Counting the True Cost of Discipleship

“Large crowds were travelling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: ‘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. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear." (Luke 14:25-35 NIV)

The above text is a major challenge to those who seek to know Jesus on more than a superficial level, wanting to go beyond the usual motions of compartmentalized religion.

Luke records that large crowds followed Jesus. They had seen miracles, healings, demons cast out, and the power of God addressing every imaginable human problem. Jesus was a popular preacher. Had he lived in our day He would have had would have had an enormous Facebook “fiends list”.

But followers are fickle people; they can walk away as quickly as they can attach themselves to leaders who are new and different. In 2009 the editors of the Oxford 2009 declared that the most popular new word of the year was “unfriend”, which is derived from the capacity all Facebook users have to drop friends; simply delete them from the list, with no prior discussion. When the going got tough for Jesus, most of His followers unfriended HIm. God is calling us to be disciples, not fickle followers.

Understanding the Majority

Many of those who attached themselves to Jesus were curious because of His reputation. Through the fog of boredom that characterised their daily lives, when Jesus came He was a charismatic leader who challenged the religious establishment, promised change and had supernatural power to back Him up. He did “stuff” no one else could do. As he itinerated around the countryside, many came because they wanted something. Their lives were harsh and often short; disease was rife, the daily poverty was grinding, hunger was common. In following Jesus (as long He did something for them) they had nothing to lose.

Men and women are no different today. Everyone is engaged in self-seeking, “what suits me, my interests, my career, my gratification, my identity, my fulfillment, my happiness.

The Government of Bhutan has established a Happiness Indicator for the population of that small Himalayan country. Most respondents state they are indeed “happy” – who wouldn’t when the identities of those who reply are known to the secret police? People who feel unhappy are shown the door and flee to nearby countries, such as Nepal. But most people want to feel happy. Like the founders of the American republic; men and women in the West assume an inherent “right” to pursue happiness.

Against the background of the multiple problems that face most of us, who wouldn’t follow a miracle worker who looked as though He could make everything right? Many of those who were attracted to Jesus were motivated by spiritual, as well as physical needs. The spiritual dimension is inescapable - we all need God. Here was One who claimed to be God; who had a supernatural power of persuasion over people, nature, sickness and death. Jesus was their new hero; they flocked to Him. Their response was, “Jesus, we love you; we embrace your teaching and admire your example; when you speak, something awakens in our hearts, we feel free from fear, depression and anxiety. You offer a new ‘Kingdom’, a change in our circumstances. You are truly awesome.”

Much evangelical teaching today focuses on Jesus’ example, His power, His message about the Kingdom, freedom, and what all means for “ME”. But this focus somehow misses the point. The “majority” are also fickle; capable of turning in instant and baying for blood. Crowds who loved Jesus were later swayed by popular opinion when their narrow expectations about the “here and now” were disappointed. Jesus is saying, “So you want to follow me? That’s great, but there are conditions. This no TV Idol, or Master Chef; discipleship is not a celebrity program. True discipleship starts by denying yourself and ends at the cross of Calvary. If you embrace my way, I can liberate you, set you free, put you on the right course, and focus you on realizing God’s plan for your life. But it will cost you everything. You had better do your sums”.

Three Analogies

Jesus went on to say three seminal things about discipleship, about how to make the greatest choice of our lives: (i) count the cost; (ii) embrace the cross; and (iii) live a life of absolute surrender.

If you truly want to know Christ, in your life, there is no short cut. Three times he stressed, “Unless you do this you cannot be my disciple”. If your prayer is “I will follow you if you bless me, give me a good time, get me out of my problems and provide for me”, you are being wrong-headed. Now, we would never actually say that! But Jesus emphasized that if we live that way, we can never be His disciples.

1. Count the Cost:-

Read the analogy Jesus gives about a man who starts building a tower but cannot finish it because he has underestimates the cost of construction. He is left with an unfinished piece of work, which his enemies ridicule.

