Jeremiah is caught between fidelity to the vocation that is his as God’s prophet and his own natural inclinations. He was called to deliver a message of violence and destruction to his own people. It is his nation that will be racked with violence and that will face destruction, and he recoils from this responsibility. He can no longer endure the burden so he decides never again to speak in God’s name. However, like a roaring fire, the words seem to burn within him. He cannot restrain their fury. He must speak. Jeremiah is indeed a man of sorrows.
Paul appeals to the mercies of God as the basis of his admonition when he asks the Christians of Rome to offer themselves as a living sacrifice. He is calling them to a disciplined life, not a sacrificial death. He insists that they have entered into the final age of fulfillment. Saved through the blood of Christ and filled with the Spirit of God, they are being transformed into Christ. They have put aside the standards of this world in order to take on the standards of Christ and of the reign of God. This is the transformation and renewal of which Paul speaks.
Jesus predicts his own suffering, death, and resurrection and then discusses the need for the disciples to bear their own suffering. The idea of a suffering mes siah did not conform to the expectations of the people, at least not to Peter’s. He rebukes Jesus. Jesus then addresses Peter as Satan, the one who acts as an obstacle to the unfolding of God’s will. Then, turning to the other disciples, Jesus says that those who follow him must, like him, deny themselves any self-interest and self-fulfillment. Those who selfishly save themselves from sufferings lose in the arena of eschatological judgment, while those who unselfishly offer themselves are saved from this judgment. This is what following Jesus means.