Author's Preface
Author's Preface
When Michael Green, in his friendly and persuasive way, invited me to contribute to this series and allowed me a choice of titles, I told him I would play for safety and opt for The Hard Sayings of Jesus. What I meant by `playing for safety' was, I think, that this subject would confine me mainly to exposition, an exercise in which I feel comfortably at home.
I quickly found that the exposition of the hard sayings of Jesus is a difficult and responsible task; yet I am glad that I undertook it, for it has proved specially rewarding. His yoke is easy and his burden is light, but his sayings are often hard because they run counter to well-entrenched presuppositions and traditional assumptions about life and human relations. When they are hard for this reason, I hope I have not made them easier, for that would be to obscure their meaning. But the exposition of seventy of his sayings in the following pages may help readers to see what the main emphases of his teaching were.
F. F. B.