Jesus Christ is Isaiah’s prophesied Suffering Servant who took upon himself the iniquities, transgressions and sins of his people as their substitute, so that they might be reconciled to God in right relationship as new creation.[i] Or, in Paul’s words, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (5:21).[ii] Herein is how God reconciles exiled sinners to himself, propitiates wrath and replaces divine judgment with eschatological peace. In short, herein is how there can be new creation.

In this article we will reflect on 2 Corinthians 5:21 with an eye on the new creation declared by Paul a few verses earlier in 5:17 and God’s work of reconciliation that comes in between (5:18-20).

The Passive Obedience of Christ: Made to be Sin (2 Cor. 5:21a)

In order for the Isaianic restoration promise to be fulfilled (or reconciliation as new creation to take place), Israel’s iniquities, transgressions and sins had to be removed. So the first thing that Christ’s atoning death achieves is stated by Paul in these terms: “For our sake [ὑπὲρ[iii]] he made him to be sin who knew no sin” (5:21a). The substitutionary death of Christ is “the foundation on which or the way in which … reconciliation takes place.”[iv]

What does it mean that Christ was made to be sin? It is clear that this does not refer to an ethical change in Christ so that he became sinful. For if this were the case the efficacy of his death to constitute sinners righteous would be compromised. In addition, it would contradict Paul’s statement that he knew no sin, as well as all biblical teaching on the atonement (e.g., Heb. 4:15).

It seems better to understand it then as a reference to a change in Christ’s legal status before God, making him liable for the guilt accrued not by himself, but others, namely, his elect people.[v] Vos notes, “The use of the word ‘sin’ … generalizes and universalizes the legal identification between Christ and sin.”[vi] For Christ to be made sin is to make him personally responsible for its punishment.[vii] This would imply a legal imputation of the guilt of sin to Christ. This is further demanded by the consequent clause, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (5:21b). “If Christ was made sin that we might become righteousness,” remarks Vos, “then obviously He was made sin in the sense of unrighteousness, by imputation. And if the effect of this imputation was death, then obviously there was a legal penalty. The death was but the execution in act of the ideal imputation.”[viii]

This legal status change was not owing to his own sin for he knew no sin. Rather, like the Isaianic Suffering Servant who “surely … has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,” Jesus had the sin of his people imputed to him, so that while sinless he could be legally charged with the punishment for sin. Paul has in mind then a penal, vicarious, substitutionary death wherein Christ suffered for the sin of his people legally imputed to him. Calvin comments, “[H]e assumed in a manner our place, that he might be a criminal in our room, and might be dealt with as a sinner, not for his own offences, but for those of others, inasmuch as he was pure and exempt from every fault, and might endure the punishment that was due to us—not to himself.”[ix]

More specifically, if the above Isaianic background is sustained, Paul probably has in mind the vicarious, sin-bearing of the Suffering Servant (Isa. 52:13-53:12).[x] For Christ to be made sin then is for him to be constituted a guilt offering, incurring the legal ramifications of sin as a substitute for his people (cf. 1 Cor. 5:7; 11:25; Eph. 5:2). This notion of Christ being a guilt or sin offering is outright rejected by some, though the legal status change taking place here is still upheld.[xi] Nevertheless, the propitiatory nature of it must be maintained and is here expounded by Paul as a substitutionary, atoning sacrifice (cf. Rom. 8:3; Gal. 3:13). The reconciling transaction is given an explicit vicarious character.[xii]

Ridderbos rightly notes that any effort to detract from the substitutionary and vicarious nature of Christ’s death “readily does wrong to the most fundamental segments of Paul’s gospel.”[xiii] To put it tersely, Christ by being made sin by imputation took full responsibility for it, was identified with it, charged with it and paid its penalty.[xiv] “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin.”

The Active Obedience of Christ: Made to be the Righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21b)

While the removal of the iniquity, transgression and sin of God’s people in reconciliation is achieved by the imputation of the believer’s sin to Christ who then legally bore it on the cross as his or her substitute, there is also the need for a positive reuniting and renewing of sinful people with God. Both of these together amount to a new creation.[xv] Thus, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (5:21). This carries with it a soteriological and eschatological thrust.

