1 Introductory Thoughts

Jesus spoke about two ways: the nar­row way which leads to God and which few trav­el on, and the broad way which leads to destruc­tion.¹ He was well aware that most peo­ple would not be will­ing to fol­low him and to give God the pri­or­i­ty in their lives which he deserves. Sad­ly, there are many reli­gious and seem­ing­ly Chris­t­ian alter­na­tive ways on offer today, which can become quite con­fus­ing, even for peo­ple who are hon­est­ly seek­ing God. This is one rea­son we con­sid­ered it impor­tant to write this arti­cle. We want to help peo­ple gain clar­i­ty about Jesus’ call to dis­ci­ple­ship on the basis of the Bible, though we will have to lim­it our­selves to the essen­tials. If you are a believ­er, this text ought to be an invi­ta­tion to exam­ine your own life accord­ing to the Bible pas­sages and thoughts. We hope it will also help peo­ple who do not yet believe to find the way to God as it is described in the Bible.

We want to invite every per­son to get to know us and to fol­low Jesus togeth­er with us, shar­ing all the joy and the chal­lenges which arise in con­nec­tion with going this way.

2 The Situation Today

At present around one third of the world’s pop­u­la­tion offi­cial­ly con­sid­ers itself “Chris­t­ian”. Many of these peo­ple, though, do not know what it real­ly means to be a Chris­t­ian. This fact often caus­es non-Chris­tians to dis­re­gard Chris­tian­i­ty because they usu­al­ly hard­ly see any dif­fer­ence, if at all, between their own lives and the lives of “tra­di­tion­al Chris­tians”.

Jesus him­self said that many peo­ple who call him “Lord” will have a rude awak­en­ing. They will not be able to stand before Jesus, although they had believed they were Chris­tians. We can read about this in Matthew 7:21–23.

Not every­one who says to me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the king­dom of heav­en, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heav­en. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not proph­esy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I nev­er knew you; depart from me, you work­ers of law­less­ness.”

These words are a seri­ous warn­ing against reli­gious self-decep­tion. There will be many peo­ple who think that they did great things in Jesus’ name and are con­vinced that they belong to him. But Jesus will turn them away because, although they called him “Lord” they did not act accord­ing to his words.

3 What Does Jesus’ Call to Repentance Mean?

The peo­ple Jesus spoke to were all “reli­gious”. They believed in God and were basi­cal­ly aware that they will give an account to God for the way they lived their lives. And yet, Jesus called them to repent. He rec­og­nized the prob­lems in their lives and he addressed them: indif­fer­ence, reli­gious hypocrisy, self-right­eous­ness, will­ful­ness and their lack of respect for God. He knew that they would be lost unless they repent by rec­og­niz­ing and regret­ting their sins.

Nowa­days there are also many reli­gious peo­ple whose lives show that they hard­ly ask for God’s will in their lives. What Jesus quot­ed to his con­tem­po­raries from the prophet Isa­iah is just as rel­e­vant today:

You hyp­ocrites! Well did Isa­iah proph­esy of you, when he said: “This peo­ple hon­ours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;” (Matthew 15:7–8)

God sees the heart of a per­son. We can­not fool God with our reli­gious activ­i­ties and nei­ther should we fool our­selves. The nor­mal atti­tude we should have towards our cre­ator is that he deserves the first place in our hearts. This means that we have to make a deci­sion to sub­mit every­thing to him, as it is expressed in the com­mand­ment which Jesus called “the great and first com­mand­ment”.

And one of the scribes came up and heard them dis­put­ing with one anoth­er, and see­ing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which com­mand­ment is the most impor­tant of all?” Jesus answered, “The most impor­tant is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The sec­ond is this: ‘You shall love your neigh­bour as your­self.’ There is no oth­er com­mand­ment greater than these.” And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have tru­ly said that he is one, and there is no oth­er besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the under­stand­ing and with all the strength, and to love one’s neigh­bour as one­self, is much more than all whole burnt offer­ings and sac­ri­fices.” (Mark 12:28–33)

God loves us with his per­fect love. Hav­ing a lov­ing rela­tion­ship with him means want­i­ng to love him with all our strength and heart as a child loves his father. A child does not want to ignore his father’s will but he trusts and obeys him.

