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Foreword

The message of the Gospel of Mark is best summarized in chapter ten, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (v.45, ESV). It is this theme that not only inspires the title of Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse’s commentary on Mark, but serves as the focal point around which he exegetes and expounds the saving message of Christ.

With a pastoral heart and Biblical discernment, Barnhouse thematically breaks down the book of Mark into twelve chapters. Each chapter acts as a springboard toward the culmination of ultimate servant hood in the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. “Standing on this side of history, God’s people understand that the resurrection of Jesus was necessary to God’s redemptive plan and therefore inevitable. But the disciples did not have the benefit of our vantage point… To them, this truth was a candle in a fog, though to us it is a sun in a blue sky” (p.143).

This commentary is structured not only to inform and exegete the truths of Scripture, it is designed to challenge the reader. The honest compassion that characterized Dr. Barnhouse’s ministry is seen throughout the pages of this book. Barnhouse faithfully draws attention to the crucial doctrine in the book of Mark all while emphasizing its application. “Love that goes upward is adoration, love that goes outward is affection, and love that goes downward, that stoops, is grace” (p.12). I encourage you to use and share this resource and be blessed as Dr. Barnhouse’s teaching has continued to make God’s word plain for over 60 years.
-- Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

The Message of Mark

Why are there four gospels? Some have looked upon the Bible as a human book and said, “That’s simple: men named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each sat down and said, ‘I’m going to write a biography.”’ I cannot take any such opinion. The Holy Spirit determined before the foundation of the world that there would be these four portraits of the Lord Jesus Christ. He took four men and prepared them to tell the story of Jesus’ life, each in his own way. By that means He fulfilled His purpose: to present to us the Lord Jesus Christ in His various aspects.

Throughout the centuries, in churches, in the printing and illumination of manuscripts, missals, and handwritten Bibles, and in beautiful stained glass windows, believers have used four symbols to represent the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John: a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle. They have taken these symbols from the cherubim in the Book of Ezekiel and from the four living creatures of the Book of Revelation and applied them, rightly I believe, to the four gospels. Describing these four creatures, the biblical writers say that one of them had a face like a lion, another, like an ox, the next, like a man, and the last, like an eagle.

Matthew was written by a Jewish tax gatherer; he spoke of the kingdom and addressed his message to the Jews. Now, Christ is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, and the symbol of the lion is well suited to Matthew’s depiction of Christ as the Son of Abraham, connected to the kingdom and so to Abraham’s seed.

The ox, on the other hand, was the symbol of service. Under this figure we expect to find the Lord Jesus Christ as the patient laborer on behalf of others, offering Himself in service for them, ultimately as a perfect sacrifice and then as food after death. And thus we find Him in Mark.

Luke, the Greek physician who wrote to the Greeks, has had his gospel symbolized by the face of a man. He shows us Jesus as the Son of Man, one who could have compassion on others because He took on their infirmities when He took on their flesh and blood.

John, as the beloved of Christ, wrote concerning Jesus as the Lord God Almighty, the eternal second Person of the Godhead. Tradition has made the eagle the symbol for his gospel. We read in Proverbs 30:19–20 of the wonder of the “eagle in the air.” The eagle possesses a gift that probably no other creature possesses: it can look straight at the sun without being hurt by the light. It can gaze with undazzled eyes upon the sun itself, and thus it is that the eagle is the symbol of John, who reveals to us the Word made flesh to dwell among us.

In Germany in the last century, theologians developed the idea that all the gospels came from one original source, possibly Mark, and that others copied from him. I believe that to be false and that any attempt to study the gospels in that way means the death of a spiritual perception of the truth. If we are going to understand the gospels, we must realize that God Almighty spoke through these writers in a divine way to communicate truth to us exactly as He wanted. We will understand the truth in the measure that the Holy Spirit reveals it to us; we don’t find it naturally. Only as we are enabled by God to look at the Scriptures from His point of view can we understand the truth. No one can understand the verbal inspiration of the Bible unless he himself is filled with the Holy Spirit who inspired it.

