April 12, 2015 Sermon — Peace Be With You: The Scars and the Spirit of the Lord (John 20:19-23)

It is Easter or Pascha. Either one of those names will do. Either one of those names can be used to label this 50-day season celebrating the resurrection of Christ. Some years we have put Easter on the bulletin. Other years we have used Pascha. But either term is fitting. Easter is certainly the more common term, at least in the Latin church. The term comes from an old German word for East, believe it or not, because the sun rises in the East. And the celebration of Christ’s resurrection happens around the spring equinox, when the light of the sun more and more overcomes the darkness of winter. Easter means the light that entered the world at Christmas is growing and triumphant. Pascha is the Greek term for Passover. And because the Easter week happened at Passover in Jerusalem, and because there are so many connections between Passover and Easter, it is a fitting name as well for this celebration of Christ’s resurrection.
When Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, it was probably the very same day that the lambs were chosen for Passover and brought into the city. When Jesus died outside the city on Good Friday, it was probably at the exact same time that the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the city. Jesus is the firstborn who dies to bring us out of slavery to sin in a new exodus. Because His blood covers us we are spared from the angel of death. Because of His resurrection we keep the paschal feast, celebrating His victory, eating and drinking the bread and wine that are to us His body and blood. Pascha or Easter is truly our new covenant Passover.
We pick up today in John chapter 20 where we left off last week. Last week we looked at Jesus’ Easter morning encounter with Mary Magdalene. And we saw there a man and a woman in a garden. And so this is clearly a new creation scene. The risen Christ is inaugurating a new world. Today we are going to look at Easter evening in the upper room. Then next week, Lord willing, we will look at the second Sunday in Easter, as Jesus again meets with His disciples and especially speaks to Thomas. And then the week after that we will look at what is quite possibly the third Sunday of Easter in John’s epilogue, John chapter 21.
So today it is Easter evening. By the evening of that first Easter obviously stories were starting to circulate. Mary had no doubt shared with the others about her encounter with the risen Christ. Peter and John had no doubt told the others that they had seen the empty tomb. But the disciples were certainly not full-on believers at this point. They are somewhere suspended between doubt and belief. They still need convincing. They are still harboring doubts. And so far from being courageous in proclaiming Christ’s resurrection, they have locked themselves in a room out of fear for the Jews.
But as they are locked in this room, Jesus suddenly appears to them. He came and stood in the midst of them. And most every reader of this story figures Jesus’ resurrection body must have somehow been able to pass through walls or doors. In fact, C.S. Lewis surmised that perhaps resurrection bodies are so much more solid and so much denser than our present bodies that perhaps they can pass through material objects the same way a rod of iron can pass through water. I do not know if that is the right explanation or not. But certainly it is miraculous—the miraculous appearing of Jesus in their midst.
This is probably the same upper room the disciples were in when they shared the Last Supper with Jesus. It is probably the same upper room they are going to be in the next week when Jesus again appears to them. It is probably the same upper room that they are going to be in in Acts chapters 1 and 2 when the Holy Spirit comes upon them at Pentecost. We cannot absolutely prove that it is the same room each time, but it makes sense for a number of reasons. And in fact, the Anglican bishop J.C. Ryle was so confident about this he called one of his books The Upper Room. And indeed said that room is, quote unquote, “the cradle of the church” because of all the great events that happened there.
Jesus enters this room and He speaks to His scared disciples. He says, “Peace be with you.” Now what is happening here? Really at one level you could say this is simply Jesus fulfilling His promises. The last time they were in this upper room, Jesus gave a long discourse. It is there in John 13 through 16. And in that discourse Jesus made all kinds of promises—promises He is now making good on. Jesus said He was going away, but then He said He would come back. And here He is; He is back. He said to them, “You will see Me again.” And now they are seeing Him again. Again, He said they would weep and lament while the world was rejoicing; they would weep and lament. But then their sorrow would turn to joy. And now it is. They are glad to see the risen Christ. In fact, the very last thing He said to them in that upper room in John 16:33 was this: “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace.” Peace. And now He has returned to give them the peace that He promised.
