Morning, brothers and sisters. I’d like to read some verses from the New Testament, and then we’ll talk about them. All right?
1 Timothy 1:15
This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.
2 Timothy 1:12
For this reason I also suffer these things.
He is talking about the preaching of the gospel.
Nevertheless I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.
2 Timothy 4:7–8
I have fought the good fight.
I have finished the race.
I have kept the faith.
Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day; and not only to me, but also to all those who have loved His appearing.
1 Corinthians 15:10
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain.
Ephesians 2:8–9
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
Our Father, we want to thank You this morning for our wonderful Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. We want to thank You for all that He has done for us, all that He is able to do for us, and all that He is willing to do for us, that we might receive, in that Day, the crown of righteousness.
How we thank You, Lord, that He is able. We confess that we are not able, but He is able.
Lord, this morning, as we come to Your Word, we want You to speak to us in a way that gives us hope, sets us on the Rock that we should be on, and looks ahead to the final things where we can rest our hope, look to You, and walk in that power which comes through Jesus Christ and His resurrection and ascension.
Lord, only You can make things real to us. Only You can inspire us. Only You can reveal things to us that we need to see. Lord, I am a poor vessel, but You are a wonderful God. We trust in You this morning, and we give this time to You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
This morning, I would like to close out the things I have been saying. I do not even know if they all go together, but all these verses that I read today have to do with Paul.
What I want to do is look at the Christian life as seen through the life of Paul. Now, that sounds like a big chunk of stuff, right? I have limited it to these things because I think this is the crux of the matter.
We are not talking about us being like Paul. Paul was called for a specific purpose, and he did those things. But in Paul’s life is what the life of all Christians should be. I am not talking about the particular things he did, but as we go through these things, I want you to understand that this is what the Christian life really is.
I picked this song—not that I am a really good song picker—because it starts out as though it is the end of times: “The sands of time are sinking.” In 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy, this is the end of Paul’s life.
When we look at these verses, especially in Timothy, Paul is looking back on his life. He is not reminiscing—“Oh, those were the good old days. Remember when we were in prison in Philippi? Wasn’t that great?” This is not some kind of reminiscing.
He is simply looking over his life and saying, “It is finished, but I have run the race. I found a grace and a power to do it.” In other words, he is not boasting of anything in himself.
I used to really dislike Paul because he seemed so brash. You read, “Be like me,” or see him standing up to Peter, being in his face. He just seemed so brash to me, and it never sat right with me.
If I had my choice, I would take Peter. Even in looking at the Christian life, I would take Peter, because Peter has failures. We all relate to failures, and we like when other people have failures because we say, “Oh, I’m not the only one.”
But you look at Paul’s life, and it does not seem as though he has any failures. So when you say that Paul’s life is characteristic of the Christian life, you think, “Oh my gosh, what is he going to tell us? Is he going to get out the whip and hit us?” But that is not it, because Paul did not look at it that way.
Generally speaking, Paul is like Samuel or Daniel in the Old Testament. There is nothing recorded as being wrong with them. Yet here is this man, at the end of his life, saying, “I have run the race, and I am going to receive a crown.”
My brothers and sisters, that is supposed to be the Christian life. It is supposed to be that we receive a crown. Paul says that crown is for all who love the appearing of Jesus Christ—for all. That is a very inclusive word.
I have three things that I want to point out, and then I will stop.
The first thing comes in 2 Timothy 1:12. Paul begins by saying, “I know.” What does he know?
The first thing he knew—or came to know—was what we read at the opening this morning: “I am a sinner.” This is the first thing I came to know. I did not know I was a sinner until I met the risen Christ on the Damascus road.
Up to that time, Paul thought, “I am a Hebrew of Hebrews. According to the law, I am blameless.” That was where he was. He had to come to know that he was a sinner, because he found himself in the glory of Someone greater than himself: the risen Lord.
When you read Romans 7, what was the sin that brought Paul down? Coveting. You may think, “That is not such a bad sin.” You look at the Ten Commandments, and it is down near the bottom of the list. It does not seem too bad, does it?