Mark’s Uniqueness

As we look at the Book of Mark, we need the Spirit of God to reveal to us the unique message He wants to bring us. Throughout their lives, God prepared each of the four gospel writers for the task of creating a particular portrait of Christ. The portrait of Christ we see in Mark was written by a menial servant. In Acts 12:25, it says that, “Barnabas and Saul [Paul] returned from Jerusalem...bringing with them John whose other name was Mark.” In chapter 13 verse 5, it says that, “they had also John [with them] to minister” (KJV). This is the man who later wrote this gospel.

This word minister is very interesting. It is used to translate five different Greek words. The word angelos, or angel, is once or twice translated “minister.” The word apostolos, our word apostle, is also translated “minister.” The word diaconos, which has given us the word deacon, can be translated “minister,” as can a fourth word that is a form of the Greek word that has given us liturgy—it refers to someone who is ministering at spiritual things. The fifth word that is translated “minister” is the one that is used to refer to Mark. It is the lowest of all ranks. The word is huperates, which means an “under–rower.” The Greeks didn’t have steamships; their boats were powered by oarsmen. The lowest rank of slave was positioned in the most difficult spot on the boat and had to do his rowing with a short, unwieldy oar. This is the social rank ascribed to Mark, that of the common workhand, the subordinate, the menial laborer.

Now, a servant doesn’t look at things the same way other men do. As Mark looks at our Saviour, we shall certainly learn how we may serve Him better, for we shall see that God has put us here for that purpose. We shall also learn about our service by looking at the Servant Saviour, as Mark reveals to us the gospel, or good news, of our Lord Jesus Christ. The central truth of Christianity is a record of historical fact. It is not a philosophy, it is not a system of morality, but it is history. It is the true good news for men and women. It is the story that our brother, for that is what He calls Himself, came and lived and died for us. This feeds our hearts and our minds and our wills; it fills our hopes and nourishes the whole nature into spiritual health. Of all the things that have ever been taught, this story is the only one that deserves the name good news.

The Glory of God’s Grace

The gospel begins with historical facts, but these facts need explanation, for the facts by themselves do not constitute good news. Christ died; so did millions of other men. Christ was buried; so were millions of others. Christ rose from the dead; they have said that about other men, though it has only been true of Him. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:3–4, “For I delivered to you... what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.” The fact of the gospel has three parts to it: death, burial, and resurrection. But, these facts are not good news until you add the subsequent clauses. Christ died “for our sins”; then it becomes good news. Christ died “according to the scriptures”; thus it immediately becomes good news. The facts without the purposes behind them are meaningless; they are no more gospel than the story of the death of Socrates.

In Acts 20:24 the gospel is called, “the gospel of the grace of God.” When you speak of the gospel of the grace of God, you find Him stooping to us. Love that goes upward is adoration, love that goes outward is affection, and love that goes downward, that stoops, is grace. When we find the gospel of the grace of God, we see God stooping down to us. And in the servant picture that Mark paints for us, the gospel of the grace of God is clearly seen.

Mark’s gospel account also illuminates another aspect of the gospel message, that which is seen in 2 Corinthians 4:4, where the Greek refers to, “the gospel of the glory of Christ.” In Mark we clearly see that the glory of God is not only to be found in His power, His majesty, His might, and His dominion. The true glory of God is in His grace. An English preacher said that the true glory of the divine nature is its tenderness. The lowliness and death of Christ are the glory of God, not the awesome attributes that separate His inconceivable nature from us, not the eternity of His existence, not the infinitude of His being, not the omnipotence of His unwearied arm, nor His omniscience that sees to the heart of us.

These other attributes are but the fringes of the brightness of God’s love. God’s glory is God’s grace, and the purest expression of both is found where Jesus hangs dying in the dark. That reaches me, and it is only thus that I can understand Mark’s message, “the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (1:1). It is the gospel of the Lord as the servant, the gospel of the Lord of glory who showed His glory by becoming little for us. He descends, He conde scends, He stoops, He serves, He dies; this is His glory.

