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The Cost of Discipleship


The story is told of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the famed explorer of Antarctica, placing the following ad in the newspaper:

Men Wanted: for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.

Shackleton died in 1922, and this story began circulating in 1944, so it may be a myth. But it bears a striking resemblance in tone to Jesus’ call to discipleship in Luke 14, which is not a myth. Listen for God’s word to you from Luke 14:25-33…

Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

In this passage, Jesus urges his followers to count the cost of discipleship before taking on the task. Jesus says we should be like someone building a tower who estimates the cost before taking on the project. Or we should be like a king who, before going to war, estimates whether he has enough soldiers to win the battle.

So, what does it cost to be a disciple of Jesus? First, we must answer the question: what does it mean to be a disciple? 

A disciple is a learner. Jesus, quite literally, had many people following him at this point in his life. “Large crowds were traveling with him.” But what does that really mean unless those same crowds are willing to listen and learn from Jesus and implement what he says in their lives?

Jesus is not impressed by the number of people following him in the loose sense of that term, just as he wouldn’t be impressed by the number of friends you or I have on Facebook today. Such following does not cost much. Such friendship is cheap.

So, Jesus proceeds to tell the crowds what will be involved if they truly choose to be his disciples, his learners.

First, Jesus says, it is going to cost them their family.

Obviously, Jesus is using hyperbole when he says, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” Jesus does not literally want us to hate our family members or even ourselves. If he did want us to do that, then why would he instruct us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and even love our enemies? 

As Michael Wilcock explains, love for our family members and even for ourselves is to be so far surpassed by love for Jesus that our love for our family and ourselves will seem like hate in comparison to our love for him.

In Matthew 10:37-39, Jesus says, 

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

In what ways might it cost us our family in order to follow Christ?

Jesus’ first disciples left their families for a time in order to follow Jesus, and to preach and heal alongside of him. This leaving of their families was not forever. But a clear cost was involved. Missionaries have paid this kind of price over the centuries in order to follow Christ. My own father left our family for a time while he was establishing his ministry to teenage gangs in New York City.

But there is a second way in which it might cost us our families if we choose to be Christ’s disciples. As we talked about a couple of weeks ago, some of our closest family and friends might not like it when we commit our lives to follow Jesus and be his disciples. Therefore, being a disciple of Christ might cost us our relationships, when people don’t want to associate with us because of the priority we give to following Jesus.

So, here is the key question: are we willing to put Jesus as overwhelmingly the first priority in our lives, over and above even our nearest and dearest family? Jesus says that true discipleship involves this kind of prioritizing.

Secondly, Jesus says it will cost us our possessions if we want to be his disciples. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

Jesus’ first disciples did this when they chose to follow him around Palestine, preaching, teaching and healing. 

I have never yet given up all of my possessions to follow Jesus, but I have come close to doing so. When we felt led of God in 2004 to move to Ireland to live and work with C. S. Lewis’ stepson, Douglas Gresham, we sold many of our possessions, and left the rest behind in the care of others. We travelled on one-way plane tickets, not knowing when the Lord would lead us to return to the United States. The sum total of our possessions consisted of what we could wear on our backs and fit in our suitcases.

And whether we give up our possessions to follow Jesus in this life, like many monks and nuns have done over the centuries, there will come a day when we have to give it all up anyway. I have performed many funerals in my life as a minister. I have yet to see a hearse pulling a U-Haul trailer.

But I think the key here is not whether we physically give up all our possessions or not. I think what God cares about most is our attitude toward our possessions. Do our possessions possess us? Or do we hold everything loosely, realizing it all belongs to God anyway?

In Acts 2:44-45 we read this about the first Christians in Jerusalem…

All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.

Then, in Acts 4:32 we read…

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. 

To me, these two passages reveal the attitude we need to have in regard to possessions. Do we claim our possessions as our own, or are we willing to share everything we have?

Finally, Jesus says that being his disciple will cost us our life. Jesus says,

Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

Again, Jesus is using hyperbole. He does not expect us, literally, to hate our lives. Scripture teaches us throughout that we should be thankful to God for the gift of life, and we should do all in our power to protect both physical and spiritual life.

But at the same time, Jesus’ first disciples would have had no doubt what he meant when he said, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

This was no mere metaphor to the first disciples of Jesus. Jesus himself went to the cross and was executed as a revolutionary (from the Roman perspective) and a blasphemer (from the Jewish perspective). Jesus’ first disciples may have not realized the full import of this statement when Jesus first made it, but after they saw him nailed to a cross, they certainly understood that if they continued to follow Jesus, they might end up the same way.

The cross has been a powerful symbol of Christianity ever since.

In 1999, two years after my father died, my mother sent me a poem on Maundy Thursday. On the poem which she wrote in a beautiful card, she affixed a sticky note (one of her favorite things, sometimes I think she single-handedly kept 3M in business!) On the sticky note she said, “the crosses on Easter cards, bedecked with lovely lilies and colorful flowers, prompted my writing.” And then on the card was this poem,

The cross that stood
On Calvary’s hill,
Bore no lilies fair.
No choir sweet
Sang Easter’s song,
The Son of God hung there.
Darkness fell
O’er all the land,
The earth gave up the dead.
Christ sacrificed Himself
That hour.
For our sin He bled.

Oh glorious love
The Father gave,
And gives eternally.
To those who come
To Him through Christ,
Salvation full and free.

Sing glad hosannas
To the Lord,
Give thanks
In song and prayer
In heaven’s glory
Christ now reigns
To give us entrance there.

I agree with my mother, if we are going to wear a cross around our necks, or give one out on an Easter card, the cross ought to have a starkness about it. The cross on which Jesus hung was anything but pretty. And if we choose to follow Jesus as his disciples then we too must give our lives for him, maybe not in one fell swoop as some great martyrs do, but in daily service over a lifetime.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who was executed by the Nazis shortly before the liberation of Germany by the Allied forces. Bonhoeffer was imprisoned and executed because of his involvement in the resistance and the plot to assassinate Hitler. In 1937, Bonhoeffer wrote in his book, The Cost of Discipleship

The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death-we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call. Jesus’ summons to the rich young man was calling him to die, because only the man who is dead to his own will can follow Christ. In fact every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die, and therefore Jesus Christ and his call are necessarily our death as well as our life. The call to discipleship, the baptism in the name of Jesus Christ means both death and life. The call of Christ, his baptism, sets the Christian in the middle of the daily arena against sin and the devil. Every day he encounters new temptations, and every day he must suffer anew for Jesus Christ’s sake. The wounds and scars he receives in the fray are living tokens of this participation in the cross of his Lord.[1]

Now I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: Why would anyone want to follow Jesus and be his disciple when the cost is so great? Peter asked the same question in Matthew 19, beginning with verse 27…

Then Peter said in reply, “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.

So, there will be a reward in the end, a reward that makes up for all we are asked to give up now.

But remember this above all: Jesus is the only perfect disciple. He gave up family, possessions, and life … for us! He can help us be totally committed to him. But it is a growing process. As I have said before, so I say again, all we can do is begin, by giving as much as we know of ourselves to as much as we know of Christ.


[1]Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, New York: Macmillan, 1963, p. 99.

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