Now what is this peace? That is such an important word in the Scriptures. What is this peace? Certainly wishing peace to a friend was a typical way of greeting one another in the ancient Middle East. But on the lips of Jesus here, it is much, much more than a friendly greeting. It is not just a wish for peace. It is a gift of peace. Peace is being given to them through His words. This peace, or it would be shalom in the Hebrew, is really, you could say, what the Old Testament prophets had promised. That when the kingdom of God arrives, peace will come in its wake. The Old Testament prophets spoke of a new heavens and a new earth, a new creation. They spoke of a coming kingdom when God would reign over all, when He would manifest His gracious and righteous reign over all. The prophets spoke of a time when the nations would bow before Israel’s God and Israel’s Messiah. The prophets spoke of justice rolling down the mountains like a rushing river. You take all those prophecies, all those promises that the prophets made, all those things they spoke about. You could really say shalom, or peace, summarizes all of those blessings. Shalom is the salvation. It is the kingdom. It is the new creation. It is God’s justice manifested for the nations. God’s justice rolling down like a river off the mountains. All of that taken together, that whole package of promises and prophecies, that is shalom. And so here Jesus is bestowing on His disciples everything the prophets had promised. He is the Prince of Peace. He is bestowing peace. Peace is the great gift of Pascha, the Easter gift the risen Christ gives to His people.
Well, then Jesus shows them His hands and His side. And then He says to them again, “Peace to you.” So you see the order here: it is peace, wounds, peace. He speaks of peace. He shows them His wounds. And then He speaks of peace again. He wants them to know the peace Jesus gives comes through His wounds. Paul says in Colossians 1, Jesus made peace through the blood of His cross. That is what Jesus is demonstrating here. That peace with God and peace with one another—shalom rippling through the creation—is the result, the outcome, the outworking of Christ’s cross. His pain brings us peace.
We can also conclude from this demonstration of His wounds, His scars, that Jesus wears the scars of His passion forever. The risen Christ has nail prints on His hands and a scar mark on His side from being pierced even right this very moment. Again and again, when we see the risen Christ or when there is a vision of the risen Christ, the scars are there. So in Revelation 5, John sees Jesus appear as a Lamb that has been slain. As if to say the risen Christ takes His cross with Him wherever He goes.
Now we might ask, what is the point? What is the point of caring about these scars in His resurrection body from all eternity? Why should His resurrection body have scars? Some have suggested that as our mediator, He intercedes for us continually presenting His wounds in heaven before His Father as a memorial of His cross. He has the scars as a way of bringing the benefits He purchased for us on the cross with Him into heaven. So He presents those scars even in heaven on our behalf. That could certainly be part of it. Others have said this is so we will know and so the disciples would know that even though our resurrection bodies will be glorified and perfected, they are still going to be in continuity with our present bodies. So in Jesus’ case, the same body that was crucified is the same body that is raised up. The same body you are serving God in now, offering the members of your body to service in His kingdom. It is the same body that will be rewarded and glorified and perfected in the resurrection. Again, I think all of that is true and those may even be the most important things, but I think there is something else going on here. I think the scars tell us something else that we should not miss. I think they tell us something about what Christ is doing for and with His church right now, especially when His church suffers. I think He bears wounds, signs of His suffering because He still suffers. Oh, He is done suffering for His people. That is why He cried out on the cross, “It is finished.” But He still suffers with and in His people. He suffers with us when we suffer.
Think about Acts chapter 9. Saul, this zealous Pharisee, is out to persecute the church. He is on the road to Damascus where he is going to continue his work of breathing out threats and persecuting Christians. And suddenly the resurrected Christ appears to him in blinding glory and speaks to him out of this glorious light: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” Now at this moment, Jesus is in heaven. And Saul is persecuting Christians, not Christ. But clearly here, Jesus is indicating that He suffers with His people. When His church suffers, He suffers. He shares in our suffering.
Or think about that very enigmatic verse in Colossians 1, verse 24. Paul says, “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of His body, the church.” Paul speaks of something lacking in the afflictions of Christ. What could possibly be lacking? Did not Christ suffer infinitely on the cross? Well, Paul here is not talking about suffering in just the way Jesus suffered on the cross—suffering in a way that quenched the wrath of God against our sin. The kind of suffering that is lacking, the kind of suffering that needs to be filled up, the kind of suffering Paul is talking about there is suffering for the sake of ministry and mission. Suffering persecution as he goes about proclaiming the gospel. There is more suffering for Christ to undergo in union with His body. It is as though God has preordained a cup of suffering that must be filled to the brim. And until it is filled, there is still more suffering for us to undergo. But it is suffering in union with Christ. When the body suffers, the head suffers as well.
