28 June 2020

He Who Dies by This Sword, Lives by This Sword

If there is a more difficult Word of Jesus than the one at hand in this morning’s Holy Gospel, I’m hard pressed to know what it would be.  It’s not that what He says is hard to understand, but it is devastatingly difficult to accept it and take it to heart.  A flash of steel, as it were, a cut and thrust, and just like that He has pierced your heart and separated the very marrow from your bones.  Yet, he who dies by this Sword, lives by this Sword.  And there is no other real life than that.

Perhaps you already have all the answers and know the score, as you suppose.  Be that as it may, this Word of Jesus still confronts you with a constant challenge, a daily crucifixion of your body and soul and your sinful life in this fallen world.  Quite apart from what you know, it is how you live and die that matters here.  Theoretical affirmations and the best of intentions won’t save you.

Who is your God?  That is the question.  Not the means that you enlist to achieve some other end, but the heart and soul, the center, and the goal of your whole life, what it is that you’re living for.

How do you measure and evaluate your life? — And if you think of yourself and your life as some kind of independent, self-existing entity, that is already the problem that puts you at odds with the Lord Jesus.  But what do you reckon as life?  A long and happy marriage?  Healthy and successful children, or your own good health and well being?  Property, savings, and investments?  Good times, good friends, and a good reputation?  A solid job with a significant title and description?

If you’re looking to find your life in any of these things, then you’ve already forfeited your life, whether you achieve your goals or not.  Then your heart is in the wrong place, longing for and clinging to the wrong gods.  And in countless big and little ways, your idolatry will show itself in the choices that you make between this and that, in the priorities you exercise from day to day.

If the decisive and definitive priorities of your “life” are anything other than Christ Jesus and His Word, then you are worshiping a false god; and if the Lord does not then cut you to the quick with His mighty Sword, you shall be left to die in your sins, in your false belief, despair, and shame.

But as this dear Lord Jesus Christ, the true and only God in flesh and blood like yours, in mercy calls you to repentance and puts you to death by His Word and Spirit, so does He bring you to life in and with Himself, both now and forever in body and soul.  You find your life in Him, already here and now by faith, and hereafter in eternity, in the Resurrection, by losing the life that you’ve been striving to find for yourself in the things of this earth.  “Finders, weepers. Losers, keepers!”

I know that sounds and seems all wrong, because all the ways that you think and feel are also being crucified and put to death, in order that you should be entirely recreated and made altogether new in both body and soul; that you should be granted the heart, mind, and spirit of Christ Jesus.

Until you learn to think rightly about God in Christ Jesus — which is more than knowledge in your head; it is faith in your heart; fear, love, and trust in Jesus above all else; and the discipline of your flesh by His Word — until you thus learn to think correctly about the Lord your God, you won’t be able to get anything else right, either.  It is not possible.  Then God’s good gifts will be idols or demons in your life, and you’ll bounce from one extreme to another until you perish forever.

The better the gifts, the more dangerous the temptation.  It’s not that the gifts are a problem; they are from the Lord, and they are truly good.  But so long as your heart and your head are all wrong, God’s good gifts will remain problematic for you.  At the very heart of your sin, you fear, love, and trust all the wrong gods — which are really no gods at all; they cannot give you life or save you.

It’s not only when you compromise Christ Jesus and your confession of His Name for the sake of your family and your place in the world.  It’s also when you attempt to “balance” Christ Jesus and His Word alongside your other priorities, as though He were merely one god within your pantheon.  There is to be no equal distribution of your affection, allegiance, and attentions.  You shall have no other gods before Him.  You shall have no other gods beside this one Lord, Jesus Christ.

Repent of your idolatry, and redefine your family values.  Whether married or unmarried, with or without children; widowed, orphaned, and distressed, or overwhelmed with too many people who depend on you — bow your head and bend your knee to no other name than that of Christ Jesus.  Whatever gifts He gives to you in this body and life, be they few or many, receive them in His Name, in faith and with thanksgiving, and use them under His authority, sanctified by His Word.

Practically speaking, you are neither to despise nor to depend upon your peeps and possessions.  You are simply to love your neighbors for Jesus’ sake; to exercise His good gifts to the glory of His Name, to the praise of His glorious grace; to watch and pray, as you wait upon the Lord and look to Him for Life; and to suffer all, even death, rather than deny, disregard, or disobey Him.

