If you'll turn in your Bibles to the book of Romans, chapter 13, you'll find the passage for this morning, Romans chapter 13, and I'll read the chapter, it's not very long, and then the sermon comes from most of the chapter. Romans chapter 13, God's holy word. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment, for rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval. For he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid. For he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the evildoer. Therefore, one must be in subjection not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this, you also pay taxes. For the authorities are ministers of God attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed. Taxes to whom taxes are owed. Revenue to whom revenue is owed. Respect to whom respect is owed. Honor to whom honor is owed. Owe no one anything except to love one another, each other. For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law 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. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Besides this, you know the time that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone, the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. Let's ask God's blessing on this word. Father, as we come to your word this morning, which you have given to us through your servant Paul, we pray you will open our eyes, soften our hearts, open our ears, and write your word on our hearts in fulfillment of the promise of the new covenant. For we ask in the name of the word, Jesus, your son. Amen. Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're looking here this morning at Romans chapter 13. This being April 15th, tax day, it seemed like an apt time. I've actually rarely ever done these sorts of sermons or rarely does it work out when the sort of our daily calendar so obviously points to a place where we should go. And to be perfectly frank, I wrestled over whether to preach this text. But as I meditated on this text, I was convicted that I needed to hear it. And I thought, well, perhaps if I needed to hear it, then maybe one or two of you might possibly need to hear it. Most of you probably not, but I do. And so if no one else benefits from the message this morning, perhaps I will. And I think Pete needs to hear it. I don't know why I think that. He just gave me that look. The Apostle Paul wrote this passage, this letter to a congregation he had never met while he was in Corinth. And he's probably getting ready to go west. He had reached a turning point in his ministry and he had reached a remarkable distance with the gospel. In fact, he says in one place that he had fulfilled his ministry thus far and he had gotten perhaps as far as some reckon as far as the Balkans. And now he's looking west and he's looking towards Spain. He's looking towards what we think of as Western Europe. This is a fellow with big visions, real visions, not metaphorical visions, but visions from the Lord. and a calling to plant churches and preach the gospel and to be prosecuted and persecuted for the sake of Christ, to be beaten, to be jailed, to be shipwrecked, to be snakebitten, and on and on. So he writes to this congregation in Rome for a variety of reasons, but most likely this is going to be when he begins to go west, if the Lord allows him to do it, This is going to be his jumping off place. And this, of course, is the center of the Western world, center of the Eastern world. It's the center of the world that then was. And he writes to a mixed congregation of Jews and Gentiles, all believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's important to remember this morning that he's writing to a Christ confessing covenant community, just like this one, a mixed community of people of various kinds of backgrounds. There had been a Jewish community in Rome that had been chased out by the preceding or previous emperor, Claudius, and they were trickling back into the city now. And so the congregation that was originally there was probably mostly Jewish. But in the interim, while the Jews had been chased out by the emperor, Gentiles had come to faith. And so now Jews are returning to this congregation. And one of the issues that Paul is facing here is how Jewish and Gentile Christians to relate to one another. And, of course, that was a major issue in the New Covenant. There were a number of things also going on here in this in the city that were likely affecting the congregation. Just about this time, the Jews who had returned were engaging in a significant tax revolt. And Nero had some big plans and he wanted to build some significant buildings. And in order to do that, he needed, as the government always needs, more money. They never come to you and say, well, you know, we've got too much. How would you like to have some back? And, of course, Scripture warns us about that. You want a king, Israel? Well, great. This is what you get. Taxes. And just when you think that's enough, more taxes. How do you like your king so far, Israel? Well, it wasn't any different in 57 AD. And the king to whom Paul refers here in this passage is a king to whom I suspect we would have a great deal of trouble submitting. Do you know why that is? Do you know how old King, Emperor, Caesar, Nero