Devotional 46: Christ's Priestly and Kingly Offices: Atonement and Dominion

The Confession Read

The Lord Jesus, in his human nature thus united to the divine, was sanctified, and anointed with the Holy Spirit, above measure, having in him all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge; in whom it pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell; to the end that, being holy, harmless, undefiled, and full of grace and truth, he might be thoroughly furnished to execute the office of a mediator, and surety. Which office he took not unto himself, but was thereunto called by his Father, who put all power and judgment into his hand, and gave him commandment to execute the same.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 8, Section 3

Introduction

The water of the Jordan is not clear. It runs thick with silt from the mountains of Lebanon, a brown current winding through a valley three hundred feet below the level of the sea. On a day whose date no calendar records, a man stood in that water with the crowds pressing toward him, his camel-hair garment plastered to his skin by the same river that had once parted for Joshua and for Elijah. He was the last prophet of the old order, the voice crying in the wilderness, and he was baptizing sinners for the remission of sins. And then a Sinner came who had no sin. Jesus of Nazareth stepped into the Jordan not because He needed to repent but because He needed to be numbered with the transgressors, identified publicly with the people He had come to save. John recognized Him; or rather, John was told how to recognize Him: "Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost." And when Jesus rose from the water, the heavens were torn open, the Spirit descended in bodily form as a dove, and a voice from heaven declared, "Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased." This was not the beginning of Christ's anointing. It was the public manifestation of an anointing that had been His from the moment of His conception, when the Holy Ghost overshadowed Mary and the human nature of the eternal Son began its existence. What the Confession declares in Section 3 is that the Lord Jesus, in His human nature (that nature which He assumed when He became what He was not while remaining what He was), was sanctified and anointed with the Holy Spirit beyond all measure, furnished with every gift necessary for the office He had undertaken, and sent into that office by the express command of the Father. Section 1 took us into the eternal counsel where the Son was chosen as Mediator before the foundation of the world. Section 2 brought us to Bethlehem and the mystery of the incarnation, where the eternal Word became flesh. Now Section 3 stands at the Jordan and gazes upon the Spirit descending, because the question this section answers is not who Christ is — that was settled by the eternal decree and the hypostatic union — but whether He is equipped. Is the Mediator supplied with everything the work demands? Is His human nature adequate to the burden? Has He received from the Father all that is necessary to stand between a holy God and a sinful people, to be mediator and surety, the one who guarantees the debt and pays it with His own blood? The answer of the Confession is an unqualified yes. The Spirit has been given to Him without measure. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Him. In Him all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily. He is holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, and for that very reason He is able to save sinners to the uttermost.

