In Luke 14:16-24, Jesus challenges a large crowd following him to count the cost to be his disciple. It ain’t easy.

In American Christianity, we believe in cheap grace (Bonhoeffer). But it cost Jesus his entire life to save us; do we offer him our entire life in response?

Before we begin the exegesis …..

Quick definition of a parable:

Literally, the word parable (parabolē in Greek) combines para– (pronounced pah-rah) and means “alongside” and bolē (pronounced boh-lay) which means “put” or even “throw”). Therefore, a parable puts two or more images or ideas alongside each other to produce a new truth. […] The Shorter Lexicon says that the Greek word parabolē can sometimes be translated as “symbol,” “type,” “figure,” and “illustration,” the latter term being virtually synonymous with parable.

For more information on what a parable is and its purposes, click on this link:

What Is a Parable?

The translation is mine. If you would like to see other translations, click here:

biblegateway.com.

If you don’t read Greek, ignore the left column.

I often quote scholars in print because I learn many things from them. They form a community of teachers I respect (1 Cor. 12:28), though I don’t agree with everything they write. But they do ensure I do not go astray. There is safety in numbers (for me at least).

Now let’s begin.

The Parables about the Cost of Discipleship (Luke 14:25-33)

25 Συνεπορεύοντο δὲ αὐτῷ ὄχλοι πολλοί, καὶ στραφεὶς εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτούς· 26 εἴ τις ἔρχεται πρός με καὶ οὐ μισεῖ τὸν πατέρα ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τὴν μητέρα καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὰ τέκνα καὶ τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς καὶ τὰς ἀδελφὰς ἔτι τε καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἑαυτοῦ, οὐ δύναται εἶναί μου μαθητής. 27 ὅστις οὐ βαστάζει τὸν σταυρὸν ἑαυτοῦ καὶ ἔρχεται ὀπίσω μου, οὐ δύναται εἶναί μου μαθητής. 28 Τίς γὰρ ἐξ ὑμῶν θέλων πύργον οἰκοδομῆσαι οὐχὶ πρῶτον καθίσας ψηφίζει τὴν δαπάνην, εἰ ἔχει εἰς ἀπαρτισμόν; 29 ἵνα μήποτε θέντος αὐτοῦ θεμέλιον καὶ μὴ ἰσχύοντος ἐκτελέσαι πάντες οἱ θεωροῦντες ἄρξωνται αὐτῷ ἐμπαίζειν 30 λέγοντες ὅτι οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἤρξατο οἰκοδομεῖν καὶ οὐκ ἴσχυσεν ἐκτελέσαι. 31 Ἢ τίς βασιλεὺς πορευόμενος ἑτέρῳ βασιλεῖ συμβαλεῖν εἰς πόλεμον οὐχὶ καθίσας πρῶτον βουλεύσεται εἰ δυνατός ἐστιν ἐν δέκα χιλιάσιν ὑπαντῆσαι τῷ μετὰ εἴκοσι χιλιάδων ἐρχομένῳ ἐπ’ αὐτόν; 32 εἰ δὲ μή γε, ἔτι αὐτοῦ πόρρω ὄντος πρεσβείαν ἀποστείλας ἐρωτᾷ τὰ πρὸς εἰρήνην. 33 οὕτως οὖν πᾶς ἐξ ὑμῶν ὃς οὐκ ἀποτάσσεται πᾶσιν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ ὑπάρχουσιν οὐ δύναται εἶναί μου μαθητής.

25 Huge crowds were going along with him, and he turned and said to them, 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters and even his own life, he is unable to be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me is unable to be my disciple. 28 For who among you wanting to build a tower does not first, after sitting down, calculate the expense, if he has enough to complete it? 29 So that after he has laid the foundation and is unable to complete it, everyone observing him never begins to laugh at him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and is unable to complete it!’ 31 Or which king going to war against another king, after he has sat down, will not first plan out whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 Otherwise, while he is still far away, after he has sent an emissary, he sues for peace. 33 In this manner, everyone of you who does not give up all of his possessions is unable to be my disciple.”

This parable has a larger context. Please click here to read about it.

Luke 14

Now let’s interpret the parable verse by verse.

25:

Let’s first take all of these verses in context. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, for the ultimate purpose of dying. There is no more room and no more time to monkey about. Crowds can get caught up in a low-level or high-level hysteria; they can follow the latest fads. Think of the pop band the Beatles in the 1960s. Girls shrieked and carried on. There doesn’t seem to be any shrieking here, but huge crowds were gathering around him and following him.