But coveting is the root of adultery: “Do not covet your neighbor’s wife.” Coveting is the root of theft: “Do not covet your neighbor’s goods.” If you really want your neighbor’s goods and he will not give them to you, what do you do? You kill him. Coveting is the root of murder.
Go beyond that: coveting is also the root of idolatry. Today, we do not see people running around looking at idols, but we covet what the world has. So we worship Mammon. We go after the things that will give us what we want. It is all coveting.
The first thing Paul—and all of us as Christians—must come to see is that we are sinners. Some of us were born into Christian families, and it is difficult to say we are sinners because, hey, we live a good life. We go to church, go to Christian schools, or maybe we were homeschooled. We do not see ourselves in the world.
Even when I came to the Lord, I knew I was not good enough to get to heaven. In Catholicism, who goes to heaven? Saints and priests. Where does that leave the rest of us? Well, we are either going to purgatory or Florida—it is really hot.
You go to confession, and you do not really know what sin is, so you make stuff up. I remember going into the confessional and giving a number: “I lied 465 times.” Anybody raised Catholic knows that is right. You gave them a number because you thought God was keeping count, and you tried to guess high.
But that is the first thing you have to come to: you must acknowledge that you are a sinner. Sometimes you come to this knowledge as Paul did, before you even get to the matter of coveting. He came into contact with Someone greater than himself. It was glorious.
The law does not have the kind of glory that Jesus Christ has. The law has a fading glory; that is why Moses put a veil over his face. But the Lord Jesus has an unfading, undiminishing glory.
Paul stood in that glory, and it humbled him. He saw that his righteousness was like filthy rags. It was nothing compared with the glory of Christ.
Then Paul had to know something else. He said, “I know whom I have believed,” not what I have believed, but whom I have believed.
As Christians, we are to know the Lord Jesus Christ—to know Him, not merely to know about Him. It always starts with learning about Him. That is what Sunday school is for. You learn about the Lord, but that is only to draw you into a place where you actually meet Him and begin to know Him.
Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:9 that God is faithful, by Whom we were called into the fellowship of His Son. Fellowship means sharing. It means a relationship in which you share with one another.
None of us who are married would have married our spouses if we had not had some fellowship with them before we married. That is how we came to know them, and that fellowship is what won us.
It is this fellowship with Christ that wins us into a deeper and deeper relationship.
When Paul was converted, he learned the Lord in two ways. First, he learned by hearing and studying—what we might call a lecture class. You go to a lecture class and learn something.
Paul went out into Arabia for a while. What was he doing there? I think he was going over what he knew in the Word about Christ. He was looking for Christ in the Scriptures. The Scriptures he had known had to be opened up anew, and he had to rethink everything.
It was not merely that he had to rethink it intellectually. He had to open the Scriptures and say, “Lord, show me. I cannot get it by my intellect or my great learning. You have to show me these things.”
It was like when Jesus was on the road to Emmaus and opened their minds to the Scriptures. Paul had believed that there could not be a suffering Christ, because anyone hung on a tree is cursed of God. All that learning had to be transformed.
Then Paul went to Jerusalem because he specifically wanted to talk to Peter and James. Why? Because they knew Christ. They knew Him as He lived on the earth.
James, the Lord’s brother, and Peter knew Jesus’ life. They walked with Him. They knew His teaching, and they knew His mighty works. Paul wanted to learn Christ.
Then he went off to Tarsus, and nobody heard of him for perhaps five years, until Barnabas went to get him. What was he doing during that time? I think the same thing: he was looking for the Lord, that he might know the Lord and the Lord might know him.
That was one way Paul learned: he learned by hearing. Some of us need to do the same thing. We need to be in our Bibles, learning, because Scripture is the place where the Lord reveals Himself.
There are times when you come to the Word and the Lord reveals Himself to you. It is marvelous. All of a sudden, you begin looking at the Word differently.
There is a path in our backyard that goes from our backyard to another home dwelling. During the summer, it is my walking path. It is just a regular path, and you do not expect anything to come out on it. You walk it simply from habit.
