Love Him First to Love Them Best

[Luke 14:25-35] Now great crowds accompanied 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, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. ²⁷ Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. ²⁸ For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?²⁹ Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, ³⁰ saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ ³¹ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? ³² And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. ³³ So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. ³⁴ “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? ³⁵ It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Love Him First to Love Them Best

A man bought a car without counting the cost. He knew what the payments would be but didn’t realize how much the insurance would be. And he was totally caught off guard by the price of repairs.

He was not prepared for the cost. Every new clunk and screech left him sweating. Then his inability to face a major repair led to an even hastier trade – a trade that left him worse off than how he started.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus addresses the “great crowds” who “accompanied Him.” He warns them of the cost they will face in this world as His followers so that no surprise of trial, rejection, or responsibility causes them to make a hasty trade – trading in their faith for a benefit in this world.

I.

Strangely to us, Jesus begins with these words: “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” Father and mother, wife and children, siblings, and even your own life. Hate?

This is not hate in the sense we think of it, as if Jesus is telling you to be mean, nasty, and unloving toward your parents and children. We know from the rest of Scripture and common sense that that’s not it. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Husbands, love your wives as your own bodies.” But there is, Biblically, another sense of this word that means to choose or prioritize the one over the other.

So, God said about two brothers, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” [Romans 9:13]. This didn’t mean that God was mean to Esau or didn’t love him. It meant that, in regard to passing down the blessing of Abraham – the blessing of carrying on the lineage of the coming Savior – God chose Jacob over Esau. “Jacob I loved, Esau I hated.” 

On the buffet line at a wedding, you hate the chicken. You might love chicken. But you make room for the prime rib first. Prime rib you loved, chicken you hated.

And whoever would be a disciple of Jesus recognizes the First Commandment – “You shall have no other gods.” Not mom, not dad; not son or daughter, not wife or husband. No one gets to be Savior, Redeemer, Truest Friend, God and Lord – no one gets to be your All-in-all, except Jesus Christ, with the Father and the Spirit, one God.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” [Matthew 22:37-39]. There is a first and a second, and God is first. Not mom or dad, or wife or husband, or child, or sibling – nor your own self – but Jesus alone —

— And certainly not the ideas, ideals, or treasures of this world or the opinions of your neighbor or those who seem to hold sway in this world or over your life. Jesus you love first. But truly, this is easier to say than to do. And we often misstep.

II.

In regard to all of those, we love them best when we love our Lord and God, Jesus, first. When you hold to the Word of God first, you are the best you you can be to them. The Word of Jesus says, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved His church” [Ephesians 5:25]. “Wives, respect your husbands, and receive their leadership” [Ephesians 5:22,23]. Children, “obey your parents in the Lord… that it may go well with you.” [Ephesians 6:1-3]

And, Fathers, His Word says to you, “bring your children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (His Word)” and “not to provoke your children to anger” by being too hard on them [Ephesians 6:4]. “These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” [Deuteronomy 6:6-9]

When you love Christ first, you love your family best. They want many things from you – but loving Christ first means you will choose and prioritize the “one thing needed” [Luke 10:42] over the many things wanted. Don’t give them a bad trade but know what you most truly owe them. And other good things will be possible, at God’s direction.

III.

At the time Jesus said these words in our Gospel, He was speaking them to disciples who were soon to face a great price for being disciples of Jesus. They would face rejection from family and synagogue, hardships, beatings, and imprisonments – and the loss of their own lives – for publicly confessing Jesus as Messiah.

All of which they could trade in for an easier path by not confessing His name publicly. That bad trade would be tempting, so Jesus wants them to know ahead of time the costs they will face.

Today, among your neighbors, there are those who come to faith in Jesus Christ – and the price they will pay is scorn and rejection from their families and friends. They may be mocked. And if they’ve been raised in some other religious tradition, they will disappoint dad and mom by becoming a Christian. It’s a hard price to face. This is what it means that we must love Jesus more than father or mother, husband or wife.

For some, in some places, leaving their family’s religion for faith in Jesus can mean violence from those very same people. Jesus, in the Gospel, lets them know the cost ahead of time so they can turn to the Holy Spirit for strength and endure.

But how about those raised in the Church? In a free nation. Is there a cost? In my experience, the cost often goes like this:

A pastor teaches about issues that are touchy in people’s lives – or controversial in our culture – about marriage, man and woman, how God has ordered our lives together; about not living together; about divorce; about abortion; about homosexuality as against God’s will and nature – and who gets angry?

Often, moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas who have never supported any of that stuff, but whose children or grandchildren are living it.

The parents or grandparents have followed the children. Unwilling to upset them. Or unable to come to grips with what it might mean for their children or grandchildren if those things really are against God’s will.

But because the parents follow toward the ways of their children, now those children have lost their only rope and anchor in truth. Their only rope and anchor in the Savior.

But when mom and dad, and grandparents, keep their love of Jesus their Savior first, their younger loved ones still have a lifeline to the forgiveness of sins in Jesus. A rope and anchor to their Savior in their family remains. You love them best when you love Jesus first.

IV.

When you love Him first, you are loving them best. And we love Him first because He first loved us [1 John 4:19]. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” [1 John 4:10]. “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” – “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” [Romans 5:6-8].

Jesus has loved you to death. And, in Him, “you have redemption, the forgiveness of your sins” [Colossians 1:14]. We each fall short of what Jesus has commanded us today. And He has forgiven you all of your sins by the price He paid, when He kept as first the Father’s will to save you [Luke 22:42; Philippians 2:8].

You are all sons and daughters, moms and dads, brothers and sisters, friends, and neighbors – you are all some of those things. And someone in each of your lives has benefited you by loving Jesus first. Do the same. And never, for anyone, trade in your Savior who has first loved you. Amen.