For us to become the righteousness of God is for us to be constituted a new creation, reconciled to God into an eschatological state in Christ. Those who once were objects of God’s wrath, rightfully banished from his presence and closed off from re-entering, according to the holiness of God which cannot condone sin,[xvi] have in Christ by means of his death and resurrection been legally and objectively constituted the righteousness of God. There is therefore a positive status imputed to the believer through Christ’s resurrection, namely, the righteousness obtained by Christ in his active obedience, for we are the righteousness of God in him.

In summary, for the work of Christ in his death and resurrection to have an eschatological impact on those who are in Christ, two things must occur. First, the believers’ sin must be imputed to Christ rendering him legally liable to receive the punishment on their behalf, as their substitute, in their place, which is his passive obedience. Second, his active obedience must be imputed to believers so that they might be constituted the righteousness of God.[xvii]

Reconciliation as Objective and Legal

The legal rendering of Christ as sin and the believer in Christ as the righteousness of God carries with it an objective status as a redemptive-historical accomplishment, similar to justification. In the words of Barnett, “[It] points to forgiveness, the reversal of condemnation. Here, then, is the objective, forensic ‘justification’ of God to those who are covenantally dedicated to God ‘in Christ,’ whom God ‘made sin.’”[xviii] Likewise, Ridderbos writes,

[Reconciliation] appears in more than one place as the parallel and equivalent of justification. … Whereas ‘to justify’ is a religious-forensic concept that is highly typical of the basic eschatological structure of Paul’s preaching, ‘reconciliation’ … has a more general, less qualified meaning in theological parlance. It originates from the social-societal sphere (cf. 1 Cor. 7:11), and speaks in general of the restoration of the right relationship between two parties.[xix]

Interestingly Vos states, “The objective reconciliation took place in the death of Christ; its subjective result is justification.”[xx]

Reconciliation consists not only in the removal of man’s guilt (or “objective legal obstacles”[xxi]) before God and of his sin not being imputed to him, but “it consists above all in the effecting eschatological peace as the fruit of justification (Rom. 5:1), and thus prepares the way to receiving a share in the new creation, the new things, peace as the all-embracing condition of salvation.”[xxii] In short, reconciliation is both the foundation and summation of the whole Christian life. In reconciliation, God does not merely restore a broken relationship, but also in this restoration propels them into the eschatological new creation.

[i] The transition into right relationship is to enter the new creation. In the words of Beale, “To be propelled into the eschatological new creation is to enter into peaceful relations with the Creator. … [R]econciliation is a facet of the larger diamond of the new creation. Nevertheless, the point is that they are of a piece with one another and are organically linked” (Beale, New Testament Biblical Theology, 537).

[ii] The difficulty in relating 5:21 with the preceding is that it is asyndetic, so that “it stands as an impressively absolute statement” (Barnett, Corinthians, 312). Nevertheless, Paul has already spoken of the death and resurrection of Christ in 5:15, which with 5:21 seems to form a possible inclusio. Barnett rightly considers this passage as effectively the foundation of 5:16-21 (p. 315). Vos writes that this verse “constitutes the essence of the reconciliation” (“The Pauline Conception of Reconciliation,” 364).

[iii] Vos argues that ὑπὲρ (“for the sake/benefit of”) here, as well as in 5:14, has the full force of ἀντὶ (“in the place of”; cf. Matt. 20:28; Mk. 10:45). “What Christ did as priest,” writes Vos, “He did as the substitutionary Surety of believers, and, precisely for that reason, did before God and not toward man” (Reformed Dogmatics, Volume Three: Christology, 100).

[iv] Ridderbos, Paul, 186.

[v] Vos, “The Pauline Conception of Reconciliation,” 364.

[vi] Vos, “The Pauline Conception of Reconciliation,” 364; emphasis mine.