was when this passage was written? He was 17 years old. I bet you didn't know that. I didn't know that. How many of you could submit to a 17-year-old? Let's imagine a scenario just off the top of my head. You get laid off. This is not too far fetched. You're in your 50s. The company sees that your benefits are getting more expensive. Your salary is more expensive. They need to offload some costs because because income is down. And so they lay you off and you can't find anything because nobody else wants to hire guys in their 50s because they're too expensive. So you do the right thing, and you get the only job you can get, and that's standing at a counter at McDonald's asking, do you want fries with that? Two weeks before, you were a highly paid analyst, and now you're a burger server. And guess who's managing the local McDonald's, a 17-year-old? How galling would that be? How often would you go home to your wife and say, I cannot believe this kid, he's got pimples. He can't drink. He doesn't have a credit card. And he's telling me what to do. And now imagine that he's king. He's not just any king. He's the Roman king. Did you catch that language that Paul used in this passage? He does not bear the sword in vain. When Paul said bear the sword, he wasn't speaking metaphorically. He was speaking literally. He could have just as well said he doesn't bear the cross in vain, not carrying the cross, but inflicting the cross on other people. This little twerp could send people to be crucified. And you know what? They printed coins that said Nero Divis, Nero Divine. Typically they waited. Well, sometimes they waited until they were dead and sometimes they didn't wait until they were dead to divinize a Caesar. Not only that, he was, I guess, an able administrator as governors go, but he was personally a bad guy. In 54, when he came to power, his mother, he came to power because his mom murdered his stepdad, who had very graciously brought him from exile and adopted him. How's that for gratitude? Sit down at the breakfast table and you never get up. In 59, when he feared that mom and stepbrother were plotting against him, Nero had them assassinated. Not only that, he was a sexual deviant. This is a family show, so I won't tell you how, but you'll just have to take my word for it. In 64, he was suspected of setting fire to a part of the city because he wanted to build a project they called the Golden Dome. And according, maybe most pointedly of all, according to the ancient historian Tacitus, Nero murdered, and this is Tacitus language, vast numbers of Christians, some by setting them on fire. Children, it used to be in this period in 57 AD when the Apostle Paul wrote, there was a very real likelihood that upon professing faith in Christ, or at least there's a possibility, it probably was a little more intense later on, that having confessed Christ, having stood up before the congregation and said, I believe the holy Christian faith, just as you will do, children, when you make profession of faith, right? You finish catechism and you go before the elders and you sit in that room and it's kind of scary and they're all staring at you and they start asking you questions and your knees are knocking. You want to give the right answers and after that's all done and you confess the faith that you really believe in your heart, probably nothing bad is going to happen to you. But when this was written here, children, some of those people were arrested simply for being arrested by policemen in a sense. Fellows not with guns, but with swords on their side. And they took them away. And do you know what they did? They put tar on them and they set them on fire. And others, they attached to a cross so they could suffocate just for being Christians. For standing up in front of the congregation and saying, all the promises that were made to me in my baptism, I receive heartily and I believe. So that's the situation in which the Apostle Paul wrote these remarkable words. So that when we read him saying, Let every person be subject to the government governing authorities. The Apostle Paul is not speaking idle words. He's speaking the most solemn words in a very dangerous situation where there is no authority, Paul says, except that which is from God. And those that exist have been instituted by God. And that's why I say that in the first part of our passage, verses one through four, we're looking here at Paul describing God's sovereign rule. And what he wants us to understand this morning, particularly, is that the civil magistrate is God's minister. His servant is what a minister is. You know, in our tradition, we sometimes refer to the minister as domini. At least we used to, maybe not so much anymore. And domini is a respectful term. It's not a horrible thing, but some of you may know, some of you may remember, that it used to sometimes attach to an attitude. And some of our congregations have been ruled by a single person with an iron fist sometimes. This is the way it will be. And there's no discussion, no backtalk. Well, properly, we all know this. Honestly, the pastor is a minister. He's a servant. It's the same word, by the way, for minister in Greek and Latin for the deacon. Did you know that? The deacon is a minister and the minister is a