I think sometimes reading our Bible is like that. We do it because it is what Christians do, blah, blah, blah.
Then one day, while I was walking, a big deer stepped out. It was a big one, with antlers and everything—not Bambi. It looked right at me. You know how an animal can look right into your eyes, as though it is checking out who you are?
Sometimes when we read the Word, it is like that. The Lord comes out and reveals Himself to us in such a way that we see He is a living God. There is life in the Word, and it looks right down into your soul. It touches you so that, the next time you go out, you are looking for that deer.
For the next two weeks, every time I went on that path, I was looking for that deer. Because I was looking for the deer, I became open to other things. I started observing things and found all sorts of woodland life that I had never seen before.
Paul was looking for the Lord in the Word. He was in the place where the Lord could reveal Himself. He went to James and Peter because they knew the Lord in a particular way, and he wanted to find the Lord and learn about the Lord.
The other way Paul learned was by experience. The Lord did not call Paul merely to be a theologian—to have great revelation, write it down in books, and have people say, “These are wonderful truths.” The Lord let him see these truths because He wanted Paul to walk in them.
Do you think Paul merely thought about the truths of Christ in us, and all the things he wrote in Romans? Or did he experience them? He experienced them.
He experienced the life of the Lord Jesus in him. That is why he could say that those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God. He learned Christ—not stuff. That is the great difference. He knew Christ, and that is Whom we are to know.
He was brought into action and service so that he could find out that the Lord was faithful. The Lord said, in effect, “Trust Me. Go out and find out that I am faithful. Carry My gospel, and you will find out Who I am.”
Paul found out the power of the gospel. That is why he could say in Romans 1:16 that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. It was not a mere thought; it was something he found to be true.
That is why he could preach it with such passion. He knew it was true. That is why he could say in 2 Timothy 1:12, “I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is faithful.” Why? Because he had experienced Him in that way.
As Christians, we are to know Him in our lives. We are to come to the place of saying, “I know Him.” Because I know Him, I am persuaded. I am persuaded to move this way, to get away from that, and to make certain choices in life because I know Him.
Our calling is also to bear His name. We may not be in the same situation as Paul or have the same large ministry, but even in the smallest ministry, we are called to bear the name of Christ.
What is my favorite book? Mimosa. I am so ashamed of the rest of you—you failed the quiz.
When you look at Mimosa, what was her ministry? It was only to her little village, but what a powerful ministry it was. She bore the name of Christ before those people, and they saw that Christ was real and true.
The second thing is this: Paul ran the race. As Christians, we have all been called into this race. In fact, we have not merely been called to enter it; we have been entered into it.
I told you last week—or the week before—that, when I was a sophomore, I played varsity basketball. It was not my choice. Somebody put a bug in the coach’s ear, and all of a sudden I found myself entered into the race. What a shock.
But we have been entered into the race. In 1 Corinthians 9:24, Paul says, “Run in such a way that you may win the prize.” That is how Paul ran: to win the prize.
Everybody talks about the race as being a marathon. It is not a marathon; it is a steeplechase. Have you ever watched an Olympic steeplechase? It has to be the most torturous race in the world.
You run around a track—generally, I think, a two-mile race—and there are hurdles along the course. The men’s hurdles are three feet high. For women, they are six inches lower, because you ladies are the fairer sex. You are just not studs like us.
Then there is the water jump: a twelve-foot pit filled with water, deep on one side and shallow on the other. You jump the hurdle, and then you have twelve feet of water to get across. That is a tough thing.
It might not be so bad on the first lap, but what about the fifth or sixth? If you watch those races, runners will jump on top of the hurdle, almost like a gymnastics balance beam, and then try to jump the twelve feet. Usually they land in shallow water, but it splashes all over them.
Remember Chariots of Fire? One of the characters was a steeplechase runner. In the race scene, he goes over the pit and falls in. Back then it was dirt, so he came out covered in dirty water. But that is the race.
