As we go from Sunday to Sunday, I have been looking at some of the interesting conversations that our Lord had out of the four gospels; and we come to one this morning that I think you’re familiar with as a story, but it provides for us a very, very important emphasis that I want everybody to understand. The text is Mark chapter 2, Mark chapter 2. And the chapter opens with this familiar story about the man being let down through the roof into the presence of Jesus and what ensued as a result of that appearance. But let me read, beginning in verse 1, down to verse 12, so you have the story in mind.

“When He”—meaning Jesus—“had come back to Capernaum several days afterward, it was heard that He was at home. And many were gathered together, so that there was no longer room, not even near the door; and He was speaking the word to them. And they came, bringing to Him a paralytic, carried by four men. Being unable to get to Him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above Him; and when they had dug an opening, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic was lying. And Jesus seeing their faith said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’ But some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, ‘Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming; who can forgive sins but God alone?’ Immediately Jesus, aware in His spirit that they were reasoning that way within themselves, said to them, ‘Why are you reasoning about these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven”; or to say, “Get up, and pick up your pallet and walk”? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—He said to the paralytic, ‘I say to you, get up, pick up your pallet and go home.’ And he got up and immediately picked up the pallet and went out in the sight of everyone, so that they were all amazed and were glorifying God, saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this.’”

To introduce this I want to pose a question to you: What is the most distinctive benefit that Christianity offers? If you were to do a man-on-the-street survey in our modern culture, and ask people in some random fashion what they think the message of Christianity really is, you would be surprised, I think, if you found somebody who got the right answer because there are so many viewpoints of Christianity. Some think it is some kind of a moral form of political ideology. Some people think it is a rule so that you can live the kind of life that God will accept. Some people think it’s purpose; Christianity is to give purpose to your life, is to frame up your life with some significant goal and objective. Some people think Christianity is to provide love in the heart so that we can counter the hatred in the world. Some people think that Christianity’s goal and objective is peace. There are some who think that Christianity basically is a form of social responsibility, a family love, and its design is to bring about moral change in society. Some people think its basic existence is to provide personal fulfillment, personal happiness, a personal peace and joy; and that’s a rare thing in the world in which we live.

Well, the truth of the matter is none of those is the right answer. There is one benefit that transcends all other realities, a benefit that directly corresponds to man’s greatest need, and that is important to say. Whatever man’s greatest need is, Christianity must respond to that need. That is precisely what it does.

So what is man’s greatest need? Let me take you over to John chapter 8 for a moment and let you hear the answer to that question from the lips of Jesus. John chapter 8, verse 21: “Then He said again to them, ‘I go away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin; where I am going, you cannot come.” He said, “I’m going to heaven, and you’re not. You will die in your sin; and where I am going, you cannot come.”

He repeated in verse 24: “I said to you . . . you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” Three times He says, “You’re going to die in your sins, and you’re not going to be able to come to heaven, unless you believe in Me.”

What sends people to hell? Not sin; unforgiven sin, unforgiven sin. We all sin, and we would all end up in hell if our sins were not forgiven. This is the message of Christianity: that God through His lovingkindness has designed a way for sinners to be forgiven, and forgiven with such magnanimity that it could be spoken of as if it’s removing your sins as far as the east is from the west, or burying them in the depths of the sea, or putting them behind His back, or remembering them no more. What sends people to hell is unforgiven sin. So the greatest need of every soul is divine forgiveness. The greatest benefit that Christianity offers is just that: forgiveness.

Again, it is unforgiven sin that sends people into eternal punishment in hell. Christianity answers, then, the compelling question, “Can I be forgiven?” “Can I be forgiven?” And if you are giving a faithful message concerning the Christian message, the Christian truth, the Christian gospel, what you’re telling people is, the good news is that you can be forgiven.

In the thirteenth chapter of the book of Acts, the apostle Paul declares this for us. Down in verse 38 of Acts 13, “Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through Him”—that is, Christ, whom God raised from the dead—“through Him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses.” The “all things” there has to do with punishment, judgment. You cannot be freed from judgment, punishment, and hell through the law of Moses, through obedience to the law. No, “everyone who believes is freed.” This is the Christian message: Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you can be forgiven.

Listen to Ephesians 1:7: “In Him”—that is, “In Christ”—“we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.” In Ephesians chapter 4, verse 32, “God in Christ . . . has forgiven you.” First John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

When you go into the Old Testament, you find the same thing. Hear the words of Exodus 34. The Lord God Himself said, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin.” God is introducing Himself there, as you remember, in the mountain to Moses, and He wants Moses to know His character, and He describes Himself as compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and truth; forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.