The para­ble of the prodi­gal son² describes well what repen­tance means. The prodi­gal son decid­ed to go his own way, seek­ing hap­pi­ness far from his father’s house in world­ly plea­sures and sins. He did not care what his father thought about it. When he real­ized that the path he had cho­sen was a dead end he hum­bled him­self and returned bro­ken­heart­ed­ly to his father. He regret­ted deeply the way he had despised his father’s love. He knew that he can­not do any­thing to com­pen­sate for what he had destroyed. The only thing left for him to do was to con­fess his guilt and to ask for for­give­ness, trust­ing in his father’s good­ness and mer­cy. The authen­tic­i­ty of his repen­tance became vis­i­ble through his desire to serve his father obe­di­ent­ly from then on. His father embraced him, gave him a ring and san­dals and arranged a cel­e­bra­tion with­out the slight­est reproach. The son’s guilt was for­giv­en, their rela­tion­ship restored. And so in the son’s life there was a com­plete­ly new beginning—as the father express­es it in the para­ble:

For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. (Luke 15:24)

With this para­ble Jesus want­ed to show that God accepts as his child every per­son who sin­cere­ly regrets his sins, for­giv­ing him all his guilt. In this way he offers every “prodi­gal son” hope that the way back to the Father’s house is possible—yes, the Father is even wait­ing and keep­ing watch to see when his child will return. Who­ev­er allows him­self to be touched by this love will expe­ri­ence repen­tance as some­thing joy­ful, like the joy of the son who is allowed to return home. The fol­low­ing words of Jesus also describe this joy:

The king­dom of heav­en is like trea­sure hid­den in a field, which a man found and cov­ered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the king­dom of heav­en is like a mer­chant in search of fine pearls, who, on find­ing one pearl of great val­ue, went and sold all that he had and bought it. (Matthew 13:44–46)

Who­ev­er realis­es what a pre­cious trea­sure it is that God loves us and wants to give us true life, will be ready to “sell” every­thing else to gain this trea­sure. If some­one is not will­ing to do that because some things are so “valu­able” to him that he is not ready to give them up for God, he will not spend eter­ni­ty with him, a fact which is vis­i­ble in the encounter of the rich young man with Jesus.

And as he was set­ting out on his jour­ney, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inher­it eter­nal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the com­mand­ments: ‘Do not mur­der, Do not com­mit adul­tery, Do not steal, Do not bear false wit­ness, Do not defraud, Hon­our your father and moth­er.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, look­ing at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have trea­sure in heav­en; and come, fol­low me.” Dis­heart­ened by the say­ing, he went away sor­row­ful, for he had great pos­ses­sions. (Mark 10:17–22)

This man want­ed to come to God—and he made efforts to achieve this. But he clung to his pos­ses­sions. He was not ready to give up every­thing in order to fol­low Jesus. But this did not move Jesus to low­er his stan­dard. He did not run after the man to offer him a com­pro­mise. It does not show love and respect for God if we want to with­hold any­thing from him. With this, Jesus also showed us that we can­not be Chris­tians with­out the uncon­di­tion­al readi­ness to place our­selves and every­thing we have at God’s dis­pos­al. The fol­low­ing sec­tion will make this clear­er.

4 Follow Me! The Cost of Discipleship

In Luke 9:23–26, fol­low­ing the first pre­dic­tion of his suf­fer­ing, we read Jesus’ clear state­ment on the seri­ous­ness of being his dis­ci­ple, that is, of life as a Chris­t­ian.

