Submission: Training for Exiles

Well, Summit family and friends, we are in a series called Together We Endure. It's a study through Peter's first letter to the church.

So if you've got a Bible, I want you to grab it or find it somewhere around your house and open it to 1 Peter 2. Man, I sure do miss being with everybody. I cannot wait till we can get back together in person.

I know a lot of you are frustrated also. So before we get started, let me just give you an update on what's going on with our reopening plan. At the end of May, we told you that we were going to have another member meeting around this time to explain our next steps.

Well, in light of recent developments in our state, we're going to postpone that update for just a little while. Our leadership task force continues to consult with other like-minded churches, medical professionals, or elders to make a recommendation on what's next. Our directional elders are going to be prayerfully considering those recommendations this coming week.

What we do know right now is that at least through July 4th weekend, we're going to continue to operate online only for our weekend services. You can stay tuned of course to summitchurch.com for info, and we will share with you information as soon as we have it. So pay attention there, especially here in this coming week. Now, we left off last time in chapter two, where Peter was about to dive into three really difficult relationships that believers in his day often found themselves in. One was being under the authority of unjust rulers. We're going to see that in chapter two, verses 13 to 17. Then he's going to discuss being under the control of an unjust master. That's going to be verses 18 through 25. And then number three, he's going to discuss being married to an imperfect person, the first seven verses of chapter three. Now, I'm going to be totally honest with you here, okay? I was really, really tempted to skip this whole section and just see if you didn't notice because it just seemed like a really difficult time to talk about some of these dynamics that get brought up.

The first and third relationships are relevant enough for us. All of us, of course, feel the frustration of being under the governance of incompetent and sometimes unjust rulers. Amen, right? And all of us who are married know what it's like to be married to an imperfect person. Amen.

That sound you probably heard right now is my wife screaming amen from somewhere in North Raleigh. But then you've got this second relationship right in the middle about masters and household servants or some translation say slaves. And you're like, what is that all about?

So I was tempted just to kind of skip it. But Peter teaches us a principle through these relationships that is incredibly relevant to us. And even though we how we think about these relationships now is different, the principle that Peter teaches us is still really, really important.

For Peter, you see these three relationships are merely an application of one single principle that he is trying to drill home. And that is that one of the Christians primary callings as a stranger and an exile is to is to patient and faithful endurance in the face of unjust suffering in how he's talking about these three relationships. He is telling you that God is not blind to your suffering in these relationships and he is going to give you justice one day.

But in the meantime, he is using your suffering as a part of his redemptive work on earth, both in you and through you. The word that Peter uses to introduce each of these three relationships is the word submit. Submit is the first word you'll see in verse 13. And that word is going to reopen Peter's discussion of each of these three relationships. You know, sometimes Christian men wrongly think that submission is is a woman's issue. Peter shows you it is an important and essential part of every Christian's life. It was one of Christ's most dominant characteristics, Peter explains.

Yes, God has called us in Christ to thrive and to soar and to rise above, but he's also called us to humble ourselves to to surrender and to die to ourselves to submit. So right in the middle of Peter's discussion of these three relationships, he's going to point us to Christ. Christ, he says, is your guiding example for how you should approach any of these relationships, any relationships, these three or otherwise in which you experience injustice. Look at what he says, verse 21. For you were called to this because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. Verse 22, he did not commit sin and no deceit was found in his mouth.

A quote from Isaiah 53, when he was insulted, he did not insult in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree so that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness because the scripture says, by his wounds, you have been healed. We actually looked at this in our last study of first Peter, but what did Christ do in the face of injustice?

Well, we noted four things. Number one, he was patient. Verse 22, he knew that suffering was an integral part of God's plan for salvation. Some Christians, I explained to you, have bought into the lie that if you follow Jesus and do things right, everything will go smoothly.

Look, I don't know what savior they're following, but it's not Jesus. To follow in Jesus' steps means that we should expect unjust suffering. Jesus didn't roll into Jerusalem in an Escalade and take up residence in a mansion. He came in on a donkey and he died on a cross. Number two, we said, Jesus committed himself to him who judges justly. That's verse 23.