Die to the world, therefore, and to your own self-righteous pretense of life in this world, in order to be wed to Christ Jesus and to live in Him.  Is that not what the Lord your God has spoken?  That He should be your Bridegroom, your Husband and your Head, and that you should be a member of His Holy Bride?  So have you been named by His Name and adorned with His righteousness; that, forsaking all others, you should be joined to His Body — of one flesh and blood with Him.

Put yourself to death, and so live unto Christ, by taking up His Cross and following after Him.  That is repentance and faith — to be turned away from sinful unbelief to the mercies of the Lord in His Gospel of forgiveness.  It is to trust the promise of His Resurrection in the face of the grave.

It is to fear the wrath and displeasure of God, so that you flee from temptation and tremble at the very thought of breaking His Commandments; and so that you refuse to be swayed or persuaded by the disapproval, frowns, raised eyebrows, cold shoulders, or threats of peers and princes.  It is to love and worship the Lord Jesus Christ, to delight in His Word and the preaching of it, and to value His Gospel, His mercy and forgiveness, above and beyond all the praise and flattery of man.

This new Life, which is by faith in Christ Jesus alone, begins with and continues from your Holy Baptism in His Name.  But it is already the preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in His Name which brings you to such faith, and so also to the waters of His Baptism, that you should thereby die and rise with Him, and so live with Him in righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.

This dying and rising of repentance and faith, which is both accomplished in and signified by the water and the Word of your Baptism, is the labor and delivery of your new birth into a new family.  Therein you are named by the true God and Father of your Lord Jesus Christ, adopted by grace as a beloved son or daughter, as surely as Christ is the Head of His Body, the Church.  Henceforth, by His Word, your heart, mind, body, and soul are animated with His living and life-giving Spirit.

This family and fellowship of the Holy Triune God is your permanent vocation and identity, which already now and forevermore defines and determines your entire place and life in this world and the next.  It is not what you do that determines what you are, but who and what you are in Christ Jesus determines what you do.  Thus do you live and love and serve in His Name and for His sake.

There is a readiness and willingness in you to lose all things and to let go of everyone else on earth, lest you let go of Christ and lose Him.  It is not your human family, nor your friends, far less your property and possessions, for which you “risk it all” and dedicate yourself “at all costs.”  But if you are called upon to put yourself in harm’s way, to defend and protect, and to lay down your body and life in self-sacrificing love for your neighbor, this, too, is in the faith and love of Christ Jesus.  And by the same faith, you are ready, willing, and able to risk losing your place in the world and your neighbor’s friendship, for the sake of the friendship of Christ and your place in His family.

Do you see, then, how everything in your life, your day-to-day decisions and activities, and your long-term commitments and pursuits, are all now governed by this entirely new set of criteria and priorities?  Not the ties of human flesh and blood, nor the aspirations and affections of this body and life, but the Flesh and Blood of Jesus Christ, His Body and His Life, His Name, His Calling, and His affection for you and all the children of God — these guide and govern all that you do.

You live within a new household and family, which is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of the one God and Father of one Lord, Jesus Christ.  It is established here on earth, even here in this place, as it is in heaven, by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit through the Gospel of Christ.  He has told you where and how this gift is given and accomplished, and He has attached His Word and promise to this Ministry of His Gospel.  He says to the men who are sent in His Name and stead, “Whoever receives you, receives Me; and whoever receives Me, receives Him who sent Me.”

Thus do you receive and welcome His prophets and His righteous saints in the Name of this Lord Jesus Christ.  And you care for His “little ones,” for His dear disciples of all ages and abilities, in all sorts of big and little ways, as you are so enabled by His grace — all for His Name’s sake.

In these servants of His, you receive Christ Jesus Himself and the gracious reward of His Gospel: Not a righteousness of the Law, but the righteousness of faith, which is busy and active in love.

It is not that you are worthy of yourself to love and serve the Lord Jesus.  But He is worthy of your faith and love, your reverence, and your trust — and He has called you to Himself by His Gospel.

