4.16.2013 COST OF DISCIPLESHIP 3

the following hopefully will cover chapters 3-5

CHAPTER 3   SINGLE MINDED OBEDIENCE

when he was challenged by Jesus to accept a life of voluntary poverty,
the rich young man knew he was faced with
the simple alternative of obedience or disobedience.
when levi was called from the receipt of custom
and peter from his nets,
there was no doubt that Jesus meant business.
both of them were to leave everything and follow.
again, when peter was called to walk on the rolling sea,
he had to get up and risk his life.
only one thing was required in each case
-to rely on Christ's word, and to cling to it
as offering greater security than all the securities in the world.
the forces which tried to interpose themselves
between the word of Jesus and the response of obedience
were as formidable then as they are today.
reason and conscience, responsibility and piety all stood in the way,
and even the law and 'scriptural authority' itself
were obstacles which pretended to defend them from
going to extremes of antinomianism
(belief that a christian is free from having to keep the moral law due to grace)
and 'enthusiasms'.
but the call of Jesus made short work of
all these barriers, and created obedience.
that call was the word of God Himself,
and all that it required was single minded obedience.

if, as we read our bibles, we heard Jesus speaking to us
in this way today we should probably try
to argue ourselves out of it like this;
'it is true that the demand of Jesus is definite enough,
but i have to remember that He never
expects us to take His commands legalistically.
what he really wants me to have is faith.
but my faith is not necessarily tied up with riches
or poverty or anything of the kind.
we may be both poor and rich in the spirit.
it is not important that i should have no possessions,
but if i do i must keep them as though i had them not,
in other words i must cultivate a spirit of
inward detachment,
so that my heart is not in my possessions.
Jesus may have said:
'sell thy goods,
but He meant:
'do not let it be a matter of consequence to you that
you have outward prosperity;
rather keep your goods quietly,
having them as if you had them not.
let not your heart be in your goods.'
-we are excusing ourselves from single minded obedience to the word of Jesus
on the pretext of legalism and a supposed preference for an obedience 'in faith'.
the difference between ourselves and the rich young man is
that he was not allowed to solace his regrets by saying:
'never mind what Jesus says,
i can still hold on to my riches,
but in a spirit of inner detachment.
despite my inadequacy i can take comfort in the thought
that God has forgiven me my sins
and can have fellowship with Christ in faith.'
but no, he went away sorrowful.
because he would not obey, he could not believe.
in this the young man was quite honest.
he went away from Jesus and indeed this honesty
had more promise than any apparent communion with Jesus
based on disobedience.
as Jesus realized, the trouble with the young man
was that he was not capable of such an inward
detachment from riches.
as an earnest seeker for perfection
he had probably tried it a thousand times before and failed,
as he showed by refusing to obey the word of Jesus
when the moment of decision came.
ti is just here that the young man was entirely honest.
but we in our sophistry differ altogether
from the hearers of Jesus' word of whom the bible speaks.
if Jesus said to someone:
'leave all else behind and follow Me;
resign your profession,
quit your family,
and the home of your fathers',
then He knew that to this call there was only one answer
-the answer of single minded obedience,
and that it is only to his obedience that
the promise of fellowship with Jesus is given.
but we should probably argue thus:
'of course we are meant to take the call of Jesus with
'absolute seriousness',
but after all the true way of obedience
would be to continue all the more in our present occupations,
to stay with our families,
and to serve Him there in a spirit of true inward detachment. '
if Jesus challenged us with the command:
'get out of it'
we should take Him to mean
'stay where you are but cultivate that inward detachment.
again, if he were to say to us:
'be not anxious'
we should take Him to mean:
'of course it is not wrong for us to be anxious:
we must work and provide for ourselves and our dependents.'
if we did not we should be shirking our responsibilities.
but all the time we ought to be inwardly free from all anxiety.'
perhaps Jesus would say to us:
'whosoever smiteth thee on the right cheek,
turn to him the other also.'
we should then suppose Him to mean:
'the way really to love your enemy is to fight him hard
and hit him back.'
Jesus might say:
'seek ye first the kingdom of God'
and we should interpret it thus:
'of course we should have to seek all sorts of other things first;
how could we otherwise exist?
what He really means is the final preparedness
to stake all on the kingdom of God.'
all along the line we are trying to evade the obligation
of single minded, literal obedience.