Nehemiah 9:17, “You are a God of forgiveness, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.” And I read earlier Psalm 103, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” How far is the east from the west? That’s an infinite line.

In Isaiah 38:17, it says of God, “You have cast all my sins behind Your back.” Isaiah 43:25, “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” What an amazing message. That is the message of the true and living God. That is the essence of the Christian gospel. It’s not a form of morality; it’s not a form of philanthropy, human goodness; the gospel is the only way that you can have your sins forgiven, and that’s the only way you’ll escape hell.

In the book of Micah, the prophet in verses 18 and 19 of chapter 7, Micah 7:18 and 19, “Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever, [but] He delights in unchanging love. He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities under foot. Yes, You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” What astounding generosity this is. And this is the Christian message. This is the message that God gave in the Old Testament and in the New: He forgives sins.

Now this raises the question of justice. God understands that justice must prevail. In fact, God says it’s an abomination if you do something that violates justice. Listen to Proverbs 17:15, “He who justifies the wicked . . . [is] an abomination to the Lord.” “He who justifies the wicked . . . [is] an abomination to the Lord.” And yet, that is exactly what God did. Listen to Romans 4:5, “But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly”—the very thing that Proverbs 17 says is an abomination is exactly what God does; He justifies the ungodly—“his faith is credited as righteousness.”

The sound foundational law of morality in the world is that evil must be punished and goodness rewarded. But God Himself has chosen to violate that law in the sense that He justifies the ungodly—one of the most shocking statements to Jewish people anywhere, in the New Testament. How can God do that? How is it possible? And the answer is because He punishes His Son in the place of believing sinners.

Back in Romans 3, verse 25, “God displayed [Christ] . . . as a propitiation”—a satisfaction—“in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed.” He passed over sins. But in order to be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus, those sins had to be punished; and Jesus bore our sins in His own body. God sacrifices His only Son to accomplish His will of justifying the ungodly. This is the glorious message of the Christian gospel. Jesus came to offer forgiveness—everlasting, eternal forgiveness. And that is what is demonstrated in that account that we read, so let’s go back to Mark chapter 2.

Now this particular account also can act like a sort of exemplary story of the ministry of Jesus, and has all the components of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus is there, sinners are there, healing is there, the crowd is there, the hostile leaders are there. It’s a microcosm of life in the ministry of Jesus during the three years that He plied His ministry in Galilee and Judea.

But just to give you the picture, in chapter 1 of Mark, Mark chronicles for us the fact that Jesus was preaching the gospel. Back to chapter 1, verse 14, “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God”—the good news from God, the good news of forgiveness—“saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.’” So He’s preaching the gospel. And again, the good news, the good news is forgiveness.

But how does He convince people that He can forgive sin? It’s one thing to say that; how do you prove it? Well, He had done many miracles. Mark records in the first chapter His power over demons, His power over disease. Mark talks about His teaching with authority, verse 27. His teaching was something that they had never seen before. And then He commanded the unclean spirits, and they obeyed Him. This is His ministry. He comes to preach the gospel of forgiveness, and He proves that He can forgive sin by demonstrating the power of God, which is His own power, in miracles.

He has demonstrated His authority over disease, His authority over demons; and that was visible. People could see the healings, they could see the powerful deliverance from demons, they could hear the truth that He spoke; and all of that was simply to demonstrate His divine power so that they would understand that He can also forgive sins. Because how do you prove you forgave somebody their sin? You could prove your power over demons. Manifestly, He did that. The people said, “Even the spirits are subject to Him.”

You can demonstrate Your power over nature—He did that; your power over disease—He did that; your power over death—He did that. But how do You prove You’ve forgiven sin? What visible reality validates that? And yet that’s what He was after. His goal was not to heal people; His goal was not deliver them from demons. His goal was to give them forgiveness. All of that miracle-working was to demonstrate His divine nature so that people would understand that He had the power to forgive sin, which belonged only to God. Christianity has to get to that point, or it’s a misrepresentation.

And again, I’m heartbroken about the chaos and confusion that so-called Christians are sending out into the world as to what our message really is. If we can be dismissed as some kind of moral movement, if we can be dismissed as some kind of charitable movement, if we can be dismissed as some kind of personal-enhancement religion that makes you feel better about yourself, gives you purpose in life and satisfaction—if we can be dismissed as any of those things, we have missed the whole point. It’s about forgiveness.

