Mark 12:13-27
Date: May 14th 2023
Speaker: Samuel Crites
Scripture: Mark 12:13-27
Exegetical Outline
Main Idea of Text: The Jewish leaders continue to challenge Jesus by sending Pharisees and Sadducees to test him in the temple.
12:13-17: The Pharisees test Jesus with a question about taxes.
12:18-27: The Sadducees test Jesus with a question about the resurrection from the dead.
Main Idea of Sermon: To worship God rightly, you must love God duly and know God truly.
To worship God rightly, you must love God duly.
Explanation
Trap: Paying taxes to “the enemy.”
Evasion: God deserves more than our money; he deserves our very person (imago dei).
CR: Genesis 1:27
Worship is an orientation of the heart that leads to actions, not the actions themselves.
To worship God rightly, you must know God truly.
Explanation
Trap: Denying the resurrection through a riddle.
Evasion: The S.’s ignorance of God’s Word simply makes them wrong.
CR: OT on Resurrection from the dead.
CR: Exodus 3:1-4, 17
Lesson on Resurrection.
The resurrection is real.
The resurrection is a bodily resurrection.
The resurrection is for life.
Introduction:
René Descartes was born March 31, 1596, and died February 11, 1650. He was famous scientist, mathematician, and philosopher. He is probably most famous for his philosophy known as Cartesian Rationalism. You have probably heard of René Descartes or at least his ideas summarized in the Latin phrase “cogito, ergo sum,” which translates into English as “I think, therefore I am.”
You see, Descartes was concerned with trying to establish an undisputed first principal. He wanted to start with some sort of philosophical foundation that was universally agreed upon by everyone, so that he could than reason out from that point. To establish this first principle, Descartes decided he was going to doubt everything; only when he found something that no rational person could doubt would he be able to make progress in establishing his philosophy.
Descartes could not trust his senses, because there were plenty of times when he was dreaming that he was certain that the dream was real. He could not trust his senses. So there is a famous myth that he locked himself in a potbellied stove for multiple days in order to cut himself off from his senses, and in that inky blackness, he came to the realization that the only thing that could not be doubted was the fact that he was thinking. Rationality became the basis for his entire political system.
I bring up Descartes in the introduction to our sermon today, because the idea that man is a thinker has dominated how modern people have thought about what man is since Rene Descartes emerged from the proverbial potbellied stove. Descartes represents a division in history between the pre-modern world and the modern world. After Descartes, man was essentially thought of as a brain on a stick. From the way we educate our children to the communities we design, modern society conceives of man as a thinker, a reasoner, a rational mind. As if man was an inefficient computer, the goal of education is to stuff facts into the minds of students.
We see this in the Church as well. When we have a new disciple, we train them as if they need to learn a definite list of theological facts in order to reach spiritual maturity. We create programs and curriculum. As soon as the material has been covered, we graduate the student, slap a certificate on them, and declare them to be mature. This is only a small tweak on the Cartesian model. Instead of man is thinker, in the modern Church, man is believer. Maturity is reduced to our ability to regurgitate the right theological facts.
The problem is, in the Bible, man is not a thinker or a mere believer, man is a lover. Over the next two weeks, as Jesus is tested by the Pharisees, then the Sadducees, and finally by the lone scribe, we are going to see that the consistent problem is not that the Pharisees, Sadducees and scribes lack knowledge; the problem is not that they don’t know the right things, the problem that they don’t love the right things.
Man is not a thinker; man is a lover, created to love the only Person inside or outside the universe worth loving. Jesus has come to bring an end to the false worship of the temple, and create a better temple. A temple not crafted by human hands, but of human people that genuinely love God and genuinely worshiping him. Consider this as we read Mark 12:13-27. Let’s read:
Mark 12:13-27
13 And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians, to trap him in his talk. 14 And they came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone’s opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?” 15 But, knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” 16 And they brought one. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to him, “Caesar’s.” 17 Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at him.
18 And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked him a question, saying, 19 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring. 21 And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. 22 And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died. 23 In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.”
24 Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? 25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 26 And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.”
Two weeks ago, we saw the Jewish leaders confront Jesus as he walked into the temple, because the day before, he had driven the money changers out of the Court of the Gentiles. After he drove them out, Jesus taught that the prophesies of Jeremiah and Isaiah were going to come true. That God was going to bring an end to the temple. To illustrate this to his disciples, he cursed a fig tree so that it withered and died. In the same way that the fruitless fig tree was shriveled up at its root, the fruitless worship of the temple was going to be ended. Jesus has come to end false worship and establish a new, true worship of God. The main idea of our sermon today is this: To worship God rightly, you must love God duly and know God truly.
