More than Anything

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

MORE THAN ANYTHING

Luke 14:25-27

25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26 "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters — yes, even his own life — he cannot be my disciple. 27 And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

NIV

Surely Jesus was not advocating that we go around spewing hatred toward all our relatives so we can be his disciples. If we take a look at that Greek word translated hate, we see the application Jesus was using. Of course he did not speak Greek, but it is still how the Greek translated word may have become seen as hate. This word means by extension to love less. This would agree with all the rest of scripture. For we have been told this is the gospel of love. First how much Jesus loves us and that we are to love him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and second we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.  So if we are to love our neighbor as ourselves which would include our father and mother, our brother and sister, our spouse and children then it would not make sense to hate them in order to be his disciple. The point Jesus was making has been written about to great extent by Detrick Bonhoeffer in his book, The Cost of Discipleship. Jesus was telling the crowd who were following him because of all that he did for them, they were a little misguided. Sure, it is fine to follow Jesus because of all the blessings we receive, but we cannot follow Jesus while we are in love with all the ways of the world. If we love our family, yes even our own life more than we love Jesus we are in danger of not actually being his disciple. We might just be one of those fair weather friends. As long as everything is going great, and we are getting one blessing after another we are content to believe we are his disciples. But if things get a little dicey either in our family setting, or with life itself, are we still content to be his disciple? Have we learned to love him more than anybody else? In this world people, especially family are very important to most of us. Our own lives are incredibly important to us. Just look how much money we spend on doctors so we can be healthy and live as long as we can. Look how much attention we pay to what we eat and drink so we think we can be healthy and live a better life. We husbands are told to give ourselves up for our wives, which is putting them first even before us, but yet we are to love Jesus even more than our wives. Wives are told to love their husbands, yet if we love each other more than we love Jesus we are in danger of not being his disciples. The point is that we need to seek first the kingdom of God, seek first Jesus, then the rest of life will be taken care by of by him. Jesus, God is a jealous God, he wants all of us first. He does not want to share us with other people. He does not want to share us with the things of this world. He does not want to share us with our concerns about our own lives. He wants every part of us, all, not part, of our heart, our soul, our mind, and our bodies. We will see he drives this point even further in the next several parables, but for now we need to see this truth about just how much we are to love him as his disciples. More than anything.