And so tonight in this tough text, we'll explore how this shocking statement, properly understood, does not call us to emotional rejection of our loved ones, but rather to something far more profound, a complete reordering of our of our affections that enables us to love others more deeply than we could ever do before. Through the lens of Augustine's concept of the ordo amoris, the proper ordering of loves, we will discover that Christ's demand represents not the destruction of human love and affection, but it's rather its ultimate fulfillment.
So, to begin, Luke places the the words of this text at a crucial juncture in Jesus' uh journey to Jerusalem. Great crowds were following him, uh drawn by his miracles and by his authoritative teaching, uh and the hope that um he might be the long awaited Messiah who would deliver Israel from Roman oppression. And yet Jesus recognized that many in this crowd were motivated not by a a superficial enthusiasm rather than a genuine commitment. And they sought the benefits of following Christ without understanding uh the cost of this. And so this verse is directly uh directed rather primarily to those on the fence or those with practical motives like getting free food, free bread, or those with uh political concerns.
So, um in response to this shallow discipleship, Jesus turns and addresses the the crowd with a series of increasingly demanding statements. He begins with the requirement to hate one's family and escalates to bearing one's cross and concludes with the necessity of renouncing all possessions. This is not gentle Jesus meek and mild that we see. This is the Lord who demands everything from those who would follow him.
And so this passage from Luke 14:25 through 35, as viewed as a whole, forms a carefully constructed unit on counting the cost of discipleship. Jesus also employs two other parables in this section, the tower builder in verse 28 and the king going to war in verse 31 to illustrate the necessity of a deliberate commitment. Just as no sensible person begins a construction project without calculating whether they can complete that project, we know this from firsthand experience here most recently. Um, and no king engages in battle without first assessing his chances of victory. So no one should embark on the path of discipleship without understanding what is it going to require.
The section concludes with a mysterious saying about salt losing its saltiness in verses 34 and 35, which suggests that half-hearted discipleship is not merely inadequate, but it is actively worthless. It's worth nothing. Jesus is not interested in gathering large crowds of nominal followers. He seeks only disciples who will follow him to the cross.
So there's a Greek word here, uh that we that that we translate hate in the English, which is miseo. Did I get did I get that right, Adam? Miseo, which typically translate to hate in English, but we must understand it through the lens of first century Jewish thought patterns rather than with modern Western categories. Um, in Semitic languages and thought, comparative relationships were often expressed in absolute terms. So what we would, so how we would express as uh loving something less, the Hebrew speakers would express as hatred. It was much more binary for the Semitic um thinker. The clearest biblical example appears in Genesis 29, 30 and 31. There's many of them, but this is a clear one, where we read about Jacob's relationships with Leah and Rachel. Verse 30 tells us that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah, while the very next verse describes Leah as hated. The Hebrew text uses the same root word for hate that underlies Jesus' statement in Luke. And yet clearly Jacob did not despise Leah in an absolute sense. He lived with her, had children with her, and provided for her. The hatred was comparative, not absolute.
And so Matthew's gospel um also provides crucial interpretive help. Um, in Matthew 10:37, if you'd like to to shift over there real quickly, I'll wait for you. Matthew 10:37. The same teaching appears in comparative rather than an absolute language. 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. So Matthew, writing in a primarily Jewish audience familiar with Semitic hyperbole, preserves what may be closer to Jesus' actual phrasing. Luke, writing to Gentile readers, may have retained the more shocking formulation precisely because it better conveys the radical nature of Jesus' demand to an audience unfamiliar with Hebrew idioms. This parallel demonstrates that Jesus is not commanding emotional hostility towards family members, but instead establishing a hierarchy of devotion. The issue is not whether we love our families, because scripture elsewhere commands such love, but whether we love them more than we love Christ.
Notice the comprehensive scope of Jesus' requirement back in Luke. He moves systematically through the circles of human affection, parents who give us life, the spouse in whom we are one flesh, um children who carry our hopes for the future, siblings who share our blood and our name, and finally our very own lives. So nothing is exempt from subordination to Christ. Every natural affection, every human loyalty, every instinct for self-preservation must yield to his supremacy. That's what he demands.
So, uh, St. Augustine of Hippo, um, some many of you are familiar with him. He's perhaps the most influential theologian of the early church after Paul, provides us with a framework that illustrates Jesus' teaching. Augustine or Augustine, if you prefer, um, argued that the fundamental problem with the human condition is not that we love wrong things, but that we love right things in the wrong order. This is the essence of his concept of ordo amoris, the proper ordering of loves. Thomas Aquinas also expanded upon this concept and some other thinkers. Um, in order to to to get a foundation for this, please turn over to, I'm this is probably the last verse I'll have you turn to. Matthew 22, 37 through 40. It's one that you you know well. Matthew 22, 37 to 40. Where Jesus says, the greatest commandment is this, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second command the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself.