In tender mercy and compassion, by His Word and Holy Spirit, He bestows on you His worthiness, His righteousness and holiness.  For His sake you shall live and by no means lose your reward.

Here and now, in the gracious hospitality of Christ Jesus your Savior, at His Table in His Father’s House, He presses into your hand and places upon your lips the pledge and promise of His grace, mercy, and peace toward you, and the surety of your place in the household and family of God.

If there is a more beautiful and comforting Word of Jesus than the Gospel that He speaks to you here at His Altar, I am hard pressed to know what it could be: “Take, and eat,” He says, “this is My Body, which is given for you.”  And again, He invites, “Drink of it, all of you,” as He pours out His Cup, the New Testament in His Blood, for you, His little one, “for the forgiveness of all your sins,” unto Life and Salvation with Him in both your body and your soul, forever and ever.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

24 June 2020

The Preacher Prepares You for the Coming of Christ Jesus

The coming of Christ, the Son of God, is at once the most wonderful and the most terrible thing.

He comes as the true Light in the midst of deep darkness, in order to lead you out of Egypt by His mighty outstretched arm, to save you from sin and death, and to bring you into the Promised Land.

But how shall you receive Him?

The sad fact is that you cannot; not by any wisdom, power, strength, or ability of your own.  Your sin, which cuts you off and separates you from God, likewise prevents you from receiving Him and His salvation in faith.  What is more, by your sins what you deserve from the Lord your God is condemnation, punishment, and death.  For you are sinful and unclean, unrighteous, and unholy.  Therefore, you cannot abide or survive in His presence, nor can you stand in His judgment.

And yet, for all of that, it is with tender mercy and divine compassion that He comes.  It is by and with grace that He takes every initiative in coming to you with life and light and love and peace.

So then, in order to prepare you for His coming, the Lord raises up, calls, and sends a messenger before His face.  He sends a preacher to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins.  And in sending such a man to preach His Word, He sends one who is like Himself.  For the Lord Jesus Christ is the very Word of God in human Flesh; He has become true Man for us men and our salvation.

Already ahead of the Lord’s own miraculous conception and birth, you see the grace, mercy, and peace of God in the way that St. John the Baptist is conceived and born and given his name.  It is not by the reason or strength of his old man and his barren old mother, but by the grace of God.

St. John’s entire life, from even before his conception, and even while yet in the womb, is bound up with the coming of Christ Jesus and proclaims that.  That’s especially true of his preaching and his baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; but it’s all about Jesus, it all point to Him.

Indeed, it is only by such preaching of the Word that you are prepared for Christ Jesus.  It is only by such preaching that you or anyone else can receive Him and respond to Him in faith and love.

Praise God for His preachers, for His messengers who go before the face of the Lord to prepare His way — who are sent to prepare you for His coming.  You would be lost without them.

But there is still a problem.  You can no more receive or respond to the preaching of the Word than you could receive the Word-made-Flesh Himself.  Your sin still gets in the way and prevents you.  The Law of God — by whomever it is preached — still condemns you and puts you to death.

You cannot live without Him.  But left in your sin, you could not live with Him, either.  Damned if you, and damned if you don’t, so long as you remain in yourself, in your own heart and mind.

The solution and salvation are not from within you, but from without.  The preaching of the Word of Christ accomplishes His purposes and saves you from sin, death, and hell; not by any power, response, understanding, or effort of yours, but only because Christ Jesus submits Himself to that preaching and fulfills that Word of God in His own Body and Life in your stead, on your behalf.

So it is that the Lord Jesus will hear and heed and respond to the preaching of St. John the Baptist, in order to accomplish and establish the righteousness of God for you and for all people.

It is especially in this way that St. John prepares the Way of the Lord.  He preaches the Law to which Jesus submits Himself in order to redeem you and all those who were conceived and born under the Law.  St. John preaches the repentance which Jesus undergoes by His voluntary death upon the Cross and in His Resurrection from the dead — whereby He opens the way of repentance to you.  St. John preaches and administers the Baptism of repentance, to which the Lord Jesus submits Himself in faith and love, so that, by the Lord’s own death on your behalf, your Baptism is for you the forgiveness of all your sins and a participation in His Resurrection from the dead.

