This, then, is a perfect example of the error of transcriptionist 17 I mentioned earlier. Someone noticed that Mark 9 and Matthew 17 contain the same story, but Mark had words that Matthew didn’t. So, either in an attempt to connect the two passages for personal remembrance or to fix a supposed error, a transcriptionist of Matthew copied the words of Mark 9:29 at Matthew 17:21. When modern translators discovered this was not in an older copy of Matthew, they footnoted it because it is in Mark 9.

But the neat thing about the Bible, about God, and about His commands is that they’re not different for the old or new believer; He does not qualify or restrict His ordinances based on how long you’ve been reborn—with the exception that you can only be obedient to the extent of your knowledge (James 4:17). So the call for the immature believer remains the same: don’t set a stumbling block in front of another Christian and be an example for all in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity.

1 Corinthians 13 tells us that what remains is faith, hope, and love. Take everything else in this world away, and these three subsist. And it is only here that they can exist at all because it is only here that we could ever grow to comprehend a lack of faith, hope, and love. It is only in the bitterness that we can come to understand the true sweetness of God. The angels know God’s status as set apart, holy. They know His timelessness. We alone know, can comprehend, and can receive grace and mercy by faith, hope, and love. We alone can repent. We alone can be brought near. And we alone are recipients of the heart of the one true God. Do you want to know why suffering exists? Because only by suffering can we grasp the magnitude of grace.

The effort, as I’ve said, is not merely to deny ourselves, for our bodies are temples, not the “flesh” that the Scriptures say we are to deny. It’s not about hurting or inconveniencing ourselves in order to look good. In fact, when we fast, the Bible is clear no one should know (Matthew 6:16-18). It is also not about what we are giving up. The things we are giving up are vehicles to clear space for us to seek God.

He used not only the prophecies of Micah and Isaiah but also the Babylon’s pagan conquests and the pagan astrology of the wise men to draw them hundreds of miles from their home to tiny Bethlehem and tiny Jesus who would eventually open up the way for them to forgo their pagan ways and come to the Way, the Truth, and the Life. God used Israel’s wickedness and disobedience to make not His people His people (Hosea 2:23) by captivity in Babylon, which not only drew His people back to Him at the time but also opened up the way for even Gentiles to show the love of Christ after the resurrection.