how is such absurdity possible?
what has happened that the word of Jesus can be thus degraded
by this trifling,
and thus left open to the mockery of the word?
when orders are issued in other spheres of life
there is no doubt whatever of their meaning.
if a father sends his child to bed,
the boy knows at once what he has to do.
but suppose he has picked up a smattering of pseudo-theology.
in that case he would argue more or less like this:
'father tells me to go to bed,
but he really means that i am tired,
and he does not want me to be tired.
i can overcome my tiredness just as well if i go out and play.
therefore though father tells me to go to bed,
he really means:
'go out and play.'
if a child tried such arguments on his father
or a citizen on his government,
they would both meet with a kind of language
they could not  fail to understand
-in short they would be punished.
are we to treat the commandment of Jesus differently
from other orders
and exchange single minded obedience for downright
disobedience?
how could that be possible!

it is possible because there is an element of truth
underlying all this sophistry.
(a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible,
but generally fallacious method of reasoning.)

when Jesus calls the young man to enter into the situation
where faith is possible,
He does it only with the aim of making the man have faith in Him,
that is to say, He calls him into fellowship with Himself.
in the last resort what matters is not what the man does,
but only his faith in Jesus as the Son of God and Mediator.
...everything depends on faith alone.
so far then we are quite right:
it is possible to have wealth
and the possession of this world's goods
and to believe in Christ
-so that a man may have these goods as
one who has them not.
but this is an ULTIMATE  possibility of the Christian life,
only within our capacity in so far as we await
with earnest expectation
the immediate return of Christ.
it is by no means the first and the simplest possibility.
the paradoxical understanding of the commandments
has its christian justification,
but it must never lead to the abandoning of
the single minded understanding of the commandments....

CHAPTER 4  DISCIPLESHIP AND THE CROSS

..peter's protest displays his own unwillingness to suffer,
and that means that satan has gained entry into the church
and is trying to tear it away from the cross of its Lord.

Jesus must therefore make it clear beyond all doubt that
the 'must' of suffering applies to His disciples no less than
to Himself.
just as Christ is Christ only in virtue of His suffering
and rejection,
so the disciple is a disciple only in so far as
he shares his Lord's suffering and rejection and crucifixion.
discipleship means adherence to the person of Jesus
and therefore submission to the law of Christ
which is the law of the cross.

surprisingly enough, when Jesus begins to unfold this
inescapable truth to His disciples,
he once more sets them free to choose or reject Him.
'if any man would come after Me' He says.
for it is not a matter of course,
not even among the disciples.
nobody can be forced,
nobody can even be expected to come.
He (who) says rather 'IF any man'
is prepared to spurn all other offers
which come His way in order to follow Him.
once again, everything is left for the individual to decide.
when the disciples are half way along the road of discipleship,
they come to another cross roads.
once more they are left free to
chose for themselves,
nothing is expected of them,
nothing forced upon them.
so crucial is the demand of the present hour
that the disciples must be left free to make their own choice
before they are told of the law of discipleship.

...to deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ
and no more of self,
to see only Him who goes before
and no more the road which is too hard for us.
once more, all that self denial can say is:
'He leads the way, keep close to Him.'

..to endure the cross is not a tragedy;
it is the suffering which is the fruit of an
exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.
when it comes, it is not an accident, but a necessity.
it is not the sort of suffering which is inseparable from
this mortal life,
but the suffering which is an essential part of the specifically
christian life.
it is not suffering per se
but suffering and rejection,
and not rejection for any cause or conviction of our own.
but rejection for the sake of Christ.
if our christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship,
if we have watered down the gospel into
emotional uplift which makes no costly demands
and which fails to distinguish between natural and christian existence,
then we cannot help regarding the cross
as an everyday calamity,
as one of the trials and tribulations of life.
we have then forgotten that the cross means
rejection and shame as well as suffering.
the psalmist was lamenting that he was
despised and rejected of men,
and that is an essential quality of the suffering of the cross.
but this notion has ceased to be intelligible to a christianity
which can no longer see any difference between
an ordinary human life
a life committed to Christ.
the cross means sharing the suffering of Christ
to the last and to the fullest.
only a man thus totally committed in discipleship
can experience the meaning of the cross.