From the moment Christ entered Jerusalem on the back of a donkey’s colt, he has been confronting the false worship of the people of Israel. By contrast, we need to be learning how to worship God rightly. This week, we are going to see Jesus be tested by two of the four religious sects in Jerusalem: the Pharisees and the Sadducees. These two groups represent two different errors in worship.
The Pharisees were a faction of religious leaders that knew all the right rituals to perform in worship, but their hearts are far from God. They attempted to trap Jesus with a question that they thought would make him look bad in front of the crowd. Caesar is the worst. He is the oppressor of the Jews. If Jesus supports Caesar, then he is not a true friend of the people. Using a coin with the image of Caesar on it, Jesus is going to show us our first point: To worship God rightly, we must love God duly. As image bearers, God deserves our hearts, totally devoted to him in worship; it is his due, his just desserts. We are to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s. He made us to reflect his image, so he deserves our adoration.
The Sadducees were a faction of religious leaders that denied the resurrection and the existence of spiritual beings such as angels. They attempted to trap Jesus with a case study that they thought proved their core belief: there is no such thing as an afterlife. Jesus responds with a damning critique,
Mark 12:24
Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?
The Sadducees have the opposite problem from the Pharisees. Their worship is not characterized by a lack of genuine affection, but a lack of knowledge. In the second point of our sermon, we will see that: To worship God rightly, we must know God truly. We must know his word and his power if we are going to truly worship him as he has revealed himself to be. There is a way to worship that is full of emotion and zeal but is not worship at all, because your affections are not informed by knowledge. The god being worshipped is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To worship God rightly, we must know God as he has revealed himself in his word.
These are the two great errors of worship. Either people tend to be driven by their minds, seeking to do all the right things without any genuine affection or they are slaves to their feelings without any understanding of the one that their feelings are directed toward. Our sermon today is about how to avoid both extremes. To worship God rightly, you must love God duly and know God truly.
To worship God rightly, you must love God duly.
The language of our main idea is a riff on multiple sermons that I have heard John Piper preach. He will often say something to the effect of, “To know God truly is to love God duly.” By this he means that there is a direct connection between what we know and what we love. This is never more true than when we think about knowing God, and the test of the Pharisees is a perfect example. Let’s consider our first point: To worship God rightly, you must love God duly.
Look carefully with me at verse 13 of our sermon text. Who sent the Pharisees to Jesus? Verse 13 says,
Mark 12:13
13 And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians, to trap him in his talk.
Who were the “they”? Well two weeks ago, when we were in Mark 11, we saw that Jesus was confronted by quite an impressive group of Jewish leaders. It was made up of the chief priests, scribes, and elders. These were the top dogs of the religious and judicial authority under the Roman prelate. These guys were the authority figures in Jewish society, and they were challenging Jesus’s authority because he was teaching that the temple was going to be destroyed. Jesus came out better in the exchange. For fear of the crowd, the Jewish leaders retreat, but they are not done with their assault. They regroup and send the Pharisees and Sadducees after Jesus to trap him in theological quagmires.
So, the testing of the Pharisees and the Sadducees that we see in our sermon text is not an isolated event. It is the coordinated effort of all the religious and judicial leaders and their cronies attempting to trap Jesus in front of the crowds to reduce his popularity. So, we are going to find the key to understanding these passages of Scripture by looking at the traps the Pharisees and the Sadducees set for Jesus, and how he escapes them.
Let’s look at the Pharisees first.
The Pharisees begin with false flattery. Verse 15 says that Jesus knew their hypocrisy. They don’t believe what they are saying in verse 14. Everything they say to Jesus is only because they care about outward appearances. It is so important for them to be seen as respectful and deferential because it keeps up their carefully crafted façade. They are the religious elite; they are the righteous ones. They have to convince the crowd that they have nothing but respect for Jesus and his disciples.
Have you ever met people like this? They are so sweet that they immediately put you on the defensive. The lack of authenticity is almost palpable. You can feel it. That is exactly how the Pharisees are at the beginning of our sermon text. You can almost feel that their show of respect for Jesus is directly proportional to their hatred for Jesus. This kind of person loves the praises of men so much that they will literally say and do anything to be praised. They wear the mask of kindness like a weapon.
This is not how Christians are supposed to be. We are not hypocrites. No one should doubt our motivations because we are not people pleaser; we are God pleasers. In Galatians, Paul says that being a people pleaser and a God pleaser are mutually exclusive realities. In Galatians 1:10 he says:
Galatians 1:10
10 For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.
To be a servant of Christ is to abandon the approval of other men and only desire the approval of God.
