Rachel Workman: 25 A large crowd was following Jesus.
He turned around and said to them, 26 “If you want to be my disciple, you must,
by comparison, hate everyone else—your father and mother, wife and children,
brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my
disciple. 27 And if you do not carry your own cross and
follow me, you cannot be my disciple.
Are we willing to put Christ above
everything else in our lives? I believe this is what Christ is talking about here.
The one thing I do know is that God’s word does not contradict itself. So when
I look at these verses I know that Jesus was speaking in comparison not literal.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Pat Bell: This is what would scare me. I wonder
how many of today's clergymen would be willing to do this? I hope all of them
if He walked in this world.
____________________________________________________________________________________
John Burnett: 25 Now [a]large crowds were going along with
Him; and He turned and said to them, 26 “If anyone
comes to Me, and does not [b]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. 27 Whoever does
not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. This is a confusing passage
because it says we are to hate our family, but that is not really, what it
means. Jesus has to come first and we are to love our family and our life
less than we love him. It points out that there should be a large gap
between the amount we love Jesus Christ and how we love our family or
ourselves. Carrying our own cross is dying to self and putting ourselves
last and Christ first above all else.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Mike Grimm: 25 Large crowds were
traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said:26 “If
anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children,
brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my
disciple. 27 And whoever does not carry their cross
and follow me cannot be my disciple.
Verses 25-26: I found this on
Fervr.net and it explains in a way that I can understand;
Large crowds were travelling
with Jesus because they had seen him healing people, feeding people and teaching
people at no cost. Why not follow Jesus? You can get something for nothing.
However, in this passage we see Jesus turn around to them that following him is
not without cost - you have to place him before other important people in your
lives. You even have to place him before yourselves.
To get his point across he
uses very emotive and challenging language - you must hate everyone else. In so
doing he is not saying that you do it literally but you must be prepared
to put everything else second. So if your parent forbids you from following him
then you must disobey them and so on.
Thankfully many of us have
never been put in a situation where we have had to choose between Christ and
our loved ones. But imagine if you had been captured by religious terrorists
and they demand that you deny Christ or watch one of your friends die what
would you choose? Jesus is saying you must choose him.
But it can be more subtle
than this. In the stress of working and making ends meet we can be tempted to
cut down of church activities, reading the bible or praying because we don’t
have time. It may be the things you are working hard for are good things that
will allow (say) your kids to have a better education. Jesus is saying don’t
pursue these things at my expense - nothing, not even your wife and kids, is
more important than following me and obeying me.
It’s not easy but Jesus
promises that he will provide for all our needs. See Matt 6:25-34 and also Mark
10:17-31. Both these passages talk of God’s rich provision for those who seek
to follow Jesus above and beyond everything else.
Verse 27. "And whoever does not carry their cross and
follow me cannot be my disciple." It means that we must accept the death of our own
self-directed life, die to ourselves daily, and be willing to face whatever
physical, emotional, or social persecution that ensues -- and follow Jesus.
Being a disciple, Jesus is saying, demands full commitment; nothing less will
do. In order to illustrate this point Jesus goes on to tell two parables in
verses 28-30 (Estimating Construction Costs), and verses 31-33 (Estimating the
Success of a Military Action).
____________________________________________________________________________________
Tomorrow’s reading for Luke 14:28-30
28 “But don’t begin until you count the cost. For who would
begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if
there is enough money to finish it? 29 Otherwise, you might
complete only the foundation before running out of money, and then everyone
would laugh at you. 30 They would say, ‘There’s the person who
started that building and couldn’t afford to finish it!’
No comments:
Post a Comment