So let’s look at the story in Mark chapter 2. And we see all of the typical players, in the ministry in the life of our Lord. First, we start with a crowd. Verse 1 begins, “When He had come back to Capernaum.” He left Capernaum. Capernaum was His headquarters, and very likely He stayed at Peter’s home. Verse 1 says, “He was at home.” So this was a place that He would normally go, very likely the home of Peter. And He had gone out from Capernaum. The reason that He had to leave Capernaum was, verse 45 says, “He went out and began to proclaim it freely and spread the news around.” What is that? That is the man that Jesus healed of leprosy. Verse 44, “[Jesus] said to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone’”—“Don’t say anything about your healing.” “‘Go, show yourself to the priest and offer [the] cleansing [that] Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the news around, to such an extent”—this is why Jesus told him not to do this—“that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city, but stayed out in unpopulated areas; they were coming to Him from everywhere.” I mean, it was a massive response by the crowd.

On its surface you would assume that this was a wonderful, successful beginning to His ministry in Galilee. And back in verse 39, “He went into [the] synagogues throughout all Galilee, preaching [the gospel of forgiveness] and casting out demons.” He would have continued to do that, but it became impossible because of the massive, massive crowds. And so He had to be gone for a while, until enthusiasm cooled a little bit. And then you come to chapter 2, verse 1, “He [came back] . . . several days afterward.” We don’t know how long a period of time; long enough that He could at least move around among the villages of Galilee. Matthew says He came back after He had been to the region of the Gadarenes, where you remember in Matthew chapter 8 He healed the demon-possessed man who was living among the tombs, and the demons were sent into the pigs. So He’s been gone a while; now He’s come back. That tour must have been some amount of weeks.

Capernaum is His home because He was driven out of Nazareth. You can read about that in Luke 4. They drove Him out; He had to run for His life from there. And based on John 5:16, He had already felt the hostility of the Jewish authorities. They wanted Him dead. Never mind His healing power, His power over demons, His teaching with authority; they were already dogging His steps, looking for a way to hold Him guilty that would result in capital punishment. They wanted Him dead because His message of the forgiveness of sins, they saw as blasphemy.

It says in verse 2 they “were gathered together, so that there was no longer room, even near the door; and He was speaking the word to them.” So He’s in this house, and He’s teaching, and the place is jammed full, and all the way to the door you have no access. And again, this is the typical crowd that the miracles attracted. The desire? What was their desire? More miracles. And when He fed them, they wanted more free food.

They’re essentially indifferent to the good news of forgiveness. They can’t accept that in their self-righteousness system, in their legalism. Nowhere does Mark say they were repentant, or the crowd was marked by genuine faith. They are curious; they’re spiritually passive. If they do anything, they obstruct Jesus, they get in His way, making it hard for Him to minister. So crowds never were a measure of ministry success. They aren’t now either; they never have been.

The crowds were an indication of miracle success, miracle power. And remember, at the same time He’s doing these miracles, which only God can do, He’s preaching the forgiveness of sins, which only God can do. They never get to that part. There’s no repenting. There’s no believing. In fact, in Nazareth when He said that He was there to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy concerning Messiah, He had to run for His life.

Now Luke says that—Luke has a parallel to this, and so does Matthew. Luke says some of the people in the crowd were Pharisees—Mark doesn’t note that, but Luke does—Pharisees, mingled with the crowd; and always, it seems, to the rest of the Lord’s ministry, were the guardians of the populist form of apostate Judaism—the fundamentalist, legalist architects and promoters of salvation by works, self-righteousness, the system that dominated the Jewish people.

Pharisees believed in resurrection; they believed in angels; they believed in demons; they even believed in predestination, human responsibility, written law, oral law. They believed in the Old Testament; they believed in the coming of Messiah. They believed in the kingdom, the promised, glorious kingdom to come to Israel. They were non-priests; they were laypeople who became very preoccupied with the law, the Old Testament law and tradition, and they built up a wall—what they thought was a wall—around the law to protect the law, to keep people from violating the law; and the wall was hundreds of prescriptions, hundreds of other little laws that they thought would be a barrier so that the people didn’t violate the actual law of God. It turns out, according to Matthew 15:3, that they actually substituted tradition for the law of God. So they actually, in an endeavor to protect the law, basically obscured the law, and in its place put all their little prescriptions.

They are small in number. They seem to have been no more than six thousand Pharisees at the time of our Lord, scattered around Israel. They had a long history; they go back to the Babylonian exile. They’d been around for at least four hundred years, and they developed the positions of power when it comes to religion.