...the cross is laid on every christian...
thus it begins;
the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise godfearing
and happy life,
but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ.
WHEN CHRIST CALLS A MAN
HE BIDS HIM COME AND DIE.
it may be a death like that of the first disciples
who had to leave home and work to follow Him,
or it may be a death like luther's,
who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world.
but it is the same death every time
-death in Jesus Christ,
the death of the old man at His call.
Jesus' summons to the rich young man was calling him to die,
because only the man who is dead to his own will
can follow Christ.
in fact every command of Jesus is a call to die,
with all our affections and lusts.
but we do not want to die,
and therefore Jesus Christ and His call
are necessarily our death as well as our life.
the call to discipleship,
the baptism in the name of Jesus Christ
means both death and life.
the call of Christ, his baptism (?)
sets the christian in the middle of the
daily arena against sin and the devil.
every day he encounters new temptations,
and every day he must suffer anew for Jesus Christ's sake.
the wounds and scars he receives in the fray are living tokens of
this participation in the cross of his Lord.
but there is another kind of suffering and shame
which the christian is not spared.
while it is true that only the sufferings of Christ
are a means of atonement,
yet since He has suffered for and borne the sins of the whole world
and shares with His disciples the fruits of His passion,
the Christian also has to undergo temptation,
he too has to bear the sins of others;
he too must bear their shame and be driven like a scapegoat
from the gate of the city.
but he would certainly break down under this burden,
but for the support of Him who bore the sins of all.
the passion of Christ strengthens him to overcome the sins of others
by forgiving them.
he becomes the bearer of other men's burdens
-'bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. gal. 6.2
as Christ bears our burdens,
so ought we to bear the burdens of our fellow men.
the law of Christ, which it is our duty to fulfil,
is the bearing of the cross.
my brother's burden which i must bear is not only his outward lot,
his natural characteristics and gifts,
but quite literally his sin.
and the only way to bear that sin is by forgiving it
in the power of the cross of Christ
in which i now share.
 thus the call to follow Christ always means
a call to share the work of forgiving men their sins.
forgiveness is the Christlike suffering
which it is the christian's duty to bear.

but how is the disciple to know what kind of cross is meant for him?
he will find out as soon as he begins to follow his Lord
and to share His life.

suffering, then, is the badge of true discipleship.
the disciple is not above his master.
following Christ means pasio passiva,
suffering because we have to suffer.
that is why luther reckoned suffering among the marks of
the true church.
and one of the memoranda drawn up
in preparation for the augsburg confession
similarly defines the church as the community of those
'who are persecuted and martyred for the gospel's sake'.
if we refuse to take up our cross and submit to suffering
and rejection at the hands of men,
we forfeit our fellowship with Christ
and have ceased to follow Him.
but if we lose our lives in his service and carry our cross,
we shall find our lives again in the fellowship of the cross with Christ.
the opposite of discipleship is to be ashamed of Christ
and His cross
and all the offence which the cross brings in its train.

discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ,
and it is therefore not at all surprising
that christians should be called upon to suffer.
in fact it is a joy
and a token of His grace.
the acts of the early christian martyrs are full of evidence
which shows how Christ transfigures for His own
the hour of their mortal agony by granting them
the unspeakable assurance of His presence.
in the hour of the cruelest torture
they bear for His sake,
they are made partakers
in the perfect joy and bliss of fellowship with Him.
to bear the cross proves to be the only way of triumphing
over suffering.
this is true for all who follow Christ,
because it was true for Him...

Jesus prays to His Father that the cup may pass from Him,
and His Father hears His prayer;
for the cup of suffering will indeed pass from Him
-but ONLY BY HIS DRINKING IT.
that is the assurance he receives as He kneels for the second time
in the garden of gethsemane that suffering will indeed pass
as He accepts it.
the cross is His triumph over suffering....

suffering has to be endured in order that
it may pass away.
either the world must  ear the whole burden
and collapse beneath it,
or it must fall of Christ to be overcome in Him.
He therefore suffers vicariously for the world.
His is the only suffering which has redemptive efficacy.
but the church knows that the world is still seeking
for someone to bear its sufferings,
and so, as it follows Christ,
suffering becomes the church's lot too and bearing it,
it is born up by Christ.
as it follows Him beneath the cross,
the church stands before God as
the representative of the world....

