19-The Cost of Discipleship
XIX. THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP.
Luk 14:26. “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” THIS is surely” one of the “ hard sayings “ of our Lord’s teaching.
He it was who said, “ A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” Is the same Lord so jealous, so exacting, so indifferent to the mutual affections of human beings, as to demand that men must hate all, for the more perfect following of himself? There is no one, you might have thought, less likely to have made such a demand than Jesus Christ, whose glory it was to humble and empty himself on behalf of his brethren, to give up his life for his sheep.
Yet, with a little more reflection, you might see in the boldness of this saying what is peculiarly characteristic of the Lord Jesus. This is, in truth, just what no other teacher, or master of disciples, could be imagined to say. There is more here than the ordinary exactingness of human egotism. The masters of schools and founders of religions have been tempted to set their pretensions very high, and have found it profitable to do so: such self-exaltation pleases, rather than repels, those who are inclined to become their followers. But one would not expect to find amongst the sayings reported and recorded by their disciples anything that would put their claims in so invidious and disturbing a light. But our Lord, we know, was not unwilling to surprise and perplex his hearers, by saying what would at the moment offend them and repel them from him, instead of attracting them to him.
We should remember that many sayings are best to be understood by the tone in which they are uttered. When we are reading written words, it is of course not easy to recover with certainty the speaker’s tone. There must always be some doubt whether we interpret rightly the mood in which our Lord spoke any words of his which we may be studying. But it is beyond all doubt, I believe, that some of his sayings are misapprehended by us, and others are greatly weakened to our minds, through a common habit of taking for granted that Christ always spoke in a uniformly passionless mood, and of reading his utterances, therefore, as if delivered in a calm didactic tone.
There are indications enough of deep and varied feeling, giving special significance to particular portions of our Lord’s teaching. What the feeling was, is in part to be gathered from the circumstances of the history.
We can see that our Lord was not always able to be as gracious as he would have desired to be. In his own spirit, indeed, he was without intermission full of grace as of truth. But his manner was sometimes of necessity stern, rather than soft; repellent, rather than winning. And this was not only the case in his well-known dealings with the Pharisees, when his rebukes were full of fiery invectives and threatenings. At times he had to push back the common multitudes who thronged round him in cheap admiration. As he proclaimed the glad tidings of the Kingdom of heaven, and wrought the beneficent signs of it in acts of healing, the people, captivated by what they heard and saw, pressed as it were with violence into the Kingdom of heaven. But Jesus did not welcome this superficial enthusiasm. We have accounts like the following of his attitude towards it. “ Many believed on his name, when they saw the miracles which he did. But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of men.” “When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again unto a mountain himself alone.” When an eager multitude had taken great trouble to find him, Jesus said to them, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw signs, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled.” He would not let them suppose that the deliverance he proclaimed was to be found in laxity of conduct. “ Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil... I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” The pattern parable, that of the Sower, describes the various kinds of reception given to the word of the Kingdom, and warns two classes of the worthlessness of the receiving of it into a shallow heart, or into one occupied with the cares and pleasures of this world. And in the same mind Jesus told his hearers that they must strive make efforts to enter in at the narrow gate, for many would seek to enter in, and would not be able.
These are examples of the discouragement which our Lord was accustomed to offer to the contagious enthusiasm which the sight of his wonderful works and the expression of his sympathy with the humbler classes inspired amongst the common people. He was full of grace; but he was also full of truth: and he must tell his hearers the truth, at the cost of appearing to neutralize the grace. The sympathies, the hopes, the promises, which touched the people and made them wonder at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth, were perfectly sincere and real; but our Lord knew that he was not opening a Paradise of easy delights to men. Not such was the Kingdom of heaven; nor was it to be entered and possessed by pleasure-seekers. The true bliss of it was to be attained through self-renunciation and sacrifice, through the testing fire of tribulation. The Lord Jesus must make this thoroughly understood; but it was impossible that he should bear this testimony to those who thronged about him without pain and sadness. And we ought to see a feeling of most earnest sadness in that warning which we are specially considering to-day. We have examples in the preceding part of the chapter of the way in which our Lord made the cause of the suffering classes his own. The Kingdom of heaven, he had plainly taught, was for the poor rather than for the rich, for the despised rather than for the highly esteemed. In ver. 25 we read, “There went great multitudes with him.” The champion and benefactor of the poor, he had the popularity which he might seem to have courted. But the sight of this following caused him sorrow rather than joy. He knew what was in man: and this sort of discipleship he perceived to be fallacious. There was not the stuff of the true disciple of the Son of man in these multitudes. They would have to be tried and exposed. His followers would have to endure all losses, all distresses. He was looking forward to a terrible baptism for himself, and those who would cling to him must be prepared for their share in it.
Expressing this knowledge, he turned to the multitudes, and said, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Such words were not a direction given in a mood of calm contentment; they were a prophetic warning, wrung out of one of the agonies of the Son of man. There is a tone if one must not say of bitterness, at least of protest and horror, in this forecast of the contradictions which the following of him would evoke.
