Over the last decade or so, makeover TV shows have become one of the most popular genres of programs. Among the most popular and influential of these programs are:
• Extreme Makeover – began airing in 2002. Individuals volunteered to receive an extensive makeover involving plastic surgery, hairdressing and wardrobe.
• Extreme Makeover: Home Edition – a spinoff of Extreme Makeover in which families facing some kind of hardship had their homes remodeled or replaced
• Biggest Loser. Overweight contestants go through a diet and exercise routine in order to see who can lose the most weight.
• Restaurant Impossible. Robert Irvine helps failing restaurants to turn things around with a two day makeover of their facilities and their menu.
I often wonder whether these kinds of programs influence our ideas about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. And I think in some cases, the church has been guilty of peddling Christianity as nothing more than a means of making over one or more aspects of our lives:
• Having problems in your marriage? Then just come to Jesus and let Him makeover your marriage.
• Having problems with your kids? Then just come to Jesus and let Him makeover your parenting skills.
• Having problems with your finances? Then just come to Jesus and let Him makeover your finances.
• Having problems in your job? Then just come to Jesus and let Him makeover your work.
While it is undoubtedly true that becoming a disciple of Jesus will result in a makeover of every area of our lives, the problem with that particular approach is that it is completely focused on what I can get out of the relationship. But as we saw the last two weeks as we began our study of the Hard Sayings of Jesus, and as we’ll see again this morning:
Being a disciple of Jesus
is a matter of a takeover, not a makeover
Keep that idea in mind as we examine the third hard saying of Jesus that we’ll be covering in this series. We find that hard saying in Luke chapter 14:
“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 ESV)
I don’t know about you, but my first reaction to that saying is to think it can’t possibly be something Jesus said because it seems to contradict what we’ve been taught elsewhere in the Scriptures. After all aren’t we taught:
• to honor our fathers and mothers? That is the fifth of the Ten Commandments and Paul says the same thing again in Ephesians 6.
• to love our wives? God established marriage in Genesis and Paul specifically commands us to love our wives in Ephesians 5.
• to love our neighbors and even our enemies? That’s what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount and yet here He tells us we need to hate our children, brothers and sisters?
Obviously before we wrongly conclude that Jesus is somehow contradicting what we find elsewhere in the Word of God, we need to look at what Jesus said here in context. So let’s go back and begin reading in verse 25 and read through verse 33:
Now great crowds accompanied 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 bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
(Luke 14:25-33 ESV)
The purpose of Jesus’ words
The key to understanding this passage is to determine the overall purpose of Jesus’ words here. I’m going to enlist your help here. Look at the end of verse 26, verse 27 and verse 33. What is the common phrase that Jesus uses in each of those verses? [Wait for answers.] That’s correct: “he cannot be my disciple.” So would you agree that the overall purpose of Jesus here is…
• to convey what is required to become Jesus’ disciple
Before we go any further, I need to point out that there are some who draw a sharp distinction between salvation and discipleship. Salvation, they claim, is God’s free gift, but discipleship, on the other hand, is costly. They say that it is possible to be saved but never be fully committed to being a disciple, that it is possible to receive Jesus as Savior, but not make Him Lord. But I just don’t see how the Scriptures bear that out.
I think we saw that clearly last week, when Jesus said that many who thought they were saved because they had called Him Lord and done religious works in His name were not going to enter His kingdom.
But to me, the place we see that best is in what we call the Great Commission. As the resurrected Jesus met with His disciples on a mountain in Galilee and gave them their marching orders He told them to go and make what? [Wait for answers]. That’s right – disciples. Jesus didn’t tell them to go and make converts and then hope that those people would one day become disciples. Jesus never seemed to distinguish between being saved and being a disciple.
While salvation requires a person to make a decision, it is so much more than that. It is the mighty power of God raising a dead soul to eternal life. And God, who is the one who initiated that process has promised that He will complete what He started:
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
(Philippians 1:6 ESV)
The new life that God imparts at salvation will inevitably result in a new way of life in which we day by day become more like Jesus. That is the essence of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. So do you see why we really can’t separate the idea of salvation from being a disciple of Jesus?
So Jesus is primarily speaking here of what it takes to become a disciple of Jesus on the front end. He is addressing the mindset that is required at the outset in order to become a disciple. He is not describing here something that we must do in order to continue to be a disciple. That’s an important distinction here because it means we can’t use these words of Jesus to try and motivate people to merely use Jesus as the means to makeover their lives. As we’ll see clearly this morning…
Being a disciple of Jesus
is a matter of a takeover, not a makeover
In this passage, Jesus gives us…
Three conditions for becoming a disciple of Jesus
1. “Hate” my family and my own life
This takes us back to the hard saying of Jesus that we began with this morning. And understanding what Jesus meant here is really the key to unlocking this entire passage. As I mentioned earlier, what Jesus says here seems, at least on the surface, to violate the teaching elsewhere in Scripture that we are to love our families.