minister. One is a minister of mercy and the other is a minister of the word of God. He's a servant. The only rulers in our churches are the elders in an earthly sense. Christ is sovereign ruler over all things, civil and ecclesiastical in his providence. And this king, this 17 year old deviant, murderous, self-aggrandizing king, is without his knowledge certainly God's minister. God's servant God appointed him Caesar Nero thought he came to power because mom murdered his stepdad but that's not why he came to power sure those are the machinations that happened in time and space in history but he's Caesar only because God sovereignly decreed from all eternity that this 17 year old punk would be Caesar ruler over all of the known civilized world. Now, to be sure, he had regents, people helping him to govern, but eventually he would shed those and he would go to war. And it was his going to war ultimately that would cost him his place. And he finally ended up committing suicide in 68. He did not know that in 57 AD when Paul writes this to the Roman Christians. And they did not know that. But God from all eternity knew that this child to whom they were being called to grant submission and honor and fear, respect, and to whom they were called to pay ever-growing taxes, and we'll come to that, that 11 or 12 years later he would take his own life because of a miscalculation. God still calls him a minister, a servant. So we call him God's civil servant. And that's what he is. He doesn't have any authority except that which God has given him. And, of course, there are limits to the authority that God has given him. By creational mandate, his function, and Paul describes it here, his function is to exercise authority in the civil realm. Look at what Paul says. We'll come back to 3 and so in a minute. But look at verse 4. For he is God's servant for your good. What's his job? It's to bear the sword. He's God's servant. And who is he? What is he? He's an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the evildoer. When people transgress the civil law, God is not pleased and he will have them punished. This goes all the way back to Genesis chapter 9. By whoever sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. That's the civil magistrate's job. That's a creational function. Paul just assumes it's the right of the magistrate, the divinely established right under God's authority to exercise that kind of justice. And the image of the sword refers to ultimate justice. It refers to capital punishment. Paul has no qualms about capital punishment, which again is a remarkable thing because it's not very long after this. We don't know exactly when the Apostle Paul would suffer a completely unjustified capital punishment. They would arrest him. They would lead him outside the city on the Appian Highway. And because he was a citizen and he had certain rights, he would not be crucified. They only did that to people who had who did not have the privilege and the rights of citizenship. Having been tried, having been sentenced unjustly, having broken no civil laws, the Apostle Paul, having organized no rebellion, would be taken outside the city, made to kneel down, hands behind his back, and a highly skilled soldier with a very sharp sword would cut his head off. When God's word says that the civil magistrate does not bear the sword in vain, God's word isn't kidding. And the Apostle Paul submitted to that. And, you know, we don't have to think back all the way to Paul. We can think of Guy de Bray, who wrote our Belgic Confession, who died a martyr for the faith in 1567, who could have arranged a rebellion. Some of the civil authorities said, you know, we can get you out of town. We can protect you. We can cause an insurrection. We can fight back against that unjust tyrant, Philip II, who, by the way, killed at least 12,000 of us. Do you understand that just for saying, just for being herformed or chalefimed, 12,000 of us slaughtered, hiding in the hedgerows. You know Guy de Bray wrote the Belcher Confession. This is what I tell my students anyway, that he wrote the Belcher Confession hiding in hedgerows while Spanish soldiers with battle armor went clanking by, looking for him with a poster of Guy de Bray. And finally, when God's time, and in God's time, when his time was up, his work was completed, he stood on a scaffold and he declared that the magistrate had a right to do what he was about to do, even though it was entirely unjust, because Guy de Bray believed in the resurrection of the body, the life everlasting, and that these unjust civil magistrates, Philip II and Margaret of Parma and the rest of them, they were all going to suffer at God's hand. They were all going to give an account one day for the kind of injustice they had promulgated. But it wasn't his job to set them right just now. The other thing I want you to see as we move on quickly is that not only are all these authorities instituted by God, and not only was Nero God's minister, but that I want you to see how Paul characterizes in the first part of this passage, our life as citizens in earthly civil kingdoms or the civil sphere. He characterizes our life. And if you see this particularly in verses two and three, in terms of what we would call in reformed theology, a