I remember seeing pictures of George VI at his coronation, with his enormous jeweled crown, his ermine robes, and all the pomp that marked the occasion. It was very impressive.

But I saw another picture of George VI where I truly knew him as king. The photograph showed the East End of London after it had been bombed by the Nazis into a heap of rubble. George VI was there with Winston Churchill to inspect the damage. He wore no crown or ermine robe, just a suit and a derby hat. He looked totally unremarkable, except for one thing. As he walked through the debris, he cried. As he saw the damage, his suffering people, the Union Jacks his subjects had draped over the wreckage of their homes, he wept. Churchill’s memoirs record that as the people watched their king weeping in the midst of their ruin, they said again and again, “He loves us. He loves us.”

That to my mind is the noblest picture of the king of England I ever saw. And when I want to see the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, I look at Him on the cross, dying for me. That is the glory of the gospel. It is what Mark saw when he looked at Jesus, and it is that vision we must receive for ourselves, that we might be transformed by it and in newness of life bear our own testimony to the glory of grace.

CHAPTER ONE
Identified With Man

The Gospel of Mark is the gospel of action, and it is action of a unique kind. More than any gospel writer, Mark moves rapidly through the events of Jesus’ life. It takes him only twenty short verses in chapter one to describe the ministry of John the Baptist, Jesus’ baptism, His temptation in the wilderness, and the call of the disciples. The truth is presented succinctly, but it is packed with tremendous spiritual blessing. We are being introduced to the God who, in the words of Philippians 2, “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (vv. 6–7). It is as the sovereign servant, the God–man, that Jesus is coming to win the battle over sin. Mark’s emphasis is on action, and we can sense his excitement as he takes us quickly from one event to the next.

The first event of Jesus’ life that Mark describes is found in verses 9–11: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when He came up out of the water, immediately He saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, ‘Thou art My beloved Son; with Thee I am well pleased.”’

The Meaning of Baptism

Why was Christ baptized? John the Baptist was proclaiming the necessity of his baptism for the remission of sin. But Christ had no sin and, therefore, He needed no such baptism. The meaning of Christ’s baptism has been obscured by the current emphasis on baptism as the symbol of the death, burial, and resurrection of the believer with Christ. The spiritual significance of baptism goes beyond any concern with a particular mode of water baptism. Its true meaning is the identification of the believer with Christ.

The origins of the word baptism precede any concept of immersion in water. Five hundred years before Christ the word immerse was used to describe the process of turning a piece of pink cloth into blue cloth, or yellow cloth into black cloth. In other words, the process of cleaning and dyeing. The dyer was called a “baptist”. In Athens five hundred years before Christ, you would have taken your cloth to Theophilus the Baptist in order to change its appearance and in so doing, its identity.

In a similar way, there is an identification that takes place in baptism. For the believer, it is an identification into the whole of the work of Jesus Christ. For Christ, His baptism was an identification with humanity. The Lord Jesus Christ was becoming flesh for us.

Mark 1:4 tells us that John came and began to baptize in the desert, proclaiming baptism as the mark of a complete change of heart and of the forgiveness of sins. Now, of course, this could never have been applied to our sinless Saviour, and that is why Matthew records John’s protest at Christ’s request (Matt. 3:14). It seemed to John that the act of baptism would contradict the truth of the word he had just spoken at the leading of the Holy Spirit: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Such a lamb, as every Jew would know, could have no spot of sin in need of cleansing. Every year, when Jewish families would choose a Passover lamb, they had to examine it with great care. If it had the mark of a broken leg, a scratch on its ear, a torn place in the flesh, a wen, or a deformity, it was put aside. They needed a lamb without spot or blemish. This they would take into their home for three days, examine once again, and then kill.