The race is a steeplechase. There are obstacles, and they are not necessarily obstacles put there by God. They are simply the obstacles of life that arise in the way of your race.
If you look at Paul, he had obstacles just as we do. He had physical obstacles—problems with his eyes, and a thorn in the flesh. Do you have physical obstacles where you say, “I cannot go on. I just cannot make it because of these obstacles”?
Paul had to work. That was an obstacle, because he wanted to make the gospel free to everybody. Even though people could have supported him as God’s servant, he chose to work. He worked as a tentmaker before going to the school of Tyrannus.
That is what I loved about Floyd Polis. He taught math—higher math, at that—and then he would come ready for a Bible study on a Tuesday night. He had done his day at work, completed his lesson plan for the next day, and there he was, ready to give to us and feed us.
Paul also faced spiritual opposition. In many places, that spiritual opposition became physical. He carried the cares of those whom he loved and to whom he had preached.
Read Galatians and see how upset and distraught he was because they were going after another gospel. Read 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, and you see his grief for the Corinthians. He was carrying their load, just as we carry the load for our children and loved ones. We want them to make right choices and come to the Lord. Those are obstacles as we go on.
How was Paul able to overcome these things? Was it because he was an apostle? No. It was not because he had some title. It was because he knew the working of the inner life—the life of Christ in him.
Galatians 2:20 says:
I have been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me;
and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Paul knew the working of that life. He did not merely know the theology that Christ lives in me. He was not simply a man who preached it; he knew the reality of Christ in him.
Philippians 2:12–13 says:
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
for it is God Who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
Paul knew the working of God—not just to will. Romans 7 says, “I want to do what is right, but I cannot do it.” But Paul knew Romans 8 as well. It is not only that I am willing; I am able, because Christ is living in me.
If we could get hold of that, instead of trying by might and main simply to be Christians, we could pray, “Lord, please reveal Your Son in me.” Paul said that God was pleased to reveal His Son, not merely to him, but in him.
Maybe that should be our prayer: “Lord, reveal Your Son in me, so that I no longer have to remain in the Romans 7 category. I can be in Romans 8. That is where I want to be.”
This is sufficient grace. Paul said, “I have a thorn in the flesh, and I want to get rid of it.” He sought the Lord three times, and the Lord’s answer was, “My grace is sufficient for you.”
What grace? The grace of Christ in you—the grace of Christ living in you and through you, enabling you to please God. “My power is made perfect in weakness.”
The life of Christ is revealed in us when we finally give up and say, “I cannot do it anymore.” This is the exchange life. Hudson Taylor found the exchange life when he read about the vine in John 15.
There is another way Paul was able to overcome these obstacles: he ran with others. He ran with others.
In an Olympic race, you have a number of people running together. In some ways it is funny because they are jostling and running into each other. But from a Christian perspective, it is so good to have brothers and sisters running next to you.
When they see you stumbling, they steady you. When you say, “I cannot go on,” you see them going forward, and their going forward urges you on. You want to go after them.
Paul ran with others who had the same goal: to finish the race. Is that our goal? Is our goal to finish the race, or is it merely to endure? There is a difference. “I will just endure until it is over.” No, I want to finish. I want to come through to the end.
Look at the people Paul ran with. Barnabas was an encouragement. Silas suffered in prison with Paul when they went to Philippi. Aquila and Priscilla were fellow workers. Luke was a faithful companion—so faithful that Paul called him “the beloved physician.” Paul loved him.
Then there was Timothy, who was younger. You younger people do not know what a blessing and help you can be to older Christians.
And Mark—Mark was a failure at one time. Paul had said, “I want nothing to do with this guy,” but Barnabas took him under his wing. Eventually Paul said, “He is useful to me.” What a wonderful story of redemption that is.
You hardly ever see Paul alone in Scripture. Apart from his time in Arabia, the one time I can think of was when he went to Athens. He had sent the others ahead to Corinth, stayed in Athens, and tried to preach there. It was miserable. People laughed at him and said, “We will hear you again concerning this.”
