Luke 14:25 ¶ And there went
great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them, 26 If any man come to me, and hate not
his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea,
and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. 27 And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and
come after me, cannot be my disciple. 28
For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first,
and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?
29 Lest haply, after he hath laid the
foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it
begin to mock him, 30 Saying, This man
began to build, and was not able to finish. 31
Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down
first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that
cometh against him with twenty thousand? 32
Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an
ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace. 33
So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath,
he cannot be my disciple. 34 Salt is
good: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned?
35 It is neither fit for the land, nor
yet for the dunghill; but men cast it out. He that hath ears to hear,
let him hear.
A word should be said
about the word hate here. In a
different context, when Jesus commissioned the twelve apostles as reported in
Matthew 10 it is recorded;
Matthew 10:37 He that
loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth
son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
By comparing passages
that express the same or similar sentiment we can determine the meaning of
passages that are difficult for us. Clearly, to hate, in this context, is to hold one in lower regard than one
would reasonably expect rather than to hold in contempt, to despise, to abhor,
and reject as in other contexts. You cannot properly interpret the Bible
without cross-referencing. Any version that destroys the cross-referencing
traits of the Bible should be dismissed outright. If we believe that the Bible
was given by inspiration as it says it was, that the Holy Spirit had a hand in
translations and copies, then we must understand that the ultimate author was
God Himself and in order to understand a word or phrase we need to look within
the text itself.
Verse 27 has led to a
lot of guilt feelings on the part of Christians who do not live in countries
where they are persecuted horribly. It has even prompted some Christians to
make themselves as obnoxious as possible to try to get a taste of what they
perceive is persecution so they can feel justified. However, remember, first
that Jesus is talking to the people He deals with every day in the flesh and
those who would follow Him in His hour of suffering. Tradition tells us that
every single Apostle, save John, died a martyr’s death and it wasn’t for lack
of trying that John was not martyred.
The cross was a type of
execution that was very painful and the process of death was often prolonged as
the sufferer tried to breathe and had to experience the agony of having hands
and feet nailed to the wood.
Many of the people that
would have heard this saying about taking up one’s cross daily left following
Christ when things got tough. The disciple had to be willing to give up all
that he had, all earthly connections, to follow Christ as we can see by verse
26 and Matthew 10:28-30. The end result of that discipleship could be
imprisonment, torture, and death as we can see by Luke 12:11; Acts 7:59; Acts
12:2. The hope and treasures of the
heart of a disciple, as a result, had to be focused on heaven, not earth as we
can see in Matthew 6:19-20.
Even if you are not
persecuted, though many are in many parts of the world today and are called to
see this verse in their lives, you do have the burden of bearing your own Cross
of suffering and pain in this life and bearing it in faith with a testimony
before others who have not trusted Christ or are weak in their faith. We have
this burden of being fenced in with bones and sinews, our souls trapped in the
body of this death, every day dying and yet alive as we can see in Job 10:11
& Galatians 2:20. If we are not willing to suffer these things, although we
will whether we do it in faith or not, then we should count the cost before we
profess faith in our Saviour and declare ourselves redeemed of the Lord as this
passage then reveals. Like salt, we can be completely useless, in our case, in
the disciples of this time’s case, if we or they are unwilling to follow our
Saviour to death. The disciples here are warned that this way is not going to
be painless for them while they are in the flesh.
Suffering in this life
is real and inevitable, whether you do it in faith, trusting your Creator, or
do it in anger and bitterness and denial, and unbelief. For the Christian this
life is the only Hell they will ever know. For the rejector of Christ the
suffering you experience here is only the beginning of woes.
The early Christians
and many now throughout the world are faced with a choice, to renounce Christ
or face the loss of everything they hold dear. To confess Christ or to renounce
Him. Chapter 12 had a reference to this.
Luke 12:8 Also I say unto
you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also
confess before the angels of God: 9 But
he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God.
And so Paul and John
will write;
2Timothy 2:12 If we suffer,
we shall also reign with him:
if we deny him, he also will
deny us:
13 If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot
deny himself.
Revelation 3:7 ¶ And to the
angel of the church in Philadelphia write; These things saith he that is holy,
he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man
shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth; 8
I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no
man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and
hast not denied my name.
Preachers are fond of
using these verses to indict you for not handing out a tract at a certain time
or going door-knocking and those may be valid ways of projecting the text onto
the relatively painless, when it comes to persecution for Americans (at least
the persecution that comes from humans and not the spirit world), but the
context is life-and-death persecution enacted at times by the Romans and later
the Roman and Protestant churches and other religions. The secular state and
Islam are the greatest physical persecutors today.
This context, the
literal meaning of verses, like this has to do with the persecution they faced.
Jesus warned His
disciples to expect it.
Matthew 20:20 ¶ Then came
to him the mother of Zebedee’s children with her sons, worshipping him, and desiring a certain thing of
him. 21 And he said unto her, What wilt
thou? She saith unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy
right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom. 22 But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what
ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be
baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto him, We are
able. 23 And he saith unto them, Ye
shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am
baptized with: but to sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to
give, but it shall be given to them
for whom it is prepared of my Father.
Don’t whine when you
are forbidden to hang up a verse from your office cubicle condemning
homosexuality. Save your whining for when someone is standing over you with a
sword and threatening to cut off your head if you don’t renounce Christ as a
Christian in the Sudan might experience today. The question is, are you
prepared to die guiltless of any violence for your faith and to trust Christ
for your resurrection? It is a question many Christians faced throughout
history. The comfortable Christian culture of America, the self-congratulating
way we practically fall over patting ourselves on the back for “choosing” to be
on the right team, is an echo-chamber where you eventually only hear what
affirms you and justifies you. I suspect in the face of the kind of persecution
a Christian in Vietnam might experience or a Christian in Iran might have to
endure most of us would be running for the hills and swearing allegiance to
anything but Christ to keep evil from being done to us.
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