The Fine Print of Following Jesus Text: Luke 14:25-35
Introduction: Culling the Crowd
We live in an age of soft-sell Christianity. The modern evangelical enterprise is often geared toward making the gospel as palatable, as non-threatening, and as seeker-friendly as possible. We want to fill the seats, so we sand down the sharp edges of the cross, we mute the hard sayings of Jesus, and we present a Savior who is more of a life-coach than a sovereign Lord. We offer a gospel of cheap grace, which is no gospel at all. It is a spiritual bait-and-switch. We get them in the door with promises of a better life, and hope they don't notice the fine print later on.
But Jesus Christ never operated that way. In our text today, we see the Lord doing something that would make any modern church-growth consultant tear his hair out. Great crowds were following Him. By all the metrics of success, His ministry was a triumph. He had momentum. He was popular. And what does He do? He stops, turns around, and gives the crowd a series of the most difficult, offensive, and demanding conditions imaginable. He is not trying to build a crowd; He is culling it. He is not interested in fans; He is calling disciples. And a disciple is something altogether different.
Jesus is not trying to trick anyone into the kingdom. He lays the terms out in the open, in the starkest possible language. He wants everyone to count the cost. The Christian life is not a casual add-on to your already existing life. It is not something you "try out." It is an unconditional surrender. It is a declaration of allegiance to a new King that necessarily puts you at odds with every other competing loyalty. In this passage, Jesus gives us three non-negotiable terms of discipleship. They are hard, they are absolute, and they are glorious.
The Text
Now many crowds were going along with Him, and He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Lest, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions. Therefore, salt is good, but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned? It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
(Luke 14:25-35 LSB)
The Hated Father and the Hated Life (vv. 25-26)
The first condition is a relational absolute.
"If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple." (Luke 14:26)
This is perhaps one of the most jarring statements in all of Scripture, and it is intended to be. Our sentimental age immediately wants to explain it away. We say, "Well, He didn't really mean hate. He meant love less." And while that is the ultimate sense of it, we must not blunt the force of the word Jesus chose. This is a Semitic hyperbole, a rhetorical device meant to shock the listener into a new frame of reference. The point is one of ultimate loyalty. Your love for Jesus Christ must be so absolute, so all-consuming, that by comparison, every other love in your life, even the most precious and natural affections for family, looks like hatred.
This is not a command to be cruel or unloving to your family. The same Bible that says this also commands us to honor our father and mother, and for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church. The point is not about emotion, but allegiance. When there is a conflict between the claims of Christ and the claims of your family, there is no contest. You must choose Christ. If your father tells you to abandon the faith, you must "hate" your father and obey Christ. If your wife pressures you to compromise your convictions, you must "hate" your wife and stand firm. The first commandment is that you shall have no other gods before Him, and family can very easily become an idol.
Notice that Jesus pushes it to the ultimate conclusion: "...yes, and even his own life." This is the core of it. The fundamental loyalty that must be dethroned is your loyalty to yourself. Your own ambitions, your own desires, your own self-preservation must all be nailed to the cross. You are not your own; you were bought with a price. Discipleship is not self-improvement; it is self-abnegation. You cannot follow Christ and follow yourself. You must hate your old life, your sinful life, your autonomous life, in order to receive the new life He gives.
The Cross and the Cost (vv. 27-32)
The second condition is a personal execution.
"Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple." (Luke 14:27)
In our day, we have domesticated the cross. We have turned it into jewelry, a sentimental symbol. We talk about our "cross to bear" when we have a difficult boss or a chronic headache. But to the first-century listener, the cross meant one thing and one thing only: excruciating, shameful, public execution. It was the ultimate symbol of Roman power and human degradation. To carry your cross meant you were a dead man walking. You had no rights, no future, no hope in this world. You were on a one-way trip to your own death.
This is what Jesus requires. To be His disciple is to accept the death sentence on your own self-directed life. It means you die to your own will daily. It means you are willing to face whatever persecution, ridicule, or loss the world throws at you for your allegiance to Him. You are carrying the instrument of your own execution, which means you have utterly surrendered to the will of your conqueror, who is Christ.
