or the church, if you would open to Galatians 6. I should say before it distracts you, I will be sitting again today. If you're new, I've had a lot of back issues and have made a lot of improvement, but I don't think I'm quite ready to stand and preach the whole time. Galatians 6. And I'm going to read verses 1 and 2. We'll mainly be focusing on verse 2, and then we'll be moving back into chapter 5 for a while. Let's start in verse 1. This is God's Word. It says, If anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." Father, Lord, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for Your Spirit. And we need to be renewed in our minds right now. And we need our hearts to be compelled to live for Your glory and to pour ourselves out for the good of others. And Lord, we need Your Spirit to work, so Holy Spirit, come. We pray that You would work through this passage, this Scripture before us. You would transform us. And Lord, we pray that we would leave here people that look more like Your Son, and that we could live lives that would give more glory to Your Son. And so we pray, Father, that You would work that in and through this preaching. In Jesus' name, Amen. Well, I want to talk about the law of Christ tonight, which is an odd phrase when you think about it. If you've been studying Galatians with us, law of Christ, that word law being used next to Christ is a little bit strange. If you've been following along the first four chapters of Galatians, Because we know the context of this book is that Paul is essentially warning these churches in Galatia of all these false teachings regarding the law. And he's mainly talking about the law in the negative sense. So we see him in chapter 3, verse 10 say, all who rely on works of the law are under a curse. And to jump in the deep end really quick here, the word curse literally means damned. Damned in hell. Those who rely on works of the law are under a curse. And then verse 13 right after that, but Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. And then verse 24 in chapter 3 says, the law was our guardian until Christ came. So, the law had a purpose. It guarded us. It guided us. It was a tutor to lead us to Christ. But once Christ has come, the guardian is no more. And then chapter 5, verse 18, if you were led by the Spirit, you were no longer under the law. And then for five chapters, we've just seen Paul repeatedly push back and basically say if anybody wants to go back to the law, you have severed yourself. Cut yourself off from Christ. And so now in chapter 6, for Paul to bring up this word law and to do it in a positive way is odd. It's not fitting the flow of this, it seems, and it begs the question, have we been freed from the curse of the Mosaic law to now be burdened down with a weightier law called the law of Christ? Because certainly, if the law of Moses, the bar was here, certainly the law of Christ, the bar must be higher. So do we have a bigger burden that we're now to bear in the new covenant than the old? And before I get into this too far, I want to just kind of put out maybe for those of you who want kind of a thesis sentence, like where are you going with this? Here's what I think the law of Christ is if we were to put it in one sentence. I believe the law of Christ is the law of love. And I want to start easy before we get into the difficult parts of this. So let me say, I think it's impossible to overstate the importance of love. We can disagree and we do disagree on a lot of things regarding love. It's not debatable. It's not confusing. It's not confusing when Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And then the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. That's not confusing. It's not debatable. There's no confusion there. It's not difficult when we look at 1 Corinthians 13 and Paul says, We could have all knowledge and we could have all faith so as to remove mountains. We could give up our bodies to be burned. But if we have not love, we have nothing. There's no confusion there. It's very clear what we're getting. You can't read the Bible and walk away and go, oh, okay, I get it. My life is to be about just loving myself. pursuing my dreams and my ambitions and my happiness, and love is all aimed toward me. You can't read this book and come to that conclusion. What you will continually see is love is to be outwardly focused toward others and toward God. I mean, you read commands like 1 Corinthians 16-14 that says, let everything you do be done in love. Everything. And the Greek word means everything. Or right before that, I'm sorry, chapter 13, verse 13 of 1 Corinthians. Faith, hope, and love abide, but the greatest of these is love. And you know, sometimes people, it's so hard to wake up to this reality. You know, people have a near-death experience, and those oftentimes make people really come to grips with big questions in life. So, they begin to say, okay, my life was spared, I should have died, so certainly God has kept me here for a purpose. And, you know, I think I want to remind us today that if you are alive right now, you are kept alive for a purpose. And that purpose is to love. It is to love. In God's providence, the primary reason why we are still alive today is to love. And I don't have to be a prophet to tell you that even in the middle of a pandemic, that even if your kids are difficult or you're stressed with work, the