Good morning, everyone. I just wanted to give you greetings from Philip Samuel in India. He called me yesterday and he wanted to convey his greetings and thank everyone for praying for him and supporting him. So think of Philip Samuel and their ministry. It's a tremendous ministry. I was there with them preaching for about a week, and we just went out every day into the villages and the mountains and preached the gospel, and that's what those guys do all the time. So pray for Philip and his ministry.

We're going to be looking at 1 John 3, a very interesting text this morning, about sin and righteousness. And I wanted you to look at one verse here in verse 4, our first verse, where John writes, "Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness." Now the word lawlessness here speaks of an attitude. It speaks of rebellion. Men and Adam are lawless. They're in rebellion. They're at enmity with God. 

What John is doing again, as he's done throughout the book, is to establish a contrast between the man in Adam and the man in Christ. And that's what we're going to see in our text again this morning. If you look at verse 10 also, John gives us the purpose for which he writes. It says, "In this, the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother."

Well, we've seen through the course of our studies in 1 John that John's primary purpose is to give assurance to those who believe in Jesus Christ in order that they may know that they have eternal life. They need nothing more. Remember, the false teachers were telling them that they needed a greater knowledge. They needed a secret knowledge. They needed to come to a higher plane. And they were trying to draw them away with false teaching. But they didn't need a greater knowledge or experience. They didn't need someone to teach them. No religious hierarchy. Nothing more. They needed nothing more than Jesus. John wants them to know that they had Jesus. 

He wants them to know these things to have assurance—assurance of their salvation. He also wants them to understand who the false teachers are, the nature of their lies, and the origin of their teaching. In short, John wants to make manifest the children of God and the children of the devil. He's done this in many ways through illustrations of light and darkness, of love and hate, error and truth. He's contrasted the believer with the unbeliever throughout the epistle in order to give assurance to the believers and to expose those who claim to know Christ but do not know Him. 

And this is what our text is about today as well. John is talking about sin and really the nature of our salvation in Jesus Christ. What does it mean that we are saved? What work did God do in us when He saved us? And for what purpose did He save us? Why did Jesus come? These are the questions that John answers in our text this morning. He does this in order that we might understand better who we are and why we are secure, why we have assurance, and also to show that those who do not believe, who do not hold the true gospel, are manifest by the fact that they are still in bondage to sin, that they live a life of continual sin, and are void of righteousness.

So John tells us in verse 10 the purpose of what he writes in verses 1-9. In this, he says, the sons of God and the sons of Satan are made manifest. He who lives in sin is dominated by indwelling sin and manifests continual sin in his life. He is a child of Satan, is in Adam, is under law, sin, and death. But he who practices righteousness, who manifests the fruit of holiness, is a child of God, and Jesus' life in him is shown outwardly through him.

I'd like you to notice what John says in verses 5 and 8 as well. In verse 5 he says, "And you know that He, Jesus, was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin." And in verse 8 he says, "He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil." 

We will see in our study this morning that one of the main purposes for which God saved us was to release us from the power and bondage of indwelling sin. He saved us that we might live new lives, holy lives, righteous lives by His power and His life in us to show the awesome, transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that we might bring God glory by how we live and that we also might be a witness in this world. God saved us and gave us a new life in order that we might live a new life. 

I think this is such an important thing for us to understand, to believe, to think about because we live in a world of justification evangelicalism. So many churches today are concerned only with their justification—happy to be saved and know that when they die, they will go to heaven, but not too concerned with sanctification, not too concerned with holy living. Often wrapped up in the world and the things of the world and filled with compromise. God saved us for the purpose that we might become righteous as He is righteous. John says so in verse 7. 

What we need to understand in order to live this righteous life that God intends is the nature of the salvation that God provides in Jesus Christ, the work that God has done in us, regenerating us and making us new men. We need to understand why it is that we can live a new life. We need to understand who we are in Christ, and we need to understand how it is that God intends to work out His will through our lives day by day. These are the very things that John is trying to teach us in our text today.

Let's look at our text. Let's begin in verse 1. "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God. Therefore the world does not know us because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself just as He is pure."

"Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous just as He is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil. Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him and he cannot sin because he has been born of God. In this, the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother."

I've given you four points on your outline this morning. First, we see children of God. Second, sin and righteousness. Third, truth and deception. And fourth, that we are born of God. Let me ask you as we begin, my brother, my sister in Christ, who is a child of God? Are we all children of God? If you ask the world, the world will tell you that all men everywhere are children of God, that they are all blessed in God's eyes. 