And he said to all, “If any­one would come after me, let him deny him­self and take up his cross dai­ly and fol­low me. For who­ev­er would save his life will lose it, but who­ev­er los­es his life for my sake will save it. For what does it prof­it a man if he gains the whole world and los­es or for­feits him­self? For who­ev­er is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glo­ry and the glo­ry of the Father and of the holy angels. But I tell you tru­ly, there are some stand­ing here who will not taste death until they see the king­dom of God.”

Despite the seri­ous­ness of these words, they are hard­ly tak­en seri­ous­ly nowa­days. Among the many peo­ple who call them­selves Chris­tians, only very few real­ly think about what this pas­sage means. But who­ev­er wants to be a Chris­t­ian has to ask him­self what it prac­ti­cal­ly means for his life to deny him­self, take up his cross, lose his life, and not to be ashamed of Jesus or his words. Jesus spoke “to all”, not only to a small num­ber of dis­ci­ples who want­ed to take it espe­cial­ly seri­ous­ly.

4.1 Deny Yourself

If we real­ly want to fol­low in Jesus’ foot­steps, we need to be aware that this path requires unwa­ver­ing deter­mi­na­tion. We can­not walk this path if we hold onto our own plans, desires and goals because that would cre­ate in us an inner con­flict in which we would be torn between God’s will and our own and which would rob us of the strength to act. Deny­ing one’s self means let­ting go of all our self-deter­mined actions and plac­ing our life com­plete­ly into God’s hands. He alone has the overview and knows best what is good for us and for oth­ers. That is why we can trust him more than we can trust our­selves. Who­ev­er is unwill­ing to sub­mit his own plans and ideas to God will not be able to expe­ri­ence his lead­ing or to serve him.

4.2 Take Up Your Cross

It is cer­tain­ly no acci­dent that Jesus spoke these words in the con­text of pre­dict­ing his own suf­fer­ing.³ For we, too, will be unable to walk this path unless we are ready to suf­fer. That is what the cross stands for. The cross makes it clear that Jesus was so strong­ly in con­flict with the world that the world was not will­ing to bear him. As Chris­tians we will also face con­flicts. When we speak God’s word to peo­ple and they are con­front­ed with their sin­ful and wretched state we can expect to face rejec­tion or even ridicule. In some cir­cum­stances we will lose our “good rep­u­ta­tion” because we tell them things which are uncom­fort­able for them or by which they feel accused. Jesus said that we should not only be ready to bear this, but even to rejoice when it hap­pens to us.

Blessed are you when peo­ple hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heav­en; for so their fathers did to the prophets. (Luke 6:22–23)

There are many peo­ple who call them­selves Chris­tians who are not will­ing to stand up for Jesus’ words and his demands. They are ashamed to do this because it is not con­sid­ered mod­ern to believe in an objec­tive truth and to think that Jesus is the one who brought us this truth. They are afraid of being regard­ed as old-fash­ioned and intol­er­ant. But this is, in fact, to betray Jesus instead of tak­ing his side. For that rea­son Jesus will not take the side of such peo­ple when they will one day have to give an account to God for their life.

All these thoughts are under­lined by Jesus’ words in Luke 9:57–62:

As they were going along the road, some­one said to him, “I will fol­low you wher­ev­er you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Fox­es have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To anoth­er he said, “Fol­low me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and pro­claim the king­dom of God.” Yet anoth­er said, “I will fol­low you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the king­dom of God.”

Fox­es have holes, and birds of the air have nests…. Fol­low­ing Jesus is not an easy path. Walk­ing with him can involve renun­ci­a­tion, which we have to be pre­pared for. Jesus is not say­ing that as Chris­tians we are not to have some­where to live. But just as Jesus, who did not estab­lish a com­fort­able life for him­self here on earth, we should also live in the aware­ness that our real home is in heav­en. This should make us ready, here and now, to lose every­thing that seems to belong to us and to be out­siders in this world.