These Pharisees, however, are hypocrites. Jesus calls them “whitewashed tombs” in Matthew 23. He knows exactly who he is dealing with and the trap they are trying to set for him. So they ask him,
Mark 12:14
Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?”
Let me explain the trap that the Pharisees are attempting to get Jesus to step into. First, the tax in view was called the poll tax. It was a flat rate tax on every non-citizen living in a Roman province. This tax is the reason that Quirinius conducted the census under the mandate of Caesar Augustus in Luke 2. If you are going to tax every head, you need to know how many heads there are. This type of tax was particularly offensive to Jewish zealots, because only God was allowed to call a census of the people. The census of Quirinius immediately led to a revolt by Judas of Galilee in A.D. 6. It was quickly stamped out, but the patriotic zeal that the poll tax engendered was a constant undercurrent in Jewish society.
On top of inherent offensiveness of a poll tax, Jewish patriots also saw it as idolatrous. The poll tax could only be paid with a Roman silver denarius. At this time, the denarius had the image of the emperor and the Latin phrase, “DIVI AUG. FILIUS,” which translates to English as “Son of the Divine Augustus.” The roman emperors claimed to be divine, so the Zealots saw Roman denarius as a graven image. They were not the currency of Jerusalem. The currency of Jerusalem was a copper coin with no image on it. It was considered shameful to carry a Roman denarius.
The debate over the denarius raged in Jerusalem, but not in Galilee. Galilee was outside of the jurisdiction of the Roman authority, so approaching Jesus with this question is very clever. Jesus is an outsider to the debate that pitted Rome against God. If Jesus says “yes, it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar,” he will lose favor with the crowds, especially the zealots. They will think that he is another Roman sycophant. If he says “no, it is not lawful,” then he will win favor with the crowds, but he will seem like another revolutionary. The Roman government might mistake him for another Judas of Galilee here to sow revolution and discord in Jerusalem.
The entire debate is centered on the premise that you cannot serve Rome and serve God and the Pharisees think they have trapped Jesus by forcing him to choose a side. In verse 17, it says that the crowd marveled at Jesus’s response. They marveled, because not only did Jesus sidestep the trap, but he also revealed the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.
Take a look at verse 15:
Mark 12:15
15 But, knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” 16 And they brought one. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to him, “Caesar’s.” 17 Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at him.
The first thing Jesus does is reveals is that he does not carry these idolatrous coins. He doesn’t carry them, but his opponents obviously do. By producing the coin, they lower themselves in the eyes of the zealots in the crowd.
Second, Jesus rejects the premise of the debate. Instead of accepting the false premise that one cannot serve both God and Caesar, he says, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars, and to God the things that are God’s.” Jesus says that your loyalties aren’t defined by who you pay tribute to, as if God and Caesar were on the same level. The Christian has multiple authorities in his life and is obligated to give honor to each of them as they are due. So if you owe taxes to Caesar, pay those taxes in whatever way is required of you.
The third and most amazing way that Jesus sidesteps the trap is that he denounces the Pharisees as those that have not rendered to God the things that belong to God. For the longest time, I didn’t understand what this passage meant. I understood the obvious application, that Christians have a duty to pay their taxes, but I didn’t understand what Jesus meant by render to God the things that are God’s.
The key to understanding what Jesus meant is found in the illustration of the coin. The coin bears the image of Caesar in the same way that we bear the image of God. This morning, Max preached Genesis 1:26. He showed us that, as image bearers, we belong to God. God paused and deliberated over our creation and purposefully made us different than he made all other creatures. He made us special. As image bearers, we are a dim, imperfect reflection of his beauty and glory. Wherever man is found, in an imperfect way, the majesty and glory of God is represented on the earth.
In a way, being an image bearer is like being a mirror. Mirrors are unique because no one looks at a mirror to see the mirror for its own sake. Instead of looking at a mirror, we look into a mirror. The purpose of a mirror is to clearly bear the image that is being reflected on its surface. If the mirror is broken or dirty, it will still reflect the image, but the image will be distorted or obscured. In this way, all men bear the image of God. We are all mirrors. In our fallen state, we are cracked, broken, and smeared with grime and filth. We were created for a purpose that we cannot fulfill.
