Luke 14:25–35
25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.
27 And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
28 “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? 29 For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, 30 saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
31 “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace.
33 In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.
34 “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? 35 It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” (Luke 14:25–35)
These days the television runs a constant stream of advertisements. Through them all sorts of manufacturers and merchants keep convincing us how cheap the thing is that they are selling. They offer us goods on installment plans. A thousand payment schemes, low interest rates, and so on. By contrast, Jesus almost seems to push us away with His call to sit down and count the cost carefully before we become His disciples. He does not promise us some cheap kind of Christianity. But usually, when something is too cheap, it is not of good quality. And the opposite is also true: what Jesus promises us is priceless.
Let us look first at how this passage begins:
25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: (Luke 14:25)
The first thing we must notice here is that Jesus was speaking to those who were following Him. Not to the people who did not like Him, but to those who were walking behind Him. They considered themselves followers of Jesus, but in reality they were only sympathizers, not committed disciples. They wanted to follow Jesus, but only on the condition that the price was not too high and the demands were not too great.
They were like many people today who do “Christian things”—going to church, praying, singing Christian songs, and so on—but who are not truly committed to the Lord. Such people want to share in the heavenly kingdom, but they do not want to give up the things in their lives that keep them from following Jesus with their whole heart. Perhaps they seek Jesus for the solution to their financial, health, and family problems, but they abandon the faith when following Jesus does not solve their problems. These large crowds were shallow sympathizers, not committed disciples.
Perhaps we should ask ourselves: “Do I really understand what it means to be a disciple of Jesus? Am I ready to pay the ‘tuition’ for my spiritual education every day, or is my debt before the Lord constantly growing?”
There are certain words in this passage that are repeated three times, and they ring out like an echo. Concerning three different kinds of people who do not meet the conditions He sets, Jesus says: “…cannot be my disciple.” In this passage He identifies three categories of people who cannot be His disciples.
- Those for whom He is not first in their lives (v. 26);
26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)
- Those who do not carry their cross (v. 27);
27 And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:27)
- Those who are not ready to give up everything they have for the sake of discipleship (v. 33).
33 In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples. (Luke 14:33)
In this way Christ sets a definite standard of commitment. And this level of commitment is especially important, because it applies not only to some special group of extraordinarily spiritual Christians, such as the apostles, but to everyone who would want to be a disciple of Christ. Several times in this text Jesus said, “If anyone wants to be my disciple…,” which means that these requirements are for all believers.
IS JESUS PRIORITY NUMBER ONE IN YOUR LIFE?
The first ones who cannot be Christ’s disciples are described in verse 26:
26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)
First, we cannot be Christ’s disciples if Jesus is not priority number one for us—if He is not in first place in our lives. In our hearts Jesus must come before our loved ones, before our personal interest, before our possessions, before our career, before our hobbies and our goals in life, even before our own life.
Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate…” This is a hyperbole used in order to be stamped upon our minds. The word “hate” used here has a figurative meaning in Jewish culture. For the Jews of that time, to hate meant to love one thing less than another—in this case, to love something less than Jesus. What, then, does it mean that we must “hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even our own life”? It means that we must love Jesus more than all these people who are dear to our hearts. Here Jesus is not speaking about the emotional feelings we may have toward Him or toward our family, but about our level of commitment. He is saying that our commitment to obey Him and to follow Him must be greater than any other commitment in our lives.
We must ask ourselves today: “Is Jesus first in my life? Is He priority number one for me? Am I more faithful to Him than to all other people, even to those closest to me?” For example, if following Jesus begins to create problems in our closest relationships, will we keep on following Him? In some countries, following Jesus can mean being cut off from your family, as in India, for instance. Sometimes it can even be equal to death, as in China or North Korea. In our own country, many believers experience problems in their families because one of the two spouses is a committed Christian and the other is not. In these cases Jesus wants us to know plainly what it means to be His disciples.
Of course, no one should use these verses as a pretext for not caring for his own household. For in the letter to the Ephesians the apostle Paul tells husbands to love their wives as their own bodies, just as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5:25; 28), and in 1 Timothy he warns that the one who does not provide for his own household is “worse than an unbeliever.”
8 Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (1 Timothy 5:8)
ARE YOU CARRYING YOUR CROSS?