Jesus, the Flawless Lamb

When John the Baptist came, he knew that God had called him to identify the Lamb for God’s ultimate Passover sacrifice. He must have looked at many a man the second time—“Could that be he? Is that he?”—only to turn away in disappointment when he saw the mark of sin. But under this urge from the Holy Spirit, John had the eyes of his spirit opened when he saw Jesus Christ. He said, “Behold the Lamb of God,” and thus identified Him as the one who was to come.

When Jesus approached John to be baptized—to be identified with sinful man and to fulfill the Law—John responded, “I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?” (Matt. 3:14). John knew that Jesus, God’s perfect sacrificial Lamb, had no sin. He knew that he needed to be identified with Christ in His death that his sins might be forgiven. But Jesus said, “Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15, KJV). So the Lord Jesus was baptized—identified with His sinful people under the Law of God.

We cannot understand this incident apart from verses like Galatians 4:4–5, which read, “But when the time had the Law. In this way He would accomplish His purpose to save His people from their sin.

Here in this act of baptism Jesus was being identified as the Lamb, God’s provision under the Law for the forgiveness of sins. But just as a Jew choosing a lamb for the Passover could judge only external flaws, John could not see what was within Jesus. So at the very moment the Lord Jesus came away from the water, the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove upon Him, and the Father spoke from heaven and said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). How wonderful it was for God to speak so that we could know that while John had looked on the exterior and called Jesus the Lamb of God, God Himself had looked upon the heart and affirmed, “Yes, this is My Lamb. This is My beloved Son.”

Notice the wording of Mark 1:11. It is a statement by God made to Jesus, the Father talking to the Son. In this verse, we have first of all the guarantee of the person of Christ. Who is Jesus? He is Jehovah God. He was begotten of God, without a human father, entering this world as the Word made flesh. That is why God speaks to Him this way.

Second, this statement out of heaven expresses to us the solidarity of the Father with the Son in all of the purposes of the incarnation. Jesus Christ did not leave the Father’s house on His own. At the very outset of His work the voice of God spoke and said, “What is happening here on earth I have initiated. What the Saviour is about to do I am doing. He will announce that the Son of Man is come to seek and to save the lost. This pleases Me. He is about to say that the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many. This pleases Me. He will go to the cross and offer His life as the surety of the new covenant, the guarantee of man’s acceptance with the Father. This pleases Me.”

In Liverpool in the last century, Bishop Ryle of the Church of England had this comment about the Father’s words: “There is a rich mine of comfort in these words, for all Christ’s believing members. In themselves, and in their own doings, they see nothing to please God. They are daily sensible of weakness, shortcoming, and imperfection in all their ways. But let them recollect that the Father regards them as members of His beloved Son Jesus Christ. He sees no spot in them. (Cant. 4:7) He beholds them as ‘in Christ,’ clothed in His righteousness, and invested with His merit. They are ‘accepted in the Beloved,’ and when the holy eye of God looks at them, He is ‘well pleased”’ (John Charles Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospel–St. Mark, James Clarke & Co. Ltd., p. 7).

Now consider for a moment the fact that three years later the Lord Jesus was taken to the Mount of Transfiguration, and as Moses and Elijah stood beside Him. Once more a voice came out of heaven with the same words: “This is My beloved Son”, and the Father added, “Listen to Him” (Mark 9:7).

We saw earlier that when a Passover lamb was taken into a Jewish home, it was kept there for three days and examined again, in case any imperfection had developed during that time. Similarly, the Lord Jesus was identified by the Father at the beginning of His ministry and then at the end of the three “days,” the Father identified Him once more on the Mount, just before Jesus was taken out of the house of Israel to be put to death for our sins.