[vii] Vos captures it well, “To make someone to be sin … does not mean to actually change him into a sinful being or to transmit the blemishes of sin to him but simply to make him personally responsible for the penal consequences of sin. The same thing is meant by the term ‘imputation.’ It occurs with respect to both the penal guilt that the sinner himself has accrued and the guilt transferred to him from someone else” (Reformed Dogmatics, 3:112).

[viii] Vos, “The Pauline Conception of Reconciliation,” 365; see also idem., Reformed Dogmatics, 3:106-7; Donald Macleod, Christ Crucified: Understanding the Atonement, 155: “The idea of imputation underlies the whole passage.”

[ix] Calvin, Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 242.

[x] Cf. Barnett, Corinthians, 313; George H. Guthrie, 2 Corinthians, 313-15; Calvin, Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 242: “It is the guilt, on account of which we are arraigned at the bar of God. As, however the curse of the individual was of old cast upon the victim, so Christ’s condemnation was our absolution, and with his stripes we are healed (Isaiah liii. 5).”

[xi] The following reject the notion of Christ being a guilt offering: Robert Letham, The Work of Christ, 134; John R. De Witt, “The Nature of the Atonement: Reconciliation,” in Atonement, ed. Gabriel N. E. Fluhrer (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2010), 26. De Witt will however go on to say, “The Father legally made him liable for the punishment of sin. He consigned his own Son to darkness and separation from his presence. It was as though he, the spotless Lamb of God, were responsible for the sin of the world. … [T]he Father stripped the Son of his own holiness and perfection and made him wear the rags of our unholiness and imperfection. He stood in the place of the condemned and the guilty” (pp. 26-27). This seems to compute with an understanding of Jesus as the sin-bearing Suffering Servant of Isaiah, which is closely related, if not paralleled, with the guilt offering, though of course Christ is not a passive animal with no say in the matter, but a willing Son who lays down his own life for the sake of his people.

[xii] Vos, “The Pauline Conception of Reconciliation,” 364.

[xiii] Ridderbos, Paul, 190.

[xiv] Macleod, Christ Crucified, 155.

[xv] Beale, NTBT, 535.

[xvi] Cf. Macleod, Christ Crucified, 151-53. Calvin writes, “For so long as God imputes to us our sins, He must of necessity regard us with abhorrence; for he cannot be friendly or propitious to sinners” (Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 237). God’s act of reconciliation, then, includes the non-imputing of our sins to us and the imputing of them to Christ who bears the legal punishment for them in his suffering and death as our substitutionary sacrifice. All of this effects a right relationship of peace where there once was judgment and condemnation (Eph. 2:14-17; Col. 1:20).

[xvii] “Treating the sinless Christ as a sinner was the means by which treating sinners as sinless was made possible” (Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:106).

[xviii] Barnett, Corinthians, 315.

[xix] Ridderbos, Paul, 182.

[xx] Vos, “The Pauline Conception of Reconciliation,” 363.

[xxi] Vos, “The Pauline Conception of Reconciliation,” 364.

[xxii] Ridderbos, Paul, 185; Similarly Vos: “God reconciled the world … by a non-imputing of sin, by removing the legal demands that He had against the world, and doing this in Christ” (Reformed Dogmatics, 3:96).

Following the apex of Israel’s glory with the construction of the Solomonic temple, the biblical drama enters a period of sustained decline with the occasional righteous Davidic king temporarily suspending its ultimate demise. The inhabitants of Jerusalem repeatedly fail to meet the standards of holiness appropriate to dwell with their gracious God who had redeemed them from Egypt for holy and joyful service in his presence.[1] The Lord is patient with them, but in the end they were unable to reverse course and so incurred the judgment of God as discipline with the gracious intention of restoring them: the temple is destroyed and Jerusalem is overthrown. Israel is traumatically sent into exile (Ps. 137).

The prophets take center stage in the lead up to the exile in both Israel in the north and Judah in the south. At the heart of their message is the hope of a future restoration and an impending eschatological temple that will far exceed even the glory of the Solomonic temple. Israel is to cling to this message as she is purged as through fire in exile (Isa. 48:10).