Let the dead bury their own dead…. Jesus does not want to for­bid his dis­ci­ples from deal­ing with buri­als alto­geth­er. He saw that this man want­ed to give the work in the King­dom of God a low­er pri­or­i­ty than his earth­ly oblig­a­tions. With these very rad­i­cal words Jesus showed what the right pri­or­i­ty is. As Chris­tians we have the pos­si­bil­i­ty to help peo­ple find eter­nal life, and we should be con­scious that this is our most impor­tant job.

The “dead” who should bury their own dead are peo­ple who do not allow them­selves to be called to life by God, and thus are spir­i­tu­al­ly dead. Con­se­quent­ly they are unable to help any­one else spir­i­tu­al­ly.

No one who puts his hand to the plough…. Jesus’ answer shows that it is not sim­ply about say­ing “good­bye”. Jesus rec­og­nized that what was behind this man’s desire to take leave of his fam­i­ly was a lack of decid­ed­ness. If any­one only leaves his old life behind mourn­ful­ly and half-heart­ed­ly, he will not be up to the chal­lenges which come with fol­low­ing Jesus.

5 A Holy Life as the Fruit of Repentance

When a per­son repents and wants to live as a Chris­t­ian, like the prodi­gal son, he will give up the things he under­stood to be sin­ful, even if he has to over­come him­self. Many peo­ple who call them­selves Chris­tians do not engage in a seri­ous strug­gle against their sins. Because they do not want to give up their sins they delude them­selves into think­ing that they are not real­ly sins at all. Or they think that God is so mer­ci­ful and for­gives any­way because he knows how weak and imper­fect we are.

It is impor­tant to expose such thoughts for what they are: Excus­es. Jesus said that all things are pos­si­ble for one who believes.⁴ When we entrust our­selves com­plete­ly to God we will expe­ri­ence his help. He does not leave us alone in our temp­ta­tions and our weak­ness. We expe­ri­ence God’s grace not only in his for­giv­ing our sins, but his grace also trains us to live our lives in this world so as to please him, as Paul wrote in Titus 2:11–14.

For the grace of God has appeared, bring­ing sal­va­tion for all peo­ple, train­ing us to renounce ungod­li­ness and world­ly pas­sions, and to live self-con­trolled, upright, and god­ly lives in the present age, wait­ing for our blessed hope, the appear­ing of the glo­ry of our great God and Sav­iour Jesus Christ, who gave him­self for us to redeem us from all law­less­ness and to puri­fy for him­self a peo­ple for his own pos­ses­sion who are zeal­ous for good works.

If we real­ly want to offer our lives to God in ser­vice and give up our sins, God gives us the strength to do it. Our lives can then become a sac­ri­fice which is pleas­ing to God. Serv­ing and obey­ing him in our dai­ly lives is what “ser­vice” real­ly means.

I appeal to you there­fore, broth­ers, by the mer­cies of God, to present your bod­ies as a liv­ing sac­ri­fice, holy and accept­able to God, which is your spir­i­tu­al wor­ship. Do not be con­formed to this world, but be trans­formed by the renew­al of your mind, that by test­ing you may dis­cern what is the will of God, what is good and accept­able and per­fect. (Romans 12:1–2)

There are many clear pas­sages in the New Tes­ta­ment which speak about the holy lives of the Chris­tians. Doing God’s will belongs to lov­ing him and God’s love for us means he gives us the strength to do that. Who­ev­er lives with Jesus will bear this fruit.

I am the vine; you are the branch­es. Who­ev­er abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do noth­ing. …By this my Father is glo­ri­fied, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my dis­ci­ples. (John 15:5,8)

As Chris­tians we are no longer slaves of sin, but ser­vants of God.