Crowds loved his teaching and his healing miracles. No doubt they loved his magnetic personality as well. He seems friendly and serious at the same time or at differing times. Here he is about to get serious and whittle down the crowds. John the Baptist said of Jesus: “His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear out his threshing floor and gather together the wheat into his storehouse, but he shall burn the chaff with unquenchable fire!” Here is Jesus taking his winnowing fork and throwing up the harvest. The heavy grains fall to the ground, while the chaff gets blown away. But it will accumulate off to the side, and it can be used for fuel for fire. (See my comments at Luke 3:17). This verse is a perfect application of John’s words.

Luke 3

Jesus is not eager to have shallow disciples follow him. He is not so needy that he must receive the adulation of the crowds. He doesn’t need lots of friends.

26:

“unable”: it comes from the standard verb dunamai (pronounced doo-nah-my) for “can” or “able.” And the verb or its cognates appears in this section three more times (in v. 29 another synonym is used). So the possible disciple cannot even begin the journey of discipleship. He does not have the capacity in his soul to begin.

This verse presents a condition (“if”). If anyone comes to Jesus, then he must not show any divided love. Note that the potential follower of Jesus seems to have a lot of free will. But let’s not get bogged down in this discussion.

If you are curious about the topic, however, see my post on God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Free Will:

Do I Really Know God? He Is Sovereign and Free

Jesus lived in a Jewish culture, and he had already said that family division is coming. In Luke 12; the family was about initiate division:

For from now on there shall be a dividing of a household, three against two and two against three!

⁵³ Father will be divided against son,
And son against father,
Mother against daughter
And daughter against mother,
Mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
And daughter-in-law against mother-in-law! [Micah 7:6] (Luke 12:52-53)

Now the disciple will initiate division, if necessary—if necessary. No need to provoke it without a cause. Disciples have to be ready to follow Jesus no matter what the cost.

One main point about the musical Fiddler on the Roof is the head of household disowns one of his daughters for marrying a Christian. Recall that Jesus said in v. 20 (above) that a man loved his marriage and wife more than following Jesus. Jesus’s disciples are about to give their all for him, after the resurrection. Peter and Paul were martyred, and tradition says the eleven were also martyred.

In v. 26 here, Jesus said you must be willing to “hate” your own family. So why such a strong term? First, it is rhetorical, designed to startle the audience. Second, it is the language of covenant (Rom. 9:13). You must join the New Covenant he is about to establish, to the point of rejecting the old Sinai Covenant. Third, the strong term reveals your priority. If your family is left behind in the Old and refuses to come with you, you must leave them behind. So “hate” could be translated as “love less” or “renounce.”

Keener says in his commentary on Matthew’s Gospel: “Hate … could mean ‘love less’ (Mt. 10:37) in both the Hebrew Bible [Old Testament] and later Jewish literature … Jesus undoubtedly employed the more graphic expression originally as hyperbole” (A Commentary on Matthew’s Gospel [Eerdmans, 1999] p. 330).

In Genesis 29:30-31, Jacob loved Rachel so much that he worked seven years, which seemed to pass by in a few days, so one’s love for the Lord must be tantamount.

Deuteronomy 21:15-17 says that if a man has married two women and loves one less than the other, he must still be fair. So in a household, one must not have divided loyalty. Bigamy divides the family and is not a good idea. Divided love is wrong.

In Matthew 10:37-39, Jesus said to a large crowd, so that they would count the cost:

³⁷ The one loving father or mother more than me is not deserving of me; and the one loving son or daughter more than me is not deserving of me. ³⁸ And so anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not deserving of me. ³⁹ The one finding his life will lose it, and the one losing his life because of me will find it. (Matt. 10:37-39)

So we are to prefer Jesus and the kingdom over all other rivals.

Now back to Luke.

Garland:

It may seem odd to instruct disciples to love their enemies (6:35) but to hate their family. But Jesus is using hyperbole [deliberate exaggeration for rhetorical effect or impact] to capture the seriousness of his demand. ‘To hate’ does not refer to enmity but is a Semitic expression that conveys indifference to one and preference for another: ‘I love A and hate B,’ which means ‘I prefer A to B’ (see Gen 29:30-33; Deut 21:15-17; Mal 1:2-3; Luke 16:13; Rom 9:13). (comments on 14:26).