The Word of Christ Jesus that is preached and given to you is a living and active and powerful Word, because it is a Word that has already been fulfilled and established forever in Christ Jesus.

Therefore, the preaching of repentance not only puts you to death, but it also raises you to life in body and soul, in heart, mind, and spirit.  It causes the Light to shine upon you, where previously you walked in darkness.  It grants you the new birth of the Holy Spirit, and it bestows upon you the Name of God by His grace.  It gives you that perfect peace which far surpasses all human understanding and achievement, because it is the Word of Christ who has reconciled you to God.

That is how and why the preaching of repentance is the preaching of forgiveness in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ.  And such preaching does and gives exactly what it proclaims!  Which is to say that it calls you and brings you to faith and to life through the forgiveness of all your sins.

It is by this preaching of the Word of Christ Jesus that you are prepared for His coming and made ready to receive Him in faith and love.  But what is more, it is precisely by the preaching of His Word that Christ Jesus comes to you in love and visits you with tender mercy and compassion.

He remembers you with this preaching — not just with thoughts in His head and feelings in His heart, but with His whole Body and Life, His Flesh and Blood, His Words and His Actions.  So it is that He raises you up from death to life, and He brings you into His House, in order to feed you at His Table and to unite you with Himself in the New Covenant of His Body given and His Blood poured out for you and for the many, for the free and full forgiveness of sins.

This is a most precious Feast — though it may sometimes taste like locusts and wild honey in your mouth.  It sustains you in the wilderness of this world unto life in the Promised Land forever.  So do you continue to live and grow and become strong, by grace through faith in this Word of Christ.

It is this peaching of the Word of Christ which has opened your ears and your heart to receive Him, and has released you from all your sins, which also now opens your lips to show forth His praise, and looses your tongue to confess His holy Name, that His great mercy may be displayed in you.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

07 June 2020

As the Words and Promises of God Declare

To be a disciple of Christ Jesus is to follow after Him in the Way that He has already gone before you, which is to say, in the Way of His Cross, in the hope and promise of His Resurrection and His Ascension to the Right Hand of His God and Father, where He ever lives as your High Priest.

As disciples are made by Holy Baptism in His Name and by the ongoing catechesis of His Word, so was the Lord Jesus Himself baptized for you and all people, for the repentance and forgiveness of the world, and for the fulfilling of all righteousness, so that you and all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve might be justified and saved from sin, death, and hell.

Just think of what the Baptism of Jesus signified and meant for Him.  In submitting to St. John’s “Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” He took upon Himself the sins of the whole world, including all of your sins of thought, word, and deed, every last one of them.  His Baptism did not make Him clean — He was already spotless, pure, and holy.  It rather saturated Him with all the dirt of fallen man, with all the filth and stench of sinful unbelief and disobedience.

He took upon Himself and bore in His own Body all your lying and cheating, your covetous lust, your cursing and dirty jokes, your laziness and negligence, your adultery and murder, your stealing, and your gossiping.  He took all of your sins — and every other sin from Adam to the close of the age — and He took responsibility for all of it, as though He alone were guilty, sinful, and unclean.

And His reward for this great work of divine and holy love was suffering and death.  Submitting to His Baptism meant committing Himself to be crucified, put to death, and buried.  Stepping into the water was, for Jesus, a return to the dust of the earth from which the first man had been taken.

For Christ Jesus as for you, His Baptism indicated that He should be drowned and die with all your sinful lusts and evil desires — in the place of your old Adam.

But that is not the whole significance of His Baptism.  For He also received the blessing of His Father and the anointing of the Holy Spirit there in the waters of the Jordan River, as the Pledge and Promise that His Father would not abandon Him to the grave nor allow His Flesh to suffer decay, but would pour out the Spirit upon His crucified Body and raise Him again from the dust of the earth.  And this Word and promise He received in your place, as your Substitute and Savior.

Of course, the Father and the Holy Spirit and immortal Life belong to the Son of God from all eternity, according to His own divine nature.  But in the waters of His Baptism — as the true and perfect Man, yet voluntarily bearing the curse and consequence of sin — He received the blessing of the Father and the anointing of the Holy Spirit as a pledge that in Him all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve would be redeemed and raised up in righteousness and holiness; that mortal flesh, after returning to the dust, would yet receive the Holy Spirit and rise up again to live forever.