Isaiah: The Fullness of Joy in the New Creation

We have already noted the common theme of the various sanctuaries of God being located on a mountain. In continuation with this, Isaiah foresees the mountain of the Lord, Zion, being established as the highest mountain, which is to say that “God himself will be exalted in majesty as he exercises supreme authority over the whole earth. This expectation brings to fulfillment God’s creation blueprint, for it anticipates the Lord dwelling in a temple-city that will fill the whole earth.”[2]

This is found, for example, in Isaiah 65:17-25. Significant about this passage is that the creation of the new heaven and new earth parallels the creation of Jerusalem (cf. Isa. 24:23). “Jerusalem is deliberately equated here with the new heavens and the new earth”(cf. Rev. 21:1-2).[3] Thus, Isaiah is expectant of a divinely transformed Jerusalem that encompasses the whole earth, but without the previous shortcomings and fractures in holiness. In this renewed city, the refulgence of the presence of God will be so blinding that there will be no need for sun or moon (Isa. 60:15-20) and we, the reconciled and re-created people of God, will experience the glory of the fullness of joy in everlasting fellowship with our triune God.

Ezekiel: The Eschatological Presence of God

Ezekiel likewise contributes much to the theme of God’s joyfully-charged presence on earth with his people. In one of the most remarkable visions of the Old Testament, Ezekiel sees the ineffable chariot-throne of God riding toward Babylon (see 1 Chron. 28:18). The same glory that led Israel in the wilderness, descended on Mount Sinai, and filled the tabernacle and temple is now speeding before Israel to Babylon. Thus, the presence of God (remember the connection between God’s glory and presence) is not limited to a certain locale as was the case with the tabernacle and the temple, nor is it limited nationally to Israel; instead, it is wherever God’s people are. The remarkable thing is that the Lord is going into exile with his people—he has not abandoned them.

Ezekiel prophesies that Jerusalem and the temple will be destroyed and the glory (and so presence) of the Lord will depart from the city in judgment. Yet, Ezekiel shines a bright light of hope as chapters 40-48 record another vision that focuses on God’s return to a restored land and a new, idealized eschatological temple set within a renewed city.[4] The presence of God will return, it has not been permanently lost in the exile and the great hope is that the return of his presence will far exceed anything Israel has experienced in her history so far. Though Jerusalem is to be destroyed, it will be rebuilt and renamed, “The LORD is there” (Ezek. 48:35).

The Return from Exile

Israel eventually returns to the land according to the decree of Cyrus and begins rebuilding the temple. However, this temple does not fully meet the expectations of the prophetic vision of a temple greater than Solomon’s; in fact, it pales in comparison, even bringing some to tears at its completion (Ezra 3:12). In this context Zechariah encourages the people that God will return to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem (Zech. 8). “While the completed structure was unable to match the splendour of the temple constructed by Solomon, its erection was a powerful signal that God was still concerned to fulfill his creation blueprint.”[5]

The message of the Old Testament ends on a note of hope as the prophets speak of a coming eschatological temple, but the mystery remains regarding how the major obstacles that have proven disastrous in the past (especially Israel’s inability to be a holy nation) will be overcome. So in a cloud of mystery awaiting revelation, the prophets anticipate something greater than the temple to enter into their midst.

[1] The concept of appropriateness of expression is taken from Geerhardus Vos, who writes, “The law was given after the redemption from Egypt had been accomplished, and the people had already entered upon the enjoyment of many of the blessings of the berith [covenant]. Particularly their taking possession of the promised land could not have been made dependent on previous observance of the law, for during their journey in the wilderness many of its prescripts could not be observed. It is plain, then, that law-keeping did not figure at that juncture as the meritorious ground of life-inheritance. The latter is based on grace alone… But, while this is so, it might still be objected, that law-observance, if not the ground for receiving, is yet made the ground for retention of the privileges inherited. Here it can not, of course, be defined that a real connection exists. But the Judaizers went wrong in inferring that the connection must be meritorious, that, if Israel keeps the cherished gifts of Jehovah through observance of His law, this must be so, because in strict justice they had earned them. The connection is of a totally different kind. It belongs not to the legal sphere of merit, but to the symbolico-typical sphere of appropriateness of expression” (Biblical Theology, 127).