Ask Oprah. Ask Dr. Phil. Ask any spiritual leader of the world. They'll all tell you we are all God's children. And this is true for religious leaders of our time as well. I looked at the LDS website. It says that we are all literally spirit babies of Father God. I read an article the other day that I thought was interesting. It was about Pope Francis. He gave a mass in the chapel where he lives, and he was talking about who is saved, who is in heaven. And here's what he said. "Even atheists are in heaven because Jesus came to save all men." 

Just recently, Pope Francis was in a small African nation, and he went into a Muslim mosque. He went into the mosque and he prayed and affirmed that, quote, "Christians and Muslims are brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of the same God." Certainly, the political leaders of our world will affirm that we are all children of God. I remember when George Bush said that Christians worship the same God as the Muslims. I also remember after 9-11 when he quoted Romans 8, culminating in verse 39 where Paul wrote, "Nothing can separate us from the love of God," but he stopped there and he did not say, "which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

There's a lot of confusion in our world among the cultural leaders, among the political leaders, and especially among the religious leaders. And they all affirm that we are all children of God in a spiritual sense. But what does the Word of God say? What does Jesus say? What does God say about those who are His children? Listen to John 1-12. This is such an important verse. He says, "As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name." 

Romans 8-16, Paul said, "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God." Romans 9-8, that is, "Those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as seed." In 1 John 3-1 that we just read, "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God. Therefore, the world does not know us because it did not know Him." 

The Bible draws a clear distinction between those who believe Jesus and those who reject Him. It makes it clear that there are two types of people in this world. And those two types of people are the children of God and the children of the devil. In John 8-44, Jesus told the religious leaders of His time, the Jewish leaders, "You are of your father, the devil, and his works you wish to do." John wrote, as we read in John 1, "For those who receive Jesus, for those who believe Him, God gives them the right to become children of God." 

All men are not children of God. In fact, all men are born in Adam. They are born sinners, sons of Satan, and it is His will that they wish to do. To become a child of God, a man must be born again. He must believe Jesus Christ. He must be changed and taken from the kingdom of darkness and placed into the kingdom of the Son of His love. Then, he becomes a child of God. John tells us clearly that those who believe are children of God. And he says that everyone who has this hope in Jesus purifies himself. 

The text that sets the context for our passage this morning is the truth that we, because we believe Jesus, because we have trusted in Him alone to have paid for our sins on the cross, to have died, been buried, and raised again, we are children of God. This is what Paul said so clearly and powerfully in Romans 8 as well. In Romans 8.14, he said, "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God." He says the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.

So we see, first of all, that there's a clear line of demarcation, a great contrast between those who are in Christ and those who are in Adam. We are not all children of God. Only those who are of the faith of Abraham are children of the promise. All men are born in Adam, and all men are made sinners in Adam. It is their nature. It is who they are. And they sin because they are sinners. This is what John is getting at in our text this morning. Notice what he says about those who are sinners, those who are not children of God, but sons of Satan.

Look at verse 4. "Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness." It's an attitude of rebellion against God. Verse 6b, "Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him." Verse 8, "He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning." Verse 10, "In this, the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother."

John is, as Jesus and Paul do consistently, drawing a distinction between the believer in Jesus Christ and the man in Adam. And what God wants us to know, what He continually teaches in His Word, is that when we believed, when we were saved, God drastically and completely changed who we are. He changed the realm in which we live. He changed our position. We were enemies of God. Now He's our Papa, He's our Daddy, our Abba, Father. We were reconciled to God. We were justified. We were made right. And now there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

We are secure forever because Jesus paid the penalty in full for our sins. And when we turn from idols to faith in Jesus, God imputed our sins to Jesus and His righteousness to us. This is what we call positional truth. This is justification, being made right with God. But salvation in Christ is so much more than this. We are children of God. God dealt with the penalty of sin, justifying us because of our faith in Jesus. God also dealt with the sin in us. He dealt with our relationship to sin and the fact that we were sinners by nature, that we were dominated and controlled by indwelling sin.

In Christ, He made us righteous. Turn over to Romans 5 with me, please. Romans 5 will begin in verse 8. Thinking about the position we have in justification and also the truth of the new creation that we were regenerated, made new. Romans 5, 8, "But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life."