Or also think about this, Philippians 3:10. Very interesting what Paul does there. Paul says, “I want to be found in Christ that I might know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.” Note the order Paul speaks in there. We might read that verse and we might think, would not it make more sense to speak of the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings first, and then to speak of the power of His resurrection second. Because that is the order, right? First Christ suffers on the cross, then He is resurrected. But the way Paul does it there in Philippians 3, it is first he speaks of the power of Christ’s resurrection, then he speaks of the fellowship of Christ’s suffering. Why is that? Why does he use that order? I think it is because when he talks about fellowshipping in Christ’s sufferings there, he is talking about Christ’s suffering with His church right now. Not past suffering that is over and done with on the cross, but suffering with Christ right now. As Paul went about being persecuted, suffering for the sake of Christ and the sake of the gospel, he knows that he is fellowshipping in the suffering of Christ, that Christ is sharing in that suffering with him. Paul cannot know the sufferings Christ endured on the cross for us, that suffering Christ endured under the curse and wrath due to us for sin. That suffering was borne by Christ alone. But Paul can know the sufferings of Christ as Christ’s body, the church, endures trial and struggle and pain and persecution in the present time. And Paul says that present suffering of the church is a fellowship in the sufferings of Christ. Christ is sharing in that suffering with us. We are sharing in His suffering as we endure those things.
See, Christ suffered on the cross because of our sin to deal with our sin once and for all. But He continues to suffer in and with His people whenever we suffer. And so His wounds, even on His resurrection body, are still visible. To remind us of His solidarity with us in our suffering. The scars mean that Christ is never distant or aloof. Yes, He is glorified. But just because He is glorified, He has not lost His ability to empathize or sympathize with us. And so this is a reminder, even as the wounds of Christ have been glorified, our wounds can be glorified as well because we are united to Him. And that I think also is why when the disciples see the risen Christ, scars and all, the disciples are glad. They rejoice.
Well, then Jesus speaks to them again. He says, “Even as the Father sent Me, so I am sending you.” And then He breathes on His disciples and He says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Now, the question is often asked, how does this gift of the Holy Spirit relate to what comes later in the book of Acts at Pentecost? I do not think this is yet the fullness of the Spirit the disciples will receive 50 days later at Pentecost, but it is a preview. It is a promise. It is a down payment of what is to come. The breath of John 20 becomes the rushing wind of Acts 2. And again, this is all connected. Peace comes through the wounds of Jesus, but peace also comes through the Holy Spirit. Indeed, in John chapter 14, Jesus told His disciples He would send them the Helper, the Holy Spirit. And then He immediately says, as soon as He says, “I am going to send you the Helper, the Holy Spirit,” He says, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.” See, when Jesus goes away, He is going to give us His Spirit and in giving us His Holy Spirit, He gives us His peace.
Now this breathing of the Holy Spirit upon them, I think also reveals to the disciples Jesus’ full identity. They know Him as a man. They have lived with Him the last several years. They knew that He was fully human. Now they are coming to know Him as a resurrected man. He has a man’s body. But now they are beginning to see the rest of the story. Yes, He is a man, but He is more than a man. He is the God-man. It is very interesting. This is the only place in the New Testament that uses that language of breathing out. But that same word is actually used two times in the Septuagint, which was the Greek translation of the Old Testament that was in use at the time. It is used in two places in the Greek Old Testament. It is used in Genesis 2, which we read this morning, where God forms man out of the dust of the ground, and then God breathes into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and he becomes a living being. And so we can make a connection: the same word that was used there is used here. If Genesis 2 and John 20 are using that same word, what is going on? In Genesis 2, who breathes out the spirit of life? God, the Creator. And so if Jesus does the same here in John 20, what must we conclude about His identity? He must be none other than God in the flesh. And here He is giving His disciples new life, new creation life. He is making them His new humanity. He has the power to do this. He has the power to give them this life because He is God. The Holy Spirit, who is the Lord and Giver of life, proceeds from Jesus or through Jesus.