[2] Alexander, From Eden to the New Jerusalem, 52.

[3] Ibid., 54.

[4] See Taylor, “Temple in Ezekiel,” 67-69.

[5] Alexander, From Eden to the New Jerusalem, 58.

Joshua 3-4 takes us on a journey with Israel as she undergoes that monumental transition from the wilderness into the promised land of Canaan by crossing the Jordan River. For three days Israel lingered by the waters of the Jordan that flowed like a violent, deadly torrent. But the Lord would not bring Israel around, nor have them wait for the waters to calm down; instead, he brings them straight through. As my Old Testament professor, Rev. Mark Vander Hart, would say, “That’s so typical Yahweh.”

The transition from promise to fulfillment for sinners is always one that must go through judgment. Israel underwent a symbolic death as she passed through the Jordan. Yet she was not destroyed (like Pharaoh in the Red Sea), but brought safely through on dry ground. As she emerges from the Jordan’s banks on the other side, she emerges a new creation, a cleansed nation—one that has gone from death (wilderness) to life (promised land).

However, this land was not ultimate and Joshua did not lead Israel into her ultimate rest (see Heb. 4:8). Instead, this event points us forward (as a sort of rehearsal or foretaste) to a greater Joshua who will safely lead his people through a greater judgment into a greater fulfillment of God’s promise: Jesus Christ. Through his death and resurrection, the violent waters of death have been parted so that we might go safely through under his leadership and emerge a new creation. He not only shows us the way into eternal life, but is himself the way to the Father (Jn. 14:6).

This is taught to us in the sacrament of baptism. By faith, baptism signifies and seals our union with Christ in his death and resurrection (WLC Q/A 165). In Christ we died, and in Christ we are raised to new life (Rom. 6:1-11). Christ is even spoken of in article 34 of the Belgic Confession as “our Red Sea, through which we must pass to escape the tyranny of Pharaoh, that is, the devil, and to enter into the spiritual land of Canaan.” On account of our being “in Christ” we are already today present inhabitants of that heavenly country; that decisive transition from death to life, from promise to fulfillment, has already been realized in part for us. For this reason, Paul can say, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).

As present residents of that heavenly country, we can draw strength in times of temptation by reminding ourselves that we’ve already crossed the “river” into the new creation. We’re no longer enslaved to the passions of our flesh, the death-grip of the devil or the ephemeral pleasures of this world, but can freely pursue righteousness and holiness as is fitting of those whom God has brought graciously to dwell with himself forever. Righteous acts do not bid us safe passage over the river—faith alone in Christ does that—but they are the proper response of those who have entered upon that holy land by grace alone. By setting our minds upon this land, our true and lasting home, we can joyfully reject the comforts of this world that threaten to lull us from finishing our pilgrimage and willingly embrace the reproach of Christ, for it is “greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt” (Heb. 11:26).

Furthermore, physical death itself is transformed by Christ into our “entrance into eternal life” (Heidelberg Catechism Q/A 42) and we have no reason to fear the day of his return to judge the living and the dead, for our Judge is “the very same person who before has submitted himself to the judgment of God for my sake” and who will “take me and all his chosen ones to himself into heavenly joy and glory” (Heidelberg Catechism Q/A 52). Just as Israel was brought safely into her inheritance through the Jordan, so too will Jesus lead us safely home to our inheritance: the new heavens and new earth (Rev. 21-22).

