August, 2001

“And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:27

A prominent Pharisee invited Jesus to dinner. One of the guests claimed that whoever eats at the feast of the kingdom of God is blessed. To everyone’s surprise, Jesus told a parable, explaining that not everyone who received the invitation would show up at the banquet. The theme of the parable is: nothing is as important as accepting Jesus’ offer of the kingdom of God, for one’s eternal destiny rests on his response to this invitation.

With that backdrop, we find Him traveling from village to village, heading toward Jerusalem. His dynamic and truthful speaking style attracted large crowd of followers. Some undoubtedly came from the same place where they had heard the parable of the Great Banquet. To make sure His followers understood that it takes more than just showing up to the banquet as a disciple, Jesus laid out the cost of being a disciple.

To emphasize that discipleship is difficult, Jesus made reference to an unprecedented devotion to God. A disciple of God must love God more than his family and/or his life. Care must be utilized to interpret this verse because literally hating one’s family and life is a violation of God’s principle. It is never taught implicitly or explicitly that we don’t need to love our family and our life. Jesus’ emphasis here is that there is a priority in place. Your devotion to love God must come before loving anything else. When you love God, you would know how to love your family (even if they are against your devotion to God) and self for love comes from God. If you love others before loving God, you would not know “how” to love in a truthful and unconditionally way.

The second difficult requirement of being a disciple emphasized by Jesus is that a disciple must carry his own cross and follow Him. This was a familiar image seen by the first century Jews. They must have seen criminals convicted by the Romans government and then ordered to carry their own cross (a rough timber) on their shoulders to the place of execution. The cross is a symbol of death. Here, the challenge is for the disciple to put to death that part of which resists the necessary devotion to God, the part that wanted to go their own way and pursue their own ambitions. Again, let us be sure that Jesus doesn’t have problem in us pursuing our goal and vision in life, but the key issue is that if what we pursue interferes with our devotion to God, we need to “nail it down” on the cross.