Bock agrees:

The call to ‘hate’ is not literal but rhetorical … Otherwise, Jesus’ command to love one’s neighbor as oneself as a summation of what God desires makes no sense (Luke 10:25-37). The call to hate simply means to ‘love less’ (Gen. 29:30-31; Deut. 21:15-17; Judg. 14:16). The image is strong, but it is not a call to be insensitive or to leave all feeling behind … Following Jesus is to be the disciple’s ‘first love.’ This pursuit is to have priority over any family member and one’s own life, which means that other concerns are to take second place to following Jesus (Luke 8:19-21; 9:59-62; 12:4, 49-53; 16:13). (pp. 1284-85).

One possible translation is “renounce” instead of “hate.”

Once again, Jesus is using startling imagery to grab the listener’s sleepy and complacent mind. He often does this (e.g. chopping off hands or gouging out eyes, or getting a beam out of you own eyes).

“life”: it is the noun psuchē (pronounced ps-oo-khay, and be sure to pronounce the ps-, and our word psychology comes from it). It can mean, depending on the context: “soul, life” and it is hard to draw a firm line between the two. “Breath, life principle, soul”; “earthly life”; “the soul as seat and center of the inner life of man in its many and varied aspects, desires, feelings, emotions”; “self’; or “that which possesses life, a soul, creature, person.” In this verse, one must be willing to renounce one’s own way of living and follow God. Jesus said to die daily. “He proceeded to tell all of them, “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and pick up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life shall lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake shall save it” (Luke 9:23-24).

7 Life of the Kingdom

Bottom line here: you must not have divided loyalty, but you renounce (“hate”) your other loves that you had placed on an equal plane with Jesus. No divided love. Your love for him must enable you to leave behind your other loves, which may appear like hatred to the ones you leave behind.

Jesus could have added any relationship. Did you have to give up your boyfriend or girlfriend, for example? How difficult was that?

“disciples”: the noun is mathētēs (singular and pronounced mah-they-tayss), and it is used 261 times in the NT, though many of them are duplicates in the three synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. BDAG says of the noun that it means (1) “one who engages in learning through instruction from another, pupil, apprentice”; (2) “one who is rather constantly associated with someone who has a pedagogical reputation or a particular set of views, disciple, adherent.”

Word Study on Disciple

Ten Characteristics of a Healthy Disciple

27:

“Jesus ultimatum to would-be disciples is similar to Joshua’s defiant bugle call to the Israelites” (Garland, comment on v. 27). Here’s the passage:

²⁴ And the people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God and obey him.”

²⁵ On that day Joshua made a covenant for the people, and there at Shechem he reaffirmed for them decrees and laws. ²⁶ And Joshua recorded these things in the Book of the Law of God. Then he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak near the holy place of the Lord.

²⁷ “See!” he said to all the people. “This stone will be a witness against us. It has heard all the words the Lord has said to us. It will be a witness against you if you are untrue to your God.” (Josh 24:19-27, NIV)

The ancient Israelites accepted the challenge and said they would serve the Lord. In their conquest of the land, they were united in most cases.

Jesus is to be your first love. Following him is to become the highest priority, even over one’s own life. In Luke 9:23 Jesus had already said that everyone must take up his cross and follow him—take it up daily. So there is a daily dying to your own self-will, your stubborn self that refuses to die, but gets you into trouble. Your death must be so complete that when he raises you up, you have new life in him.

Romans 6 is clear. At water baptism, we are dead and buried with Christ. And if we have died and been buried with him, we will be raised with Christ “from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (v. 4, ESV). “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (v. 5). That happens right now. You die and are raised up. If it happens daily (without daily water baptism!), then that means you have a heart God can use; your daily dying to self-centeredness pleases him.

28-30:

In these verses Jesus inserts a brief parable. The lesson is obvious: count the cost before you build a tower or begin to follow Christ. My brother had some level of a conversion experience in high school, but after he joined the Navy he fell away soon enough. Apparently he did not count the cost. I don’t recall anyone laughing at or mocking him for abandoning his faith, but he must have felt guilty about it. (He later came back around to true faith, before he passed.)

Recall the Parable of the Sower (or Soils) in Luke 8:4-15. Some received the word, but the devil stole it before it took root. Some received the word with joy, but quickly fell away because of a time of testing. They did not stay true. Others received it, and bore some fruit, but the cares of the world choked out their commitment to Christ. The final group received it and stayed with it, even to the very end. Jesus approves only of the final group. Here in this section of Scripture, Jesus is similarly challenging the huge multitudes to be sure to understand that following him won’t be easy or popular.