Everywhere else, Paul is with somebody. That is how we should be too. We should be walking with others. I do not mean only our spouses. We should have brothers and sisters to whom we look for strength and encouragement, and they should be able to look to us for the same things.
We are walking the same road, going to the same place, and we have the same goal. Seeing us go on is an encouragement to them, and seeing them go on is an encouragement to us.
When they see us slipping in one direction, they say, “Wait, do not go that way.” They pray for us. Sometimes they do not say anything because they know that, if they speak, we may turn them off. So they pray.
It is a wonderful thing. It is a wonderful race into which we have been brought.
The third thing for Christians is that Paul received the crown. This is where I think we all come to the place of saying, “I do not believe this.”
How many of us believe that we are going to receive a crown? Why is it that we do not believe that? Are we not persuaded by Christ? Is it because we look at ourselves and do not see the crown set before us, calling us to run toward it?
This crown is for all those who love His appearing. What does it mean to love His appearing?
For many of us, when we look at His appearing, we look at it negatively. We look at ourselves, and our focus is on our failures, sins, and inadequacies. We become discouraged and say, “That is for other people. That is not for me. I will just trudge it out.”
What does His appearing mean to me? Does it mean a judgment I will not be able to face? We know that, for us, there is no judgment for sin. The judgment for sin has already fallen. But perhaps we think, “My Christian life has been a flop.”
1 John 3:2 says:
Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that, when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
We will no longer see the lowly Jesus, because He is not low anymore. He was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, but now He has suffered death. He is raised in glory and honor.
When we think of Him coming back, it says that we will be like Him. What does that mean? It means I will not be like Him merely as He was while walking on earth. I will be like Him as He is in resurrection.
I will be clothed with immortality. There will no longer be in me the fear of death—the fear of separation from loved ones, from God, or from anything. I will be clothed in immortality.
Death will no longer reign over me. I will have no fear of it. It cannot touch me, and it cannot harm me. What a freeing thing it would be to know that you are not going to die.
I will forever be unencumbered by sin and a sinful nature. Think about how encumbered we are by this nature. We want to do things, but we cannot do them. This nature has a mind of its own. It wants to go one way, and though we do not want to go, we find ourselves dragged that way.
We will no longer be encumbered by sin: the fear of sin, the penalty of sin, or sin itself reigning over us and demanding obedience.
I will forever be in the presence of God, without fear of being banished and without shame. I will be before the Lord as Adam was before the fall, unashamed. “Who told you that you were naked?” I am not ashamed to be before God, because I am in Christ.
I will be in the position to reign with Christ. I will have the capacity to reign and rule with Christ.
Finally, all these things together mean that we will see the full worth of Jesus Christ. The full worth of Christ will be revealed to us, and we will fall down and worship because we will see all that He is—all that we did not know He was.
What we then see will dwarf all that we presently know of Him. Brothers and sisters, this is our hope.
Biblical hope is not wishful thinking. This is our expectation. We are supposed to expect to be like Him in His resurrection.
If we could see what His appearing truly means for us, I think it would change the way we look at our lives and our walk. We would see Him as He is: all-powerful, able to overcome in our lives everything against us, and inseparable from His love.
The next verse in 1 John says:
Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
This is not some kind of work trip. It means that those who see what is theirs begin preparing for what they are going to enter into.
This is not an attempt to gain merit by trying hard. We are at rest because we are assured, first, that He loves us; second, that our sins have been taken away; and third, that He has chosen us as His bride. We can have complete rest in that.
But rest does not mean that I sit around watching television, eating bonbons, and waiting for Him to come through the door. No, it means I prepare because I want to meet Him. I want Him to see me and say, “Oh, I knew I loved you. Just look at you.”
What does preparing mean? It means we are making the garment—the wedding dress. He has prepared righteousness and everything for us, but Revelation says that the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
He gives us all the materials to make the garment. He says, “Here it is.” Then we prepare: “Oh, this is so beautiful. Let me work with this.”
This, brothers and sisters, is grace. It is as much grace as the unmerited favor of God. Grace is a two-sided coin.