He knew that earthly justice may never come. It would fail him often, but God would give him justice in his heavenly country. Number three, we saw that Jesus kept doing good. Verse 23, even when he was being slandered, even when others wronged him, he kept doing the right thing, knowing that in all situations he was responding first and foremost to God.

Even if the person in front of him was treating him unjustly, he could do the right thing because he was responding not to them, but he was responding to God and God would vindicate him one day. Number four, we saw is that Jesus rested in the fact that God was bringing salvation to the world through his wounds. That's verse 24. Jesus' wounds were the means by which God brought salvation into the world. Peter tells us that in some mysterious way, that is true of us and our sufferings also. So now, with that as our example, let's look at the first two of the three relationships that Peter tells his readers they must submit in and we'll get to the third one next time. Number one, number one, the emperor and every human authority.

Look at verse 13. Submit to every human authority. By the way, which human authorities?

Right? Every human authority means anyone in a rightful place of authority over you. And you do that, he says, because of the Lord.

In other words, you're responding first and foremost not to them, but to him. Whether to the emperor, he says, as the supreme authority or to governors, as those sent out by the emperor to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is good. In other words, even when the people who occupy the office are fallible, the office itself is one that has been appointed by God.

And you respect the office, even when you don't agree with the person occupying the office. Verse 15, for it is God's will that you should silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good. Verse 16, submit as free people. In other words, you're submitting not because they're better than you or because they own you, because your only real authority is God. Yet you choose to submit to these governors for his sake. As a free person, you choose to submit for his sake. Not using your freedom, he says, as a cover-up for evil, but you do it as God's slaves.

Verse 17, honor everyone, love the brothers and sisters, fear God, honor the emperor. All right, so the big question, of course, is how do you submit to government leaders when there's so much about their lives, their beliefs, and their policies sometimes that you disagree with? Well, first, realize that Peter would not have approved of or endorsed the vast majority of what the governing leaders of his day did. And I'm pretty sure that had there been a free election, they probably would not have voted for any of the Caesars that we have on record.

We have reason to complain about our leaders. I would dare say Peter had even more. This letter we know was written in about 60 AD, which means that the emperor whom Peter is talking about is Nero. Nero was third in a trio of truly terrible Caesars, a caesarial cuckoo train that started with Caligula and ended with Nero.

Caligula, I've told you before, was unfit to keep a pet, let alone run an empire. I mean, shortly after becoming Caesar, he had his mom and brother killed to make sure that they didn't ever challenge his right to the throne. We know that he openly committed incest with three of his sisters.

He frequently cross-dressed and went out in public. He installed his favorite horse, Insiditus, as a senator. And then, and then, get this, promoted him to council. I have to ask, what had the horse done as senator to earn the promotion to, to council? I mean, how does a horse even vote in the senate, you know? All in favor, aye.

All in favor, nay. I mean, I guess that would work, but you get the point. Caligula once got mad at the weather and declared war on Neptune, the Roman god of the sea. Then he ordered his soldiers, Roman soldiers, to go take whips into the water and beat the waves for punishment and then to bring home seashells to symbolize taking plunder from his domain. He had the heads of statues of deities in Rome removed and replaced the heads he removed with a bust of his own head. I mean, imagine if our president superimposed his face on every statue of Jesus in Washington. You say, well, that doesn't sound that far fetched.

Yeah, but I haven't heard of that happening yet. And, and, and, and, and after this, you've got Claudius who took over after him, who may have been a hair less crazy than Caligula, but was every bit as cruel, right? He handed the throne over to Nero. And by the way, when I say he handed over the throne, I mean that Nero's mom killed Claudius in his sleep so that her son could replace him. Nero turns out to be the worst of the three. He turns out to be one of the cruelest, most sadistic Christian haters of all time. He intentionally set fire to Rome, where at least it was believed on strong evidence that he did it intentionally. Then as Rome burned, he stood on the balcony, watching it and, and play in the harp.

Like he was some kind of tragic poet. Then he blamed the whole thing on the Christians and use that as a pretext to have them, them rounded up and fed to the lions. So just let this sink in.

Okay. This is the emperor Nero, whom Peter is talking about when he says, submit to every human authority and honor the emperor. Tim Keller concludes here. He says the increasingly secular West is only just beginning to experience the level of hostility that first century believers faced. The 21st century persecuted church experiences it every day. It is this type of state, which the apostles tell the Christian to submit to. Peter in these verses tells us four things about our submission to rulers like this. Firstly, he says, it's always to be done with respect and honor.