reason for living is loving. It's just amazing to me. I mean, these are horrible sermons to have to preach on love. In many ways, because they're just so horribly convicting. I mean, it's amazing how few of my thoughts are spent thinking of how I can love others better. I mean, when you take the totality of your day and you think about all the things your mind is doing, and then you think of how few of those thoughts are intentionally trying to love someone. It's horribly convicting. Horribly convicting. And love is one of those things you would rather do it than talk about it. It's not so glorious to sit and analyze love. It's much better to experience it. So please don't... Don't think a sermon on love is all Christians can bring to the table. We do believe, as I prayed a moment ago, we do believe something supernatural happens when someone by faith receives these words as God's words and takes them in. Something supernatural happens. A transformation happens. We do believe that, but we don't put too much on a sermon on love, because we know that sermons on love are not the end. They're just a means to an end. That's why the apostolic phrase goes like this. 1 Timothy 1.5, Paul says, the goal of our instruction is love. The end, the purpose of our Bible teaching is love. That's what it's aimed at. That's what it's to produce in us. And so, I feel like I should say, for those who are newer to the church, maybe you would think, I don't know how everybody finds our church, but maybe you might think, well, maybe this is one of those churches that they just like to kind of hear sermons on love, doctrinally accurate sermons, and it somehow makes us feel intellectually or spiritually superior. And I would love to tell you, And I will tell you that we're not one of those churches. We're not one of those churches, and I feel I can say that. Without hesitation, because I experience regularly weekly. The love of Christ. Through this church. I experienced the love of Christ through the church. I get to see people rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep. Bearing one another's burdens. Shouldering each other's responsibilities for kids or counseling each other's marriages. Praying and fasting for one another for sin or suffering in each other's lives. generously giving massive amounts. I mean, I'm shocked at the amounts that people in this church... I hear through the grapevine of ways the church helps each other. It's shocking. And so I know this church is not a church that just wants to hear a sermon on love as an end. As if that's the aim. We want to love. We want to love. I think many of you would agree with me with what I'm about to say, but there is nothing in the Christian life that I have found that is more difficult than loving. It seems like the most basic thing to our faith, but I've found nothing more difficult. I've found nothing that instantly humbles me is when I think about how lacking I am in love. And I find it also encouraging that it seems I'm not alone. I think many Christians struggle with this, and even the Apostle Paul, many of his prayers for the churches he planted or is working with are prayers that their love would grow. We see it over and over again. One of the primary prayers that Paul prays for the churches is that their love would abound, or their love would grow with knowledge and with discernment. And it's not something that he just prays for. It's not like Paul goes, oh, I prayed for them to grow in their love, so they'll grow in their love. He actually labors to preach toward that end. So he says in Ephesians 4.14, he says, Be no longer children tossed to and fro by waves and carried around by every wind of doctrine, but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, into Christ. And he talks about this, how do you build a mature church? That's been my aim in life for 12 years. That's my calling. That's my job description. By the grace of God, try and labor that this church be mature. What does that look like? Paul says in Ephesians 4 that it be built up into the full stature and measure of Christ, and then he flips the phrase and says, or be built up in love. So a church being loving, as the Bible says, looks a lot like Christ. And it looks mature. It is mature. And we have a long way to go, but that's the aim. Paul says in Colossians 3, verse 12, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, forgiveness. And then he says, beyond all these, put on love, which is perfect in the bond of unity. There's so many things that are said out there that are just not helpful regarding the church. You hear them all the time. The church just needs to stop hating each other. Why can't the church just love each other? When I hear things like that, I don't know if they know what the church is. Because Christ's church loves Christ's church. 