So this establishes the fundamental ordering. God first, neighbor second, self third. Augustine saw this as the blueprint for all properly ordered love. Now, uh different thinkers throughout time have ordered these differently, but the the there is a concept that there are orders to our love. And that God is primary among them. So according to Augustine, God, as the supreme good and the source of all other goods, must be loved supremely. Every other love must be loved in proper relation to him. When we elevate a lesser good, however legitimate in itself, above God, we commit idolatry and we introduce disorder not only into our souls, but into our relationships. This disorder corrupts both our relationship with God and our relationship with the very thing that we have wrongly elevated.
So, take a moment to consider how this works practically. When parents love their children more than God, more than Christ, they often turn those children into idols who must then bear the impossible weight of providing ultimate meaning and satisfaction to their parents. The children are unable to bear this burden, and they either crumble under the pressure or they rebel against it. Neither one is a good outcome. So what was meant to be a blessing from God becomes a source instead of dysfunction. But when parents love God supremely and love their children in uh in Christ and for Christ's sake, the parent-child relationship finds its proper proportion and it flourishes according to its design. Augustine also observed that disordered love destroys both the lover and the beloved. So when we make ultimate what God made to be penultimate, we demand from created things what only the creator can provide to us. A spouse cannot be our savior. A career cannot be our security. Children cannot be our redemption. And so when we ask created things to be gods, we crush them under the expectations that they were never designed to meet. Further, that that disordered love enslaves us, not just those around us. And so when family approval becomes absolute to you, we become slaves to family opinion. When romantic love becomes supreme, we become dependent on the fallen hu on another fallen human for our sense of self-worth, which is a disaster. When self-preservation tops our hierarchy of values, fear becomes our master. Only when God in Christ occupies his rightful place at the summit of our affections, do we find freedom from these lesser tyrannies.
This is where we encounter the beautiful paradox of Jesus' demand. By requiring us to hate all else in comparison to him, Christ actually liberates us to love people and um to love people and things properly for the first time and in the right order. And so when God is loved supremely, everything else can be loved appropriately. Neither too much nor too little, neither as gods nor as garbage, but as gifts instead. Um, C.S. Lewis captured this truth magnificently in his book The Four Loves, and this is what he said. When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards a state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed, but rather are increased.
So this is the gospel's great paradox and mystery. Surrender leads to fulfillment, death leads to life, and hating in the way Jesus means leads us to our deepest and truest loves. As a side note, um Lewis's novella, The Great Divorce, uh is a is a tour de force uh dramatization and examination of ordered versus disordered loves. I highly recommend it despite some some of its flaws, and I've read it many times. And I recommend it to you as well.
So how does this theological principle translate into practical living? First, it means that every decision we make must be evaluated in light of our supreme allegiance to Christ. When family expectations um conflict with Christ's calling, Christ's calling must take precedence. When cultural or political values clash with kingdom values, kingdom values must prevail. This is what Jesus is telling us. When self-interest opposes self-denial, we must choose the cross. This might mean a young person pursuing missionary service despite parental approval. It might mean refusing a lucrative job opportunity that would require compromising your principles. It might mean setting boundaries for family members whose demands would prevent faithful discipleship. These decisions are never easy, and they often involve genuine loss and pain, but they flow from the recognition that Christ has first claim on our lives.
Jesus immediately Jesus immediately follows his demand about hating family with a requirement to bear one's cross. Um in verse 27, he says, whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. In the first century context, this image was shockingly vivid because this meant that the the this was the cross, this was Rome's instrument of torture and execution, and it was it was reserved for slaves and for insurrectionists, the the lowest of the low. So to bear one's cross meant to carry the horizontal beam in the place of execution, which meant publicly acknowledging Rome's authority and accepting its judgment. And so for Jesus' followers, bearing the cross means accepting the world's judgment on our allegiance to Christ. It means being willing to be misunderstood or rejected or even persecuted for his sake. It means dying to our own agenda and living to his. And so the cross is not merely an inconvenience or a disappointment, it is death to self-sovereignty.
And yet Jesus' demand contains an implicit promise as well. So don't miss this. When he says that anyone who does not hate father and mother cannot be his disciple, he implies that those who do meet this requirement can indeed be his disciples. The very severity of the demand highlights the magnificence of the relationship offered. Jesus is not merely seeking students to learn his teachings or admirers to appreciate his wisdom. He seeks disciples who will share in his life and his mission and in his inheritance. Moreover, Jesus himself models what he demands of us. He loved his earthly family, um caring for his mother even from the cross. And yet he subordinated these natural affections to his father's will by going to the cross, despite the bewilderment and the agony that this caused his mother and his disciples. And so when when his mother and brothers sought to interrupt his ministry in Mark uh chapter 3, 31 through 35, he declared that whoever does God's will is his true family. And he shows that it is possible to honor both human relationships while maintaining divine priorities.
I think it's also crucial here to to clarify what Jesus is not commanding. He is not commanding us to emotional coldness towards our families. He's not endorsing neglect of family responsibilities. Indeed, elsewhere he condemns those who use religious devotion as an excuse to avoid caring for parents in Mark chapter 7. He's not promoting a spiritual elitism that despises normal human affections. Neither is Jesus establishing a competition between love for God and love for others, as if these were mutually exclusive categories. Rather, he is establishing the proper foundation and ordering principle for all loves. So when we love God supremely, we are freed to love others appropriately. Again, neither as gods who can save us nor as obstacles to be overcome, but as fellow creatures made in God's image, worthy of love that flows from and returns to its source in Christ.