That's verse 17. Even when we don't agree with him, we can respect the office they occupy as God given and that office is worthy of respect. That's what Peter does here.

Peter was not part of some hashtag, not my emperor Facebook group. He, he recognizes God has established government and the authorities they send out like police as a gift to humanity. And, and because of that, that office ought to be respected. Verse 16, number two, you do it as free men again, not because they're superior to you, because they, they own you as a Christian, you're under the authority and control of no one but God. But in that freedom, he says, you're still God's servant. God wants you to submit to them for his glory and for the cause of Christ. Not to use your freedom, he says, as a cover up for evil, but as God's slaves. Verse 15, for it is God's will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good.

You shut their mouths to the slander they give about Christians and the faith and the gospel by the way that you honor and obey the authorities and you, and you pursue justice. But that means number three, that in submitting to authority, we never disobey the commands of God. I mean, there are certain lines we can never and should never cross. If our government tells us one day that we can't preach faith in Jesus as the only way of salvation, well, by God's grace, we won't change our message one bit. We have to honor what God says about the sanctity of marriage and in this community and the sanctity of life, regardless of what, of what the government says. There are certain kinds of marriages that we at the Summit Church will not, we cannot perform in this church. Or to use another example, we can never pay for abortions for our employees, nor can we go along with any kind of systemic injustice or discrimination.

In the last few weeks it's come out that there are certain discriminatory practices that are still on the books in some of our cities, which is disheartening and infuriating. And we are bound by God to oppose those things and speak out against them. And that leads to number four, what Peter says. Honoring emperors does not preclude speaking out against evil. I want you to notice that honor the emperor is only one of four commands in that final verse. Honor everyone, love the brothers and sisters, fear God, honor the emperor. Honoring everyone and loving the brothers and sisters means speaking up for their suffering.

I mean, right? I mean, furthermore, we live in a country where peaceful protest is a constitutional right and we get to choose our own emperors. Over the last couple of weeks, we've seen some protests in our country trying to do just that. While we should deplore any kind of violence or looting, we also recognize that many people are grieving and rightfully angry at injustice and needless loss of life.

And those of us who are not affected as directly, not only want to support their right to draw our attention to these things in a moment like this one, but also to seek to understand why they are protesting and sometimes even protesting with them. That's part of honoring them. Listening to them is honoring them. Honor the emperor and love one another.

Those are two things that you got to balance. I do think Dr. King, Dr. Martin Luther King balanced it well. He expressed it in his letter from a Birmingham jail, which I would encourage all of you to read by the way. Dr. King said, one has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. He then explains laws that lift up the sanctity of human life or just laws that degrade it are unjust. And then he said that peaceful protests are designed to force conversations on those issues when society refuses to have them. Honoring the emperor and speaking up for others, living with this tension is going to make you odd, right?

Because people want us to be all on one side or the other. They want you to either be pro emperor or anti emperor, but a Christian is not captive to any emperor. And that means we honor them all and we critique them all. Christians today should therefore not be owned by any political party. We critique them all. It's like I've told you, we are not the tribe of the donkey or the elephant.

We're the tribe of the lamb. Now to be clear, I'm not saying all voting choices are equal, or I'm not saying elections don't matter. I'm not even saying that you shouldn't belong to a political party, but at our core, we should stand above and apart from all of them willing to honor and praise rulers from both parties where we can and, and critique them where we must. Let me give you a really practical way of, of, of telling whether or not you've achieved that balance.

Here it is. If you criticize the bad in a ruler, do you also praise the good? Or conversely, if you, if you praise the good in a particular ruler, do you also criticize the bad? If you are someone who supports the current administration because it seemed like the best choice given the alternatives, well then do you also speak out clearly when it comes to the, to the bad that they do?