1 Thessalonians 4 v. 9 says, concerning brotherly love, sisterly love, love in the church, concerning that type of love, he says, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. So what does it mean that we've been taught by God to love one another? He says, that's true of you. You don't need teaching. You've been taught by God. Well, what does he mean? Does he just mean that Christians are people that have picked up the Bible and they read that they're supposed to love each other and so they're doing that? I don't think that's what he means when he says that we've been taught by God. I believe that it means that when we receive the Spirit at conversion that He wrote His law on our hearts And part of what it means to have the law written on your heart is that you love the brothers and you love the church. You know, I think you can meet a new Christian and they may not be able to articulate the gospel that saved them. So they may have been saved putting their faith in Christ, but they may not be able to yet articulate that. But have you ever talked to a brand new believer and you said, you know, you need to commit to the church and love and serve them? And they said, what? Why would I do that? Because intuitively, when someone is born again, when they receive the Spirit of God, they enter into the family of God, and they intuitively know, they naturally know, this is my family, these are my brothers and sisters, I love these people. This is how Jonathan Edwards said it. What believers are given in regeneration or when they're born again is love. The new heart we receive is a heart of love. I've been reading, I think I posted it on the group this week, a little quote from a Puritan. that I've been reading, a Scottish Puritan. He was a professor of philosophy in the University of Aberdeen a long time ago. But he wrote a book. It's kind of why he's remembered. Henry Scogle is his name. He started being a professor of philosophy at the seminary when he was 19, and he died at 27. And he wrote a letter to a friend, and right before his death it was published into a book. And the title of this book alone, some books can sum up the essence of the book and the title quite well, but the title of this book is, The Life of God in the Soul of Man. The life of God in the soul of man. That's what a Christian is. the life of God in the soul of man. And when the life of God exists in the soul of man, love will result. Love will result. Paul says this a few different ways. He says in Galatians 6.15, neither circumcision or uncircumcision counts for anything but a new creation. That's the life of God in the soul of man. A new creation. Or chapter 4, Galatians 19. Paul says, here's my desire for the believers. That Christ be formed in them. Or he says it to them. He says that Christ be formed in you. Be formed in you. The life of God in the soul of man. That when that happens, the result is love. Here's one more place that this is taught. Chapter 5, verse 5 and 6. If you'll flip back there quickly. Now listen to these phrases. He says, through the Spirit, comma, by faith, Make sure we see that. The Spirit of God being connected to faith. Those things cannot be disconnected. They're often interchangeable, as is the case here. Through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision count for anything. So the external religion isn't the essence of Christianity, but he says only faith working through love, or faith that produces love. And remember, the faith is not disconnected from the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God which brings the faith results in love. This is our context. What am I doing? I'm trying to give us a context of who He's giving this law of Christ or commanding these believers to keep the law of Christ. This is our context. Now, I want to pause because I think that if there's a perceptive listener right now, and you're like, okay, so you're saying in order to truly love We have to have the Spirit of God in us, and we have to have a genuine faith in Christ in order for genuine love to happen. So if those things happen in me, why do I keep getting commanded by God to love? Why the need? If the Spirit of God and faith produce love, why do I have to keep getting commanded to love? is if I need that reminder or instruction. And that would be an excellent question. And I would basically answer like this. I would say, just because something is natural to us, doesn't mean we're good at it or we know how to do it well. So you think about if you're an athlete going to be trained to do maybe a long marathon and you have an Olympic coach who's going to teach you how to run this marathon. They don't have to teach you how to breathe. You know how to breathe, naturally. What they're going to teach you is how to breathe correctly. And so I think this is what the Scripture is doing with the commands and the teaching regarding love. For a Christian, it is natural to us. But just because it is natural to us does not mean that we do not need instruction so that we can do it correctly. And so what I want to do, I want to lay out three, I don't know what we could call these, maybe layers or standards, I'm going to call them, of love. And they kind of build on each other. So here's the first standard I believe Paul gives us regarding love. The standard of love, number one, is self-love. Self-love. So Galatians 5.14, listen to where I'm going with this. your neighbor as yourself. So that's the key part of the verse. As yourself. And I don't mean by this how many are psychologizing this verse. This verse gets very psychologized. Many are saying when they read that verse, love your neighbor as yourself, they say, well, if we're going to love our neighbor, we first got to learn to love ourself. You'll never really learn to love others until you first learn to love yourself. That's what's often said. That's wrong. That is not what this verse means. That is not taught anywhere in the Bible. I think