You are my refuge and defense; guide me and lead me as you have promised.

Help us, O God, and save us; rescue us and forgive our sins for the sake of your own honor.

But my Sovereign LORD, help me as you have promised, and rescue me because of the goodness of your love.

Rescue me, LORD, as you have promised; in your goodness save me from my troubles!

And yet, I am the God who forgives your sins, and I do this because of who I am. I will not hold your sins against you.

"In order that people will praise my name, I am holding my anger in check; I am keeping it back and will not destroy you.

But I did not, since that would have brought dishonor to my name, for in the presence of the people among whom they were living I had announced to Israel that I was going to lead them out of Egypt.

"Now then, give the Israelites the message that I, the Sovereign LORD, have for them: What I am going to do is not for the sake of you Israelites, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have disgraced in every country where you have gone.

I write to you, my children, because your sins are forgiven for the sake of Christ.

So now, LORD, I pray, show us your power and do what you promised when you said,

And now, LORD, according to the greatness of your unchanging love, forgive, I pray, the sin of these people, just as you have forgiven them ever since they left Egypt."

But the two are not the same, because God's free gift is not like Adam's sin. It is true that many people died because of the sin of that one man. But God's grace is much greater, and so is his free gift to so many people through the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ.

Law was introduced in order to increase wrongdoing; but where sin increased, God's grace increased much more.

So then, just as sin ruled by means of death, so also God's grace rules by means of righteousness, leading us to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.