Luke 14:25-33, a segment that extends to verse 35, contains sayings around the theme of the conditions of discipleship. Jesus urges people to consider the cost of discipleship.
In context, three times the conditions for discipleship are set forth, and three times the same refrain follows, "cannot be my disciple" (vv. 26, 27 and 33). The disciple must "hate" or "cannot be my disciple." The follower must "carry the cross and follow me" or "cannot be my disciple" (v. 27) and must "give up" all possessions, or "cannot be my disciple" (v. 33 NIV). The corollary in Matthew, "is not worthy of me" (10:37-38), is the equivalent in Luke and, unlike the Lukan record, appears twice rather than three times. Both expressions may have a common Aramaic source rendering this phrase familiar, if not difficult, to the ears of his listeners. In any case, the willingness to give up family ties, face radical self-denial, and abandon possessions constitutes what Jesus calls the "cost" of being his disciple.
Luke provides the setting that large crowds were traveling with him, reminding us as readers that the travel narrative that began in 9:51 continues in its description of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Verse 26 (Matt 10:37)[1] reflects the prophetic self-consciousness that would have a home in the Jewish-Christian community, with the saying involving hating one’s family:[2] Whoever comes to me, which the large crowd had done, and does not hate, referring to complete detachment, disowning, renunciation, rejection, father and mother, wife (unique to Luke) and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Hatred of all we are under obligation to love, including the self, is the condition of fellowship with Jesus and working together with him. This does not refer to a form of hate that would be a psychological issue, but disowning, renunciation, and rejection, committed exclusively to Jesus and not bound to anyone or anything else. Such separation is the test of following Jesus.[3] Jesus requires the denial of everything earthly in following him.[4] In a similar teaching, Epictetus (around 108 AD, Discourses III.3.5-7) teaches his pupils that good is preferred to every obligation, regardless of how near the person might be. He is not connected with his father or his brother, regardless of how hard-hearted that may seem, but he is first connected to the good. Of course, the difference is that Epictetus advises attachment to the good while Jesus advises his followers to attach themselves to him. Jesus calls upon disciples to love their families (5:27-32, 19:1-14) and honor parents (15:1-9). We need to understand this saying in that context. Such love and honor within the family must not stand in the way of obedience to God. His words sound stern and uncompromising but have a relative meaning. In Gen 29:29-33, we can note the movement from Jacob loving Rachel more than Leah to Leah saying that Jacob hated her, in the sense of loving her less than he loved Rachel. As readers today, we need to reckon with the possibility that Jesus commended the renunciation of marriage to at least some of his followers. Following Jesus comes before all ties of family. Following Jesus could mean a hard surrender of family. If so, if it was the father of the house who decided to enter the community Jesus was forming, his wife and children would have no choice but to return to the home of her parents, although this act would be a social stigma attached to it.[5] If presented with a choice, love of family must not come before love of Jesus. For Jesus, family ties faded into insignificance in relation to God's imperial rule, which he regarded as the fundamental claim on human loyalty.
Jesus confronts directly the household cultural institution of his day. In Mediterranean societies, a persons' primary loyalty was to blood relatives, especially parents. The failure to honor parents meant the loss of face, of honor, and led to ostracism. Coming to Jesus is not the same as discipleship. The point of Jesus is decisive. Jesus puts family, friends, self in subordination to discipleship. One can understand the severity of this saying in the context of the primacy of filial relationships. Individuals had no real existence apart from their ties to blood relatives, especially parents. If one did not belong to a family, one had no existence in the eyes of society. Jesus is therefore confronting the social structures that governed his society at their core. For Jesus, family ties faded into insignificance in relation to God's imperial rule, which he regarded as the fundamental claim on human loyalty. In terms of the context, aware of the throngs, Jesus turns to them and utters a hard and enigmatic saying that can have no other effect than to diminish the ranks of potential disciples in the crowd. It seems incredible that Jesus could counsel one to participate in hatred of any kind. This is not the only time where Luke presents family as a potential obstacle to participation in the kingdom. In the text immediately preceding this unit, the parable of the great banquet (vv. 15-24), one person uses the excuse that he has just married and cannot come to the banquet. Likewise, earlier in the chapter, Jesus advises those who host banquets not to invite friends and family who can repay them the honor, but to invite those who could never return such a favor (vv. 12-14). Furthermore, in Luke 8:19-21, Jesus redefines family, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it” (8:21). This redefinition of family places the will of God first and reconfigures all relationships based on this priority. We see this prioritization of the rule of God most clearly in the difficult sayings of 9:57-62 in which Jesus tells a would-be follower to place the proclamation of the kingdom before the burial of his father or even before saying farewell to those at home. He then proclaims to the one who hopes to follow, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (9:62). We must read the difficult saying of hating one’s father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters in 14:26 considering these other sayings on family. Jesus intends the sayings to be harsh. Jesus intends to cause any would-be follower to stop and consider the full costs of following Jesus.