covenant of works. In the beginning, God came to Adam and he said, right, do this and live. That's the language of our Lord Jesus or violate my law the day you eat thereof. You shall surely die. That's a covenant of works. And part of what Paul wants us to know here is that our civil life under Caesar, God's minister, is a covenant of works. It's not a covenant of grace. A covenant of grace is a covenant of free acceptance by God, unconditional acceptance because someone else has paid the penalty. In civil life, there's no one else to pay the penalty for you. If you violate God's law, if the red light camera catches you entering the intersection after the light has turned, bang. it's going to get you. If CHP catches you going faster than everyone else, up the 15 or down the 5 or anywhere else, it's a covenant of works. The day you speed thereof, you shall surely be ticketed. The day you drive in the HOV lane, you shall surely receive a 400 and some dollar fine. That's works. That's not grace. It's very important that we understand that. And Paul says, if you obey, you have no fear. of judgment. You don't have to worry about it because it's all about justice. It's all about righteousness. Look at verse 3. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Christians, we have a responsibility as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to obey the civil magistrate. Now, I know that driving out here is a complicated business. Nobody keeps the speed limit. So I'm not telling you exactly what to do. I'm just saying if you get pulled over, you got pulled over. You smile. You say, yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. If I didn't deserve it this time, I deserved it 300 other times. But more than that, we have to recognize children, particularly that the civil authorities, the sheriffs, whoever else that's in charge of us, the mayor, city council, Oh, city councilmen, they're doing such dumb things. And they probably are. But God put them there. And we have to treat them with respect. We have to submit to them. And if we do, and if we don't break the law, we have nothing to fear. He's a terror, it says, not to good conduct, but to bad. If you don't want to be afraid, then don't break the law. That's exactly what Paul says. That's a covenant of works. Do this and live. And relative to the civil authorities, you can do this and live. And that's why we also pay taxes. That gets us quickly to the second part. God's people are to be submissive to the civil authorities. Verses 5 through 7. Therefore, Paul says, one, and he's speaking to a Christian, Christ-confessing congregation, must be in subjection. He uses this language in the first part of the passage, first half of the passage, really, about appointment and subjection or submission. These words are all etymologically related. They all have similar roots. This is about power. And we ought to recognize the power that God and authority, that God is powerful and he has invested civil authorities with authority, ability, rightful ability to do certain things, to levy taxes, to pass laws, to regulate civil society. And therefore, we should be in subjection. We among all people who recognize what it is to say that someone else is in authority over us, someone else is sovereign, because we confess that God is absolutely sovereign. Remember, Romans chapter 13 comes after Romans chapter 9. And the same God who has sovereignly elected some and allowed others to remain in their sins from all eternity is the same God who has instituted the civil magistrate. And so we believers of all should be in submission for the authorities. Again, verse six, are ministers of God attending to this very thing. And that's why he says in verse five, we should be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath. I bet when we're violating the law of God, when we're not filing the right paperwork or getting the right permits or whatever it is that we're not doing, we probably don't think about God's wrath. We just hope we don't get caught. Paul says not only to avoid God's wrath. Oh, that's a little uncomfortable. Could have done without that clause. Are you sure you meant to say that, Paul? It's in the word of God. But also for the sake of conscience. That word can be translated understanding, consciousness, awareness. But let's leave it conscience. Because if we're in submission to the authorities that God has placed over us, you know what? We don't feel guilty. As a teenager, I was known to drive faster than I should have and go places, do things I shouldn't have. And you learn as a teenager to kind of be on the lookout for the local constabulary. And to this day, when one of them rolls up behind me, I don't know, maybe you don't have this, but I have this, I get a little pang of guilt and then I say to myself, I'm 50. I'm driving the speed limit I've paid my taxes he can pull me over because I am not doing anything I don't have the energy to do anything but that pang of guilt is still there it's deeply rooted from 1974 somewhere, 75 but we can have a free conscience before the magistrate and so we freely pay our taxes Verse 6, now I've gone from preaching to meddling. For the authorities are ministers of God attending to this very thing. It's their job to collect taxes. Look at verse 7 now. You've got your Bibles open. I want you to see this. I want you to see that I'm not pulling rabbits out of hats or making anything up. I want you to look with your eyes and see, or at least listen carefully. Pay to all what is owed them. Well, we could have done without that. Taxes, to whom taxes are owed. Revenue, to whom revenue is owed. And by the way, he uses two different words for two different kinds of taxes. Most likely the one word is a direct tax, right? 