Jesus grew up and lived as a young man ‘in the Jewish homeland under Roman occupation,’ during the era of ‘postexilic Judaism.’ He was steeped in the traditions and practices of mature Jewish religious faith, shaped by the vision of the Law and the Prophets — that sweeping understanding of a good world, plagued by evil yet existing wholly under the dominion of God, where goodness, life, and love lie at the centre of the universe.
Because Jesus reigns over all in the kingdom of God, death itself may be faced with calm assurance (Luke 12:4; John 8:51). This is among the most radical claims of the Christian faith — not merely that death is not the end, but that death has been fundamentally defeated and need no longer inspire terror in those who belong to Christ.
All the above grounds and reinforces a striking conviction: that radical self-denial is the true path to genuine and lasting joy (Heb 12:2). This may be the most counterintuitive aspect of Jesus' teaching and the most difficult for our contemporary culture to accept. We are told constantly that self-fulfillment, self-expression, and self-assertion are the keys to happiness. Jesus teaches the opposite: self-denial is the route to lasting joy.