Do you not know that if you present your­selves to any­one as obe­di­ent slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obe­di­ence, which leads to right­eous­ness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obe­di­ent from the heart to the stan­dard of teach­ing to which you were com­mit­ted, and, hav­ing been set free from sin, have become slaves of right­eous­ness. (Romans 6:16–18)

An in-depth arti­cle about “Sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion” can be found on this web­site.

6 Jesus’ Love: An Example for Every Christian

Jesus’ whole life was char­ac­ter­ized by love. Because of his love he left behind his heav­en­ly glo­ry. He became man so that we can get to know how much God loves us and wants to offer us the joy of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with him. Because of this love he nev­er sought his own advan­tage, nev­er fol­lowed what was pleas­ant for him, nev­er chose the eas­i­er way instead of the right way. Because of love he always spoke the truth and strove to help peo­ple learn to see them­selves as God sees them rather than being lost in self-delu­sion. He even bore suf­fer­ing and death on a cross in order to put peo­ple to shame in their pride by his love and humil­i­ty.

With his lov­ing devo­tion, Jesus gave us a clear stan­dard. He set no lim­its to his love and ser­vice for oth­ers. He gave his dis­ci­ples, and all who want to be Chris­tians, the com­mand to emu­late this love.

A new com­mand­ment I give to you, that you love one anoth­er: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one anoth­er. By this all peo­ple will know that you are my dis­ci­ples, if you have love for one anoth­er. (John 13:34–35)

Being a Chris­t­ian does not mean to have gen­er­al Chris­t­ian val­ues and to vis­it a Chris­t­ian meet­ing from time to time, while oth­er­wise liv­ing your own life. The first Chris­tians under­stood this as John writes in 1 John 3:14–18:

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the broth­ers. Who­ev­er does not love abides in death. Every­one who hates his broth­er is a mur­der­er, and you know that no mur­der­er has eter­nal life abid­ing in him. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the broth­ers. But if any­one has the world’s goods and sees his broth­er in need, yet clos­es his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Lit­tle chil­dren, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

This means that we are oblig­ed to lay down our lives for the broth­ers and to love in deed and in truth. What does that mean for us? A nat­ur­al expres­sion of love is the long­ing for fel­low­ship. Fel­low­ship among Chris­tians means spend­ing time with one anoth­er with the aim to get to know God more deeply, to praise him, serve him, to under­stand and do his will. In this way the self-denial which belongs to fol­low­ing Jesus becomes a prac­ti­cal real­i­ty: Do we want to con­tin­ue using our spare time for a sport club, com­put­er games or read­ing nov­els, as we did in the past? Do we want to work over­time to devel­op our career so as to be able to buy our dream house? Or are we pre­pared to change our lives, to give up hob­bies and career, giv­ing the right pri­or­i­ty to our work and inter­ests so that we have time for our broth­ers and sis­ters in faith? Do we have the long­ing to take part in their lives and to allow them to take part in ours? Do we want to sup­port each oth­er mutu­al­ly in striv­ing for a holy life? Are we will­ing to build trans­par­ent, sin­cere rela­tion­ships in which we are able to admit our weak­ness­es and con­fess our sins? Do we want to take time togeth­er day by day to under­stand God and the Bible more and more deeply?

Just as Jesus devot­ed his life com­plete­ly to the sal­va­tion of peo­ple, a Chris­t­ian will also have this aim in life. There is noth­ing more impor­tant than doing what helps oth­ers not only to find God but to remain with him. For it is not self-evi­dent that every­one who has start­ed on the nar­row path will also reach the aim. “With­out sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14)—scripture urges us to sup­port one anoth­er dai­ly in our strug­gle for holi­ness.

Take care, broth­ers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbe­liev­ing heart, lead­ing you to fall away from the liv­ing God. But exhort one anoth­er every day, as long as it is called “today”, that none of you may be hard­ened by the deceit­ful­ness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our orig­i­nal con­fi­dence firm to the end. (Hebrews 3:12–14)

We will only receive eter­nal life if we remain faith­ful in our obe­di­ence till death.

