forsaken and obedience is manifested in our life. Friends, we don’t need church to make us feel better, or to make us feel better, about who we are. We need church to make us feel better about who Jesus is, despite how bad we are. That’s what we need. We need the truth of the gospel. This is, when we fail to make that apparent to people, this is a failure to meet the demands of discipleship. And that failure is a failure to take the law of God as serious as Jesus does.

2 Peter chapter 3,

the Apostle Paul says, but the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar,

and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved in the earth, and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, so that end is coming when the law will judge everyone once and for all. Here’s Peter’s words to those he is writing. What sort of people ought you be?

If that is the end, the end that’s coming, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. But that’s then. So what is Peter’s admonition to us now? Now, now, obey. Be zealous to obey. Be, and I say this all the time because I want it to be stuck in our heads. I want us to be a word-saturated people. Know the Scriptures so that we can obey the Scriptures. And I think the next question that comes in is this. Well, which part of the Scriptures? All of them. Yeah, all of them. The Apostle Paul says all Scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be equipped. He may be competent for every good work. So Old and New Testament are powerful to instruct us in truth, to grow in love for God and people by the power of the Spirit. Here’s what we’ve got to do as New Testament saints on this side of the cross. We’ve got to be wise and discerning, as so many writers have pointed out, as to what parts of the law in the Old Testament Christ has fulfilled, but still grow in the principles and truths of the Old Testament.

Obviously, we don’t need to, adhere to temple regulations. Jesus is our greater sacrifice. Jesus is our great high priest. So I don’t need to live by those temple laws. We are not a nation state anymore. The church is God’s representing people on earth. So I don’t need to know and live by the rules the Israelites did when they were a nation state in the Old Testament. But where there is a spiritual truth to extract and apply in our lives, friends, we are demanded to do it. Let me give you a few examples that one Bible dictionary gave. In Deuteronomy, when it says, don’t muzzle an ox to tread out the grain, Paul takes that principle to mean a reward for laborers and Christian workers. The principle of establishing truth by two or three witnesses when you accuse someone, that was applied to courts. Paul brings that into church conference. The principle that believers are not to be unequally yoked together with an unbeliever, that comes from a law saying you shouldn’t unequally yoke animals. Paul affirms on the basis of Leviticus, that incest, which was a capital offense, it’s a moral and deserves punishment. In the New Testament, when incest is practiced in Corinthians, he says that person must be cast out of the church. So Paul maintains the law’s moral principle, yet in view of the change redemptive setting, makes no attempt to apply the law’s original sanction.

So wisdom in discerning how we apply the Old Testament, but either way, if you want to take the law serious and you want to take the truths of the Scripture, it’s an eager task that you should desire to do. I want to do that. And that’s the Torah. But do you know what desert you’re putting yourself in if you don’t read of how God worked through the judges and the stories of the great kings and how God worked through Ruth and God worked through Esther, all the principles and just spiritual truths to discover God in the Psalms, the wisdom of the Proverbs. Friends, we should dive headlong into this. And of course, the New Testament, in the New Testament, we see the Jesus who fulfilled all of it in His life and His death and His resurrection. So we can never remove the Old Testament from our faith. It is the foundation on which Christ came to fulfill it to give us life.

And I think the problem for us so often is this, and this is an unfortunate flaw for us as fallen human beings, is delayed consequences. We don’t take God’s law serious because we don’t realize the harsh consequences of it because they’re not happening now. You know, it’s like somebody who maybe substance abuse and they abuse it for years and years and years and only if they could see the end of their physical state or the relationships they ruined would they say to themselves years earlier, don’t do that, right? And that goes all the way down. I can remember being a kid and you wait to that last minute to do your homework or work on that test and you’re miserable and you get a terrible grade. Why do we do that kind of stuff? Because the consequences are delayed. But friend, the encouragement of the God, the gospel to us this morning is this, know and obey God’s word. Christ is in all of it. And I would say this to you as well, commit yourself to knowing the whole Bible. Start in Genesis and work through it and if that’s intimidating, guess what? It’s intimidating for everyone. But it’s God’s word. Get a reliable commentary. Surround yourself with godly counsel. Say, hey, what does this mean? How does this apply to us as Christians in the New Testament? Know God’s word. Whole word.

And I would say also, keep in mind judgment. We won’t be judged as non-believers are judged, but we will give account to Jesus for how we did or didn’t live. Don’t you want before Jesus to say, I took obedience serious, Jesus, because you demanded that of me.