While we were still sinners, Paul says, when we were enemies of God, now we shall be saved by His life. Now look down to verse 18. "Therefore, as through one man's offense, judgment came to all men resulting in condemnation, even so through one man's righteous act, the free gift came to all men resulting in justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners, so also by one man's obedience, many will be made righteous."

I know we've talked about this many times, but it's so vital, crucial to our understanding of the Christian life and exactly what John is saying in our text today. I wonder if we really grasp the profound nature of these truths. It's so hard to keep our mind wrapped around these things unless we are continually renewing our minds and reckoning them to be true. Paul says in verse 18 that condemnation came through Adam's sin and that justification came through the free gift of Christ's death in our place. 

But notice also the transition between Romans 5.18 and 19. It literally says, justification unto life. Now please hear me, this is so important, so often overlooked by Bible teachers. Paul's been talking about positional truth, about justification, our standing before God in Christ up to this point. But the words he uses at the end of verse 18, of life, are a transition to the actual work and the subsequent actual condition of the believer because of regeneration, the new birth. 

Listen to Weiss' comments on these words. He says, "The words of life are describing the quality of the righteousness bestowed upon man. It is a righteousness which is connected with the impartation of spiritual life. In itself, the righteous standing is a purely legal matter and does not impart life nor change character. But it is accompanied by the life that God is, imparted to the believing sinner in regeneration." 

So, when Paul says in verse 19 that men were made sinners in Adam, this means that the sin of Adam in the garden brought condemnation to all men born in Adam and resulted in a condition of spiritual death, of the death of the spirit in trespasses and sins, dominated, controlled by the sin principle dwelling in every man. The man in Adam is a sinner. It is an inner corruption. It is his condition which cannot be overcome or be remedied apart from a new birth, a new creation, regeneration. 

That's exactly what Jesus does when a man turns from trying to fix himself, trying to be good enough, employing religion, rites, rituals, and good works, and turns to Jesus Christ in faith alone. God recreates him. He's regenerated. He's made new. He's born again into the family of God and thus becomes a child of God. Now, in this event, in this new birth, the believer is united to Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. He dies. This is so important.

Romans 6, 1 says, "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?" John is talking about sin and righteousness in 1 John 3. He's contrasting believers with unbelievers. He wants us to see that there's a basis, there's a foundation, a logical reason for why it is that the children of God display or manifest righteousness in their lives and the children of Satan manifest sin and lawlessness and unrighteousness in their lives. It has to do if they've been saved or not. 

It has to do if they've been regenerated or not. John is so black and white. His language indicates that these things are a necessity, that it's an inviolable truth. And that's just what Paul says in Romans 6, 2. He says the believer cannot live in sin. He cannot continue in sin because he died to sin and he was raised to newness of life. We are new men with new hearts and a new relationship to law and sin and death. 

Now, we have been made righteous by the regenerating work of God in our lives when we believe Jesus. We were justified unto life, a new life, spiritual life, God's life placed into us. This is an inward reality, and it must result in an outward change of holiness and righteousness, fruit. Now listen, I want to be clear here. What John is saying, what Paul is saying, is not that a holy life or righteousness is necessary for salvation, but rather, what he is saying is that righteousness is a result of God's saving work in our lives.

As Jesus said in the parable of the soils, when the seed falls on the good soil, it produces fruit—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundredfold. But fruit, my friends, and this is just what John was dealing with in these churches. These false teachers were telling them it doesn't matter how you live. It doesn't matter if you continue in sin. That's just fleshly stuff. You need to come to this higher spiritual plane. Don't worry about those things. 

But John says, "If you continue practicing sin, if there's no change in your life, then you do not have God." Verse 5 of our text, "And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins. And in Him, there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous just as He is righteous. Listen to verse 9. Whoever has been born of God does not continue in sin, for His seed remains in him and he cannot sin because he has been born of God."

John is not teaching sinless perfection here. He's not saying that we will never ever sin. What he's saying here, using present tense verbs, is the same thing that Paul says back in Romans 6. There can't be an ongoing, continual, perpetual state of sin for the believer. We cannot go on sinning as we did before in Adam. A true believer cannot continue in sin perpetually and continually with no change in his life. It's what Jesus said and taught so many times, there will be fruit, there will be holiness and righteousness in the life of the believer, whereas the unbeliever only always and continually lives in sin.