Scripture Foundation

The Confession's portrait of the furnished Mediator is woven not from a single passage but from the full breadth of apostolic witness. Let us trace the threads as the Divines traced them. The fourth evangelist records a declaration made by John the Baptist that bears directly upon the Spirit's relation to Christ. In John 3:34, we read: "For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him." The Greek phrase translated "by measure" is ek metrou, a construction that in the idiom of the time means "in measured portions" or "sparingly." The prophets of the Old Testament received the Spirit for particular tasks and particular seasons; the Spirit came upon them, and the Spirit could depart. Samson felt the Spirit's power and tore a lion apart; he also woke one morning and "wist not that the Lord was departed from him." But upon Christ the Spirit rested without measure, without stint, without limit. Not a portion of the Spirit, but the Spirit in His fullness, was poured out upon the human nature of the Mediator. This does not mean that Christ's human nature became omnipresent or omniscient. The human nature remained finite because it was truly human — it grew in wisdom and stature, it learned obedience through suffering, it did not know the day or the hour of the final judgment. But the Spirit so filled and furnished that human nature that every capacity it possessed was perfectly directed toward its appointed end. Christ never acted from a human impulse that was not sanctified by the Spirit. He never spoke a word that was not the Father's word. He never exercised a power that was not the Spirit's enabling. The Mediator was no self-propelled hero achieving salvation by native genius. He was, in His humanity, the supreme instance of a life lived in perfect dependence upon the Holy Spirit, and for that reason His life is the pattern of every life that the same Spirit indwells. Paul deepens our understanding in Colossians 2:3, where he writes that in Christ "are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." The word "hid" (apokryphoi) does not mean that these treasures are hidden from us, inaccessible and locked away. It means they are stored up in Christ as in a treasury, concentrated in Him rather than scattered among the competing systems of human speculation. The Gnostics of Colossae were peddling secret knowledge available only to the initiated. Paul answers that true wisdom is not secret but it is concentrated: it is hidden in a Person, and that Person is publicly proclaimed. If you would know the mind of God, you do not ascend through mystical experience or philosophical speculation. You go to Christ, in whom the treasures are stored. Every question the human mind can frame about God, about man, about sin, about salvation, about the meaning of history and the destiny of the cosmos — the answer, in its substance, is Christ. He is not one source of wisdom among many. He is the treasury in which all wisdom resides, and from Him every true insight draws its origin. The same apostle had already written, earlier in the same letter, the pregnant declaration of Colossians 1:19: "For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell." The Greek word plērōma, translated "fulness," is the same term the Gnostics used for the totality of divine emanations that they believed bridged the gap between the high God and the material world. Paul takes their term and fills it with Christian content: the fulness is not a chain of intermediary beings but a Person, and in that Person the entire plenitude of deity dwells bodily. The Father was pleased to have it so. It was not a necessity imposed upon Him from without; it was the good pleasure of His will. The same pleasure that chose the Son as Mediator in the eternal counsel now delights to see all fulness residing in the incarnate Son. Nothing is lacking. Nothing has been held back. The Mediator has been equipped with everything the office requires. The author of Hebrews provides the moral portrait of the furnished Mediator in language of particular density and beauty. In Hebrews 7:26, we read: "For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens." Four adjectives, each a facet of a single perfection. "Holy" (hosios) describes a disposition of heart that is wholly oriented toward God, a piety not merely external but springing from the deepest springs of the person. "Harmless" (akakos) means literally "without evil," innocent not in the sense of naivete but in the sense of having no complicity with sin, no hidden malignancy, no secret sympathy with darkness. "Undefiled" (amiantos) is a cultic term drawn from the language of sacrifice: the high priest of the old covenant had to be free from ceremonial uncleanness before he could enter the holy place, but Christ is free from the inward defilement that all ceremony could only symbolize. "Separate from sinners" (kechōrismenos apo tōn hamartōlōn) does not mean that Christ avoided the company of sinners, for He ate with them and touched them and let a woman of the city wash His feet with her tears. It means that He was separated from them in the essential character of His person. He was among sinners without being of them, in the world without being of the world, tempted without yielding, tried without failing. This is the kind of High Priest we needed: one who could touch our defilement without being defiled, who could bear our sin without becoming sinful, who could enter our darkness without the darkness entering Him. The moral perfection of Christ is not an abstract theological datum. It is the ground of our salvation. A high priest who needed to offer sacrifice for his own sins could never atone for the sins of others. But Christ had no sins of His own. All the blood He shed (and He shed it all) was shed for us. His holiness is the condition of His priesthood, and His priesthood is the channel of our cleansing. The Old Testament prophet who most clearly foresaw the Spirit's anointing of the coming Servant was Isaiah. In Isaiah 61:1-2, the prophet speaks: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." When Jesus stood in the synagogue at Nazareth and read these words, He closed the scroll, sat down, and said, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." He claimed the anointing as His own. The Spirit was upon Him, not for His private consolation but for His public office. He was anointed to preach, to heal, to liberate, to proclaim. Every act of His ministry flowed from the Spirit's equipment of His humanity. The miracles were Spirit-wrought. The teaching was Spirit-given. The compassion that moved Him toward the multitudes was Spirit-kindled. And the obedience that carried Him to the cross was Spirit-sustained. From cradle to grave, from conception to resurrection, the human life of the Son of God was lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Peter summarized this same truth when he preached to Cornelius's household: "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good." The Greek captures it in a single phrase: diēlthen euergetōn, "He passed through, benefacting." Wherever He went, the world was healed in His wake, not because He was a philanthropist but because He was the Anointed One, the Mediator executing His office in the power of the Spirit.