So demands of discipleship. Look back at verse 19.

He says, He says, He says, Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. So see what Jesus has done. He’s just connected the Old Testament law, which was quote unquote their thing. And Jesus is saying, see how it’s connected to the kingdom of heaven. And that’s this New Testament Matthew theme that we’ve been talking about. We’ve been looking at for so long, the kingdom of heaven. So he’s saying, these aren’t two different things. They’re very much so connected. So he’s showing his arrival, his words, his actions aren’t at odds with the law, but quite congruent. But what Jesus has a problem with is the art of relaxing.

And this isn’t like relax, like I’m going to go to the beach and relax. This relaxing means a willful overlooking. It means to avoid or ignore thinking you won’t get consequences. It is the removal of obligation. Jesus says, though, you’re obligated to the whole law, the smallest parts of it and the biggest. In the Old Testament, there was a law, you couldn’t take a mother bird and her eggs. You could take the eggs or the young, but not the mother bird. Now, why was that? Well, because you’re eliminating the food source if you take the mother as well. Leave the mother so she can make more eggs. So that would have been seen by Jesus as a smaller, more, you know, not a big deal. All the way up to punishment for crime. The problem, though, for the Jews that Jesus is speaking to is they have religious leaders who, in fact, were masters of relaxing the law. It was their thing. It’s what they did. They knew better than anyone how to relax this law. I’ll give you a couple of examples. In Mark 7, verse 10,

Jesus says, For Moses said, Honor your father and mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, if a man tells his father, father or mother, whatever you would have gained from me as Corban, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you’ve handed down and many such things you do. So what were they doing? They were giving people this out to say, I should take care of mom and dad. They’re old or whatever, but hey, whatever I have, I’ve actually dedicated it to God, so I can’t take care of you anymore. It belongs to the temple. It was a way around the law’s demand. You take care and love. Love your parents. On the flip side, in Luke 11, verse 42,

But woe to you, Pharisees! You tithe mint and rue and every herb and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. So on the opposite hand, you think you’re so holy because you’re tithing down to literally the herbs in your cabinet, but you’ve forsaken justice and mercy and the things that matter most.

So the Pharisees, the scribes, the religious leaders, that’s all they could do was lead the people

to make a ruin of the law. What do you call it when you custom order something just the way you like it or you take something and you remake it?

Well, you call it customization is what you call it. It’s just the way you want it to be.

But Jesus has no tolerance for when we customize His law. None whatsoever. Because when we customize, when we customize Jesus’ law, we forfeit the whole thing. James says, if you obey the whole law, but you fell in one point of it, you’re guilty of the whole thing.

So the second failure of discipleship then would be this. It would be to not maintain fidelity to the laws Jesus does. And I want you to see this, what Jesus is saying in verse 19. Fidelity to the law is important not just because you’re eternal souls in view. It is very much so. And how you maintain fidelity to it. But Jesus makes the point also, you’re going to get yourself in big trouble if you teach other people to relax the law as well. The word that Jesus uses in verse 19 teaches, it’s the exact same Greek word that Jesus uses in the very famous Great Commission.

Go therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. So this is how Christians, Christian discipleship works. One person who knows the Lord by the power of the Spirit reproduces the Jesus in them in someone else. And then that person by the power of the Spirit sees someone else reproduce into the image of Jesus. But remember what Jesus said though, it hangs on this, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. The moment you change the all, you’re no longer making Christian discipleship, Christian disciples. You’re obliterating your own personal Christian discipleship and you’re doing this thing that Jesus says is worse. You’re ruining someone else’s discipleship.

Craig Keener says, God does not allow us the right to say, I will obey his teaching about murder, but not his teaching about adultery or fornication. Or, I will obey his teaching about theft, but not about divorce. To refuse his right to rule any of our ethics or behavior is to deny Christ. His lordship.

To deny his lordship.

But from what we must also remember if we’re going to be in a state of fidelity towards God’s law and towards obedience is this, obedience is often uncomfortable and difficult for us. It’s uncomfortable for a number of reasons. We live in an age of comfort and convenience in which people don’t want to be told truth.

