1 The Lord takes a likeness of the seed that is cast into the field, which bringeth forth no fruit, except it dieth utterly, after all that it is.
2. Christ said that he would not be glorified except by death, so that he might teach us that even through the cross and death we should be glorified and come to glory, not only after this life, but that we also now bear fruit in life with the death of our old Adam.
By the word "soul" the Lord means all that we are. For all our actions must be killed and perish, so that we may be born anew and live born in God. Therefore he says in Luke Cap. 9, 23: "If anyone would follow me, let him deny," not this or that, "but himself."
4. let the disciple of Christ follow the Master in the cross, that he may also attain to the glory to which Christ, his Mei-
*) This summa is found in Erl. A. 65, 274 f. D. Red.
ster, came through the cross; which is not a glory of the world, which the hypocrites follow, but the glory of the Father.
5. the poor have the gospel preached to them. Believers are called poor in Scripture; for who is poorer than he who labors to deny himself, which the spirit of faith does? Christ's people are lost in the sight of the world, but in the sight of God they are given and in great glory.
(6) Such assurances make the cross all the more grievous to those who by faith look not to the present but to the future, as St. Paul says in 2 Cor. 4:16, 17, 18: "Therefore we are not left; but though our outward man decay, yet the inward man is renewed from day to day. For our affliction, which is temporal and light, creates an eternal glory, and glory beyond measure, to us who look not at the visible, but at the invisible; for what is visible is temporal, but what is invisible is eternal."