The other place where the word is used is Ezekiel 37, when the prophet has a vision of Israel as a valley full of dry bones. This is Israel in exile under the curse, under judgment. And the Lord says to the prophet Ezekiel, “Can these dry bones live?” And the prophet answers, “O Lord God, You know.” And then the Lord commanded the prophet to prophesy to the bones. And as the prophet speaks, the Lord breathes upon the bones. And they come to life, and they are covered with flesh, and filled with the breath of life. And they become a great united army. The Lord’s breath gives new life.
Now fast forward from Ezekiel 37 to John chapter 20. What have the disciples shown about themselves? The disciples are really no better than a pile of bones. They are dead in sin. When Jesus was taken away to be crucified, they all scattered. They all abandoned Him. They are a group of deniers, and abandoners, and betrayers. But now Jesus is back. And He is breathing on the dry bones, bringing them to life. Gathering His scattered disciples into a new community, a new humanity. Reversing exile, and bringing about Exodus. And as He breathes on them, and gives them His Spirit, Jesus Himself is really coming to live in them, by His Spirit. He is coming to indwell them, by means of His Spirit. He is sharing His resurrection life with them. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is now coming to live in the disciples. Again, what does it mean? It means Jesus is God. He is the Lord. He is the embodiment of Yahweh. And that is why His breath is equated with the Holy Spirit. That is why the text here echoes the creation account. Jesus is nothing less than the Creator God. Jesus is Creator and Recreator.
See, really you could say, this is John’s Gospel coming full circle. John 1 echoes Genesis 1. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” John 1 sounds a whole lot like Genesis 1. But now John 20 echoes Genesis 2. John 20 sounds a lot like Genesis 2. Genesis 2, the Lord God breathes into man’s nostrils the breath of life. That is what Jesus is doing here. He is breathing His Spirit. He is breathing the breath of life into these new Adams. See, Jesus is the Word through whom God made all things. Now He is the Word through whom God remakes all things. This is the remaking of the human race. The remaking of man. This is mankind 2.0. Inaugurated here with Jesus breathing His Spirit out upon His disciples. Genesis has God as Speaker, God as Word, and God as Breath. The same united threesome is here in John. Jesus is the one sent by the Father, but He is also the one who sends the Spirit.
I think this is a bit of a detour, but I think it is so important to see creation and recreation as the work of the Trinity, the triune God. See, either God created out of need or God created out of surplus. Did God have needs that creation could meet? Did God create to try to shore up some deficiency in Himself, to make up for something that was lacking in Himself? The Bible’s answer to that question again and again is no. It is no because God has always been joyous and satisfied in the love of the Trinity. God has always had His Word, His beloved. This is different from other gods. Like, say, Allah. Allah has a book, but He does not have a Word. You cannot say Allah is love because before creation, who was there to love? Allah was a loner. Not so with Yahweh. Yahweh is love. He is love from all eternity because Father, Son, and Spirit—or Speaker, Word, and Breath—have enjoyed relationships of love and communion and service from forever, from all eternity. So God created not to make up for something that was lacking, not to compensate for something He was missing. He created out of a surplus of love. Creation is the overflow of God’s love and joy in Himself. God created in order to communicate Himself, to share Himself. Not because He needed to, but because He desired to. And now we see Father, Son, and Spirit recreate for the same reason. God was under no obligation to redeem His fallen creation, to forgive the sins of man, or to restore man to His original position of glory, or even exalt Him above that. After man’s sin, all was forfeit. All was lost. But the Father, Son, and Spirit together undertook this work of recreation. And so the Father shares His Son with the disciples. And in sharing the Son with His disciples, the Father really shares Himself. And the Son shares the Spirit with His disciples. And in sharing the Spirit, the Son really shares Himself. And when the Spirit comes to us, what does He do? He brings us to the Father and the Son.