We live in an age where people want to do what they want to do. But Jesus says, I’m Lord and Master and I get to tell the truth. I’m going to tell you what to do and how to live your life. So the real disciple then, if you’re going to meet the domains of discipleship, you must attach to the commands of Christ, pain and suffering. It’s just the reality of discipleship in this lifetime. It hurts to obey

because it hurts to obey. Our flesh pulls us in one direction, the enemy pulls us in another direction, and the world pulls us in another.

But friend, you must go back to this truth. Is Jesus your master? Do you love your master and do you love his way? If you do, fidelity, you will take it as serious as Jesus does. It is a demand of discipleship. Now, I think if we’re truly in the kingdom as Jesus is talking about, here’s what we’re not going to do. I’m not going to want to be the least in the kingdom. And I’m not talking about in humility. That sounds bad. Not in the sake of humility, but in the sake of obedience. For the sake of obedience, I want to be great in the kingdom. I want to hear those words, well done, good and faithful servant. I want to hear Jesus say, you were so faithful, you were in a state of fidelity towards me and my law, and you constantly tried to make disciples who were the very same thing.

The notion of being in a state of infidelity towards Jesus and to his word in the scriptures is as ridiculous as the notion of open marriage. And open marriage is and has become popular in our society. It’s crazy that you can find plenty of stories about people who experiment with open marriages. And open marriage, it contradicts itself. A marriage is two people saying, I love you and you love me, and we’re agreeing to keep one another and be faithful to one another always and forever. And the fact that marriage is on the table, able to customize and to change, it’s just a sign of our times. Religion’s on the table. Relationships are on the table. Even today, literally, gender is on the table.

But friends, it does not change the reality of what is in God’s eyes.

Remember, we may change. Culture may change. But God remains the same. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. Love for Jesus is shown in difficult obedience and encouraging others to obey God’s Word in the very same. It’s how actual disciples are made, not bogus or pseudo-disciples. And ask yourself this question. In what place do you want to be great? Do you want to be great now in this life that passes away? Or do you want to make it to the end to be great in your Father’s eyes and great in Jesus’ eyes because you live for Him alone? Do you want to hear those words? Well done, good and faithful. Amen.

Verse 20, Jesus says, For I tell you, unless your righteousness

exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

And that would have been a soul shock to the Jews standing there because who could keep the law better than the Pharisees? I mean, they not only keep the law, they make up some new laws on top of it. I mean, they’re so good at it. But in fact, what Jesus is saying is your righteousness must exceed theirs. It is a whole different quality and degree of righteousness above and beyond theirs. That’s what Jesus is saying. And as much as Jesus is saying their righteousness, as much as they think it’s righteous, it’s not.

Friends, if we’re reading this passage right, we must read it to mean that we cannot exceed anyone’s righteousness, and we certainly can’t meet Jesus’ kind of righteousness. So how can we then meet these demands of discipleship if we cannot exceed the Pharisees or, and do what Jesus is really saying here, match His righteousness? It would be an impossibility.

Well, here’s how. Here’s what Jesus has done. Jesus has taken what was common

to us as a sinful people, and He took it upon Himself. And Jesus took what was radical to us, but common to Him, and He put that on us. Jesus took sin and the shame of sin upon Himself, and what He put on us was holiness and righteousness. He imputed His righteousness to us, and He put on Himself our sin and our shame and our guilt, so that when Jesus had on Himself what was common to man, but radical to God, the Father had to turn away and couldn’t look at Jesus because Jesus bore the sin of mankind. Yet, it means this, that the Father can now look on us because what was common to God, holiness and righteousness, Christ, because He died for us and was the atonement for the law, He has made us right, and He has made holiness common to us once more. That’s what Jesus has done. Jesus Himself has fulfilled the demands of discipleship. Jesus, alone, has made it possible for us to be His disciples. For Christ, alone, has made us holy. Paul says in Romans chapter 8, He says, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin He condemns sin in the flesh in order that the righteousness requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Friends, when we put our faith in Jesus and we trust in Jesus Christ, no longer does God see our inability to take the law serious, our inability to be true to the law, but in Christ by the power of the Spirit, God sees His Son Jesus when He looks on us. And by the power of the Spirit, we are able to obey God and love His law and live up to His law. That means this for us, friends. We can cling to Christ and know that it doesn’t depend on man. It depends on God alone. Jesus is our righteousness. Jesus is our life. Christ has preached His gospel to us. Do we believe it? And do we live in the power of it? For Christ Himself, Himself has made it possible. Let’s pray.