Your dear Lord Jesus thus lived as you are called to live, that is, by faith in the Word and promise of His God and Father.  He proceeded from the waters of the Jordan in that holy faith, in love for His Father and in love for you and for all His neighbors of all times and places.  Against the devil’s temptations, He relied on God the Father’s sure and certain Word: “You are My beloved Son.”

In such faith and confidence He lived faithfully within His own vocation, and He carried out the works of love that belonged to His own office and station in life.  He honored His father and mother and submitted to them.  He loved His family and friends.  He ate and drank with sinners.  He healed the sick, and cast out demons, and raised the dead.  He fed the hungry with good food.  He taught the Word of God, preached the Gospel, confessed the faith, and prayed without ceasing.

And for this love and faithfulness, for the Name of the Lord that He glorified, He was persecuted, betrayed and arrested, falsely accused and mocked, beaten and blasphemed, unjustly sentenced to death, and crucified in public shame.  All of which He bore in peace and patience.  He persevered in love for all people, even those who were putting Him to death.  He forgave those who trespassed against Him.  He turned the other cheek, and He suffered His outer and inner garments to be taken from Him.  He did not retaliate, nor did He revile in return, but He relied on His God and Father.

So, if you find that your Christian discipleship is difficult and challenging, do not imagine that Christ Jesus is unaware of or unfamiliar with those challenges and difficulties.  Even His family and friends did not know what to make of Him or what to do with Him.  They misunderstood Him and wanted all the wrong things from Him.  The rulers of the people were jealous and hateful of Him, and conspired against Him, and stirred up the crowds to cry out for His death.

You do not have a Savior and High Priest who is unable to sympathize with you, but One who has been tempted and tormented in all the ways that you are, who has borne all of your sins as though they were His own, and who has shared all your suffering, sorrow, sickness, shame, and death.

Although He is the Son of God from all eternity, nevertheless, in human flesh and blood just like yours He learned the faith and the obedience of sonship through what He suffered in your place.

He learned, not as though He were ever ignorant or naive, but by the way of personal experience, by living your human life as you are called to live, first hand, in His own person.  He did so, not out of intellectual curiosity, as though for some kind of experiment or science project, but in order to establish divine sonship for you in human flesh and blood.  So did He also receive and bear the Spirit of God in His truly human flesh and blood for you and your salvation, in order that your fallen flesh might receive and bear the same Holy Spirit and be raised up to eternal Life with God.

The Lord Jesus Christ thus lived by faith in the Word and promise of His Father.  He lived in the hope of His mercy by the grace and guidance of the Spirit.  He did what His Father called Him to do, and He spoke as His Father gave Him to speak.  In steadfast faith and flawless love, He was handed over to the Cross by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, and He humbly accepted the same, submitting His human will to the divine Will in the hope of the Resurrection.

It is there on the Cross — on the one hand enduring the condemnation of the Law that He perfectly fulfilled, and suffering the separation of sin from the Father He loved and trusted, while on the other hand continuing to trust and believe His Father’s steadfast love and faithfulness — it is there that He permanently established divine sonship for you.  So that, even in the midst of your sin and in the face of your death, the promise of the Gospel and the Sabbath Rest of Christ remain for you.

He has weathered the perfect storm in order to bring you safely through it in and with Himself.  He has endured the inner conflict of the Old Man and the New Man in His own Body, even unto the death of His Cross.  And though sin and death were crucified and put to death in Him, He has prevailed in faith and love, and He has been raised up by the Spirit of His Father as the new and better Adam, as the First Fruits of the New Creation, as the Head of His Body and Bride, the holy Christian Church, in order to be the Firstborn of a great multitude of divine sons and daughters — called and gathered from all the nations, from every tribe and tongue and culture and ethnicity.

Having thus received the promised Holy Spirit from the Father in His Resurrection from the dead, He has poured out the same Spirit generously upon you in the waters of your Holy Baptism.  Not only that, but He continues to pour out the Spirit upon you in the Absolution of the Gospel, in the Word of forgiveness that is preached to you, and in the Spiritual Food and Drink of His Supper.