Obviously, in order to grasp what Jesus was communicating here we need to understand what He meant by the word “hate”. In their well-intentioned attempts to prove that Jesus was not contradicting other Scriptures, some commentators have tried to suggest that the word Jesus used there really doesn’t mean “hate”, but that it means something more like “love less”. But the Greek word used here does in fact mean “hate” and every other place it is used in the New Testament, it clearly means “hate” and not just “love less.”
However, we must remember here that Jesus was a Jew, whose concept of hate would have been developed based on a Hebrew understanding of hate. And we also need to note that Jesus spoke primarily in the language of the day – Aramaic – although He probably also used Hebrew, especially when teaching in the synagogue or the temple. So when Luke wrote his gospel account, he had to use a Greek word which would best capture the idea that Jesus was conveying here in Aramaic, and there really is no Greek word that could totally communicate the Hebrew concept of hate.
The Hebrew idea of hate is different than our understanding of hate that involves anger or emotion. It is instead more about “separation” or “exclusion”. We see this consistently in the Old Testament where hate is manifest by separating oneself from entangling relationships or circumstances rather than by some emotional reaction. This idea is confirmed in Matthews’s parallel account of Jesus’ words here in Luke 14:
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
(Matthew 10:34-37 ESV)
Jesus makes it clear here that He is like a sword in the sense that He has come to bring separation. That’s what a sword does – it separates. And then He goes on to explain that there needs to be a separation from one’s family in order to become His disciple in the sense that the family relationships cannot be more important than one’s relationship with Him.
So without needlessly trying to alter the meaning of the word “hate” here, we can understand what Jesus said here in a way that doesn’t contradict Scripture at all – it actually embraces the rest of Scripture. Jesus is actually upholding the importance of Scripture here. He is saying that if anything else – even your own family or your own personal interests and desires – might cause you or provide justification for you to rebel against what God has taught in His Word, then refuse to be drawn away. Hate those alternatives to God by separating yourself from them.
In other words – don’t let anything prevent you from becoming a disciple of the One who is greater than all these things.
We’ve spent a lot of time on this first condition for two reasons. First, it is by far the hardest of the three to deal with. And second, once we have an accurate understanding of what Jesus meant here, the next two fall into place much easier.
2. Bear my own cross
This is connected with the idea of hating one’s own life. We’re going to pursue this idea in much more detail next week, but for now let’s note that the idea of bearing one’s cross suggests several things:
o The cross was an instrument of death and death requires the total surrender of everything we possess here on earth.
o The cross was an instrument of pain and torture which reminds us of the fact that, just as Jesus warned, we will suffer tribulation here on earth.
o The cross was an instrument of shame and reproach. Jesus warned his followers that they would be despised and hated merely because of their association with Him.
Jesus experienced all of that upon the cross and He is pointing out here that becoming His disciple requires that we are willing to follow in His footsteps and endure the things He endured.
3. Renounce all I have
The word translated “renounce” in verse 33 literally means “to set apart” or to “separate”. When used in the particular verbal form in which we see here it can mean “to say farewell.” Jesus is not calling for socialism here. He is not saying that to become His disciple you have to sell or give away all your possessions and live on the street as a beggar. He is speaking here of a mindset that recognizes that you own nothing and that everything you possess belongs to God. He is calling His followers to be stewards rather than owners.
I think we would all agree that what Jesus requires here for those who would desire to be His disciples is radical and extreme. Becoming a disciple of Jesus is not merely adding something to our lives. It’s not an invitation to merely makeover one or more areas of our life. It’s not a call to just move up a little higher on the ladder of spiritual life. It’s not just getting one foot in the door of the kingdom with the idea of hanging around long enough to become a better person.
It is a total commitment to make Jesus the number one priority in my life – ahead of family, ahead of my material possessions and even ahead of my own life. It is a commitment to let Jesus take over every single area of my life. So now do you see why I said earlier that…
Being a disciple of Jesus
is a matter of a takeover, not a makeover
We know from verse 25 that Jesus spoke these words during the height of His popularity. Luke records that “great crowds” were following Jesus. But Jesus knew their hearts. He knew that most of those people were following Him around because of what they might get from Him. He knew that very few of them were ready to make the kind of commitment that He was calling for here. So He uses two short parables to impress upon the people the need to carefully consider all the ramifications of this kind of commitment before they proceeded to make it.
The first was the example of someone who decided to build a tower. And Jesus pointed out that it would be embarrassing not to finish the tower because the person hadn’t first considered the cost required to bring the project to completion. The second example was of a king getting ready to go to war. The king would be foolish not to consider whether he had the ability to succeed before sending his troops into battle.
With both examples, Jesus is urging His followers to consider all aspects of what they are getting into before they pledge to become His disciples. He wants them to consider the costs and make sure they are willing to incur those costs so that they will be able to complete their journey as His disciples. He doesn’t want them to make a decision in a moment of intense emotion without much thought for what that decision will require.
Implications for us
These words of Jesus have important implications for all of us, including me. I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about these words of Jesus and how they should impact us as a body and me personally as a pastor in the way we invite people to make a decision to become a disciple of Jesus.
I’ve thought a lot about my own journey to become a disciple of Jesus and about my church experiences over the years and in particular about the words and methods that are used to try and convince people to make a decision about their relationship with Jesus.