What the Divines Meant

When the Westminster Divines composed this section, they were addressing a cluster of errors that threatened to undermine the sufficiency of Christ's mediatorial work. Four concerns in particular pressed upon their minds. The first was the error of those who denied that Christ's human nature required sanctification by the Spirit. If the human nature of Christ was united to the divine Person of the Son, some argued, what need was there for the Spirit to sanctify it? Would not the union itself guarantee all necessary holiness? The Divines answered by insisting that the human nature of Christ, though sinless from conception, was a creature, and as a creature it needed the Spirit's supporting and sanctifying presence to live in perfect obedience to the Father. The union of the two natures in one Person did not make the human nature self-sufficient. Christ prayed. Christ depended. Christ was "heard in that he feared." The Spirit's anointing was not a redundancy; it was the appointed means by which the human nature of the Mediator was kept in uninterrupted communion with the Father and empowered for every act of obedience. The Divines were guarding against a subtle docetism that would make Christ's humanity a mere instrument of His deity rather than the arena of a real and dependent human life. The second error was Socinianism, which reappears at every stage of this chapter. Faustus Socinus and his followers denied that Christ's death had any atoning value. On their scheme, Christ was a teacher and an example, not a sacrifice. The Confession answers by using a word that the Socinians could not accommodate: "surety." The Greek engyos, from Hebrews 7:22, designates one who guarantees the obligation of another, who stands as the responsible party for a debt he did not incur. Christ is the surety of the covenant: He assumed the debt of His people's sin and undertook to pay it in full. A mere teacher cannot be a surety. An example cannot bear the wrath of God. But One who is holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners (One who has no debt of His own) can voluntarily assume the debt of others and discharge it. The Divines chose "surety" deliberately, anchoring the whole of Christ's work in the legal and covenantal framework of Scripture, against every attempt to reduce the Mediator to a moral influence. The third error was the claim, advanced by various enthusiasts and radicals in the seventeenth century, that any man who had the Spirit could assume the office of mediator or claim an authority equal to Christ's. The Quakers, in their more extreme expressions, spoke of the "inner light" as if it rendered external revelation unnecessary and made every believer a little Christ. The Confession responds by declaring that the mediatorial office is unique: Christ "took not unto himself" this office but was called by the Father, who "put all power and judgment into his hand, and gave him commandment to execute the same." No one else has been so called. No one else has been so anointed. No one else has been given all power and judgment. The mediatorial office is not a pattern to be replicated but a work to be received. We do not repeat Christ's mediation; we rest in it. The Spirit who anointed Christ without measure now dwells in believers by measure, not to make them mediators but to unite them to the one Mediator by faith. A.A. Hodge, in his commentary, draws attention to the phrase "all power and judgment." The Father gave the Son authority over all flesh, the right to execute judgment, the power to save and to condemn. This investiture of authority was not the communication of something the Son lacked as God (as God, He possessed all power eternally). It was the conferral of mediatorial authority upon the incarnate Son, the public installation of the God-man in His office as the ruler and judge of all. Hodge observes that this investiture is the ground of all gospel preaching. When the church calls men to repentance and faith, she does so in the name of one who has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. The command to execute the office comes from the Father; the commission to proclaim the office comes from the Son. Every sermon, every baptism, every celebration of the Lord's Supper is an act performed under the authority of the commissioned Mediator. Robert Shaw, whose exposition of the Confession guided generations of Scottish Presbyterians, notes the careful connection between Christ's sinless character and His fitness for the mediatorial office. It is not enough to say that Christ was powerful or wise or compassionate. He must be holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. A mediator who had even the faintest taint of sin could not approach a holy God. The seraphim in Isaiah's vision covered their faces and their feet in the presence of the thrice-holy God. How much more must the Mediator, who enters not merely to worship but to represent a sinful people before the throne, be free from every stain? Shaw presses the pastoral implication: if Christ needed to be holy to be your Mediator, then His holiness is not a barrier between you and Him but the very thing that makes Him accessible. The fact that He is undefiled does not push you away; it draws you near, because only an undefiled priest can cleanse the defiled. Your sin, however great, does not exceed His purity. His purity overcomes your sin. The language of "thoroughly furnished" indicates completeness of equipment. Nothing is missing. Nothing has been left unprovided. The Mediator stands before the Father with every qualification the office requires. He lacks nothing, and because He lacks nothing, those who come to God through Him lack nothing either. "Ye are complete in him," Paul writes. The completeness of the Mediator is the ground of the believer's completeness. What Christ possesses in fullness, the believer possesses in union with Him.