15% off the top, right? Off the gross or whatever. And then the other one is probably the fee that you pay when you go to a county park, right? Or a state park or whatever. Indirect taxes. The kind that really irritate you because you're thinking, I just paid my taxes and now I got to pay this guy 50 bucks to do whatever. Paul's saying you pay all of those. Taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed. Now look at this. Respect to whom respect is owed. Not because they're good people, not because we think they're doing the right thing, not because we agree with them. Honor to whom honor is owed. here's where the meddling comes. We are Americans. How did we become Americans? We rebelled. Now, arguably, there's a defense to be made of the American rebellion, according to Calvin's theory of lesser magistrates. We don't have time to do that this morning. But the truth is, as Americans, we are rebellious people. There are lots of historical and sociological studies that say that there is a deeply rooted quality in the American character that says we don't like people telling us what to do. Do you know that churches call themselves community churches when they're not actually community churches because there are sociological studies that say that Americans don't like to go to churches that have denominational names on them because it makes them think that somebody somewhere else is in charge and they don't like that. They want to be someplace where they're in charge. And particularly historians have shown us that from the 1830s, 20s and 30s and 40s following, there was an outbreak of a radical democratic egalitarian spirit. And by that I just mean a radical leveling spirit where we didn't want to recognize anybody as being higher or superior in any way to anyone else. And we were going to do everything we could to flatten everything out. Do you know that it wasn't very long ago that in the United States there were not direct elections for United States senators? They were indirectly elected. Do you know why it was set up that way? Because the founders did not trust you. They didn't think you would pay attention and that you would elect the wrong kind of people and you had no business choosing. Do you know that we don't actually elect the president of the United States? You think you do, but you don't. We have an electoral college that's modeled after the medieval pattern of electing popes since the 12th and 13th centuries. It's called the Electoral College, which is essentially patterned after the College of Cardinals. We don't have white smoke and black smoke, but it's a group of people who are indirectly elected, who gather and who actually elect the president of the United States. And the founders, the framers of the Constitution set it up because they didn't trust us. And Americans don't like that. And all the time there are laws. We've got to get rid of the Electoral College because we want to have direct control. Well, when we rebelled against the King of England, we were paying 6% or 7% taxes. When we came back to the United States after being in the U.K. for a couple of years, Katie, some of you may remember little Katie. She's now a much taller Katie. She was a little English girl who'd gone to English schools for a couple of years. She was in the back and she said, Daddy, who's the queen of this country? And I said, well, that's a complicated question, dear. We don't have a queen. We used to belong to the queen, but we rebelled, and now we're our own country. She said, why, Daddy? Why ever did we rebel from the queen? What's wrong with the queen? She'd spent two years pledging allegiance to the queen and singing, God save the queen. As far as she knew, the queen was wonderful. Why would we rebel? And I said, well, we were paying 6% or 7% of taxes, and we were facing some religious oppression, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Now we're paying 40 or 50 percent of taxes. But at least we're paying them on our own hook, we decided. The nub of the thing here is at the end of verse 7. Respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. That's where the rub is for us Americans. That's what we need to get to grips with. There's a place where we need to recognize our sin and we need to repent. And I need to repent of my unwillingness to honor those to whom honor is owed. And then finally, the last thing that God wants us to see from this passage is the fact that we live, and really the ending at verse 10 here is pretty arbitrary. It's really the rest of the passage. We as believers in the church, as members of the congregation, we live in two different spheres simultaneously. We live in the civil sphere, but we're also members and citizens of a heavenly kingdom. You remember our Lord Jesus, when he was before the civil