for God is a God who BEARS.
the Son of God bore our flesh,
He bore the cross,
He bore our sins,
thus making atonement for us.
in the same way His followers are also called upon to bear,
and that is precisely what if means to be a Christian.
just as Christ maintained His communion with the Father
by his endurance,
so His followers are to maintain their communion with Christ
by their endurance.
we can of course shake off the burden which is laid upon us,
but only find that we have a still heavier burden to carry
-a yoke of our own choosing,
THE YOKE OF OUR SELF.
but Jesus  invites all who travail and are heavy laden
to throw off their own  yoke and take His yoke upon them
-and His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.
the yoke and the burden of Christ are His cross.
to go one's way under the sign of the cross
is not misery and desperation,
but peace and refreshment for the soul,
it is the highest joy.
then we do not walk under our self made laws and burdens,
but under the yoke of Him who knows us
and who walks under the yoke with us.
under His yoke we are certain of His nearness and communion.
it is He whom the disciple finds as he lifts up his cross.

'discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend
-it must transcend all comprehension.
plunge into the deep waters beyond your own comprehension,
and I will help you to comprehend even as I do.
BEWILDERMENT IS THE TRUE COMPREHENSION.
NOT TO KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING IS TRUE KNOWLEDGE.
My comprehension transcends yours.
thus abraham went forth from his father
and not knowing whither he wen.
he trusted himself to My knowledge and cared not for his own
and thus he took the right road and came to his journey's end.
behold, that is the way of the cross.
you cannot find it yourself,
so you must let Me lead you as though you were a blind man.
wherefore it is not you, no man, no living creature,
but I Myself, who instruct you by My word and Spirit
in the way you should go.
not the work which you choose,
not the suffering you devise,
but the road which is clean contrary to
all that you choose or connive or desire
-that is the road you must take.
to that I call you and in that you must be My disciple.
if you do that, there is the acceptable time
and there your master is come.'  luther


CHAPTER 5    DISCIPLESHIP AND THE INDIVIDUAL

if any man cometh unto Me
and hateth not his own father and mother and wife and children
and brethren and sisters, yea and his won life also,
he CANNOT be My disciple luke 14.26

through the call of Jesus men become individuals.
willy nilly, they are compelled to decide
and that decision can only be made by themselves.
it is no choice of their own that makes them individuals:
it is Chris who makes them individuals by calling them.
every man is called separately ,
and must follow alone.
but men are frightened of solitude,
and they try to protect themselves from it
by merging themselves in the society of their fellow me
and in their material environment.
they become suddenly aware of their responsibilities and duties,
and are loath to part with them.
but all this is only a cloak to protect them
from having to make a decision.
they are unwilling to stand alone before Jesus
and to be compelled to decide with their eyes fixed on Him alone.
yet neither father nor mother,
neither wife nor child,
neither nationality nor tradition
can protect a man at the moment of his call.
it is Christ's will
that he should be thus isolated
and that he should fix his eyes solely upon Him.

at the very moment of their call,
men find that they have already broken
with all the natural ties of life.
this is not their own doing,
but His who calls them.
for Christ has delivered them from
immediacy with the world,
and brought them into immediacy with Himself.
we cannot follow Christ unless we are prepared
to accept and affirm that breach as a fait accompli.
it is no arbitrary choice on the disciple's part,
but Christ Himself,
who compels Him thus to break with his past.

why is this necessary?
why are we not allowed to grow slowly, gradually, uninterruptedly
in progressive sanctification
out of the natural order into the fellowship of Christ?
what is this power which so angrily comes between a man
and the natural life in which it had pleased God to place him?
surely such a breach with the past is a legalistic technique
and surly contempt for he good gifts of God.
a technique far removed from the
'liberty of the christian man'?
we must face up to the truth that the call of Christ
DOES set up a barrier between man and his natural life.
but this barrier is no surly contempt for life,
no legalistic piety,
it is the life which is life indeed,
the Gospel, the person of Jesus Christ.
by virtue of His incarnation He has come between man and his natural life.
there can be no turning back,
for Christ bars the way.
by calling us He has cut us off from all immediacy
with the things of this world.
He wants to be he centre, through Him alone
all things shall come to pass.
He stands between us and God,
and for that very reason He stands between us and all other men and things.
HE IS THE MEDIATOR,
not only between God and man,
but between man and man, between man and reality.
since the whole world was created through Him and unto Him
john 1.3; I cor. 8.6; heb 1.2'
He is the sole mediator in the world.
since His coming man has no immediate relationship of his own
any more to anything,
neither to God nor to the world:
Christ wants to be the mediator.
of course, there are plenty of gods who offer men direct access,
and the world naturally uses every means in its power to retain
its direct hold on men,
but that is the very reason why it is so bitterly opposed to Christ,
the Mediator.