Theological Depth

The church's theologians have explored this section's themes with the reverence and precision they deserve. Four voices reward particular attention. John Owen devoted sustained reflection to the Spirit's work in the human nature of Christ. In his Pneumatologia, Owen argues that every act of Christ's mediatorial work was performed in the power of the Holy Spirit. The conception of His human nature was by the Spirit's overshadowing. His growth in wisdom was by the Spirit's illumination. His miracles were by the Spirit's power (Christ Himself attributed them to the Spirit when He warned that blasphemy against the Spirit would not be forgiven). His obedience under suffering was sustained by the Spirit, for it was "through the eternal Spirit" that He offered Himself without spot to God. Even His resurrection was by the Spirit's agency, for Paul declares that He was "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." Owen draws from this a conclusion that bears directly on the Christian life: if the Son of God incarnate did not live His human life in His own strength but in the power of the Spirit, how much more must we? The pattern of Christ's dependence is the pattern of our dependence. The Spirit who filled Christ without measure fills believers by measure, but it is the same Spirit, effecting the same kind of communion with the Father, producing the same kind of obedience. Christ is not merely our substitute who obeys in our place; He is our forerunner who shows us the way of obedience, a way walked not in self-sufficiency but in constant reliance upon the Spirit whom the Father gives. Every believer who has felt the inadequacy of his own resources for the life to which he is called may take courage from this: the Mediator Himself, in His humanity, did not rely on His own resources. He prayed. He trusted. He depended on the Spirit. And the Spirit who sustained Him sustains you. B.B. Warfield, in his essay on the emotional life of our Lord, addresses the question of how Christ could be sinless while experiencing the full range of human emotions. The Confession speaks of Christ's "common infirmities," and Warfield insists that these include genuine emotion: joy at a wedding, grief at a grave, anger in the temple, anguish in Gethsemane. The sinlessness of Christ does not mean He was incapable of feeling what we feel. It means that every feeling He experienced was perfectly proportioned to its object and governed by love for God and neighbor. His anger never became petulance. His grief never became despair. His joy never became frivolity. The Spirit's anointing did not suppress the emotional life of Christ; it sanctified it, so that the whole range of human affect became the instrument of perfect righteousness. For the believer tempted to despise his own emotional life (to regard tears as weakness, anger as always sinful), Warfield's insight is corrective and comforting. Christ felt more deeply than you have ever felt, because His humanity was more alive, more perfectly attuned to reality than yours. And He felt rightly. The Spirit's work in you is not to make you emotionless but to make your emotions, like His, proportional and pure. Herman Witsius, the Dutch federal theologian whose work on the covenants remains one of the richest treatments of the subject, devotes careful attention to the concept of Christ as surety. In his Economy of the Covenants, Witsius distinguishes between a surety who merely promises that another will pay and a surety who undertakes to pay the debt himself. Christ is the latter. He does not stand before the Father and promise that His people will satisfy divine justice; He knows they cannot. He undertakes to satisfy it Himself. This suretyship involves both substitution (He pays what we owe) and representation (He acts in our name). Witsius points out that the suretyship of Christ is grounded in the eternal covenant between the Father and the Son but is executed in time through the incarnation, the active obedience, the passive obedience, and the intercession of the Mediator. Every stage of Christ's work is an installment of the surety's payment. And the payment is complete. There is no outstanding debt. The surety has been accepted, the obligation discharged, the prisoners set free. This is the legal realism of the gospel, and Witsius would have every believer know it: if Christ is your surety, your debt does not exist. It has been paid — not partly paid, not conditionally paid, not pending your performance. Paid in full. The hand that received the Spirit without measure is the hand that paid your debt without remainder. Geerhardus Vos, whose biblical theology traced the unfolding of redemption through the whole sweep of Scripture, directs our attention to the messianic consciousness of Jesus. In his treatment of the Gospels, Vos observes that Jesus consistently spoke and acted with an authority that no prophet had ever claimed. He forgave sins, which the scribes rightly recognized as a divine prerogative. He declared Himself Lord of the Sabbath. He claimed that His words would outlast heaven and earth. Yet at the same time, He insisted that He could do nothing of Himself, that He spoke only what the Father gave Him to speak, that He sought not His own will but the will of Him who sent Him. This combination of supreme authority and complete dependence is only intelligible on the terms the Confession provides: the incarnate Son, in His human nature, was so thoroughly furnished by the Spirit that every word He spoke and every act He performed was both fully human and fully divine, both the act of a dependent creature and the act of the sovereign Lord. Vos helps us see that there is no contradiction between Christ's authority and His dependence. The dependence is the means by which the authority is exercised in a human life. The Spirit's anointing is the channel through which the power of the Godhead flows into the humanity, so that the visible words and works of Jesus are the words and works of God — not because the humanity is overwhelmed by the deity but because the humanity is perfectly yielded to the Spirit.

