But the authority of Jesus was not merely that of a lawgiver. He inaugurated the Kingdom whose coming He proclaimed and whose laws He formulated, and He is to be the final judge of the worthiness of its members. These members were not merely pious Jews in general or John's disciples, but were His disciples. They were the light of the world because they were His disciples, and the crowning element in their character was endurance of persecution for His sake (Matt. v. 11, "for my sake"; Luke vi. 22, "for the Son of man's sake"). His teaching instead of pointing away from Himself to God, in the spirit of the other wisest teachers of men, pointed to Himself as the One by whom fully and finally God's will and purpose were to be made known. He plainly taught or clearly implied that men's relations to Himself as Teacher, Lord, Lawgiver and Judge, were supremely important for human destiny (Matt. vii. 21-24). No words in the ethical-religious message of Jesus are more striking in form and thought, and no others have more deeply impressed the minds of men, than those in which He asserted that the value of the soul outweighs all earthly good: "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" These words, says Eucken, have given the soul a history. In the startling paradox in the context, "He that saveth his life shall lose it," we have the saying of Jesus most often repeated in the Gospels, occurring six times, and assigned to four different occasions (Mark viii. 35; Matt. x. 39; xvi. 25; Luke ix. 24; xvii. 33; John xii. 25). The study of these sayings in their context (Mark viii. 34-38 and parallels) shows that the thought which was uppermost in the mind of Jesus, and in fact dominated at this point the ethical teaching, was precisely that of His own person and death and resurrection. His question to Peter, "Whom say ye that I am?" (Mark viii. 29) shows that He was dissatisfied with the title of prophet given Him by others, and that He would draw from the disciples a confession that they had come to hold a higher view of His mission. When Peter, according to the accounts in Mark and Matthew, refused to accept the prediction of His death, He showed that it was necessary for all His disciples to take up the cross and follow Him. The goal of life is to be reached only by those who follow Him in spirit in His death and resurrection, and confess Him before men. The losing of the highest in life is for those who are ashamed of Him in this generation. The destiny of men hinges upon their relation to Himself. The connection between the most oft-repeated and self-authenticating maxims of Jesus and His own person, death, and resurrection is as clear and organic as the connection between the ethical and doctrinal, or Christological, teaching of Paul.