this breach with the immediacies of the world is identical
with the acknowledgement of Christ
as the Son of God the Mediator.
it is never a deliberate act whereby we renounce all
contact with the world for the sake of some ideal or other,
as though for instance
we were exchanging a lower ideal for a higher one.
that would be enthusiasm and willfulness
and again an attempt at direct relationship with the world.
only the recognition of the fait accompli of Christ as the Mediator
can separate the disciple from the world of men and hings.
it is he call of Jesus, regarded not as an ideal,
but as the word of a Mediator,
which effects in us this complete breach with the world....

the call of Jesus teaches us that our relation to the wold has been
built on an illusion.
all the time we thought we had
enjoyed a direct relation with men and things.
this is what had hindered us from faith and obedience.
now we learn that in the most intimate relationships of life,
in our kinship with father and mother, brothers and sisters,
in married love and in our duty to the community,
direct relationships are impossible.
since the coming of Christ,
His followers have no more immediate realities of their own,
not in their family relationships nor in the ties with their nation
nor in the relationships formed in the process of living.
between father and son, husband and wife.
the individual and the nation,
stands Christ the Mediator,
whether they are able to recognize Him or not.
we cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves
except through Him,
through His word and through our following of Him.
to think otherwise is o deceive ourselves.

but since we are bound to abhor
any deception which hides the truth from our sight,
we must of necessity repudiate any direct relationship with
the things of this world -and that for the sake of Christ.
WHEREVER A GROUP, BE IT LARGE OR SMALL,
PREVENTS US FROM STANDING ALONE BEFORE CHRIST,
wherever such a group raises a claim of immediacy
IT MUST BE HATED FOR THE SAKE OF CHRIST.
for every immediacy, whether we realize it or not,
means hatred of Christ,
and this is especially true where such relationships
claim the sanction of christian principles....

for the christian the only God given realities
are those he receives from Christ.
what is not given us through the incarnate Son
is not given us by God.
what has not been given me for Christ's sake,
does not come from God.
when we offer thanks for the gifts of creation
we must do it through Jesus Christ,
and when we pray for the preservation of this life by the grace of God,
we must make our prayer for Christ's sake.
anything i cannot thank God for the sake of Christ,
i may not thank god for at all';
to do so would be sin.
the path, too, to the 'God given reality' of my
fellow man or woman with whom i have o live
leads through Christ,
or it is a blind alley.
we are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of
otherness and strangeness
which resists all our attempts to overcome it
by means of natural association
or emotional or spiritual union.
there is no way from one person to another.
however loving and sympathetic we try to be,
however sound our psychology,
however frank and open our behaviour,
we cannot penetrate the incognito of he other man,
for there are no direct relationships,
not even between soul and soul.
Christ stands between us,
and we can only get into touch with our neighbours through Him.
that is why intercession is the most promising way to reach our neighbours,
and corporate prayer, offered in the name of Chris,
the purest form of fellowship.

we cannot rightly acknowledge the gifts of God unless we
acknowledge the Mediator for whose sake alone they are given to us.
there can be no genuine thanksgiving for the blessings of
nation, family, history and nature without
that heart felt penitence which gives the glory
to Christ alone above all else.
there can be no real attachment to the given creation,
no genuine responsibility in the world, unless we recognize the breach
which already separates us from it.
there can be no genuine love of the world
except he love wherewith God loved it in Jesus Christ....