Let’s first talk about the words we use. Most of us have probably heard most of these invitations, or at least something similar:
• “Invite Jesus into your heart.”
• We invite people to pray “the sinner’s prayer” (There is actually no such thing in the Bible)
• We ask people to “receive Jesus” or “believe in Him” - phrases that are actually in the Bible
• We ask people to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus
• I know I often use the term “Christ followers” rather than the term “Christians”
While there is probably some value in all those terms, the problem I see with them is that they all fall short of what Jesus desires and the kind of commitment He is asking people to make here. Jesus is not calling people to become His “followers” here. He had lots of followers already. He is not asking them to merely pray a prayer or to ask Him into their hearts. He is not asking people to receive Him or to have a personal relationship with Him. He is asking them to commit to becoming His disciples. So it seems to me that is what we ought to ask people to do as well. So, although I know it’s going to be hard to overcome some long ingrained habits, I’m going to do my best to do follow Jesus’ lead in that regard from now on.
Now let’s address the methods we use. Like many of you, there was a time in my life when I walked down an aisle at the end of a church service during the second or third verse of “Just as I Am”. Then the pastor talked to me briefly and asked if I had asked Jesus into my heart and then assured me I was now a Christian.
Let me just say up front that I don’t want to in any way discount the similar experiences that some of you have had. Some of you have personally shared with me how you were compelled by God’s Holy Spirit to respond to an invitation like that and praise God for that.
But I also know that some evangelists and some churches have become very skilled in developing experiences which are intended to draw on people’s emotions for the purpose of getting them to walk down the aisle or raise their hand or respond in some similar manner without ever explaining the cost of becoming a disciple of Jesus.
So let me close by briefly discussing the implications of this hard saying of Jesus for all of us. Although I’m confident that most of us here this morning are in fact disciples of Jesus, let me first address anyone here who has not yet made that commitment.
• If you haven’t already made a decision to become Jesus’ disciple:
o Don’t act on emotion
Jesus is telling His audience that He doesn’t want them to come to Him just on some emotional level. He is not looking for people to become His disciples just because they think He can help them overcome some disappointment, or confusion or hurt in their lives. There is no doubt Jesus can help you deal with those emotional hurts, but that should never be the primary reason to become a disciple.
o Carefully consider the cost
There are certainly great rewards that come with being a disciple of Jesus, but there are also great costs. What Jesus points out here is that it is not possible to become His disciple if you are going to depend upon or try to find your security in anything or anyone else other than Him. It is not possible to become His disciple unless He is going to be more important to you than your family, your possessions and even your own life.
o Commit to finish the journey
Discipleship is not an event – it is a journey, a lifelong journey. And just like in any other journey, there are going to be some distractions and obstacles along the way.
Because we are still sinful human beings even after we become disciples there will be times when we get off track because of our own decisions and choices. Jesus is not looking for perfect people. He knows that no one has the resources in and of himself to follow Him completely. But He is looking for disciples who have considered the cost and who will commit, with His help to finish the journey, even when it gets difficult.
• If you are already a disciple of Jesus:
o Being a disciple is a matter of a takeover, not a makeover
This is a principle that we saw last week as well, although I’m afraid I may not have articulated this point as clearly as I would have liked.
Jesus words here, as well as His words in Matthew 7 that we looked at last week, are not a call for His disciples to work harder or to try and be a “better Christian.” He is not calling on His disciples to merely take His teachings and use them to makeover various areas of their lives. Even those who are not His disciples can do that. There are a lot of people in our culture who believe Jesus was a good teacher and they try to apply the things He taught in their lives, but they don’t become His disciples just because they do that.
What Jesus is looking for in a disciple is a person who has a mindset in which he or she is willing to let Jesus take over every area of his or her life. He is looking for people who are willing to make Him their number one priority and who are willing to follow, serve and proclaim Him in spite of what others might think of them, in spite of any inconvenience or discomfort they might face and in spite of any financial harm they might suffer.
And, as I’ve already pointed out, Jesus is not looking for those who can do that perfectly, since no one is capable of that. But He is looking for those with a heart that desires to live like that.
o Avoid the tendency to peddle “cheap grace”
When we are telling others about what it means to become a disciple of Jesus, we owe it to them to give them the whole story. We need to make sure that they understand the cost of becoming a disciple. We aren’t doing them any favors at all by trying to make salvation and discipleship merely a momentary emotional experience, or by trying to sell what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.”
Sometimes I think we fear that if we emphasize the cost of becoming a disciple, we are going to somehow hinder that person from becoming a disciple. But we need to remember that salvation and discipleship is 100% the work of God. When God’s Holy Spirit is at work in someone’s life and drawing that person to God, there is nothing that is going to stop that person from responding to God. So we should have nothing to fear by helping that person consider the cost.
Being a disciple of Jesus
is a matter of a takeover, not a makeover
If you’re merely looking for a makeover in some area of your life, there is no shortage of places you can find help to do that – books, the internet, and TV programs like the ones I mentioned at the beginning of this message. But if you want something more lasting and valuable, then you need to be a disciple of Jesus by letting Him takeover your life.