The second “cannot be my disciple” is in verse 27:
27 And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:27)
According to Jesus, we cannot be His disciples if we are not ready to suffer for Him and for the kingdom of God. In this verse Jesus uses the metaphor of the cross to underline His words. In those days everyone understood what Jesus meant when He spoke about carrying your cross. The cross was a brutal form of execution invented by the Romans. Criminals were forced to carry their crosses to the place of their execution. Everyone knew that when someone took up his cross, he was saying goodbye to his life and to everything in this world. They knew that if you took up your cross, from that moment on there was no turning back. And Jesus uses exactly this illustration to show us that, in order to follow Him, we too are required to say goodbye to our own desires and to submit our will to His completely. Someone has said that our cross is the place where God’s will crosses our own will. To carry our cross means that when we come to such a place in our lives, we choose to do not what we want, but what we know to be the will of God. In other words, when God’s will crosses our will, someone has to die, and that someone is our flesh, our old, sinful nature. In Romans 8 the apostle Paul says:
12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. (Romans 8:12–13)
Someone might say: “Wait a minute! Doesn’t this requirement of complete commitment contradict the spiritual truth that salvation is a free gift from God?” While I was preparing for this sermon I came across the following illustration from the book “The Cost of Discipleship” by Steven Cole.
Suppose I have a desire to climb Mount Everest. But the price for such an expedition is no less than eighty thousand dollars, and I do not have that money. Then a wealthy businessman offers to pay for the whole trip. He is ready to buy all the equipment and to cover everything needed for transportation, guides, and preparation. All of this will be free for me. But if I accept this free offer, I commit myself to months of hard training and a time of preparation and effort. This expedition could cost me even my life, because many good climbers (including Bulgarians) have died in the attempt to climb Everest. It is free, and yet it is costly. Such is the relationship between salvation and discipleship. Salvation is by grace, but discipleship is costly. In this connection someone has said the following:
Salvation from Jesus costs nothing,
Following Jesus costs something,
Serving Jesus costs everything.
There is a price for being in the school of Christ. And the price is the maximum—to deny both yourself and all your possessions. The steps of Jesus pass through the cross. So if we want to follow Him, we must be ready to suffer. There is a saying that “Without a cross, there is no crown.” But if our love and our commitment to Christ are strong enough, we will be able to endure the cross and to enter into the glory of God.
ARE YOU READY TO GIVE UP EVERYTHING YOU HAVE?
In verse 33 of our passage Jesus said:
33 In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples. (Luke 14:33)
Here Jesus tells us to give up everything. In the Greek, for someone to “give up” everything he has means for him to say goodbye to, or to forsake, all his possessions. This means to leave behind everything that keeps us from following Jesus faithfully and fully.
Jesus must come not only before our loved ones, not only before our own life, but also before everything we have. Before all our personal desires, goals, interests, and even needs. Jesus must be lifted up in our lives above our savings, our public image, our work, our comfort, and so on. And here we are not speaking about some hypothetical situation, but about our everyday life. If our following of Jesus means being deprived of all these things we have mentioned, then we must be ready to do it. And sometimes following Jesus really can require us to make these sacrifices.
YOU CANNOT RISK LOSING YOUR SALTINESS!
Discipleship is not cheap, and we must count the cost well to see whether we can afford it beforehand—not after we have already decided to become believers. To begin the life of a disciple of Christ and not finish it is shameful and ruinous. This is exactly the point of Jesus’ parables about the man who builds a tower and about the king who prepares for war.
28 “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? 29 For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, 30 saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ (Luke 14:28–30)
31 “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. (Luke 14:31–32)
34 “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? 35 It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” (Luke 14:34–35)
That is why I tell you that we cannot risk losing our saltiness. Because when salt loses its saltiness, it is good for nothing except to be thrown out. Does that sound to you like salvation and eternal life? If we are Christians only by label but not in substance, we will perish!
If we claim to be something and then it turns out that we are not what we say we are, we will lose our worth, we will lose our value. That is why we must think ahead. Jesus does not want people to commit themselves to Him without understanding what it is about and without seriously considering what the decision to be a follower of Christ involves. Unlike many people today, including many preachers, who are interested only in gathering large crowds, Jesus was not interested—and still is not interested—in numbers. Large crowds do not impress God. What impresses Him are fully committed people. He is not looking for head counts. He is looking for commitment.
Jesus ends His speech with the words: “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” He said this to remind us of our responsibility to hear and to respond to this difficult message. A message that is not difficult to understand, but is difficult to accept and to apply.
So the question is not only “Do you want to be a disciple of Christ?” The question is “Can you afford to be a disciple of Christ?” Are you ready to pay the price that following Jesus demands?
If you still want to be a disciple of Christ, then you must honestly answer the following questions:
- Is Jesus priority number one in my life?
- Am I ready to carry my cross daily, whatever that may mean?
- Am I ready to give up everything, just so that I may follow Jesus?