We must not press these words beyond their proper sense. We should not give words that had a specific direction in this moment a universal significance. Yet, we must also be willing to see the distinctive and concrete ethical direction is present. “Hate” does not mean emotion aversion, hostility, contempt, or repugnance. We should not take it psychologically. Such a statement is not a universal rule for all human conduct. Yet, within these limits, we must not tone down the saying. The divine command can in fact acquire the character of a commitment that literally says Jesus says here. Some situations demand this sense and direction.[6]
Such a statement is a reminder of the broken nature of the reality that salvation can achieve in historical form. Christian confession itself causes opposition that Christians cannot avoid if the cost is their confession. Thus, the unity of humanity in the reign of God is always a broken one as we see it in its historical form.[7] Such separation is the cost of faithful confession in this world. Jesus warns his followers that they must make life-and-death choices in the matters of to whom to be loyal and whom to fear. There are soul-shaking consequences to their choices. If their primary focus is avoiding rejection, death, or bodily harm at the hands of angry family members and other folks who oppose Jesus, then they deny Jesus and risk losing their very souls. Alternatively, they can choose to focus primarily on Jesus and his mission, no matter what the cost (even a cross), deny themselves, and follow him. These sayings remind us that there is life beyond this paralyzing fear of rejection and loss and that in the whole scheme of things, there are much more important things of which to be afraid. Jesus offers us the ultimate perspective of the rule of God, and from that eternal perspective, we will all realize that being a faithful witness and standing with Christ in this life is much more important than the fear of rejection and loss. A community of people unafraid of losing the praise and esteem of the world and even its possessions and building would truly be free.
The point for us today is that Jesus does not play a secondary role to other commitments. Re-ordering commitments is a central moment in our discipleship. Here, Jesus is saying that discipleship means strengthening our faith ties to Jesus. A true disciple will value a relationship with Christ over other relationships. If we are not literally to hate family, we are not to worship them either. A disciple knows his or her vocation or mission in life.
In verse 27 (Matt 10:38 but also parallel to Mark 8:34-5, Matthew 16:24-25, Luke 9:23-24) Jesus expresses his prophetic self-consciousness that found a home in the Jewish-Christian community,[8] turns to the theme of persecution in its mention of the cross, the Roman government's most heinous means of inflicting criminal punishment: Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple (Matthew has “is not worthy of me”). This expresses the prophetic self-consciousness of Jesus.[9] Mark 8:34 (Matt 16:24, Luke 9:23) is similar: Whoever would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.[10] This refers to a sense of vocation.[11] That is, their cross meant the consequences of the special calling and sending they received from God. To follow Christ involves denial of self in the sense of yielding freely to this total service and therefore refusal to save their lives for themselves. Jesus lays out requirements for discipleship that go far beyond any usual conversion practices. Jewish proselytes had to decide to accept Jewish faith and law freely, willingly rejecting old pagan relationships and acquaintances. The insistence of Jesus that a potential disciple must not only deny all old familiar ties but must be prepared to suffer horribly because of their identity as a disciple is unprecedented. Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously said in his Cost of Discipleship, that when Christ calls us, he bids us to come to him and die. Epictetus said, "If you want to be crucified, just wait. The cross will come. If it seems reasonable to comply, and the circumstances are right, then it's to be done, and your integrity maintained." He is rehearsing one of several consequences of adopting and living in accordance with a certain philosophy. He would likewise graphically depict the cost of assuming an analogous way of life. One can conceive of such a fate as imagined here because of the social challenge and outrageous behavior in which Jesus seems to have participated. Bearing one’s own cross is no easy burden. This means that each disciple has a cross to take up, rather than to fear, hate, avoid, evade, or escape the affliction that falls on the disciple. Discipleship becomes a matter of each Christian carrying one’s own cross, suffering one’s own affliction, bearing the definite limitation of death that in one form or another falls on one’s own existence.[12] The challenge here is that to follow Jesus, one simply must renounce, withdraw, and annul, any existing relationship of obedience and loyalty, namely, to oneself. As he sees it, self-denial in the context of following Jesus involves a step into the open, into the freedom of a definite decision and act, in which it is with a real commitment that people take leave themselves, the person of yesterday, of the people they were. They give up their previous form of existence. What matters now is not the self, but to follow Jesus, regardless of the cost.[13]
Luke’s gospel portrays Jesus’ foretelling of his imminent death in 9:21-27 and then resolutely setting forth to go to the cross. In 9:22-24, after he tells the disciples that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected and killed (v. 22), he says to all, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” (vv. 23-24). Bearing one’s own cross echoes the demand to hate one’s life in 14:26. The kingdom of God must come before personal security, health and life. Discipleship is a march to the cross with a deep and abiding hope in God’s sovereignty even over death (9:22, 24-27).
In the sayings about the discipleship of the cross, Jesus required his disciples to bear his cross, but only as far as they were to bear their own. Sharing the cross and death of Jesus thus means subjecting all else to the specific divine calling that each of us receives just as Jesus himself subjected all else to his own sending by the Father and for the sake of it was willing to go even to death.[14]
For those who had not heard the private prediction of Jesus concerning his suffering, death and resurrection, these words must have shocked them to their shoes.
After two millennia of "cross" imagery, our senses are not as shocked by this reference, as listeners to Jesus must have been. The pain, brutality, and degradation of a death by crucifixion ‑‑ including the spirit‑stripping practice of making the condemned "take up his cross" on this final death march to the execution site ‑‑ was a torture reserved for only the most despised of state criminals. Yet this is the very image Jesus chooses to represent as the fate of his most devoted disciples.
Following Jesus in this service means co-crucifixion with Jesus. Paul, in fact, suggests this in Galatians 2:19-20, where he says that he has been crucified with Christ so that now, his life is a matter of Christ living in and through him. The focus on discipleship is identification with the destiny of Jesus. This view is in keeping with the sayings of Jesus about the discipleship of the cross, in which Jesus required his disciples to bear his cross, but only as far as they were to bear their own. The bearing of their cross is the consequence of the special calling and sending they received from God. Christology and discipleship are inseparable, and that the way of Jesus to the cross is also the way the disciple must follow.[15]
Luke next provides two examples of what it means to count the cost. Jesus is calling people to take great risks, but he wants their eyes wide open to the decision they are making.[16] Jesus calls his listeners to self-testing, moving from a lesser example to a more important case. Jesus drives home the exhortation to not act without mature consideration, for a thing half-done is worse than a thing never begun.[17] These parables do not seem to serve well Jesus' insistence upon self-renunciation. Indeed, the reverse is true. These are accounts of self-actualized, self-assertive men who are determined to build or go to war and who are carefully counting the cost before doing so. Yet, Jesus makes the deeper point: The man who builds the tower and the king who goes to war will count everything that does not advance those objectives as worthless and meaningless. One must make great sacrifices for great gain.
Verses 28-30 (unique to Luke) is a saying of proverbial wisdom in parabolic form involving the tower builder. It begins with a rhetorical question. For which of you, intending to build a tower, a private house of many stories,[18] does not first sit down and estimate the cost, recognizing one must work out or reckon the cost,[19] to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Jesus urges self-evaluation and probing, especially when it comes to making critical decisions.[20] The follower of Jesus must undergo self-examination to see whether he or she has the requisite means and strength, which in context suggests renouncing all personal resources.[21]He suggests that becoming a disciple is such a crucial moment in one’s life. By such careful reckoning, the builder not only avoids littering the landscape with an unfinished tower but avoids the taunting barbs of his neighbors as well. It can cost to be a follower of Jesus.
Verses 31-32 (unique to Luke) is proverbial wisdom in parabolic form involving the warring king. It begins with a rhetorical question. Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. If the king has underestimated the strength of the enemy, he will submit to the terms of peace the enemy offers.[22] Jesus urges self-evaluation and probing before making crucial decisions, suggesting that the decision to follow Jesus is such a critical moment.[23]
As isolated parables, to what kind of self-examination were the parables meant to lead?[24] We need to consider the two parables from the perspective of Jesus himself. Jesus, facing Jerusalem, is seeking committed disciples to carry on the work of the kingdom. Jesus is the tower-builder and the king going to war. He is the one who has counted the cost of building and of the battle. He is determined neither to abandon the building nor to sue his enemy for peace. The disciple can be confident that he is following one who has himself "estimate[d] the cost" and can see this through.[25]
In these parables, given their context, Jesus is explaining an aspect of the message of the imminence of the rule of God against critics, in this case, the right answer to its summons.[26] Jesus intended the parables to encourage would-be followers of Jesus to take heart. The message of the parables is that if the builder counts the cost before building the tower, he is likely to complete it successfully. Likewise, if the king carefully assesses the battle-readiness of his troops, he is likely to gain the victory. The point is this: If the demands of Jesus to love him more than family and life itself seem hard, the disciple will not fail in his discipleship if he counts the cost as carefully and enthusiastically as the worldly tower-builder and the warrior-king. We, too, can avoid building a spiritual tower that is a few bricks shy of a full load, and can avoid being a few soldiers short of a full and complete spiritual victory.