In those intervening years, the Lord Jesus walked with humanity. He associated with sinners and people who were hated and condemned. He had left heaven to become a man, to live among people of great need. He moved among them with a readiness and an ease that made them know that certainly here was someone who was not one of them but who nonetheless loved them. The love of Christ for them was plain. There was none of the false respectability that so many associate with Christianity today. This outpouring of love pleased the Father. If we as Christians take our faith and live apart from the world in an ivory tower, if we hold ourselves aloof while the world goes on its merry way to hell, we have not understood the heart of Christ, which caused Him to come and be baptized and identified with us. We have failed to understand the significance of Jesus Christ as heaven becoming earth for us without becoming earthy. We are to become one with the world around us—not one in its aims or its methods, but one with it in love, ready to touch its infirmities, ready to meet its needs, ready to live so that men recognize that we possess what they so desperately need. The love of Christ cannot be brought to the world around us if we are not willing to be baptized into the world as Jesus was. We need to be identified with it, having our lives rooted in Christ, but living in the midst of a world that is alien to Him.

This is the meaning of the baptism of Jesus Christ. He was not baptized for the remission of sins. He had no sin. But He said, “Father, I’m going down there to be identified as a human being.” He persuaded John, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” And the Father said, “That is My Son. I love Him.”

The Challenge of Satan

After Jesus’ baptism, Mark shows us that Jesus’ identification with us immediately involved Him in fierce spiritual battle. “The Spirit immediately drove Him out into the wilderness. And He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and He was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to Him” (Mark 1:12–13).

The other gospels take much longer to discuss this incident in Jesus’ life, but Mark, the servant, uses a phrase that is not found in the other accounts. Mark notes that it was the Spirit that drove Jesus into the wilderness; it was the Spirit that urged Him to go.

This spiritual battle is significant because of the identity of Jesus’ adversary and because of the way Jesus fought and won the battle. The Lord Jesus had come from heaven for a purpose. Earth was the rebel province. It was as if a prince had rebelled against a king and claimed that he was now master of his own province. That is exactly what had happened here. Lucifer had fallen to become Satan and said, “This world is mine.” The Lord Jesus Christ had come to begin to dislodge this great enemy.

As soon as the Lord Jesus Christ had been identified as the Messiah, the Holy Spirit drove Him to the one who claimed to be in charge of the province. God always works in an orderly fashion. In the Book of Ezekiel we discover that when the devil was first created as Lucifer, he was established as a ruler by God. But then he rebelled and said, “I am so wonderful and wise that I do not need to get direction from God. I can administer from my own knowledge and power. And I do not need to give all of the credit to God. I can take some of that credit for myself.” That double interception in the channel of administration and worship is the original sin that came into this universe. It is the taking of authority to oneself and taking the credit to oneself.

Originally, God had said to Lucifer, “Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so” (Ezek. 28:14, KJV). And though Lucifer had rebelled, God had never completely overturned his power. Thus, when Jesus arrived on earth and was proclaimed by God as His ambassador, He immediately made His protocol visit to the devil, just as a visiting ambassador today would present his or her credentials to the head of state. The time had come for Him to deal with the problem that had been created on earth by this rebellious prince, so Jesus went straight to Satan, and for forty days the devil brought great stresses against Him.

The other gospel accounts reveal that Satan’s first challenge to Jesus was, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread” (Matt. 4:3). When Satan said “if,” it was no if of doubt. Satan knew whom he was confronting. He knew very well that this was the Lord, Jehovah of Hosts, made flesh. It was Satan’s pride that led him to challenge Jesus in this way. He wanted still to be treated as God’s equal, to be acknowledged as rightful master of this earth, something Jesus would never do. He was in effect saying to Jesus, “Don’t meet me as a man, though that is the form You have taken. Meet me as God.” It was humiliating for Satan to face the fact that God would defeat him with the seed of the woman, as the Lord had promised Eve in the Garden. It degraded Satan in his own proud mind to know that God’s victory over him would be accomplished with an insignificant being made lower than the angels. He did not want that. He wanted Jesus to fight him as God, for he believed that doing so would elevate his own status. The devil said, “Don’t defeat me as a man; that would be too demeaning. Beat me as God. Then at least I can go back and say, ‘Well, after all, it took God to do it.”’

