<p>8:35 <i>For whoever would save his life shall lose it, and whoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, he shall save it</i>- I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that it is the process of our engagement with God's word, our love of it, our integrity in considering it etc., which is more important to God than our grasping the final 'truth' of each clause in a final, Euclidean sense. By saying this I take nothing away from the fact that &quot;the truth&quot; is &quot;in Jesus&quot;, that there is a wonderful personal reality of salvation for each of us in Christ, a living personal relationship with Him. My point is simply that God's intention in giving us His word is surely not to relay to us a heap of individual specific truths- for the written word isn't the best way to convey such things to simple, illiterate folk, nor indeed to computer-assisted students of our own times. Rather does He seek us to enter into <i>relationship</i> with Him and His Son, and He uses His word and its ambiguities as a way of achieving this. The Lord Jesus used language like this- consider how He uses the word <i>psuche</i>, life, in Mk. 8:34-37. We are to lose our life in order to find life... and &quot;what does a man gain by winning the whole world at the cost of his true self? What can he give to buy that self back?&quot; (NEB). The ambiguous usage of <i>psuche</i> is surely in order to get us thinking about our relationship with Him. And thus the Lord's parables often end with questions which have open-ended, ambiguous answers, through which we reveal and develop our relationship with Jesus- e.g. &quot;What will the owner of the vineyard do?&quot; (Mk. 12:9- kill them? be gracious to them? give them yet another chance? keep them as His people anyway?). I am not saying that correct interpretation of Scripture doesn't matter; rather am I saying that in <i>some</i> ways, in some places, in some aspects, interpreting the Lord's words is designed by Him to be open-ended rather than intended to lead us all to identical conclusions.</p><p>The Lord Jesus paralleled &quot;my sake and the gospel's&quot; with &quot;me and my words&quot; (Mk. 8:35,38). He Himself thus understood the Gospel to be His words.&nbsp;Preaching, in whatever form, is not glamorous. It is a sacrifice of self, a not saying and doing as we feel, a surrendering of our own rights- for the sake of others&rsquo; salvation, both in the preaching of the Gospel and in helping our brethren to salvation. To lose life is paralleled with the Lord to unashamedly witnessing to Him in an unbelieving world; and He calls us each one to lose our lives in this way (Mk. 8:35).</p>