magistrate, said, My kingdom is not of this world. Were it so, I would have called down legions of angels. Do you really believe that Pontius Pilate, an ill-regarded regional governor, Had the power in and of himself to arrest God the Son incarnate who had fed multitudes twice, raised the dead, calmed the seas? Except he submitted humbly in recognition of a kingdom that has no end. Where is the Roman kingdom? Where is Caesar? The Roman kingdom is no more. Caesar's dead. Where is Jesus' kingdom? It's where it always was, at the right hand of the Heavenly Father. And where is it manifested? It's manifested here in Escondido, in this place and in other places, and all over the globe, on this Lord's Day. Christians are gathering to bow the knee, not to Caesar. Not to say Caesar Dominus est, Caesar is Lord. Not to say Caesar is Lord, but to say Jesus ho curios esti. Jesus is Lord. Children, they crucified. The civil magistrate arrested our Lord and Savior Jesus and they put him to death. He allowed them to do it for your sake. And they buried him, as you know, and on the third day, the morning of the third day, they went and he wasn't there. And some days after that, he was ascended. He went to be with his heavenly father and the disciples saw him go bodily, physically ascend to the father. And there he sits at the right hand of the father as the king of whom we sang in the psalm, praising him. As the king installed by God the Father, ruling over all nations with a rod of iron, sovereignly, authoritatively administering his sovereign rule. But the eternal kingdom is not at City Hall. It's manifested in places like this. The civil magistrate may distribute to you bread and water. But God's minister administers to you salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, that comes through bread and wine, as it were, not by magic. But that's the sign and seal of the salvation that he freely gives. It's signified and sealed in the water in that baptismal font. It comes through the mystery of the preaching, the foolishness of preaching. Jesus is sovereignly administering His kingdom. And right now, the Holy Spirit is present, operating through this silly, disorganized, chaotic sermon, making sense out of what might not make sense to you and what barely makes sense to me. Sovereignly raising dead people to life as you sit in these pews. You say, I can't see it. And I say, just wait. You know how they say, wait for it? One day Jesus will appear again as they saw him go. And then it will all be made plain. But look how we then are to conduct ourselves in light of that as members of that sphere. Look at verses, just look at verses 8 through 10 very quickly. Oh, no one anything. Now look at this, except to love each other or one another. He's talking about the congregation. This is how we ought to conduct ourselves, relative to the congregation. For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For all these commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal. These are all the Ten Commandments. You shall not covet. And whatever other commandments, these are all summed up in the second table of the law, Love your neighbor as yourself, as our Lord Jesus taught us in Matthew 22. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Here's what I want you to come away. And I called this section God's spiritual kingdom, but we just as well call it his gracious kingdom, his loving kingdom. I wasn't sure what adjective to use. I use spiritual because I wanted to convey it's the kingdom of his Holy Spirit. It's the kingdom of grace. We are engrafted into this kingdom, this sphere of salvation by God's free, undeserved favor. And we, in turn, love each other, embrace each other, accept each other, treat each other the way we do, not out of compulsion, right? We drive 65 out of compulsion, out of fear, a justifiable fear, a righteous fear. We pay taxes out of submission and respect, but we love each other out of grace and freedom and salvation. Not out of compulsion, because we were loved. We were accepted. We were forgiven. We conduct ourselves the way we do because of the way God has conducted himself, as it were, in Christ through us. And that's why he goes on to say what he says. If we had time, we'd look at the rest of the verses. But it's really more of the same stuff. We live the way we do in this sphere, under God's sovereign rule. Not to say, by the way, that we don't love our neighbors who are outside of this sphere. We do. Peter makes that plane. Paul makes that plane. But we have special relationships and obligations, as it were, in Christ as a consequence of his free favor toward us in Jesus Christ. God rules everything sovereignly. Praise God that he's seen fit to include us not only and to place us not only under Caesar, but in a sphere where it's not by works, but by grace. Free acceptance, because someone else paid your debt. Owe no one anything. You owed everyone, including God, everything. But Jesus, children, he came and satisfied. He paid everything that we might freely love one another in his Holy Spirit, in his grace, submitting to him freely, not out of compulsion, bowing the knee to King Jesus in gratitude, in union to him who's at the right hand of the Father. God grant us grace this morning to do that.