We look at one side of a coin and see George Washington’s head. How many of us look at the back? We know whose image is on a dollar bill, but do we look at the other side? We are so enthralled with the front of it.
Grace also has two sides. One side is unmerited favor: favor bestowed upon us that we could never gain, freely given to us.
But the other side is that grace brings forth a response in us toward Him. It includes gratitude, but it is gratitude that says, “I want to give myself to You because of what You have done.” Something is worked in us because we have had this favor shown to us.
It is like Les Misérables. When Jean Valjean has favor shown to him, his whole life changes because he is so grateful for what has been done. That is redemption.
We look at forgiveness of sins, but we forget redemption. Redemption means that our whole character is changed because we have tasted forgiveness. It does a work in us so that we say, “I want to give back to You. I want to give back the love You have given to me.”
It has taken me a long time—even up to this year—to say to the Lord, “I love You.” I have had the hardest time doing that because I fail. How can I say, “I love You,” when I fail in this and that?
But the Lord is looking for a response. He says, “I know you fail. But do not your children fail too? Do you not long for them to tell you that they love you? Tell Me you love Me. Tell Me that you are Mine and that I am yours. That is what I want to hear.”
This is grace also.
This is why the capstone of the building in Zechariah comes with cries of, “Grace, grace!” Not merely unmerited favor, but a changed life given back to God. Grace. It is all grace.
Our Christian life is like the Spurgeon book, All of Grace. It is all of grace: grace given to us, that grace having its effect in our hearts, and then our giving ourselves back to God.
When we give ourselves back to Christ, we find Him leading us in His triumph. That itself is grace. We are no longer walking alone in ourselves.
In 1 Timothy 1:15, Paul says, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.”
Then he punctuates it with verse 16:
However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life.
Paul is saying, “Brothers and sisters, if He could do this in me, there is hope for you, because I am the chief sinner.”
This is what we are to take from Paul’s life. The chief of sinners was able to know God, run the race and finish it, and receive the crown.
The last two verses of hymn 403 say:
O I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved’s mine!
He brings a poor, vile sinner into His house of wine.
I stand upon His merit; I know no other stand,
Not e’en where glory dwelleth, in Emmanuel’s land.The bride eyes not her garment, but her dear Bridegroom’s face;
I will not gaze at glory, but on my King of grace;
Not at the crown He giveth, but on His pierced hand:
The Lamb is all the glory of Emmanuel’s land.
Do you know what Paul is going to do with that crown? He is going to cast it at the feet of Christ.
The crown is not so that we can walk around saying, “Hey, look what I have.” When we see Him as He is and the crown is given to us, we will say, “I am not worthy. It is Yours. It is all because of You.”
This is the Christian life in Paul. We know we are sinners, but we know God. Knowing what He has done for us overcomes our consciousness of being sinners.
Then we know Him for Who He is. We run the race, and by running the race we discover that we do not only know God on the outside; we know God on the inside.
Finally, we have the hope of finishing the race because He is in us. Looking at Him, we see Who He is for us, and then we cast our crown before His feet.
This should fill us with hope. We should not look at this and say, “Oh, I could never do this.” Do you think Paul thought, “Oh yeah, piece of cake”? No.
I do not think he did, because he looked at himself too, just like us: “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” Then, in the next breath: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ.”
What a Savior. This is the Christian life: to know our Savior in such a way that He not only delivers us from sin, but takes us through the course and gives us a crown at the end. Praise the Lord.
Our heavenly Father, we want to thank You for so great a salvation and so great a Savior that is ours. How wonderful it is that He is ours, and we worship Him today.
Lord, we thank You that it is not upon us. It is not in our ability, as the men and women that we are, to do these things, except by the life of Christ in us.
Lord, we pray that You would show us, in these coming weeks, our Savior—our risen Savior—that we might look at Him with fresh eyes and see Him in His glory. Seeing Him in His glory, may we consider that we will be like Him.
May we be moved to purify ourselves, not because we have to do something, but because we are so moved by seeing Him that we want to embrace Him. Oh Lord, do this for us, we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.