Friday, August 7, 2020

The writings of Luke the physician starting with his version of the gospel - Luke 14:25-35 comments: whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple




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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