What Jesus is saying to the Pharisees is that they have a duty, an obligation, to reflect the image of God. The Pharisees are failing because their hearts are not oriented toward God. They are like a solar farm that is not pointed at the sun. The Pharisees are hypocrites because they live their lives for the approval of others. They perform all the good works that are required by the law. Their outward righteousness is evident in front of everyone, but all of their worship is meaningless because they have held back the one thing that is essential for true worship; they have held back their hearts.
To worship God rightly requires us to orient our hearts toward him in love. The Pharisees poured their entire lives into appearing like they are the most righteous worshipers in God’s kingdom, and yet they have not truly worshipped God one day in their lives.
Now it might seem that I have been talking about two different things. On the one hand, I have said that it is our duty to reflect God’s glory as image bearers so that all those around us can see his beauty and majesty, and I have said that the essence of worship is orienting our hearts toward God through love. These are not two separate things, but one single thing that if you understand it will fundamentally change your life. You will never be the same if you get this one concept that Jesus is teaching us in Mark 12. Here it is. God will be seen as most beautiful and majestic when his people are completely satisfied and infatuated with him. Again, I am trying to say exactly what John Piper has been saying for his entire career, and what Jonathan Edwards said before him, and what Augustine said before him. Other people will see God’s beauty when his people worship him, when they treasure, adore, are satisfied by him as their greatest delight in life and in death.
We know this intuitively, right? If someone spends a million dollars on a car we go, “Wow, he must really love cars.” Or if someone sells their house in order to move in with their aging mother so that they can take care of her, we think “man, that guy really loves his mom.” Well, when Christians are willing to die for their God. When they sacrifice their money to fund Gospel ministry, or when they give up their vacation to go to a Bible conference or to go to Uzbekistan on a mission trip, the world out there is going to look at them and think, “Wow, they must love their God. He must really mean something to them. Look at what they are willing to sacrifice for him. I would never sacrifice like that for anything. Their God must be special.” They will see your sacrifice and consider your God and come away thinking what do they have that I do not have? Their God must be great.
To worship God rightly, we must love God duly. The Pharisees’ test revealed that their hearts were far from God. They attempted to trap Christ into a false position between honoring Caesar or honoring God, and actually revealed that they did not love God with the affection that was due to him. True Christian worship requires a heart that is oriented toward God in love so that all the world can see how gloriously precious he is to his people.
To worship God rightly, we must know God truly.
In the second part of our sermon text, the Sadducees take their turn at trying to trap Jesus. The Sadducees represent the opposite error from that of the Pharisees. The Pharisees had a knowledge of God, but no genuine affection for God. The Sadducees, on the other hand, worshipped God without knowledge. They worshipped, but their affections were oriented to a god of their own making that is not revealed in the Scriptures. Through them, Jesus teaches us that to worship God rightly, we must know God truly.
The Sadducees are a unique minority in Jerusalem during the time of Jesus. Not a lot is known about them, because most of their writings were destroyed when Rome sacked Jerusalem in AD 70. What we do know comes from their critics and what is revealed in Scripture. We know that they denied the resurrection from the dead and we see that their goal in our sermon text is to trap Jesus into agreeing with their minority position.
The Sadducees don’t have any preamble like the Pharisees. They jump right in with their case study. What is interesting is that the Sadducees think they are making an argument based on Scripture. Look how they begin their case study in verse 19:
Mark 12:19
Teacher, Moses wrote for us…
Here, they are referencing Deuteronomy 25:5-10 that says that if your brother dies and has no male heir, the next oldest brother should marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. The hypothetical problem that the Sadducees set before Christ is meant to disprove the resurrection from the dead. If the brothers all marry the woman and none of them have offspring, then there can be no resurrection from the dead, because when they are raised she would be the wife of all of them at the same time.
Christ’s response to the Sadducees is arguably the most direct and harsh in all the Gospel of Mark. He tells them that they are completely and utterly wrong, giving two reasons for their error.
First, they don’t know their Bibles. Jesus doesn’t even entertain the idea that there is no resurrection from the dead or treat it as a respectable position to hold. At least the Pharisees have the appearance of righteousness. These Sadducees don’t even know the Scriptures.
If they knew their Bibles, they would see the constant theme of resurrection from the dead in the Psalms. Or, for example, Isaiah 25:7-8 that says:
Isaiah 25:7-8
And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.
8 He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces,
and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the LORD has spoken.
But they do not know their Bibles. They did not read comprehensively, but got distracted by pet theological debates.
Second, they err because they do not know the power of God. He is not real to them. Let that sink in for a minute. These Sadducees do not know the power of God, because they do not know their Bibles. What does that mean about the important of knowing your Bible? You will not know the power of God in your life unless you know what God’s word says. There are so many people that desperately want to know the power of God. They want revival and healings, they want miracles and wonders, but they never open up their Bibles. They have it totally backwards. We seek the extraordinary when God has consistently taught us that he works through the ordinary.