The world is full of starters. As a boy in Brisbane I often passed the foundations of a cathedral a Christian denomination hoped to build in the city centre. After collecting funds, a confidence trickster convinced the leadership to give him all the cash, to be taken to the head of the denomination in Europe, to be “blessed”. Naturally, he did not come back. It would be decades before the church would raise enough funds to finish the job. Those who passed by the foundations saw the sad foundations, with grass growing long and unkempt between the stones, and they ridiculed the church.

The New Testament world was known as the “Age of unfinished towers”. King Herod was known for his palaces. Jesus says, “If you do not count the cost, you cannot be my disciple.” There is nothing impulsive about discipleship. Do you know what you are getting into? What price is God asking you to pay? Which parts of your life are off-limits? How much is your life truly worth? How much will it cost you to do His will? Can you afford it? You had better do your sums.

As the Western world recovers from the Global Economic Crisis property prices are going up so rapidly many are failing to get into the market because they can no longer afford it. Their savings have devalued. If you are serious, you need to be able to pay the price. The true cost of following Christ is putting him above every desire, every human relationship, every treasured goal, submitting everything to Him. His call is higher than the demands others place on us. If we want to be His disciples, He has to be our first love, above family and friends, even our own lives. Higher than our feelings and our traditions. Higher than our most precious goals. I can almost hear you responding, “Are you saying Jesus is asking us to put all our eggs in one basket?” Yes! Recklessly so. If you want to hold onto life it will slip away like sand. If you want to keep it, you need to invest it in Christ.

Paul discovered this. At the end of a long road of achievement, influence and tradition, where confronting eternal values saw him totally reevaluate what was truly important, Paul said, “All I have, all that I am is rubbish; it is excrement, compared with knowing Him and the power of His resurrection and eternal life”. We usually think life is all about us, our reputation, and our rights. Jesus is teaching that, in fact, it has nothing to do with us; life is all about knowing Him. He gave up everything; His reputation, status and rights, not so we would admire his altruism, but so that we would live like Him (read Philippians 2:5-11). What has God called you to do? He wants you to finish it. If you don’t, you will always feel a failure, that you never quite “made it”.

(ii) Embrace the Cross:-

“Carry your cross”. This was one of the most radical things Jesus taught. In New Testament times, seeing someone carrying a cross was a familiar sight. It meant only one thing: that the carrier was a condemned criminal on his or her way to execution. It was a cruel age. Every Jewish man, woman and child had seen crucifixions. They were ugly and barbaric.

If you remember the Mel Gibson movie, “Brave Heart” you will be able to picture the execution of William Wallace, who was hanged, drawn and quartered by his English captors. His dying clarion call was for “Freedom”. His death is pictured as patriotic, noble even, capable of instilling fear in the English and devoted love on the part of the dispossessed Scots.

But there was nothing noble about crucifixion. To Jews, it was considered a curse from God. It was an affront to the followers of Jesus: “We love your teaching, we are your greatest fans, we will write books, build universities, inscribe plaques, compose proverbs and sing songs about you, but we don’t want that cross. We want to carry other things. Our resumes, so that we can impress others. Our charm and good looks (and hope they never fade). Our great reputations, so others stand in awe of us. Our lists of demands; we have “rights”. This was never Jesus’ way. His job resume was giving up the glory He shared with God and being born, not into a palace, but a labourer’s family; walking away from the good looks we see in paintings, so that His face could be marred and made ugly by his enemies (read Isaiah Chapter 53); abandoning His reputation (he “became of no reputation”). He gave up His charm to the extent that we “hid our faces from Him”. Now Jesus is asking: “If I ask you to carry your cross, that is no more than I did … for you”.

This is not a popular message. It sounds distinctly “uncool”, narrow. Australian sociologist Hugh MacKay thinks Christians “too restrictive. Australians are easygoing about religion, they are suspicious of extremists”. But that doesn’t change or de-legitimize the message. To know and follow Christ means to die to ourselves. This is the supreme irony. If you seek your life, you will lose it; if you lose it for Christ you will find it.