Now they’re gathered with this crowd, and they’re not alone. Go down to verse 6: “Some of the scribes were sitting there.” Again, in all these accounts of our Lord with the population of Galilee and of Judea, inevitably the scribes and the Pharisees are there looking for a way to discredit and destroy this man, Jesus. In Luke 5, Luke says scribes came from all the villages of Galilee. So He’s got a very elite core in this crowd of people that are the theologians of apostate Judaism. They came from all the villages of Galilee; they came also from Judea, Luke says, and they came even as far away as “from Jerusalem.” So the scribes are the scholars of the law, theologians who copied, studied, taught the religion of Judaism.

So they embed themselves in the crowd, and obviously they have an agenda of protecting their power and protecting their apostate religion. These scribes would be the people that are called rabbi, meaning “great one.” So they want to make sure that they were treated with the appropriate honor. And here is Jesus, and it says in Luke 5:17, “The power of the Lord was present for Him to perform [miracles, miracles of] healing.” So there was an explosion of healing power. And again, the purpose of that was to demonstrate His divine power so that they could make the obvious connection that if He is God in human flesh, He can also forgive sin. But that was a threat to them because first of all, they didn’t see themselves as sinners, they saw themselves as righteous. That’s how profoundly deluded they were about their righteousness.

So we see the crowd. And into this we find injected an interesting group of five men, verse 3: “And they came, bringing to Him a paralytic, carried by four men.” By the way, this is the only specific case in Mark or Luke of the healing of a paralytic; although Matthew 4 says Jesus did it more frequently. This is the one illustration we have of someone who is perhaps a quadriplegic.

And so they bring him, and they want to get him to Jesus so that he can be healed. But this is an unusual group of five, as we will see; doesn’t take long. They were so determined to get him to Jesus, it says in verse 4 they began to take the roof apart: “Being unable to get to Him”—normally, through the door—they climbed up. There were one-story houses that had exterior staircases, and the roof was like a patio. They went upstairs, and they started taking the tiles off. And interestingly enough, they knew exactly where Jesus was standing, because Luke says when they got the hole, they dropped him right in front of Jesus. So they had done a little bit of a survey, and they wanted to have him right in the face of Jesus. “When they had dug [the] opening, they let the pallet on which the paralytic was lying, down.” I mean, the drama of this, the desperation of this is amazing. They’ve literally torn up somebody else’s house.

And then we meet the Savior in verse 5. This is shocking: “And Jesus seeing their faith”—wait a minute. What do you mean, “seeing their faith”? Faith is invisible. What do you mean, “seeing their faith”? Well, anything is visible to deity, right? John 2:25, He knew what was in the heart of man; nobody needed to tell Him. He knows. He knows the hearts of these men. He sees beyond their action to their hearts, and He sees that their hearts are filled with faith—not just faith in Him as a healer but faith in Him as a Savior, because He says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

He knew the man was there not just for healing, he was there for forgiveness. It doesn’t say He saw the physical condition, it says He saw their faith. Faith is visible to God. Yes, no doubt he believed in the healing power of Jesus; that’s why they went to such extreme to get him in front of Jesus. But he was far down the spiritual journey, to the point where he was crying out for forgiveness. And Jesus calls Him “Son”; that is amazing: “Son.” And Luke adds that He called him, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

The only way you have your sins forgiven is to believe. If you believe in Christ, your sins will be forgiven. So this man was a believer. His faith was not limited to Jesus’ healing power, but the gospel of forgiveness was what was on his mind. Nobody speaks. None of the five said anything. No request is made. But He knew the heart of that paralytic. With endearing, sympathetic expression He says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

And Jesus knew that’s why he was there. Here is a real conversion; and they happened during the life and ministry of Jesus. Never says the crowd repented or the crowd had faith. And that was true throughout His whole ministry; the crowd never got beyond curiosity. But this man’s wretched condition had opened him up to an understanding of his sinfulness and the realization that through this Jesus, this Man from God, He could receive forgiveness.

At that moment, on His own personal authority, on His own—I’ll say it again—personal authority, Jesus absolved the man of all his sins, apart from works; and Jesus obliterated the man’s guilt forever, forever. In a sense, He treated him like the thief on the cross. This is the message of Christian: Jesus will forgive all your sins in a moment, when you come to Him and believe in Him and cry out like the publican, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

And then that activates the hostile leaders, verse 6: “Some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts.” He not only could read the heart of the paralytic and know that there was real faith there, but He could read the hearts of the scribes, their “reasoning in their hearts”; and this is what they’re musing about: “Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming; who can forgive sins but God alone?” I mean, that’s pretty obstinate unbelief. They had seen miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle, astounding everybody. but they couldn’t move to the reality that Jesus would forgive the sins of one who believed, because they were so profoundly steeped in legalism—salvation by works. And so when Jesus instantaneously forgives him, they say He is blaspheming: “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” They’re right. Only God can forgive sins.