Puritan Application

First, learn from the Spirit's anointing of Christ what it means to live the Christian life in dependence upon Another. Many believers labor under the impression that sanctification is a project of self-improvement, a slow accumulation of virtue through determined effort. But the pattern of Christ's own humanity teaches otherwise. If the sinless Son of God lived His earthly life not by drawing on His own divine resources but by constant reliance upon the Holy Spirit, how can you imagine that you will make any progress in holiness by your own resolve? Christ prayed through the night before choosing His apostles. Christ was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Christ cast out demons by the Spirit of God. Christ offered Himself through the eternal Spirit. At every point, the human nature of the Mediator looked away from itself to the Spirit who filled it. Your sanctification, like His anointing, is not a matter of mustering inner resources but of receiving what Another supplies. The Spirit who rested upon Christ without measure now dwells in you by measure, but He is the same Spirit, and the mode of His operation is the same. He does not make you self-sufficient. He makes you Christ-dependent, and through Christ, He makes you holy. Second, let the completeness of Christ's equipment silence every fear that He cannot save you. The Confession piles phrase upon phrase — sanctified, anointed, all treasures, all fulness, thoroughly furnished — to drive home a single point: the Mediator lacks nothing that your salvation requires. Are you ignorant? In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and He is made unto you wisdom. Are you guilty? He is your surety, and your debt is paid. Are you defiled? He is undefiled, and His purity is reckoned to you through faith. Are you weak? He has been given all power in heaven and on earth, and His strength is made perfect in your weakness. Are you afraid? He is the one whom the Father commanded to execute the office, and He will not abandon the work He has been commissioned to complete. Whatever your need, the answer is already present in Christ. The question is never whether He can meet the need. The question is only whether you will bring the need to Him. The same Spirit who equipped Him for His work now equips you to come to Him in faith. Do not stay away because you feel your emptiness. The Mediator was filled precisely because you are empty. His fulness is for your poverty. Third, let the fact that Christ did not take the office upon Himself but was called by the Father establish your confidence in His mediation. In human affairs, self-appointed advocates are unreliable. The man who thrusts himself forward as a representative may have his own interests at heart, and when those interests diverge from yours, he will abandon your cause. But Christ did not volunteer for His office in the sense of seizing it. He was appointed by the Father, and the Father's appointment carries the Father's authority. God the Father is not reluctant to save you, needing to be persuaded by a merciful Son. The Father is the one who sent the Son, who anointed Him with the Spirit, who gave Him the commandment to execute the office, who put all power and judgment into His hand. Your salvation originates in the Father's will, is accomplished by the Son's obedience, and is applied by the Spirit's power. You are not hoping that Christ will succeed in persuading a reluctant Father to accept you. The Father who called Christ to the office is the same Father who calls you to faith. The whole Trinity is engaged in your salvation, and no person of the Godhead works against another. Rest in the unity of the divine purpose. The Mediator you trust was appointed by the God you fear. Fourth, let the holiness of Christ become to you not a barrier but a refuge. The natural conscience, awakened to sin, shrinks from holiness. Adam hid among the trees of the garden because he was afraid. Isaiah cried, "Woe is me, for I am undone," because his eyes had seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Peter fell at Jesus' knees and said, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." The instinct of the guilty is to flee from the holy. But the gospel reverses this instinct. The holiness of Christ is not a threat to the penitent sinner; it is his only hope. If Christ were not holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, He could not be your High Priest. His separation from sinners is the condition of His ability to save sinners. The Lamb without blemish is the only Lamb whose blood can cleanse. Flee, then, not from the holiness of Christ but to it. His holiness covers your unholiness. His righteousness is imputed to you. His undefiled nature is the garment in which you stand before the throne. What you cannot be in yourself, you are in Him. What you cannot do in your own strength, He has done in His. The holiness that would consume you if you approached in your own name becomes your safety because you approach in His. Fifth, let the Spirit's anointing of Christ for His office teach you to value the Spirit's work in your own life. It is possible to be so Christ-centered that one becomes Spirit-neglectful, as if the Spirit were a mere force or influence rather than the personal agent of our union with Christ. But the Confession will not permit this. The same Spirit who equipped the Mediator now applies the Mediator's benefits to the elect. The same Spirit who sanctified Christ's human nature now sanctifies yours. The same Spirit who sustained Christ's obedience now enables yours. The same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead will quicken your mortal body. Every grace you possess, every good desire, every prayer that rises beyond the ceiling — all of it is the Spirit's work, applying Christ to you and conforming you to Christ. Do not grieve the Spirit by neglect. Do not quench the Spirit by resistance. Welcome His promptings. Yield to His convictions. Depend upon His power. The Spirit who filled the Mediator without measure is the Spirit who dwells in you as the seal and earnest of your inheritance, and He will not leave His work unfinished.

Prayer

O Lord Jesus Christ, thou blessed and only Mediator between God and men, we bow before thee in wonder at the fulness that dwells in thee. Thou wast sanctified and anointed with the Holy Spirit above measure, that thou mightest be thoroughly furnished for the work the Father gave thee to do. In thee are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. In thee it pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell. Thou art holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners — and yet thou art not ashamed to call us brethren, and thou hast made us, who were once far off, nigh by thy blood. We confess that we have too often looked to our own resources for the strength to live the life to which thou hast called us. We have forgotten that thou thyself, in thy human nature, didst live in constant dependence upon the Spirit whom the Father gave thee without measure. Forgive our prideful self-sufficiency. Teach us to walk as thou didst walk: praying, trusting, yielding, obeying, in the power of the same Spirit who now dwells in us, not without measure, but truly and savingly. We bless thee that thou didst not take the mediatorial office upon thyself, but wast called unto it by the Father, who put all power and judgment into thy hand. This is our confidence: that the Father who appointed thee to save us is not reluctant to receive us, and the Spirit who anointed thee for thy work is not unwilling to apply that work to our hearts. The whole Trinity is engaged for our salvation, and we rest in the unity of the divine purpose. O blessed Spirit, who didst rest upon our Lord without measure, rest upon us. Sanctify us as thou didst sanctify his human nature. Fill us with all wisdom and knowledge as thou didst fill him. Conform us to his image, not that we might become mediators, for one Mediator is sufficient, but that we might be faithful witnesses to the one Mediator, living lives that reflect his holiness, his harmlessness, his separation from sin. Grant that thy church would never turn from the sufficiency of Christ to any lesser savior. Guard us from the seductions of a wisdom that is not found in him, from remedies that cannot heal, from hopes that cannot satisfy. Be thou our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption. And when our days on earth are done, bring us into thy presence, where we shall see, no longer veiled but face to face, the one in whom all fulness dwells, and shall be satisfied with his likeness forever. To thee, O Christ, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be all honor and glory, dominion and power, both now and unto the ages of ages. Amen.