He has also given you the Word and promise of His God and Father, that you are a dear son of God in Him, beloved and well-pleasing to the Father; that all of your sins are freely and fully forgiven; that God has reconciled you to Himself in Christ; and that, even though you die, yet shall you live.

In this Gospel of Christ Jesus, the Father moves toward you in love, and He gives Himself to you, and He embraces you to Himself as a beloved child, always raising you up from death to Life, from out of darkness into Light, and from the dust of the earth to be a living creature in His own Image.

You are raised up in and with Christ Jesus to live and move and have your being in Him: To move in love — within Him, and through Him, by the Holy Spirit — unto His God and Father in heaven.

That Life in Christ and in the Holy Spirit — that movement of your body and life toward God your Father in heaven, as a living sacrifice — that true faith and worship of the Father in the Spirit and the Truth — is lived from your Holy Baptism through death and the grave into the Resurrection.

It is by the way of the Cross, not for the sake of gratuitous violence or suffering, but in order to work in you a genuine sacrifice of repentance, faith, and love.  So that you, who are a son of God in Christ Jesus by His grace, may learn the faith and obedience of sonship in Him.  And so that sin and unbelief and all their deadly fruits may be crucified and put to death in you.  And so that you, in bearing the Cross for your neighbor, might love your neighbor as the Lord Jesus loves you.

That way of the Cross — which is the way of Christian discipleship — is difficult and challenging, make no mistake about it.  Indeed, it would be utterly impossible for you apart from Christ, if He had not gone before you and established that way in faith and love, in His own flesh and blood.

But now Christ has lived that life for you, and He has gone that way of the Cross for you, and He has died that death for you.  He has borne your sins and suffered all their consequences.  He has atoned for all your sins and reconciled you to God.  This is most certainly true.  So God has also raised this same Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, and exalted this beloved Son at His Right Hand, and placed all your enemies beneath His feet, crushed and defeated beneath His wounded heel.

That is how and why He pours out His living and Life-giving Holy Spirit upon you through the Gospel of His Cross, raising you daily from death to Life.  It is for this reason that He has called and sent His servants, not only to baptize you in His Name, but to catechize you with His Word, and to commune you with His Body and Blood in remembrance of Him, with His own authority.

These Gifts Christ freely gives are the First Fruits of His Cross and Passion.  And the same Tree of the Cross bears good fruits in you after its own kind.  The Cross bears such fruits in you, even as it is crushing and killing the old Adam in your heart, mind, body, and soul.  Do not suppose that He is out to get rid of you, but remember what His Father has spoken to you in Holy Baptism:

“You are My beloved son!  With you I am well-pleased.”  I am not angry or upset with you.  I am not out to punish you.  Your sins are all forgiven.  You shall not die forever, for whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved.  “This promise is for you and for your children.”

Bind that Word and promise of the Father to yourself — to your heart, mind, body, and soul — by giving attention to the ongoing catechesis of Christ Jesus.  Listen to the preaching of His Word, and know that it is preached to you as a sure and certain Word of Life.

Better yet, take to heart that He has bound Himself to you, and that He binds you to Himself, by His Word and Spirit, Flesh and Blood, and by His divine and holy Name.  Just as He has promised, He is with you always, even to the close of the age.  He shall never leave you nor forsake you.

As He is risen from the dead and lives and reigns forever at the Right Hand of the Father, so does He bear the good fruits of His Cross in you: Forgiveness of sins, received and given; faith and love and self-sacrifice, but also resurrection and newness of life — day after day by His grace, unto the Resurrection of your body and the Life everlasting of your body and soul with the Holy Trinity.

Christ has died, and Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!  And by the power of His own indestructible Life, He enlivens you with His Word and Holy Spirit, both now and forevermore.

As you are baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so surely are you a beloved and well-pleasing son of God in Christ Jesus, by His grace, through faith in Him.  His Cross and Resurrection, His Spirit, His Father, His House and Home, and His whole Body and Life are yours.  So has He taught you to pray with the confidence of a dear child to your own dear Father.  And so does He invite you to recline here at His Table, that He should feed you with His holy Body and His precious Blood, from His own hand, for the forgiveness of your sins and Life and Salvation.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.