“Immediately Jesus, aware in His spirit that they were reasoning that way.” It’s interesting to me, He knows what’s going on even though they don’t say anything. You know, you could have a conversation with Jesus, and that wouldn’t be the only thing that was going on; He could be listening to your words and reading your mind at the same time.

“Aware in His spirit they were reasoning that way . . . [He] said to them, ‘Why are you reasoning about these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven”; or to say, “Get up, and pick up your pallet and walk”?’” Which is easier? Well, you might say, “Oh, it’s easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ because nobody knows whether they actually were or not. You can get away with that.” But that’s just opposite the point. The Lord assumes that there has to be a validation. So the way to understand what He says is, Which is easier: to say, “Your sins are forgiven,” and prove it; or to say, “Get up, and pick up your pallet, and walk,” and prove it? Forgiving sins is invisible. For a quadriplegic to pick up his bed and walk is manifestly visible. And that was our Lord’s whole point.

The leaders wanted nothing to do with the spiritual ministry of Jesus. They didn’t want to make the move from divine power over demons, disease, to divine power over sin, because that would completely shatter their works system, where you earn your way. So our Lord says the right thing—Which is easier to say and prove it: “Your sins are forgiven,” or, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk”?

And then in verse 10, “‘But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—He said to the paralytic, ‘I say to you, get up, pick up your pallet and go home.’” And His point is this: If He can do that, He is God; and if He is God, He can forgive sin.

What happened? Verse 12, “He got up, immediately picked up the pallet and went out in the sight of everyone, so that they were all amazed and were glorifying God, saying, ‘We’ve never seen anything like this.’” And again, the final scene of the crowd is they’re impressed. So typical of the crowds that followed our Lord.

The leaders are not impressed. They think He’s a blasphemer. They think He’s a blasphemer. There’s a fascinating parallel story to this in Luke 7; I’ll just make a couple of comments about it—Luke 7, starting around verse 36.

The scene is they’re in a house of a Pharisee, and Jesus is there. “And there’s a woman,” verse 37, who is “a sinner”—a prostitute—“and when she learned that He was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster vial of perfume.” She went into the Pharisee’s house—which they never would have allowed, but somehow she got in—and she brings “an alabaster vial of perfume, and standing behind [Jesus] at His feet, [she’s] weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears, kept wiping them with the hair of her head, and kissing His feet and anointing them with the perfume.” This is shocking, shocking the Pharisee and his friends: “What is a prostitute doing here, and why is He allowing this woman to treat Him with this kindness?”

“When the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet He would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching Him, that she’s a sinner.’” And this is just exactly how they felt about sinners: “Get them out of here.” They had nothing but contempt for sinners.

Jesus had a different attitude. Jesus says to the woman, verse 48, “Your sins have been forgiven.” How did that happen? Verse 50, “Your faith has saved you.” And all those—in verse 49—around the table “began to say to themselves, ‘Who is this man who even forgives sins?’” They couldn’t make the connection, because it would sacrifice their self-righteousness.

So they determined that He was a blasphemer in spite of the massive display of power. He had to be a blasphemer, because God would never forgive her sins. And God would never forgive the paralytic; he was probably paralyzed because of his sins. You don’t get forgiveness that way, you earn it.

And so this is what dogged the steps of Jesus all the way to the cross: the legalists, who called Him a blasphemer even though He gave massive evidence of being divine; and only the Divine One could forgive sin. So the crowd—“Wow,” “Amazing”—nothing more.

Hostile leaders: “blasphemer; we’ve got to stay after Him”—which they did until they finally caught Him in His words when He said, “I and the Father are one,” and that was the final blasphemy for which they sent Him to His death.

But Jesus wants you to know that all the healings He did were for, verse 10, “So that you may know the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” And we all need to be forgiven. Again, it’s not sin that sends people to hell, it’s unforgiven sin. “If you believe in Me—confess Me as Lord and Savior—you pass from death to life, from hell to heaven.”

The crowd, they were amazed. Luke 5 says, “They were filled with fear”—phobeō, “panic,” really. Matthew says in his account, “They were awestruck, and glorified God, who had given such power to men.” They couldn’t get past that.

Miracles were only to make it clear that Jesus came to forgive sins. That’s the message of Christianity, and that’s man’s greatest need. And aren’t you glad that that’s what Christianity provides?

Father, we thank You for this wonderful account, Scripture. Thank You for Your Word, which is our hope and our joy. And I pray, Lord, that You will this day draw sinners to You and to Your forgiveness. That’s my prayer, in Christ’s name. Amen.