It has been rightly observed by many that there is an eschatology—a goal of higher, escalated life that the creation is to move toward—already in Genesis 1–2. While everything was “very good,” it had not yet been brought to its perfection in consummate glory as it will one day be in the new creation. Geerhardus Vos taps into this vein of thinking in reflection on the apostle Paul’s understanding of the Genesis account:

The tree of life and the other tree and the primeval paradise and the fall and death and the expulsion from the garden on account of the sin committed, all these are present in the scriptural narrative, and a single glance at Rom. v is sufficient to convince of the fact, that in the most fundamental manner they support (qua history) the entire eschatology of Paul. . . . The only reasonable interpretation of the Genesis-account (e mente Pauli) is this, that provision was made and probation was instituted for a still higher state, both ethico-religiously and physically complexioned, than was at that time in the possession of man. In other words the eschatological complex and prospect were there in the purpose of God from the beginning.[1]

The eschatological goal embedded in the creation from the beginning included at least three components: a people in a place under a potentate. In Genesis 1–2 you have Adam with the task to multiply (a people) in the limited locale of the Garden that was to be expanded (a place) under God’s rule (a potentate). While that was very good, the eschatological picture of the perfected creation is found in Revelation 21–22. There you have the bride of Christ ransomed from every nation (a people) in the cosmic expanse of the new heaven and new earth (a place) under God’s uncontested rule (a potentate). This final picture was God’s intended goal from the beginning.

The Old Testament from the beginning has an eschatology and puts the eschatological promise on the broadest racial basis (Genesis 3). It does not first ascend from Israel to the new humanity, but at the very outset takes its point of departure in the race and from this descends to the election of Israel, always keeping the Universalistic goal in clear view.[2]

With that in mind, it’s interesting to reflect on how the Lord achieves that goal through his work in redemptive-history, especially as he aims for this universal consummation through a particular people (Abraham), place (Canaan) and potentate (David).

The eschatological goal for the land (or place) is universal—the whole earth is to be a fit dwelling place for God. However, as we come to the patriarchal epoch beginning with Abraham we will begin to see God aiming for the universal through the particular. The universal land-promise is going to be particularized in Canaan without losing its ultimate trajectory toward the universal. The arrow that God fires at his universal target must first pierce the particular.

The same is true of his other promises of a people and a potentate. The people of God are going to be particularized in Abraham and his descendants even though the Lord is desirous of blessing all the nations (Gen. 22:17–18). And even later we will see God’s universal reign particularized in David’s throne over a limited locale on earth even though the Lord’s ultimate intention is to bring the entire cosmos under the dominion of the king he will appoint (Ps. 2).[3]

We recognize then that God’s plan of redemption has a universal direction and goal. In the Old Testament the particular and universal are not mutually exclusive or contradictory. The movement of God’s purpose always starts with the particular on its way to the universal.

The question then is how does the particular promise reach its universal goal? How is the particular universalized? Answer: the Christ! Take note of this insight from Richard Bauckham,

God’s purposes could not in fact move directly from those he singled out in Old Testament times to the universal goal of his purposes. They had to be focused definitively in one more particular act of singling out an individual: Jesus the Jew from Nazareth. Jesus, in a sense, repeats the particularity of each of the three chosen ones we have studied [Abraham, Israel and David]. He is the descendant of Abraham through whom all the families of the earth will be blessed. He assumes for himself his nation Israel’s own destiny to be a light to all the nations (Luke 2:31–32). He is the new, the ideal, David, the only one truly able to be the human embodiment of God’s rule over all. But when we see Jesus’ particularity in these ways, in the categories established by the Old Testament, then we at once see also his universality… The whole of New Testament thought is unified around the universal relevance of precisely the particular human being Jesus.[4]

God aims for the universal through the particular. The particular was never meant to be an end in itself, but through it God will realize his universal, eschatological purposes. God calls out a single man, Abraham, in order to bless all the nations; he sends him to a single strip of land, Canaan, in order to possess the whole earth (Rom. 4:13)!

[1] Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1994), 304.

[2] Geerhardus Vos, “Heavens, New (And Earth, New),” in The Collected Dictionary Articles of Geerhardus Vos (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2013).

[3] For a very helpful discussion of this idea of God aiming for the universal through the particular see Richard Bauckham, “From the One to the Many,” in Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 27–54.

[4] Bauckham, Bible and Mission, 48.

On episode 12, your hosts Rob McKenzie and Bob Tarullo, discuss the importance of the historic creation account and the fall of mankind in a historical Adam.

Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace.

Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage you check out her sight and buy some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace.

Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage you check out her sight and buy some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo