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In Luke 14:25-35, our precious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, teaches us about the cost of being his disciple. During the time in which this passage took place, there was a weeding process going on—a thinning out process if you will. Lots of folks followed Jesus Christ for the wrong reasons. He was terrifically charismatic and powerful, and these characteristics are magnetic; they draw folks from the wood-works, and so it was with our Master Jesus. People flocked to him, but he made it clear that before they’d attempt to get on the disciple train, they needed to know that a cost was involved. He said in Luke 14:27-28(NLT), “And if you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple. But don’t begin until you count the cost. For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there is enough money to finish it?”
The heft of this wisdom is enormous. It takes lifetimes to fully unpack it, but we definitely aim to extract a few of its juicy nuggets. Jesus said, “IF you do not carry your own cross…” This suggests to us that all of us will have one—all of us will have a cross to carry. We will have something in our lives that we’re holding tightly to, and we shouldn’t be. It’s not that the thing we cling to is so bad. It’s that we’ve demonstrated repeatedly that we will place this person, relationship, behavior, attitude, thing, or situation before our commitment to God. We will allow something to take precedent over God’s agenda, and in some ways, we have shown that we will not relinquish our wills for His Will.
For some of us, this is a very unconscious thing, but we need to pray to God that through the Holy Spirit, He will cause us to snap into consciousness about it. Because Jesus said in Luke 14:26(NLT), “If you want to be my disciple, you must, by comparison, hate everyone else—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple.”
I was in a seminar not long ago, and when asked to comment about the scripture in Luke 14:26, a man remarked that he had mixed emotions about it. He found it challenging to reconcile with all his meaningful relationships and the various components of his existence. And this is precisely what this passage demonstrates. All of us cling to things of which we derive comfort, support, and love. But we are called by God to breach the walls of that comfort and stretch beyond it. The proof of our all-encompassing commitment to Christ is admitting the truth about the hold that some aspects of our lives have on us. It is to admit the degree to which we cling to the very things that Christ calls upon us to lose for the sake of God’s Kingdom. It is in effect dying to those things so that God is first. This is the cost of discipleship, and many of us don’t want to pay it.
Jesus doesn’t want us to hate anyone. Neither does he want the joy in our lives diminished. God wants us to be exceedingly blessed, but we are not on this earth to serve our own purpose. We are here to serve our Creator’s purpose, and it should be the joy of our rejoicing to do so.
Jesus Christ tells us John 15:5 that he is the vine and we are the branches. All that we are is attributable to what he has accomplished for us, and without him we can’t do anything. God is the One who keeps—protects and sustains—all those we care about. He’s the glue that holds our relationships together. He’s the glue that holds the people we love together. They don’t belong to us; they belong to Him. God is our sufficiency. He takes care of us and all that we care about, so we should never put anyone or anything before God.
This is what Jesus Christ is making very plain to us, that if we are putting anything before our allegiance to God and His Kingdom, we’re missing the boat. Understand that Jesus Christ IS the LIFE! He said this in John 14:16. He is life itself. If this life in Christ is not at the very core of our motivation day to day, death will eat away at what we hold dear. We saw this demonstrated through the example of Job. He offered sacrifices for the sins of his children but did so out of fear. He had the wrong motivation, and this gave satan the ammunition he needed to wage war.
The habit pattern of a believer is to surrender to God every morning, to allow His Will to be done in our lives. Jesus makes it very clear that this is our choice. The eyes of heaven are upon us continually, measuring our dedication and commitment to seek the Kingdom of God first. We need to analyze ourselves, because there is a cost to discipleship, and sometimes the things we cling to will be removed, but we will not break when this happens. If our trust is in the Lord Jesus Christ, we must be anchored in the reality that all things will always work together for our good. So finally, what we lose in life is incomparable to the spiritual treasures we will gain.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
“Never Put Anyone or Anything Before God”, written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2019. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.
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