But I also want John's words to carry their full weight here. Because John is making an absolute point and he's intimating an expectation for the life of the believer. What should our expectation be for our lives in light of all this truth? Should I expect to just go on sinning? How many times have you heard a Christian say, "Yeah, but we're going to sin. You know, the things I want to do, I cannot do. The things I don't want to do, I find myself doing. And you know, Paul couldn't do it. If Paul couldn't do it, then I can't do it." What does God intend? 

What does this salvation mean to our lives? John is saying that a man cannot be saved and continue to live just as he did in Adam. There's such a drastic change. There's a recreation, a change of status and a new birth. Now we are children of God. This is so important and so consistent with John's flow of thought from chapter 2 and his desire to expose those who say they have Christ and do not. Who say you can just intellectually believe Christ, profess faith, and have no change in your life and live like the world. 

If a man lives in continual sin, has no change in his life, he has no manifestation of his new heart, his desire for God, his love for the brethren. Despite his profession, he's not been saved. This is a major point that John is making here. And John is also saying that the expectation of God for His children is holiness. Jesus was manifested to take away our sins. He came to destroy the works of the devil. God saved us and changed us that we might live changed lives, and He expects that. 

He facilitates that. He empowers us to do that, to produce fruit by His life in us. So what we need to see and understand is that sin is totally and completely inconsistent with who the believer is in Jesus Christ. I wonder if you've thought about that. Is sin consistent with who you are? It is not necessary. It is not logical. In fact, it's irrational for us to sin because we are no longer sinners. We are no longer dominated and controlled by indwelling sin. 

And Jesus has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. We don't need something more. He lives in us. He empowers us and lives His life out through us as we trust and abide in Him. Because of all these things, John says we should not go on sinning. He says, "I write you these things that you may not sin." And then he says, "But if anyone might sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." 

It is true that we do not have to sin. Do you believe that? In any given moment, in any temptation in your life, do you have the choice to reckon what God says to be true about you, to choose to believe Him, to pray to Him for help, and then to do the right thing by His power? We have that given to us in our salvation and in His life and power in us. 

The problem is we don't always make that choice. We don't always look to Him. We don't always believe what He says. We trust our feelings. We trust our emotions. We respond to the environment around us. We react. We need to come back to His Word. We need to affirm what He says. We need to expect a life of holiness.

How differently John speaks than do the preachers of today. There is truth, as we see in John's words here today, and Paul and Jesus' words as well, the truth that we are now new creations, that we have a new life in Christ, Jesus living in us. That God intends for us to live a holy life by His grace and power through faith. There is deception, a myriad of teaching diminishing the truth of holiness and righteousness in our lives. 

Teaching that it does not matter how we live, that sin doesn't matter, that we're all under grace. Grace should be teaching us to live holy lives of thankfulness. The way that holiness is so often de-emphasized today, the way that sin is excused and looked over in the evangelical church today, one might conclude that God expects, even that He intends, that we should sin. I find two extremes in this.

I just read an article this week by John Piper. And the article was called "The Sovereignty of God in Our Sin." Well, that intrigued me a little bit. By the end of the article, Piper had me believing that God intends us to sin and that we have no part in our will concerning not sinning. I once heard a Reformed teacher in a church in Indiana say that nothing, nothing, including our sin, happens apart from the will of God. It was all I had to sit there. 

Reformed teachers hold that the law is binding on believers. And men like Jerry Bridges have written that the law is like a sheepdog that drives us back into God's grace, showing us how completely and utterly, totally sinful we are, and that we never ever do what we want to do. And we always only continually do what we don't want to do. And then we come to appreciate all the more the grace of God. Really? This is why Jesus died? This is the new abundant life? This is dead to sin and alive to God, presenting our members as weapons of righteousness, our bodies as living sacrifices to God? 

Then there's the other extreme where it seems in evangelical Christianity today that no one, including God, even cares if we sin or how we live. The world, the cultural influences, the political crackness of our society have very often made the evangelical church and its members indistinguishable from the world. We act like the world, we worship like the world, we look like the world, and we live like the world. To sound a call for holiness and for separation and standing up against sin in the church is to be relegated to the status of a Pharisee or a legalist. 