what we're seeing here is an assumption by God that we already do love ourselves. And He's saying with the emphasis and the amount of focus You love yourself, love others like that. And you'll be quite loving. Now, I know nobody's raising your hand and objecting at this point, but I think there's got to be at least some of you who are saying, I think self-hatred is actually a really big problem. I don't think that people actually love themselves that much. That's why there's depression. That's why there's suicide. It's because people don't love themselves. And I would actually disagree with that. I think that depression and suicide are actually a result of self-love, not self-hatred. I think when someone gets to the bottom of the barrel to the point where they would end their life, it is because they are done loving their wife, and loving their children, and loving those who care for them. And all they can think about is themselves in that moment of darkness. And I want to show great compassion for those people, but I also don't want to tell them that their problem is self-hatred, their problem is self-love. And so when the Bible says, love your neighbor as yourself, there is a great assumption in the Bible that we have a very strong love for ourselves. I don't personally believe this is a controversial statement, but I don't think self-esteem is a problem for fallen humanity. I think we all have a great self-esteem. I think that's why Paul is able to command husbands. In Ephesians 5.28, he says, Husbands, love your wives as your own body. He who loves his wife loves himself. And then listen to the verse right after that. Verse 29, he says, For no one, no one ever hated his own flesh. Nobody actually has self-hatred. He says, Nobody ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it. So Paul's not saying, husbands, what's wrong with you? What's wrong with you, husbands? Learn to love yourself so that you can finally love your wife. That is not what he's saying. He's saying, husbands, you love yourselves. You do. Now try to love your wife as much as you love yourself, and you'll be a loving husband. It's a very high bar. It is very shameful. I hate that this is actually true, that I would say such a thing, but I really do think I love myself more than I love my family most of the time. And I love my wife and children more than anyone on this earth. But the reality is, I spend much more time loving myself than loving anyone else. And so what a command that God would say, love your neighbor, love your wife, love your children, as you love yourself, John Mark, and you'd be doing great. That's a shameful, sad reality, but it's true. I'm more concerned about my stomach being full than my neighbor. I'm more concerned about my desire for comfort and happiness and relaxation or success than I am anybody else's most of the time. With the same passion that you seek your own good, you should seek your neighbor's good. With the same energy that you seek your own happiness, seek theirs. That's what he's saying. Are you hungry? Feed your neighbor. Are you thirsty? Give your neighbor a drink. Are you lonely? Go befriend someone who's lonely. Listen, some of you would be set free from depression, from worry, from loneliness, if you would get this, you'd be set free. You'd be absolutely set free because love is not looking around or hearing what I'm saying and going, you know what, that would be nice if somebody would pay attention to me like that. Why doesn't anybody love me like that? That's not love. Love is saying, there's people that aren't love, I should go love them. There's people that are lonely, I should go be their friend. There's people that are hungry, I should go feed them. That's what love does. Love feels the desire to be noticed and to be praised and says, I bet someone else feels that and I should give that to them. Love feels the desire to be served and to say, I bet somebody else feels this desire. Maybe it's that person. I'm going to serve them. It's a very selfless thing the Lord is calling us to. The first standard of love is self-love. Love your neighbor as yourself. Second, the second standard of love is the law. So, Galatians 5.14, here's how Paul says it. That's a big phrase. 613 commands in the law. The whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And this is repeated in James 2.8. If you really want to fulfill the royal law according to Scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Or Romans 13, verse 8. The one who loves another has fulfilled the law. And then listen to what he does. He begins to name the Ten Commandments. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So, what is sexual immorality? It's a failure to love your spouse. What is lying? It's a failure to love your neighbor. Every one of God's laws that we break is, in essence, a failure to love God or others. And so God says, honor your father and mother. And if we say, no, no, I don't want to honor them, but I still love them. No, you don't. At least not in that moment. Because loving them looks like honoring them. God says, don't commit adultery. And we'll go, well, I'll commit adultery against my spouse, but I still love them. No, you don't. If you break the commandment, you don't love. It's the standard of what love is. There is a standard. We're Christians, right? We don't just relativize Scripture. This is why this is important. I was talking to someone earlier today. It's not enough for me as a pastor to be like, okay guys, here's what we're supposed to do. God says love one another. Now go do it. Because what would end up happening? We would all just come up with our own ideas of what that means. Right? Everybody would have their own, and that's what the culture does. But as Christians, we must have a standard. How do we define love? What is love and what isn't love? And this is where the law comes in. So this could be a horribly confusing sermon for many of you when we've spent months saying the law is bad, here's the bad things regarding the law in the Christian life, and now I'm coming along saying the law actually has good purposes in the Christian life. It helps us understand love. Elise Fitzpatrick said it like this, we must continue to ask ourselves this question, what is the most loving thing I can do in this moment? Since we oftentimes don't know the answer, God's law was given to help us. The law teaches us what is most loving in that moment. Or here's how John Stott said it, he said the law merely spells out what love looks like in concrete situations. We can't figure out what love is without an objective moral compass, the law. So it's popular to bring this into our context. You hear people say, well, the reason I'm living with this person out of marriage and we're sleeping together is because we love each other. And according to what I'm preaching right now, if we're understanding this rightly, we would have to push back and say, no, the problem is not that you love them. Love is not making you break God's commandments. Love does not ever make us break God's commandments. We see this in abusive relationships all the time. The man oftentimes will say, I love you, I love you, I love you, and then he continually abuses. No, he does not love her. The problem is not his love. The Bible says in Romans 13, 10, love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. How do we define wrong? The Scriptures. Charles Leiter, if you haven't ever heard of him, I would encourage you to look him up. He's very helpful. He wrote a book on the law of Christ. And I wanted to read a small portion here because he helps us understand how the law fits with love. So listen to what he says. He says, love itself tells me not to murder my neighbor, seduce my wife, steal his car, or falsely accuse him. And then he's modernizing that from Exodus chapter 20. Supreme love for God by its very nature causes me to give Him first place in all my affections, makes me abhor idols as an insult to His infinite glory, and prevents me from speaking irreverently to Him." That's a summation of the first few commandments in Exodus 20, verses 3 and 4. Love tells me that I shouldn't curse a deaf man or place a stumbling block before a blind man. Leviticus 19.14. Love tells me to protect others from possible injury by building a guardrail around a dangerous roof. Deuteronomy 22a. or confine a dangerous animal, Exodus 21-29, or cover up an open pit, Exodus 21-29. So, what he's getting at there is many of the laws in the Old Testament that we don't obey anymore in the New Covenant, since Christ has fulfilled them, we can actually still read back to a law that told the Israelites, put a fence around your roof so someone doesn't fall off. We can read that and we principalize it. We say, oh, I see the heart of God. That was meant to love others. And we can think of ways that this law still shines forth the character of God, even though we aren't commanded to specifically obey that. We're not under that mosaic. command any longer. I've been thinking about the law again this week and how it's interesting that the law often puts us on the defensive, like how do I not do such and such, whereas love puts us on the offensive. Isn't that interesting? I think this is very helpful, because many times we'll go through the Christian life, we start our day and we're like, Lord, help me not look at this. Help me not go here. Help me not say this. It's all defensive things. It's all kind of law-type thinking. I don't want to do all these bad things. But what if we prayed, Lord, help me to love. What if it was a more offensive prayer? Help me to love my wife. Help me to speak words of grace. Help me to, with my eyes, look at things that edify me and would love others, would honor the Lord. It's very different. It's easy not to kill someone. It's much harder to love your enemy. You'll go, oh, I haven't murdered anyone today. I've obeyed one of the commandments. Yes, but have you loved your enemy? See how much higher a bar that is. How much greater a command. It's easy not to commit adultery or to steal, but how much harder to actively love others. So the Christian life isn't so much what we don't do, but what we're doing. It isn't so much about what we avoid, but how well we love others. And think about Think about God's own character. God is love. He's many things, but the Bible says God is love. And we think about the love of God, and what most brings out the love of God, He isn't all of these bad things. Right? When we think of the love of God, we don't think, well, He's not evil. We think, He's so kind. He's so gracious. He's so merciful. He's so steadfast and faithful. It's all of the offensive, intentional ways that highlight His love and His goodness toward us. So we have three standards. Two so far. The