In case you think that is all tokenism, consider the following:

“Christians teach that it is necessary to be poor to enter the kingdom of heaven. To assist them we command that all the property of the Edessian Christians be confiscated and distributed to the soldiers, and their lands form part of our domain. Thus, being impoverished, they will obtain their hoped for Kingdom of heaven”. Caesar Julian (361-363AD)

Motivated by jealousy and cynicism Julian unleashed a vicious persecution and butchery against the Christian community, in the last great campaign to eliminate Christians from the Roman Empire.”

Jesus says, “Choose … and do it now”. Is the price worth it? If you paid that price for anything else, it would be a rip-off. The call of Jesus involves investing for eternity. That’s precisely what Jesus Christ did. And by dying and rising he transformed human history.

(iii) Live a Life of Surrender:-

Jesus’ third analogy was a king counting the cost of marching against an army he knew to be far greater that his own, without having an edge of some description that might give him a tactical advantage. Why would a king go up against a superior force when he knew it was a hopeless cause? Only a fool would do that. The recent Matt Damon movie, Green Zone depicted the massive allied armed force arrayed against former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who was overthrown in 2003. Living in the Middle East at the time with my family, I could never understand why Saddam tried to bluff the rest of the world that he was stronger than he actually was, even on the eve of the invasion of his country. He refused to make peace with his enemies. Maybe it was it is not in human nature to humble ourselves, admit we are not right all the time; that we want to hang on, and that it can be hard let go.

The context of Jesus’ remarks was living in Israel, which was a natural land bridge for armies moving from the Middle East to Egypt and beyond, and vice versa. The narrow strip on land along the Mediterranean, where the mountains come to the coast, was the locus of troop movements over many centuries. North of the Lebanese city of Beirut is a location named Dog River, where it is still possible to see the remnants of monuments left by invading armies over two millennia. Jesus was telling his audience that a wise ruler, if he saw an enemy coming, made hard decisions. Was it worth fighting, or negotiating terms for an agreed peace? There could be no compromise after the battle started. In the first and second parables (building a tower and carrying our cross), we make a choice without pressure. In the third, we are forced to decide. God deals with us both ways. The message here is that He calls us to make a calculated decision to surrender selves, our plans and our expectations to Him. Growing up in West we are taught that our first allegiance is to ourselves. We want to be in charge, we like being in charge, in control. We look for our identity in that. Until we come up against the Gospel and the claims of Christ in our lives. Jesus calls us to surrender, not sentimentality, but in fact, with both our heart and will. If you want to be a dynamic Christian, you need to take this call of Jesus Christ seriously.

Many of Jesus followers found these ideas offensive and confronting. Jesus threatened the status quo. The common people didn’t like the status quo being upset. So they left Him. Discipleship is not a hobby (“I will serve you as long as it is not raining”), but a life choice. It is not for the half-hearted, who faint when first difficulties arise. Jesus counted the cost; embraced the cross and lived a life of total surrender to Will of God. The call of Christ on your life and mine is uncompromising, unqualified, unconditional loyalty to Him. Every day. Does that sound harsh? It is not meant to be sugar-coated. When we decide to follow Jesus Christ, on His conditions, we need to do so with our eyes wide open. The irony is: surrendering to Him is the only key to unlocking God’s best for our lives and discovering real freedom.

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Take on Jesus’ challenge. Look at what is important in your life. Not what you say, but how you intend to live, when you are alone (that is the Litmus Test). Then see if you are prepared to get out of your comfort zone and make decisions to conform to the will of Jesus Christ, in a way that will affect the rest of your life. Don’t be indifferent; be hot or cold, but please don’t be lukewarm. If you are a Christian, you will want to know Jesus; but you will have to count the cost. How far are you willing to go? What’s the maximum you are prepared to pay? How much of “self” are you genuinely prepared to renounce? Putting aside your rhetoric and defences, are you really prepared to die your personal ambition and your reputation, to stake your future on God’s faithfulness and integrity, to put your eternal destiny entirely in His hands? What count right now are not your good works, your religiosity, your performance, even your promises? Are you ready to hand over your life completely to Jesus Christ?

God loves you. He will never let you go. I am calling you to make a commitment in your heart to put Him first, count the cost, take up your cross and follow Him in total surrender. Not in your power, but working in collaboration with the Holy Spirit in you.