Be faith­ful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. (Rev­e­la­tion 2:10)

In our arti­cle The Life of the First Chris­tians you can read a more thor­ough descrip­tion of the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of their love for one anoth­er.

7 A Christian Loves the Truth

Peo­ple have made very many attempts to pro­vide answers to the impor­tant ques­tions of life and faith. But we can find the right answer, the truth, with God. He reveals him­self to us in var­i­ous ways: through cre­ation, through our con­science and most clear­ly in the scrip­tures of the Old and New Tes­ta­ments.

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are tru­ly my dis­ci­ples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31–32)

The knowl­edge of the truth, the cor­rect under­stand­ing of God and his Word is vital for liv­ing with him. If we do not allow our own under­stand­ing of God to be shaped by the Holy Scrip­tures, we will believe in our own con­cept of God, a con­cept which suits us. But in this way it is not pos­si­ble to have a rela­tion­ship with the liv­ing God.

A Chris­t­ian is a per­son who loves the truth and who real­ly wants to under­stand God and his will. He wants to allow him­self to be shaped by the words of the Bible and to have any wrong ideas cor­rect­ed and all self-delu­sion uncov­ered. Just like Peter, every dis­ci­ple of Jesus will con­fess that Jesus’ teach­ing is the way to eter­nal life.

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eter­nal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:68–69)

Nowa­days when we speak with reli­gious peo­ple about the Bible we often expe­ri­ence that they try to explain away the pas­sages which chal­lenge them to change their way of think­ing and their actions using unbib­li­cal argu­ments. A Chris­t­ian, in con­trast, sub­mits to the word of God. If we do not, we dis­re­gard Jesus him­self, who is the truth and who came to reveal the truth to us.

The New Tes­ta­ment under­lines the impor­tance of hold­ing fast to the teach­ing of Jesus and the Apos­tles. As false teach­ings also lead to a false lifestyle, our sal­va­tion is depen­dent on whether or not we want to fol­low the bib­li­cal teach­ing. In 1 Tim­o­thy 4:16 Paul wrote to Tim­o­thy who bore the great respon­si­bil­i­ty of pass­ing on the cor­rect teach­ing:

Keep a close watch on your­self and on the teach­ing. Per­sist in this, for by so doing you will save both your­self and your hear­ers.

Hold­ing on to the right teach­ing also means to dis­tance our­selves from every false influ­ence. Chris­tians have respon­si­bil­i­ty to exam­ine what oth­er peo­ple teach and to avoid spir­i­tu­al fel­low­ship with peo­ple who do not hold to the teach­ing of Christ.

Watch your­selves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. Every­one who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teach­ing of Christ, does not have God. Who­ev­er abides in the teach­ing has both the Father and the Son. If any­one comes to you and does not bring this teach­ing, do not receive him into your house or give him any greet­ing, for who­ev­er greets him takes part in his wicked works. (2 John 8–11)

This issue is also dis­cussed in greater depth on this web­site in the arti­cle “Keep a Close Watch on Your­self and on the Teach­ing…”

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In sum­ma­ry: A Chris­t­ian is a per­son who answers God’s love by desir­ing to love him in return with all his heart and strength. He has turned away from his old, sin­ful life and now puts his life com­plete­ly at God’s dis­pos­al. He strives for a holy life in obe­di­ence to God and sub­mis­sion to his word. He loves the truth and wants to under­stand Jesus’ teach­ing deeply and clings to it. He wants to devote his life com­plete­ly to lov­ing his broth­ers and to strength­en­ing them on the com­mon path with God. He wants to tell those who do not believe or are on a wrong path about Jesus, so that they too can find the true God. The things which con­cern the King­dom of God have the high­est pri­or­i­ty in his life.

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1. Matthew 7:13–14. ↩
2. Luke 15:11–32. ↩
3. Luke 9:20–22. ↩
4. Mark 9:23. ↩