this breach with all our immediate relationships is inescapable.
it may take the form of an external breach with family or nation
in that case we shall be called upon to bear visibly
the reproach of Christ,
the odium generis humani.
or it may be a hidden and a secret breach.
but even then we must always be ready to come out into the open.
in the last resort it makes no difference whether the breach be secret or open.
abraham is an example of both.
he had to leave his friends and his father's house because
Christ came between him and his own.
on this occasion the breach was evident.
abraham became a stranger and a sojourner
in order to gain the promised land.
this was his first call.
later on he was called by God to offer his own son isaac as a sacrifice.
Christ had come between the father of faith and the child of promise.
this time the direct relationship not only of flesh and blood,
but also of the spirit, must be broken.
abraham must learn that the promise does not depend on isaac, but on god alone.
no one else hears his call of god,
not even the servants who accompanied abraham to mount moriah.
once again, as when he left his father's house,
abraham becomes an individual,
a lonely and solitary figure.
he accepts the call as it comes;
he will not shirk it or 'spiritualize' it.
he takes God at His word and is ready to obey.
against every direct claim upon him,
whether natural, ethical or religious,
he will be obedient o the word of God.
by his willingness to sacrifice isaac,
he shows that he is prepared to come out into the open
with the breach which he had already made secretly,
and to do so for the sake of he Mediator.
and at that very moment all that he had surrendered was given back to him.
he receives back his son.
God shows him as better sacrifice which will take the place of isaac.
the tables are completely urned,
abraham received isaac back,
but henceforth he will have his son in quite a new way
-through the mediator and for the Mediator's sake.
since he had shown himself ready to obey God literally,
he is now allowed to possess isaac though he had him no
-to possess him through Jesus Christ.
no one else knows what has happened.
abraham comes down from the mountain with isaac
just as he went up,
but the whole situation has changed.
Christ has stepped between father and son.
abraham had left all and followed Christ,
and as he follows Him he is allowed to
go back and live in the world as he had done before.
outwardly the picture is unchanged,
but the old is passed away,
and behold all things are new.
everything has had o pass through Christ.

this is the second way of becoming an individual
-to be a follower of Christ in the midst of society among our own kith and kin
and in the enjoyment of all our worldly wealth.
but note that is is abraham who is called to this manner of life.
abraham who had already known what it was to make a visible
breach with the past.
abraham who in the new testament became the example of faith.
we are easily tempted to generalize the possibility that was granted to abraham,
to understand it as a spiritual principle and without hesitation
to apply it to ourselves.
we would like to think that we had the same call o a christian life,
as a specially called follower of Christ
who yet retained the enjoyment of his worldly possessions.
yet the outward breach is most certainly easier than the hidden one.
unless we have learn this from the bible and from our experience,
we are indeed deceiving ourselves.
we shall fall back on our direct relationships
and forfeit our fellowship with Christ.
it is not for us to choose which way we shall follow.
that depends on the will of Christ.
but this at least is certain:
in one way or the other we shall have to leave the immediacy of the world
and become individuals,
whether secretly or openly.

but the same Mediator who makes us individuals is
also the founded of a new fellowship.
He stands in the centre between my neighbour and myself.
He divides, but He also unites.
thus although the direct way to our neighbour is barred,
we now find the new and only real way to him
-the way which passes through the Mediator.

peter began to say unto Him,
lo, we have left all and have followed The.
Jesus said, verily I say unto you,
there is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters
or mother or father or children or lands, for My sake
and for the gospel's sake,
but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time,
houses and brethren and sisters and mothers and children and lands
with persecutions;
and in the world o come, eternal life.
but many that are first shall be last and the last first. mark 10.28-31

Jesus is here speaking to men who have become individuals for His sake,
who have left all at His call, and can say of themselves:
'lo, we have left all and have followed Thee.
they receive the promise of a new fellowship.
according to the word of Jesus,
they will receive in this time a hundredfold of what they have left.
Jesus is referring to His church,
which finds itself in Him.
he who leaves his father for Jesus' sake
does most assuredly find father and mother, brothers and sisters again
and even lands and houses.
though we all have to enter upon discipleship alone,
we do not remain alone.
if we take Him at His word
and dare to become individuals,
our reward is the fellowship of the church.
here is a visible brotherhood to compensate
a hundredfold  for all we have lost.
a hundredfold?
yes, for we now have everything through the Mediator,
but with this proviso
-'with persecutions'.
a hundredfold with persecutions
-such is the grace which is granted o the church
which follows its Lord beneath the cross.
such also is the promise which is held out to Christ's followers
-they will be members of the community of the cross,
the People of he Mediator,
the People under the cross.

and they were in the way, going up to jerusalem;
and Jesus was going before them:
and they were amazed;
and they that followed were afraid.
and He took again the twelve
and began o tell them the things that were to happen unto Him. mark 10.32

as if to bring home to them how serious was His call,
to show them how impossible it was to follow in their own strength,
and to emphasize that adherence to him means persecutions,
Jesus goes on before to jerusalem and to the cross,
and they are filled with fear and amazement at the road He calls them to follow.