Or if you hate the current administration, are you praising them in the good things you see them do? If you've mastered Peter's balance here, I believe your Facebook page will have both praise for the good and criticism for the bad. And I assure you, this will make you odd on Facebook. And that's Peter's point. I knew from experience that people will come at you from both sides because they want you to be anti-Emperor or pro-Emperor, but it will point people to Jesus, to your true King and to your true country. Some at church listen. Life is too short and eternity is too long to make political identity my primary identity. I want my life to point to Jesus. I understand that some believers are called into politics. I also know that good politics is a way of loving our neighbors, which is why it's important to get involved. But it's like Pastor Brian said a couple of weeks ago, I never want to become so obsessed with changing the government that I neglect the primary thing that God has called me as a believer too. And that is getting the life-changing message of the gospel to our neighbors.

Our lives should point to Jesus much more than they do a particular political approach. So four ways that you relate to an imperfect and infallible government. Number one, you always do it with respect and honor. Number two, you do it as free men and women. Number three, you never disobey God in obeying the authorities. And number four, you speak out against evil anywhere.

What happens when you do this? People see Christ. That's his point. They see somebody who is confident that politics and earthly judges don't have the last word. People who belong to a heavenly kingdom with a perfect King. It is God's will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good consistently. Y'all, this was the posture, the most notable posture that characterized early Christians. And it made their gospel witness incredibly powerful. It's like Leslie Newbigin, who was a missionary to India said, the victory of the church over corrupt Roman power did not come by seizing the levers of power. It was one when the victims knelt down in the Coliseum and prayed in the name of Jesus for the emperor.

And so doing the entire mystique of the empire, its spiritual power was unmasked, disarmed, and rendered powerless. Come at church. Let me ask you, how do you think we're doing on this? Some of us need God's help here.

Am I right? So I want us to stop here for a moment and, and, and pray about this together. Listen, I know, I know that this thought of honoring and praying for government authorities is probably very unpopular right now for a lot of us, but, but that's what being a Christian is.

It's being unpopular toward the things of the world. So I'm going to ask that we all pray this out loud together. Let me put it on the screen here for you. Okay. So let's pray this together out loud. God, help us to honor our authorities, to speak out for truth and justice and point people to Jesus. Give us a humble and submissive heart for your sake. Help our leaders make wise decisions and please bring them to faith in Jesus. Now I want you to take 30 seconds in silence to personalize that, to, to, to put that in your own words and pray that to God. Okay.

You ready for relationship number two? It's an unjust earthly master. Verse 18 household slaves submit to your masters with all reverence, not only to the good and gentle ones, but also to the cruel ones for it brings favor. If because of a consciousness of God, someone endures grief from suffering unjustly for what credit is there? If when you do wrong and are beaten, you endure it, but when you do what is good and still suffer, if you endure it, well, that brings favor with God.

And you thought the first section was challenging. Let me acknowledge this passage has been twisted and manipulated to, to justify institutions like slavery or to, or to minimize its injustices. But, but reading this to say, Peter is supporting slavery would be a severe misreading of this passage. Peter's whole context in writing this is injustice. First let's be clear.

Okay. The slavery in Rome that Peter was referring to was not exactly like slavery in the U S and the United States. Slavery was tied to ethnicity and even worse, a, a theory of superiority based on ethnicity. You became a slave in the Roman empire in one of two ways, either a Rome conquered your nation in war. And so you became a slave or B you sold yourself into slavery in order to pay off a debt. Slavery in Rome was not tied to ethnicity as it was in our country. Many slaves would have looked just like their, their Roman masters. And generally you were emancipated by the age of 30 scholars said there were about 60 million people enslaved in these ways throughout the empire.

Now let's be clear. This system was rife with injustice. Also Aristotle, for example, he said, there can be no friendship nor justice given to inanimate things, just as you cannot be friends or give justice to a horse or to an ox. So friendship and justice cannot be extended towards a slave either as a slave and master have nothing in common. A slave is just a living tool.

So that's also heinously unjust. Neither Peter nor scripture is condoning this version of slavery. In fact, scripture strictly condemns it. Slavery that involves taking somebody captive by force is explicitly condemned in the Bible. For example, Exodus 21 16, anyone who kidnaps another and sells him must be put to death. And the first Timothy one, Paul puts slave traders in the same category as those who kill their parents. By the way, slave kidnapping is one of the few things in the old Testament for which the death penalty is prescribed.

All right. Second, the entire message of the gospel subverts the idea of slavery. The gospel teaches the revolutionary message that all people are made in the image of God. We're all united by a common problem.

Sin, we've all got a common hope, the blood of Jesus. In Christ, we are brothers and sisters in one family. In Christ, the poor sits down in equality with the rich and the kingdom of God, the slave is the equal, the master. By the way, that's the significance of Paul telling them to greet one another with a holy kiss in church. I know that sounds like a crazy violation of social distancing today, but a kiss then was a sign of equality. Masters in church would kiss slaves as their equals. Even in this passage, Peter tells us to honor everyone as an equal son or daughter of God. Now, that would just undo the entire basis, the entire system of slavery, right?

I mean, the whole New Testament ethic is do unto others as you would have them do unto you, which is why everywhere throughout history that this gospel has been preached and taken seriously, societal revolution has been the result. The theologian and historian D.A. Carson says that, in his opinion, the best work on slavery out there is by an African-American scholar named Thomas Sowell. It's massive. It's three volumes.

I've got it in my library. Sowell points out that slavery was universal. The terrible European slave trade trafficked 11 million Africans, but twice that many were bought and sold on the Arabian Peninsula during the same time period. So in other words, slavery was a nearly universal problem, yet you've got an enormous amount of guilt literature coming out of the West, but none comes out of Arabia. And the efforts to stop slavery all came from the Christianized West, Sowell points out.

Why is that, he asks? I mean, slavery seems to be universal in the human condition, but what stops slavery in the West? His answer, he says, undeniably, it's the Great Awakening. The preaching of men like John Wesley and the reforms of Christian statesmen like William Wilberforce.

By the way, the two were connected. The preaching of the Gospel by people like John Wesley planted seeds that ultimately undid the broken systems of the world from within. When Christians seriously reckoned with the Gospel, as they did in the Great Awakening, it brought the entire system of slavery down on its head.

Now, look, again, let me be totally frank with you, all right? When I read passages like this one in 1 Peter, I kind of want Peter to be more direct in his condemnation. I want Peter to say, this whole system is bad and ought to be rejected immediately, but evidently, God thought that a more effective way was to plant the seeds for transformation from within. I mean, you got to wonder, had Peter or Paul merely issued a political manifesto, believers may have focused exclusively on political action to the neglect of the more permanent, the lasting change that would come through the preaching of the Gospel. Yes, we want to be involved in justice. We must be involved in it, but the most important thing the church can do is preach the Gospel.

It is the preaching of a John Wesley that creates the reforms of a William Woodrow force. And to bring it back to Peter's main point, Peter's purpose in writing this is not to evaluate the merits of the current economic system as people are in. His purpose is to encourage those experiencing injustice. And that's the whole thrust of this passage, how to respond to injustice. You see, we live in a world where at some point you are going to be treated unjustly.

And no matter how much you speak up and how much you present your case, at the end of the day, things still may not work out fairly for you. That was true for Christ, right? And Peter's point is that in moments like these, you can still respond like Christ. You can, like he did, entrust yourself to God who judges justly. You can remind yourself, even when you're suffering, that your heavenly citizenship is secure. And you can be assured that through your unjust suffering, God is working redemption and salvation for others, just like he used Christ's unjust suffering to work salvation for you and me. You see, let me press this.

Let me press this down to us. Maybe you're really frustrated with what feels like consistent injustices at work in our legal system. We all should be frustrated. Why is it taking us so long to create a society where discrimination and prejudice are a thing of the past and where there is no hint of inequity in the processes of justice? Or maybe you're discouraged because a spouse has treated you badly and you've tried to make things right, but your spouse has lied about you and slandered you and people seem to be believing them and it feels unjust. Or maybe you're in a marriage where the other spouse treats you wrong or even worse, they tear you down to others and they seem to be winning. You live under this cloud of unfair treatment and slander and you aren't getting justice. Or maybe you've recently been taken advantage of in business and you fought it in the courts, you tried and you made your case, but the other person got their way and injustice prevailed. You can protest all these things. We should protest these things and we can and should pray for deliverance and we can and should keep fighting. But realize that the reality of the world is that at some level, Peter says this about injustice, you're called to this. We should expect it.

It's the path of Jesus. Listen to be really, really personal with you. I've experienced this recently in my own life through slander that I've had to endure. People lying about me and impugning my motives.

Now, I'll be honest, some of these things are actually kind of funny. Here's a few mean tweets. Long story short, too many young people don't have male role models nowadays. J.D. Greer and his male friends singing lust songs and female voices and booty dancing and skinny jeans undermines biblical teachings on masculinity, maturity, modesty, and interpersonal boundaries. I honestly have no idea what he's talking about, but here's one. J.D. is a growing leader, but he's more wishy-washy than a drive-through car wash in a dusty West Texas town.

J.D. 's Romans 1 sermon clearly showed he can't follow the flow of the text and that he'll jump through skinny jeans to avoid preaching against sin. I have showed you this one where I got the worst Christian of 2019 on a blog.

By the way, this is not a spurious thing. They actually had contestants and they had criteria by which they judged it. It was whoever had been the Christian who had caused the most damage to the kingdom of God that year in 2019. They elected me and they even sent me a trophy. This is not a joke.

Anonymously sent me a trophy. This is worst Christian of 2019. Now, some of these things are kind of humorous, right? I mean, it doesn't bother me, but there are times when slander really hurts.

I know for some of you, I'm not trying to make light of it, but you're like, why does injustice prevail? And when it's appropriate, you clear these things up. But it's helped me, you see, to remember that Jesus experienced these kinds of things. And he told me to expect it also to this.

I have been called. In fact, even when you read Paul's epistles, you see that Paul dealt with this. He's, you know, one place he's like, Demas has done me much harm or solace to the knees.

The silversmith has really lied about me and damaged me. And I'm sure Paul tried to keep that from happening. But, but Paul like Jesus and like I should knew that, that in some ways this was inevitable. He had been called to this, been called to have people say things like this and, and we expect it and we endure faithfully in it.

And God uses it as a part of his redemptive process. So see, like Paul and like Peter, I continually take my refuge in first Peter two, you were called to this because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. He did not commit sin and no deceit was found in his mouth, no matter what they said or did about him.

When he was insulted, he did not insult in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but he entrusted himself to the only one who judges justly and he waited for him. He himself bore our sins and his body on the trees so that having died to sin, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed. See, that means being patient, committing myself to the one who judges justly, continuing to do good and resting in the fact that God is bringing salvation of the world through my wounds also. I continually rest in the fact that this world is not my home. I'm a stranger and an exile here. And my ultimate justice, my ultimate reward is going to be found in the resurrection and my eternal kingdom.

And every day I get one day closer to my heavenly home and I can't wait. I was reminded in all of this of the story of Eric Liddell, the Scottish Olympic runner in the 1920s, whose story inspired the movie Chariots of Fire. Now, most people that know anything about Eric Little remember Little for what the movie depicts, how he because of his religious convictions, he refused to race on Sunday.

And it is an awesome movie. Let me be clear. But what we often skip is that after he became an Olympic gold medalist, Little left to be a missionary in China. It was 1925. He worked in one of the poorest provinces in the country. And when war broke out in 1941, the British government ordered all their citizens, including Eric Little, to flee China.

But Little refused. He stayed because, see, Little knew that his ultimate allegiance was not to the British government or to the Chinese government. His allegiance was to God. And when the Japanese army got closer to his poor city in 1942, he stayed to help those poor Chinese in that city that he had given his life to. And when in 1943, the Japanese took the city, he was sent to an internment camp where he spent the last two years of his life.

Everybody who knew him there, if you read his biography, everybody describes him as one of the most selfless, loving and completely others focused people that ever been around. The Japanese, in fact, here's how he died. The Japanese selected a random group of the prisoners to be set free and he was one of the ones chosen to be set free. But instead of being set free, Eric Little was shot. You have to ask, how does somebody live this way?

Here's how. Eric Little did not expect England or China to be his home. He suffered thinking of his heavenly home and entrusting himself to him who judges justly. Hey, Summit Church, let's rejoice in this promise that God has given us.

It is God's will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good. By his stripes, we are healed and now mercy should be our song. We would all be hopeless without his goodness. We'd all be desperate without his love. So may we who have received that love and mercy demonstrate that love and mercy toward others. Hallelujah for the cross.