standard of love. We should love others as we love ourselves, Number two, standard of love is the moral compass. How do we know what's loving and not? God's law and God's character. And then thirdly and lastly, and this will be really quick, the standard of love is its willingness to sacrificially bear burdens. I'm not going to get into this much right now because I want to come back to this next week, Lord willing, and press further into the context in chapter 6. But look at verse 2. bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Now again, I want to say more about this next week, but what we know right here is that love looks a lot like finding someone who's burdened and lightening that load for them. It looks a lot like that. Christ looks a lot like that. Coming along. and lifting a burden. And I would say specifically, sin and suffering in people's lives. I had a man sit down with me. Let me try to bring all this one last thing to try to clarify this as we end. I had a man sit down with me not long ago and ask me, he was asking a genuine question and a great question. What is God's standard of righteousness for a Christian? What is the standard of righteousness? And I said the standard of righteousness is the law of Christ. And he said, well, what is that? Is that the same as the law of Moses? And I said, no, it's not. And he said, well, how do you know that? And I said, because in the old covenant, if someone asked what is the standard of righteousness, then they would have listed 619 commandments. and said, that's the standard of righteousness. Uphold it. Especially pay attention to those big ten that were written on the rock by the very finger of God. That's the standard of righteousness. But in the New Covenant, when someone says, what is the standard of righteousness? What is our answer? It is the law of Christ. It is the love demonstrated through the person of Christ. I said to this brother, well, I'll turn us there if you'll go to Romans 8-3. This is very important. that we see this because He says that the law is fulfilled in us when we bear one another's burdens. And so how do we do that? How do we bear the burden of another? And so fulfill the law of Christ? I think it starts with this. Jesus said in Matthew 5, I did not come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have come to fulfill them. And so Jesus came to fulfill the law, and now Paul says we fulfill the law when we bear one another's burdens. Look at Romans 8.3. 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. Here it is. In order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. So before we can begin to bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ, what Romans 8 is telling us is that law must first be fulfilled for us. In us. That's what Paul says here. In order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. The fulfillment of the law is something that Christ has done and we receive it by faith. So, this is the good news of the Gospel that we love. That God saw a world of lawbreakers. A world of people who could not uphold His righteous standard and keep His law. And He said, I will send My Son. And Jesus came down in the body of a man. And He took hold of the law of God. And He kept all of God's law. And He fulfilled all righteousness. And then He took that perfect law-keeping righteousness to the cross and laid it down as a sacrifice for sin. And He tells us, your righteousness will not be enough. This is what Galatians over and over says. You can't keep the law and be righteous because you've already broke it. But Jesus then offers to us in His death and resurrection, He says, I have a righteousness that is not yours. You have not earned it. I have earned it. I have kept God's law. And you can receive My perfect law-keeping righteousness by faith and what was achieved for you. So hear this, when we receive the fulfillment of the law, the righteousness of Christ, We are then prepared to be these type people who would forsake self, bear a burden of someone else, take on someone else and their problems, their sin and their suffering and minister to them and so begin to fulfill the law of Christ. Let's go to the Lord and ask Him to help us on this. I do want this to be for us something that we pursue and that the Lord give us grace to bear up under, bear one another's burdens and continue to fulfill the law of Christ. Let's pray. Father, O Lord, we thank You that You have not laid upon us a law that crushes us. We thank You that You crushed Your Son under the curse of the law. And that now Christ is able to give us His perfect, law-keeping righteousness. Praise You, Jesus. Thank You that it's possible Thank You that You accomplished it. Thank You that it's available to anyone who will receive it. Lord, I pray that You would put it in the heart of even someone here today. To by faith, receive what You have accomplished for them. To have their sins forgiven and Your righteousness given to them. And Lord, that You would Help us to love our neighbors. And so, continue to live out the fulfillment of this law. Lord, strengthen Your church for this. This is a difficult season to love and an awesome season to love. Lord, help us. Help us to see the needs. And Lord, give us the will Give us the strength to bear the burdens of those around us and to give glory to Your Son, fulfilling His law. We pray these things in Jesus' name, Amen.