To correct their error, Christ teaches us three things about the resurrection from the dead. First, the resurrection is real. This is a first tier Christian teaching. If you do not believe in the resurrection from the dead, you are not a Christian. Period. We can see this in this passage because Christ just assumes it to be fact. Look at verse 25,
Mark 12:25
For when they rise from the dead…
Christ acts like it is as plain as the noses on their faces. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul makes this point explicitly clear:
1 Corinthians 15: 12-19
12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
Resurrection from the dead is the cornerstone on which the entire Christian faith rests. If people are not raised from the dead, then Christ has not been raised from the dead. If Christ has not been raised from the dead, than your sins have not been forgiven and everyone will perish.
Second, the resurrection is a bodily resurrection. Christ says in verse 25 that we will be like the angels. Angels are corporeal creatures. Their bodies might be strange to our earthly sensibilities, but they are always depicted as having bodies with recognizable parts. Not only will we have bodies, but they will be supernatural bodies like the angels. They will never grow old. They will never get sick. They will be perfect in every way.
Third, as the concept implies, resurrection has a purpose. We will rise from the dead for the purpose of eternal life. Death will no longer have any power over us. We see this because of what Jesus says about the burning bush. When Moses was speaking to God at the burning bush, God identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. According to Jesus, when God spoke to Moses at the burning bush, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were alive. The great promise of the Christian life is that we will be raised from the dead so that we can spend an eternity living with God.
Jesus finishes his response to the Sadducees with a direct rebuke. In verse 27, he says,
Mark 12:27
You are quite wrong.
The Sadducees are wrong because their worship is not informed by a real knowledge of God, neither his word nor his power.
So we must not be like them. If we want to worship God rightly, we must know God truly. That is why, as a Church, we have to be so careful that when we gather as the church our worship is centered on God’s word. Everything we do in the Sunday gathering is meant to be focused on feeding your heart with God’s word. We read God’s word, we pray God’s word, we sing God’s word, we preach God’s word, and we see and participate in God’s word through the Lord’s Supper and Baptism. It all is meant to train your heart to turn away from earthly considerations and look to God. Not God as we imagine him to be, but as he has truly revealed himself to be.
I am reminded of a quote from Jonathan Edwards. Edwards, speaking of his own ministry, said:
Jonathan Edwards
I don't think ministers are to be blamed for raising the affections of their hearers too high, if that which they are affected with be only that which is worthy of affection, and their affections are not raised beyond a proportion to their importance, or worthiness of affection.
I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.
This is what I am trying to accomplish with every worship service. As your Pastor, I want to help you love God through his Word. I want to force you to have a long, slow, intentional contemplation of his wonder and beauty.
So, at our Church, we have a Service Leader. The service leader is a role that is probably pretty unique to most of you. We intentionally do not call the person leading our music the worship leader, because our worship is not limited to the singing. We see our entire service as the time where we are worshipping. Therefore, the Service Leader works with the preacher to understand the sermon text. They then craft service that is thematically in line with the sermon that is going to be preached. They pick all the songs and scripture readings in order to elevate and illumine the sermon text, so that the peak moment of the worship gathering is the preaching of the sermon text.
In this way, we hope to be a Church that avoids the error of the Sadducees, a worship that is not informed by true knowledge of who God has revealed himself to be. Sadly, this is all too prevalent in evangelicalism today. For most of my life, I grew up in worship services where the singing and the preaching had almost nothing to do with one another. We must recover an understanding of worship that centers on God’s word, so that we worship God rightly, by knowing God truly.
Conclusion
God created men to love. We do not reason our way through the world; we feel our way through the world. We aren’t ruled by our head; we are ruled by our hearts. The question isn’t if we love, but what do we love. The great story of mankind is a story of disordered loves. We have turned away from the one that is love to lesser loves that do not satisfy.
This week, Jesus showed us that true worship is the process of reorienting our loves. God deserves our love and affection. When we attempt to do all the right things, but we do not love, we are no better than the hypocritical Pharisees. But error lies on both sides, because if we overemphasize love, then we will be like the Sadducees. They worshipped wrongly because they worshipped without true knowledge of the one that they claimed to love.
Jesus came to free us of these two grave errors. We can know God truly and love him duly, because Jesus has set us free from the bondage of sin. Praise God for his grace and kindness to us in Christ.
Let’s pray.