They're just so legalistic over there. They're so narrow-minded. My brothers and sisters, desiring and pursuing holy living by the grace and power of God in my life through faith in consistency with who I now am in Christ is not legalism; it's sanctification. And Paul said this is God's will for your life. It's sanctification. God sent Jesus to take away our sins, to destroy the works of the devil, to make us righteous, and to cause us to walk in His commands, to live holy lives, and love one another. 

This is consistent with who we are. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin. For what the law could not do and that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. On account of sin, He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law, love, might be fulfilled in us. That's why He saved us. This is why we can now live a holy life. 

Because Jesus dealt with indwelling sin in the believer. He gave us His life—spiritual life. He made us righteous. And the fact is that for those who have believed Jesus, we have been born again. Verse 9 says, "Whoever has been born of God does not continue in sin, for His seed remains in him, and he cannot sin because he has been born of God." 

We saw in our first point that we have become children of God, and this speaks to our position. This speaks to our relationship with God. But here in verse nine, John uses a different kind of language and he gives us an important truth. John says, "We have been born of God," and then he explains what this means. He said, "His seed remains in us." Spermatheo, God's seed abides in us. Peter says the same thing in 2 Peter 1.4, when he says that we as believers have become partakers of the divine nature. 

We've become partakers of the divine nature. His seed abides, remains in us. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have come to make their home in the believer. We've seen why we can live a holy life—the drastic change that took place when we believed Jesus, when we died to sin, died to the law, when we're given a new heart and a new spirit, when Jesus freed us from the law and sin and death so that we are free to obey Him. 

We have put off the old man. We have put on the new man. Now we're being renewed in the spirit of our minds. These things are the why you can now live a new life. And I also want you to see how God intends we should live a holy life. It's because of the divine nature in us, because of the life and power of God living in our lives. This is God's will and plan for us, to bear fruit as a branch abiding in a vine. 

And to see how God intends for us to live in consistency with who we are, I want you just to look with two passages with me in Ephesians 1 and Ephesians 3. These are both prayers that Paul prayed for the believers there. Ephesians 1, verse 15, Paul writes, "Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. The eyes of your understanding be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places." 

Paul says that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in you, is at work in every believer, to produce fruit, to bring holiness and righteousness. 

Now look over to Ephesians 3, verse 14. Paul prays again, "For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named." Look at Paul's words. "That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." 

Now look at verse 20. "Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen." 

God's plan for you, my brother, my sister, God's intention, God's way for the believer to live in righteousness is by His life in us through faith. This is the bottom line. We must first know the truth of the nature of our salvation, regeneration, who we are in Christ, what God has done. We must know and reckon. We must believe these truths according to the Word of God. 

We also must understand that having reckoned these truths, God wants us to yield. He wants us to present our members, our bodies by faith to Him and His power and His life in us. He will impart strength to our inner man by His Spirit. Through faith, it says, Jesus will settle down and be fully functional in and out through our lives as we trust Him and abide in Him each day. 

And it is God, my friends, it is God who is able to do exceedingly abundantly more than we can ask or think. My brothers and sisters, we have no confidence in ourselves. We have no confidence and assurance in our faith. What we have is confidence in God, confidence in Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit and the power working in us that raised Jesus from the dead. 

Our faith is not in our faith. Our faith is in Jesus and in His life in us. And this is just what Paul articulated in Galatians 2.20. We've been talking about the why. We've been talking about the how. Paul brings it all together in one verse. He says, "For I through the law died to the law in order that I might live to God." Now listen to this, "I have been crucified with Christ." This is why I can live a new life. I'm a new man. "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live." This is how. "But Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live how? By the faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me." 

This is the essence of the Christian life—the why and the how we can live a new life in Him day to day. And my friends, John is telling us that this is true for you. That the believer has fruit, has life manifest through him because he is a child of God, because he has been born of God and God's seed remains in him. 

This is a reality in the life of those who have been saved as opposed to the continual sinning and lawless rebellion that characterizes the man and Adam. What important truth we've been seeing here this morning. And I know we've talked about this many times, but I just pray that the Holy Spirit will make this real, will make this effective in your hearts. Because we can live new lives. That's the very purpose for which God saved us. 

Let's close in prayer. 

Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You that You continue to teach us and challenge us. We thank You that You are sufficient for us. Your grace is sufficient. We're thankful, Father, that You have saved us and changed us only by Your grace through our faith. 

And Father, we're thankful that we live by faith now. And that it's Your power that accomplishes Your will in our lives for Your glory. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.