And in our contemporary context, this teaching speaks powerfully to several common idolatries. In cultures, for example, that prioritize family, Jesus' words remind us that even the most sacred human bonds must not become ultimate, lest they become corrupted or destroyed. The family is a good gift from God, but it is not God. And so when family loyalty requires us to overlook injustice or compromise truth, we must choose Christ over family. And similarly in our individualistic age that makes self-fulfillment the highest good, Jesus' demand that we hate even our own lives and preferences challenges the sovereignty of our selves. So the modernist gospel of self-love and self-actualization and self-esteem crumbles before Christ's call to self-denial. And yet, again, there's this paradox. In losing our lives for his sake, we actually find them. And in dying to self-sovereignty, we discover our true identity and freedom as beloved children of God.
So for those who are struggling with difficult family relationships, this passage offers both challenge and comfort. The passage is to ensure that family dysfunction does not become an excuse for failing to honor parents or to care for family members as scripture commands. The comfort is in knowing that when family relationships become destructive or demanding in ways that oppose faithful discipleship, we have Christ's own authority for maintaining proper boundaries. For those blessed with loving families, the challenge may actually even be greater. It's often easier to subordinate a difficult relationship to Christ than a delightful one. Yet, even the best human relationships must not be allowed to compete with Christ for supremacy in our hearts. The test often comes in subtle ways. Are you willing to speak gospel truth even when it might strain family harmony, for example? Can we put kingdom priorities above family preferences? Will we choose Christ's calling over family comfort and harmony?
The doctrine of the Trinity provides the ultimate model for properly uh ordered loves. Uh for example, within the Godhead, the Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from their love. And yet this love operates in perfect order and harmony. The Son's subordination to the Father's will, most clearly displayed in Gethsemane, does not diminish his deity or dignity, but expresses the perfect love that exists within the Trinity. And so when we participate in this divine love through Christ, we enter into this same dynamic of ordered affections. We love the Father through the Son and the power of the Spirit, and from this primary relationship flows our love for all creation. This is not merely a human achievement, but it's a participation in the very life of God.
Also, uh Jesus' demand also makes sense only in light of eternity. From an earthly perspective or maybe from a materialistic perspective, putting Christ above family can seem harsh or unnatural. But from an eternal perspective, the this is the only a rational response. Our earthly families, precious as they are, are temporary arrangements. And in the resurrection, Jesus tells us in Matthew 22:30, that there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. Our ultimate and eternal identity is not as someone's spouse or parent or child, certainly not as an employee, but as members of God's family. And so this eternal perspective does not diminish the importance of earthly families or institutions, I argue, but instead properly situates them. They are schools of love where we learn the care for others, laboratories of forgiveness where we practice reconciliation daily, and symbols of the divine authority that points us toward our ultimate home. But they are not themselves ultimate. Only by keeping eternity in view can we love our families properly within the boundaries of time.
And so as we conclude our exploration of this challenging text, we need to ask ourselves, have we truly counted the cost of following Jesus? Have we recognized that he demands not a portion of our lives, but all of our lives, the whole our whole lives? Have we understood that discipleship means not adding Jesus to our existing priorities, but allowing him to reorder our priorities? The call to hate mother and father, brothers and sisters, is ultimately a call to love, to love God with the supremacy he deserves, and thereby um to love all else with in proper proportions. So this is an invitation to freedom from the tyranny of disordered affections and an entrance into the peace of properly ordered loves. It is costly grace that demands everything, but gives back infinitely in return.
Augustine understood this when he prayed this prayer. He loves thee too little who loves anything together with thee, which he loves not for thy sake. May we learn to love God with such supremacy that all of our loves are purified, strengthened, and properly ordered. May we have the courage to put first things first, trusting that when we do, second things are not lost, but indeed they are found. So the gospel of Luke presents us with Jesus' uncompromising call, absolute devotion that looks like hatred by comparison. This is not the hatred of hostility, but the hatred of hierarchy, the recognition that Christ must be supreme or he is not Lord at all. And so in embracing this demanding discipleship, we discover that we have not lost our families or our lives, but we have paradoxically found them transformed and restored in Christ.
And so let us take up our cross daily and reorder our loves daily in a proper way and follow him who loved us and gave himself for us. For in losing our lives for his sake, we find them. And in hating all else by comparison, we learn to love truly. And in dying to our own sovereignty, we rise to life eternal. So the question remains, will we be his disciples on his terms, or will we turn back to the lesser loves that can never ultimately satisfy us? The choice is ours, but the terms are his. So, church, may God grant us grace to choose wisely, to love in an orderly fashion, and to follow faithfully. And now I am ready for your questions. Well, I'm actually never ready for your questions, but it just seemed like the thing to say. Go on.