But Jesus said, “I have come forth in simple humanity,” and His first answer to Satan was, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”’ (Matt. 4:4). He demonstrates to every one of us that we are capable of over coming temptation with the Word of God and the Spirit.

He did not fight Satan by saying, “I am able to impose My might upon you.” He came, and won, with a simplicity of yieldedness that says, “O God, here is an utterly, empty vessel. Fill it with Thyself.” Luther understood that when he wrote, “Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing.”¹ Lord, here is emptiness. Fill it with Thyself. As God later said to Paul, “My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). That is the principle that Jesus set forth here.

In Satan’s second temptation of Christ, he tempted the Saviour to fanaticism. Thwarted in his first attempt, he said, “All right. You’re going to meet me as a man. You’re going to trust in the Word of God. You know, I’m something of a Bible student myself, and I found a verse back in the Psalms that says, ‘He will give his angels charge of you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’ You don’t have to go all this rough way to the cross. I’m willing to bow out of the picture and leave. I’ll just turn over the province if You’ll do it my way. You just go up there on top of the pinnacle of the temple. There’s a crowd down below, and if You jump off, the crowd will say, ‘Oh, look, there’s a man falling.’ But according to this verse, You’ll suddenly start floating down instead, and they’ll say, “This is the Messiah: You will have accomplished Your purpose by trusting in this verse” (See Mt. 4:5-6).

Again Jesus answered as a man and said, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God”’ (Matt. 4:7). The devil was saying to Jesus, “Jesus, put Your trust in a word, not the One who spoke it.” But Jesus said, “I am not going to tempt God My Father. I am not going to go against His will. I am not going to try to manipulate His words or force His hand. I am not, as a man, going to attempt to control God. It shall be as God leads, not at My direction. God’s purposes will be accomplished His way, not Mine.”

The third temptation reveals the true inner nature of sin. I know nothing more calculated to open our hearts and show us what we really are than to see Satan, the cringing, crawling coward, coming finally to say, “Look, I’m willing to lay all the cards on the table. I’m thirsty for credit—I want a little credit. I want You to admit that I am wonderful. If You’ll just get down on your knees once and worship me, if just once You will acknowledge my worth before the universe, it will satisfy me.” The Lord Jesus answered, “Begone, Satan! for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve”’ (Matt. 4:10).

Luke uses an interesting sequence of words in his version of the story. He writes that when Satan took Jesus into the mountains he, “showed Him all the kingdoms of the world... and said to Him, ‘To You I will give all this authority and their glory; for it has been delivered to me”’ (Luke 4:5–6). Satan was counting on Ezekiel 28. God has installed him. Satan was saying to Jesus, “Even when You come forth from heaven, You recognize that I was inaugurated chief of this province and all the kingdom and the power and the glory are mine.” But Jesus responded, “You shall worship God.” Even as a man, the Lord Jesus was not subject to Satan.

Not long after, Jesus went to another mountain, where He called His disciples together and taught them to pray: “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for Thine is the kingdom, and power, and the glory, for ever. Amen” (Matt. 6:9–13, KJV).

The devil had said, “Mine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,” but Jesus said, “You are going to follow Me, My children. Begin by saying to the Father, ‘Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory.”’

It must be as humiliating to the devil as anything else to have millions of people praying daily, saying, “For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever,” when that was what he had wanted for himself most of all.

Finally, the devil left Jesus, and our Lord had some good company for a while compared to what was ahead for Him— He was with the wild beasts. I’m sure they were far better companions than many of the men and women He would encounter. My Lord, having come into a rebel province, having confronted the ruling prince, having declared the principles of victory and announced Satan’s defeat, was now alone among the wild animals, and the angels of God came and ministered to Him. Soon, He would leave those friendly beasts and ministering spirits to face our ancestors, who would eventually crucify Him. Jesus had truly identified Himself with man, and in that form, He would fulfill the Father’s purpose to bring salvation and the forgiveness of sins to the earth.

1) A Mighty Fortress, Martin Luther, 1529. Translated by Frederick H. Hedge, 1853.