Self-denial is the chief demand of the Gospel; it means the same thing as that repentance which must precede entrance into the kingdom of God.  The will thereby breaks away from the chain of its own acts, and makes an absolutely new beginning not conditioned by the past.  The causal nexus which admits of being traced comes here to an end, and the mutual action, which cannot be analysed, between God and the soul begins.  Miracle does not require to be understood, only to be believed, in order to take place.  With men it is impossible, but with God it is possible.  Jesus not only affirmed this, but proved it in His own person.  The impression of His personality convinced the disciples of the fact of the forgiveness of their sins and of their second birth, and gave them courage to believe in a new divine life and to live it.  He had in fact lost His life and saved it; He could do as he would.  He had escaped the limits of the race and the pains of self-seeking nature; He had found freedom and personality in God, who alone is master of Himself, and lifts those up to Himself who seek after Him.

Jesus works in the world and for the world, but with His faith He stands above the world and outside it.  He can sacrifice Himself for the world because He asks nothing from the world, but has attained in retirement with God to equanimity and peace of soul.  And further, the entirely supra-mundane position, at which Jesus finds courage and love to take an interest in the world, does not lead Him to anything strained or unnatural.  He trusts God’s Providence, and resigns Himself to His will, He takes up the attitude of a child towards Him, and loves best to call Him the Heavenly Father.  The expression is simple, but the thing signified is new.  He first knows Himself, not in emotion but in sober quietness, to be God’s child; before Him no one ever felt himself to be so, or called himself so.  He is the first-born of the Father, yet, according to His own view, a first-born among many brethren.  For He stands in this relation to God not because His nature is unique, but because He is man; He uses always and emphatically this general name of the race to designate His own person.  In finding the way to God for Himself He has opened it to all; along with the nature of God He has at the same time discovered in Himself the nature of man.

Eternity extends into the present with Him, even on earth He lives in the midst of the kingdom of God; even the judgment He sees inwardly accomplished here below in the soul of man.  Yet He is far from holding the opinion that he who loves God aright does not desire that God should love him in return.  He teaches men to bear the cross, but he does not teach that the cross is sweet and that sickness is sound.  A coming reconciliation between believing and seeing, between morality and nature, everywhere forms the background of His view of the world; even if He could have done without it for His own person, yet it is a thing He takes for granted, as it is an objective demand of righteousness.  So much is certain; for the rest the eschatology of the New Testament is so thoroughly saturated with the Jewish ideas of the disciples, that it is difficult to know what of it is genuine.