Discipleship and the Cross

Luke 14: 25 – 27; John 17: 23
 
The gospels mentioned a number of Jesus’ uncompromising hard sayings that would have bred a level of discomfort to anyone listening. In Luke, while on His way to Jerusalem, He spoke to the crowd following Him of unequivocally hating one’s parents, family and life altogether in order to qualify as His disciple. What did He mean by downgrading affective familial ties as a prerequisite to discipleship? It may seem that obedience to God is tantamount to considering one’s family as enemies, but that position is untenable given Jesus’ instruction relating to enemies (Matt 5:44) and His own close family relationships. The emphasis was not how the family was to be perceived per se, but on discipleship – the attributes of being His followers. 
 
To focus away from the family was counter-cultural in an era where strong traditional family life was held up as an ideal. So, for Jesus to claim that only obedience to His voice matters above any others were against the grain of convention, where life generally revolved around one’s family. This further implied that if our intentions of following Him were other than to accede to His will (e.g., to further one’s career), He would not allow Himself to be used. God is God and He desires that His people come to Him for Himself with no agendas of their own. 
 
What does He mean by “hate?” The Greek can denote “to detest” or “to love less” (cf. Gen 29:30-31). Jesus seemed to have intended that they ought to love someone less affectionately compared to another. Loving or hating members of one’s family is a deeply emotional experience, and He implies that He expected them to reorder their lives to love Him with a stronger emotion that eclipses all else, including those who were dear to them. Having said that, we need to be careful that we do not loathe our family in preference to Jesus, that was not His objective.
 
Being totally upfront with His conditions and in full hearing of everyone, Jesus said that in order to relate to Him that way, there were no other options except an unconditional and sacrificial requirement of carrying their crosses. That cross represented the dying to self, to our family, career, and any other interests in life that could possibly stand in the way of a focused relationship with Him. This disgraceful symbol of execution used as a metaphor by Christ reinforced the imagery of a sacrifice that our Saviour was to epitomise later. A man carrying his cross makes only one journey - his last (Gal 2:20). Positionally, although one had died with Christ on the cross (v. 27; Luke 9:23; Col 3:1-4), as a sinner in this broken world, it is simple to forget this critical position and become self-absorbed. We are ‘dead’ in Christ, but we have not become dead! This is a learnt process in the spiritual realm as we live life daily - being crucified is slow and painful. Hence, to be His disciple will require patience and fortitude. 
 
The 12 disciples were blessed to have Jesus as their perfect guide and mentor as discipleship is an intimate accountability process between our Lord and man. It obviously involves an inordinate level of dialogue (i.e., verbal or otherwise) over one’s lifetime, and one must not forget that this journey is initiated by God. Throughout Scripture, a general observation of those whom God taught about His ways, and singled out for our instruction, will indicate the pre-requisites that God looks for in His potential disciple - a heart that sought to implicitly obey Him at all costs (1 Peter 1 : 13 - 25), and therefore, one who was obviously in the process of dying to self (Rom 6: 8 - 14). Would it be a fair assumption to conclude that God will not consistently speak with us (as a Master to His disciple), if there is no intention on our part to obey Him! And even if He did talk to us, many of us would not recognise that still small voice. There were many who followed Jesus, but He had few disciples. This onerous and costly lifelong discipleship course will set us free from the trappings of life that would deprive us from knowing Him (c.f., John 15: 7 - 11; John 17: 20 - 23). Dare we aspire to become His disciple in carrying our crosses and intensely loving Him?