“Connected to discipleship, the enemy onslaught comes from Satan. Satan will enter Judas (22:3) and sift Peter (22:31). Disciples require a defensive fortification to withstand satanic assault or they will be overrun and utterly fail” (Garland, comment on 14:28).

31-32:

This is another quick parable. You are the king about to go to war, and you must count the cost before you launch out from your own territory with ten thousand soldiers. You are outnumbered two to one. Can you face in opposition the king with twenty-thousand soldiers? If not, you better send out a representative when you are a long way off and sue for peace.

⁵ The wise prevail through great power,

Does this speak of spiritual warfare with Satan? Perhaps. Jesus had been expelling demons throughout his ministry. He said that he had already bound the strong man, so you can defeat him as well (Luke 11:21-23). So even though you have ten thousand soldiers, you can still defeat Satan with twice as many soldiers on his side.

But let’s not wander too far from the original purpose of the brief parable. It boils down to this: count the cost before you follow Jesus.

Liefeld and Pao say the parable goes deeper than counting the cost. Instead, “In building towers and waging war with a strong opponent, the inadequacy of one’s resources should be noted. In following Jesus, one should likewise renounce all claims to power and resources in the presence of God. Instead of carefully ‘counting the cost,’ disciples are called to decisive and urgent actions in their carrying Jesus’ cross” (comments on vv. 28-32). Perhaps. But this is too complicated. It is better and clearer to see it as calling us to count the cost (but see v. 33).

Even Luke, the beloved physician, apparently gave up his doctoring career to follow Paul and his team on various occasions in the Acts of the Apostles. Yet I sense that he would have recommended some herbal medicine or other first-century remedies if he had met a sick person along the way. So be open to allow God to use your strengths while you die daily to him.

Morris, quoting another scholar, has an interesting interpretation, first, of the man intending to build a tower and, second, the king planning to go to war: “In the first parable Jesus says, ‘Sit down and reckon whether you can afford to follow me.’ In the second he says, ‘Sit down and reckon whether you can afford to refuse my demands.’ Both ways of looking at it are important” (comments on vv. 31-32).

33:

Here is the punchline or payoff verse. The verb for “give up” is apotassō (pronounced ah-poh-tahs-soh), and it can mean, depending on the context, “to renounce” or “to give up.” It literally means “away” (apo-) and “place” or “station” and other things (tassō). So it means “to place” your possessions “away from” you. On the other hand, recall that wealthy women funded Jesus’s ministry out of their own resources (Luke 8:3). “Possessions” here and “resources” in 8:3 is the same noun in Greek. Jesus never told the women to give up all of their possessions.

So why the seeming contradiction?

The context is key, again. It is about whittling down or winnowing out the large crowds here in this pericope (pronounced puh-RIH-coh-pea) or section of Scripture. The women had already showed their devotion to him. As it turns out, they were about to go with him all the way to his death on the cross and his resurrection (Luke 24:49, 55; 24:1-11). They had already been proving their willingness to carry their own cross and follow Jesus, no matter the cost. Here in this pericope Jesus was speaking to the massive crowds who had not (yet) shown themselves able or willing to do this.

Faith that leads to a decision to follow Christ is the first step, but it is not the only one. You must follow him in faith all the way to the very end.

Liefeld and Pao say this verse interprets the previous verses. “His thought is probably that of abandonment of things, the yielding up of the right of ownership, rather than outright disposal of material possessions. The disciple of Jesus may be given the use of things in trust of stewardship, but they are no longer his own. The present tense [of apotassō] implies that what Jesus requires in relation to possessions is a continual attitude of abandonment … But the principle of stewardship makes a spirit of abandonment—i.e. the willingness to part with our goods (which are not ultimately ours anyway)—necessary today. This is consistent with the command to use our possession wisely (cf. 16:1-12)” (comment on v. 33).

I think I see Liefeld’s and Pao’s point. The builder of the tower and the king about to go to war must use their resources wisely, as if the possessions belong to God, before the men take control of them. But I still say that counting the cost before total commitment to Jesus is a possible interpretation.

GrowApp for Luke 14:25-33

A.. How did you count the cost before you followed Jesus?

B.. What or whom did you give up to follow him?

C.. Why is it important to surrender or crucify your stubborn self-will daily?

At this link you will find the bibliography at the very bottom.

Luke 14