See, Christ is the one through whom the world was created in the beginning. And now He is the one through whom the world is recreated. Which means He holds the whole world in His loving, nail-scarred hand. The whole creation is in His hands. He is holding it together. The whole creation declares His love and His glory. It is all His handiwork. He sustains it. He upholds it. His character and His truth are woven into the very fabric of the universe. Which means if you go against Christ, if you go against the Word, the Logos, you go against all logic, all reason, all truth, all life, you become a fool. To oppose Christ is to hate life and love death. It is the opposite of what we were created for.
It is interesting. Christ as Creator. I do not think we think about this enough. Christ’s role in creation. Jonathan Edwards, the great theologian, once tried to catalog a variety of ways in which creation images Christ, types of Christ within the creation, how the universe is continually pouring out knowledge of Christ if we look at it rightly. Basically, you read Edwards and you get the impression everything in the world either points us to Christ or points us to our need of Christ. And we can make our own kind of catalog just like Edwards. Think about the sun. On a sunny day, think about the sun. The sun reminds us that Jesus is the Sun of Righteousness who has risen with healing in His wings. It is not a sunny day. It is a rainy day. The rain reminds us that Christ washes us clean in baptism. It is a windy day. The wind reminds us that Christ’s Spirit came upon the church as a rushing wind. Edwards said, water reminds us that Christ is the living water who alone can quench our thirst. Bread reminds us that He is the true manna that has come down from heaven for the life of the world. Milk, Edwards said, reminds us of Christ as its whiteness points us to His purity and its nourishment reminds us that He is food for our souls. When evening falls, we are reminded that darkness covered the earth during His death. And when dawn breaks, we are reminded He is the risen one, the light of the world. This is Christ’s world. He made it. He has redeemed it. It was created through Him. It is remade through Him. And He shows Himself through it, through the things He has made and redeemed. And this Creator, Redeemer, comes to live in us as He gives us His Holy Spirit.
But as He comes to live in us, He also assigns us a mission. And you also see that here. As Jesus breathes on His disciples, we come to see they are not given the Holy Spirit just for their own jollies, just for their own benefit, but for the benefit of others, for the benefit of the world. Jesus has breathed on His disciples to enliven them and empower them and equip them and now He commissions them. This is why He has redeemed them and remade them and given them His Spirit. He says, “Even as the Father has sent Me, so also I am sending you.” So the Father sent the Son, now the Son sends the Spirit, but when Jesus sends the Spirit, He also sends those whom His Spirit indwells. And that is us. God is the missionary sending God. God is also the missionary God. God is the one who sends and the one who is sent.
What does it mean to be sent even as Jesus was sent? Or to be sent with His Spirit as He sends His Spirit? Well, to be a disciple of Jesus means that we have been sent by Jesus. To have the Holy Spirit means we have been sent with the Holy Spirit. When Jesus says, “I am sending you, even as the Father sent Me,” He is not saying, look, I had my turn, I did my thing, I did my mission, now it is your turn to go. That is not what He is saying. He is not saying, I did my mission, now you do yours. He is saying, I am continuing my mission, but here is how I am going to continue. I am going to continue my mission through you. And I am giving you my Spirit, so wherever you go, you take Me with you. Or perhaps we should put it this way, wherever Christ goes, He takes us with Him. That is what this means.
Now, being a missionary in Christ does not necessarily mean moving halfway across the world. It means that for some, but not for most. It may not really require any kind of geographic movement at all. That is the great thing. When the Holy Spirit indwells you, you can live as a missionary right where you are. What does it mean to be a missionary in this sense? It means to live with a sense of purpose. A sense of purpose that comes from sharing in the life and mission of the Trinity. Jesus says, even as He was sent, so He has sent us. Think about how Jesus was sent and how our sending is analogous. Jesus was sent to deal with the world’s sin and suffering in the same way. We are sent to deal with the world’s sin and suffering too. To enter into the world’s pain and to bear the world’s burdens so the world can come to know the Son as the Savior. We are called to go to those places where the world is most broken and by the power of God’s Spirit and by the Gospel begin to mend the broken world.