The parables may also suggest that the tower-building phase of Jesus' ministry is nearing completion and that the real battle is about to begin. Jesus once needed fellow builders; he now needs soldiers, not camp followers, as he nears Jerusalem. Subsequent events will demonstrate reality of his fears. In his hour of need, there is no one who "hates" family or life for his sake, there is no one who joins him in his hour of radical self-denial, and there is no one who gives up all his possessions for him. His tormentors do not say, "This fellow began to build and was not able to finish," but they do say, "He saved others; let him save himself" (23:35). It is too late to sue for peace with his enemy. He is alone.
Verse 33 (unique to Luke) is an application of the previous two parables, even though they contain nothing of the idea of sacrifice of possessions,[27] a thought of saying goodbye to everything: So therefore, none of you, referring to all followers, can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. Jesus makes discipleship dependent on the renunciation of possessions.[28] Jesus calls for renunciation of possessions. Luke regularly portrays wealth as a hindrance to discipleship. In the Beatitudes, Jesus blesses the poor (vs. the “poor in spirit” in Matthew 5:3) and pronounces a woe to the rich (6:20, 24). In 18:18-30, the rich ruler fails to follow Jesus because he cannot part with his possessions. His own disciples have left everything to follow him (5:11, 28; 18:28). Those who will follow Jesus on his way to the cross must go on the journey with him as Jesus now presents them with the opportunity. The rule of God has broken into the present and demands response. God has sent the invitation to the banquet. Now, those would-be disciples must choose to follow or to stay behind.
Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether.[29]
The Danish philosopher, Kierkegaard, complained of the petty preachers of his day who preached artistic sermons "Whereby Jesus hath obtained admirers rather than followers." It is well known that Christ consistently used the expression “follower.” He never asks for admirers, worshippers, or adherents. No, he calls disciples. It is not adherents of a teaching but followers of a life Christ for which Christ is looking. Christ came into the world with the purpose of saving, not instructing it. At the same time, as is implied in his saving work, he came to be the pattern, to leave footprints for the person who would join him, who would become a follower. What then, is the difference between an admirer and a follower? A follower strives to be what he admires. An admirer keeps personally detached. An admirer fails to see that what is admired involves a claim upon a life and thus fails to strive to become what the person admires. If you have any knowledge of human nature, who can doubt that Judas was an admirer of Christ! And we know that Christ at the beginning of his work had many admirers. Judas was precisely such an admirer and thus later became a traitor. The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. The admirer always plays it safe. Though in words, phrases, songs, they are inexhaustible in expressing they prize Christ, yet renounces nothing, will not reconstruct their lives, and will not let their lives express what it is they admires. Not so for the follower. Followers aspire with all their strength to be what they admire.[30]
At this stage in the journey, crowds admire Jesus. His teaching fascinates the crowds. They think the world of his witness to the rule of God. However, a great distance exists between admiration and discipleship, a distance bridged only by something called commitment. Here is commitment, which can detach us, cut us loose from other worthy commitments. Here is a jealous lover who tolerates no rivals.
Frankly, I do not think it is easy to confuse following Jesus with adhering to Carl Jung (psychology), Adam Smith (economics), Karl Marx (political ideology), Hegel, Kant, Kierkegaard (all philosophy). Yet, many people have done so. To keep looking to Jesus and away from the ideas most attractive to us is difficult. Are we willing to pay the price?
In his book, Four Quartets, the poet T.S. Eliot predicts that, at the end of our spiritual journey, there will come a day when:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
A little later Eliot goes on, in his apocalyptic vision:
“Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)”
Once we achieve that God-given simplicity, Eliot channels well-known words of Julian of Norwich. He assures us:
“And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.”
[1]
[2] The version of the saying in Matthew reads: "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me."
[3] Michel, TDNT, IV, 690-1.
[4] Schrenk, TDNT, V, 983.
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10] Does the saying assume the Christian view of the cross? One of the considerations that historians bring to a saying like this is that the image of the cross appears here as a Christian symbol. Can language of this sort mean anything other than a reference to Jesus' crucifixion? My assumption here is that Jesus could have said this. A Jewish teacher could have used the image of the cross to express the cost of faithfulness, given the Roman use of the cross to punish rebels.
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18] Michaelis, TDNT, VI, 955.
[19] Braumann, TDNT, IX, 607.
[20]
[21] Braumann, TDNT, IX, 607
[22]
[23]
[24]
[25] (For more on this view, see Peter G. Jarvis, "Expounding the Parables: The Tower-builder and the King Going to War (Luke 14:25-33)," Expository Times, 77 (April 1966), 196-198.
[26]
[27]
[28]
[29] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, 1985, 121.
[30] —Søren Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity, trans. Walter Lowrie (Vintage, 2004).
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