To make sure we understand the gravity of this decision, Jesus gives two parables of common sense. The first is the tower builder. A man who starts a major construction project without first checking his bank account is a fool. If he lays the foundation and runs out of money, he becomes a public laughingstock. The second is the king going to war. A king who marches his ten thousand troops against an army of twenty thousand without first assessing his chances is not brave; he is reckless. If he knows he cannot win, he sends for terms of peace while the enemy is still far off.
The point is this: Do not stumble into discipleship. Do not make a rash, emotional decision. Sit down. Be sober. Count the cost. Jesus is asking for everything. He is asking for your family, your life, your possessions. Are you willing to pay it? If you are not, it is better not to start than to start and turn back. To begin and not finish is to become a monument to ridicule, a cautionary tale.
The Possessions and the Salt (vv. 33-35)
The third condition is a material renunciation.
"So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions." (Luke 14:33)
Here is another hard saying. Does this mean every Christian must take a vow of poverty and live as a monk? Not at all. Abraham was a disciple, and he was fabulously wealthy. The Bible is full of examples of godly people who owned property and managed wealth. The issue, once again, is one of lordship. The verb "give up" means to renounce, to say farewell to. It means to relinquish your claim of ownership.
You cannot be a disciple of Jesus and believe that your stuff is your own. It is all His. You are not an owner; you are a steward. You must hold everything with an open hand. If He asks you to give it away, you give it away. If He asks you to use it for His kingdom, you use it for His kingdom. Your possessions are no longer yours to do with as you please. You have renounced all rights to them. This is the death blow to materialism. You cannot serve both God and Mammon. A disciple has made his choice.
Jesus concludes with the illustration of salt. "Salt is good, but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned?" Salt, in the ancient world, was a preservative and a flavoring agent. It was valuable. A disciple is to be the salt of the earth, preserving culture from decay and giving it the flavor of the kingdom. But for salt to work, it must be salty. It must be distinct from the thing it is seasoning. If a Christian is indistinguishable from the world, if his loyalties, his loves, and his attitude toward his possessions are the same as his unbelieving neighbor's, then he has lost his saltiness. He is useless. He is fit for nothing but to be thrown out.
This is a terrifying warning. A professing Christian who has not counted the cost, who has not surrendered his ultimate loyalties, who has not taken up his cross, who has not renounced his possessions, is not a disciple at all. He is useless salt, fit only for the manure pile. And Jesus ends with a familiar refrain: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." This is a call to spiritual perception. Are you listening? Do you understand the terms? This is not a game.
Conclusion: The Cost Was Paid
After hearing all this, the natural response might be one of despair. Who then can be saved? Who can possibly meet these terms? The cost is too high. I love my family. I love my life. I love my possessions. I cannot do this.
And that is precisely the point. You can't. The law of discipleship, like the law of Moses, shows us our bankruptcy. It is meant to drive us to the foot of the cross in desperation. For the good news is not that you can pay the cost, but that the cost has already been paid for you.
Jesus Christ is the only one who ever perfectly fulfilled these terms. He "hated" His own life, setting aside His glory and becoming obedient to the point of death. He carried His own cross, the actual, bloody, wooden cross, up the hill of Golgotha. He gave up all His possessions, being stripped naked and executed, owning nothing but a tomb borrowed from a friend. He paid the ultimate cost.
And because He did, we who are in Him are counted as having done so as well. His death becomes our death. His righteousness becomes our righteousness. The call to discipleship is not a call to earn your salvation. It is a call to live out the reality of the salvation you have been given freely by grace. We can hate our lives because He gives us a new one. We can carry our cross because He carried the ultimate one. We can give up our possessions because in Him we possess all things.
So do not hear this as a ladder to climb, but as a description of the new reality you have entered through faith. Count the cost, yes. But do so by looking at the cross of Christ, where the full price was paid. And then, in the power of His resurrection, get up, say farewell to your old life, and follow Him.