It always sounds like such a daunting task when we talk about what God has called His church to do. Let us see what is going on here. We have the Holy Spirit. God dwells in us. Because we have the Spirit, we have the power we need for this mission. And look even here how Jesus describes how this power works, how it operates. He describes this power we have in terms of binding and loosing. Here Jesus is authorizing His disciples to loose people from their sins or bind them in their sin. These powers that are elsewhere referred to as the keys of the kingdom. Now certainly we have to say that this ministry of binding and loosing belongs to the whole church because the whole church has the Spirit and the whole church shares in this mission. But I think we also have to say in a unique way this power belongs to the apostles and after them to pastors. This is how John Calvin put it. He said, “The forgiveness of sins is dispensed through pastors by preaching and the sacraments. Therefore let us seek forgiveness where the Lord has placed it.” Calvin says Christ employs these magnificent terms to commend the ministry so that believers may be fully convinced that what they hear from their pastors concerning the forgiveness of sin—even though it comes through the voice of men—it must be valued as highly as if God spoke it from heaven. So that when your pastor cries out “Take heart, your sins are forgiven,” Calvin says you ought to receive that as though God Himself was speaking those words to you straight from heaven. Certainly as a pastor one of my greatest privileges is declaring to you each Lord’s Day the forgiveness of your sins in Christ. Absolution in His name. That you are forgiven your sin.
But I want you to understand how this works. What is going on here? This is something I find very, very interesting. This word that is used for forgiveness—this loosening of people from their sins or forgiving people their sins—this same word that is used here in John 20 is also used in John chapter 11 when Lazarus is raised from the dead. And in John chapter 11 verse 44 Jesus says of Lazarus as he comes out of his grave as Jesus has raised him from the dead, Jesus says, “Loose him and let him go.” Loose him and free him. And that second part of that there—“let him go” or “free him”—that is the same word that is used here in John 20 for forgiveness. See, the forgiveness here is not just a declaration that God makes. Your sins are forgiven but now your situation is left unchanged. No, the point is that when God forgives you He frees you. Like Lazarus you are released, you are enlivened, you are liberated, you are no longer a slave, you are no longer in bondage to death, your grave clothes are taken off, your grave clothes are taken away and now you are clothed in Christ. This declaration of forgiveness means you are not dead; you are now alive. You are no longer in bondage to sin and death; you have been set free; you have been let loose. A declaration of pardon that left a criminal in his cell would be less than fully satisfied. That is not the kind of forgiveness or pardon this is. This kind of pardon when it comes it throws open the gates of the cell and now you are free to go. You are free to live as you were really made to live.
And so what does this mean? This means that all those who can feel the shackles and chains of sin, all those who long for deliverance, guess what? The church has good news for you. Good news—a promise of forgiveness and freedom in Christ that your grave clothes can be replaced with the clothes of Christ Himself if you only trust in Him. But there is also a warning here to all who refuse Christ, to those who will not repent, to all who hate Christ and love death: all the church can do for you in that case is declare you bound in yourself. You see this: you are either bound or loosed, forgiven or condemned, freed or enslaved.
Proclaiming this good news of peace and forgiveness and freedom in Christ is the church’s mission in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what we are sent to do. To be sent by Christ as the Father sent Him is to be agents of His grace, agents of this mission, this proclamation. Our calling is to announce this good news that Christ is risen, that there is the forgiveness of sins in His name, that He can set you free from bondage to death. Our mission is to let the freedom of Christ ring out. Our mission is to speak liberty to the captives, our mission is to speak peace to the embattled, forgiveness to the guilt-ridden, and resurrection to the dead. Martin Luther once said we all need to hear the good news every day because we forget it every day. So here is your daily reminder of the good news: Christ loves you. Christ forgives you. Christ speaks peace to you. Christ gives you new life. He gives you freedom from bondage. There is your reminder. Now go remind others. That is our mission. We have been sent to proclaim this good news.
I want to ask you: what kind of God does all of this? What kind of God are we meeting here in the risen Jesus? This is a God of love, a God of grace, a God of peace, a God who has given Himself sacrificially for you in order to forgive you and set you free. What kind of God is this? What kind of God shows off His scars? What kind of God seeks out those who betrayed Him and abandoned Him just so He can forgive them and speak peace to them? What kind of God says to His people Sunday after Sunday here: eat My flesh, here drink My blood? This is the kind of God we meet in Jesus. He comes to us again and again and again to speak His peace to us, to breathe His Spirit on us, to enable us, to equip us, to enliven us. This is the kind of God we have in Jesus.