You may trace it in the slow iteration of relationships. He will not spare himself or his hearers one painful detail. “Think not,” he said, “that I am come to send peace on the earth.” Surely this was what believers in him were taught to expect! No, he says: “think not I am come to send peace on the earth, I am not come to send peace, but a sword. I am not come,” [think of the intensity of all but despair with which such a profession must have been uttered by the Son of man], “to make families of one mind, to replace domestic jars and jealousies by the sweet harmony of mutual affection. Don’t expect this. Any man who would follow me will have to hate his father, and his mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, yea and his own life also, or he cannot be my disciple. This is the result of my coming and of my Gospel in such a world as this is. I cannot proclaim the goodness of my Father, and call men to be at peace with him as his reconciled children without introducing these terrible dissensions into societies and families. My disciples must be prepared for these consequences,. They must look for not merely bodily privations, but moral tortures, stripes and wounds of the affections, conflicts which will make them sometimes wonder whether the following of me can be right, if they intend to be constant as my disciples and to walk in my steps.”
It is, then, as a warning of misery that would have to be endured, and of the kind of misery which was most shocking and intolerable to the Son of man, and not as the recommendation of a course to be pursued, that we are to understand our Lord’s saying. If you suppose him to be teaching, in the calmly didactic tone, that his followers must withdraw their warmest affections from their human relatives to give them more absolutely to him, you are attributing to him, I am persuaded, not only a different feeling from that which was in his mind, but the very opposite feeling. He uses the most painful expression, to hate, just because the thing he foresees, the apparent rending of closest ties, is so painful to him. His supreme desire is to promote love; and it is laid upon him and his followers to be apparently the causes of bitter and deadly strife.
Undoubtedly our Lord might have used more guarded and explanatory language. In what he did say, we shall be ready to believe, as reverent Christians, that he spoke from his own unerring sense of what was fittest. Very often, the best language is not that which is coldly calculated, but that which is suddenly fashioned by the heat of a worthy emotion. How are we to be aware of uncommon feeling in the heart of a speaker, unless it shews its mark in some unexpected form of speech?
Part of the value of speech is in its revealing emotion and character; and if we read our Lord’s history rightly, we shall see plainly enough that his nature did not differ from the natures of other men in being more even and placid, but that it was agitated more than others by joy and by grief, by indignation and by horror. When he was thus moved by the prospect of the moral distresses which would attend the following of him, our Lord had in view primarily the circumstances of his own age, and the future of those whom he was immediately addressing. He was leading a “ little flock” into the fire of persecution. The followers of the Nazarene were to be hated of all men. “The brother,” as Jesus said on another occasion, “shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.” The first days of the Kingdom of heaven were days of peculiar tribulation. What was said with reference to the trials of those days would not be exactly applicable to other times. But although the saying we are considering is to be regarded as a warning of impending trials rather than as an exhortation, and those trials belong to a particular age, yet we may undoubtedly see in it a moral call or demand. The Lord Jesus, whilst he plainly warned his hearers what the following of him would cost, implied that to follow him was worth the cost. Though he apparently made no efforts to proselytize, and repelled many who offered themselves as adherents, he yet took the responsibility of forming a small band of followers, and he committed to them the charge of drawing others into the Kingdom, and spoke continually of the rewards of the Kingdom for those who could enter it through tribulation, and declared that as it was Divine so it must grow and triumph. Painful as was the prospect of inevitable strifes arid hatreds, our Lord by no means exhorted his disciples to shrink from becoming the occasions of them. He does therefore in these words exalt the following of himself into the highest of duties.
Whatever might be the consequences, moral as well as bodily, of following him, those who saw things in the true light would without hesitation cleave to him. The disciple such as Jesus. desired must be ready to give up all, possessions, friends, his life, when the discipleship should require it. So this warning as to the trials of a particular age hardly needs any translation to become an extremely exacting call addressed to all Christians.
If it was right for the first followers of Christ to encounter even the rending of his family affections for his name’s sake, what is there that we in this day could plead as having a title to qualify the same discipleship, and to turn it into a compromise? When Christ calls, neither father nor mother, neither wife nor child, neither brothers nor sisters, can rightly stand in the way of obedience to the summons.
What is it that can reconcile our consciences to the exactingness of a claim which thus overrides all that nature makes most binding upon us? Only the true apprehension of what Christ is. For him it was perfectly safe to use such dangerous language. If men were utterly careless about his nature and mission and general teaching, they were not likely to turn that saying into a plea for neglecting natural duties; they would rather scoff at it as monstrous. If on the other hand they were attracted by him, they could not so abuse it.
Remember that the Lord Jesus declared himself to be sent by the Father; that he bore witness of the Father as infinitely gracious; that he affirmed the true enemy of mankind to be the spirit of hatred and deceit, from whom he was come to deliver men. He was himself the manifestation of the mind which he declared to be in the Father, seeking to bind men together by mutual love, setting forth love and unity as the glory to which the soul of man owes natural allegiance and for which it must endlessly crave. He had spent a blameless childhood and youth as one of a family, subject to his parents, growing in favour both with God and man. He protested against the love of riches and of honour, against oppression and hardness, against every form of selfishness, and bade men come to and love the God of love and truth. This Son of the Father was put to death, and held up to odium as one who was disloyal to the Jewish religion. Christ crucified became to the Jews a stumblingblock. When therefore a member of a Jewish household was drawn by the Father to him, and by him to the Father, and determined to profess himself a disciple of the Crucified, you can imagine that his determination would offend his relatives, that all sorts of reproaches would be cast upon him, that efforts would be made to induce him to give up the cause to which he was attaching himself; and that when he proved constant, he would be accused of breaking the family harmony, of disobeying and dishonouring his parents, of violating those natural obligations to which the God of his fathers had given his express sanction.
Why then should he thus “hate” father and mother, wife and child? The reply of his conscience, no doubt, would be, that God himself was calling him. But then this God, whom he had learned to know and confess, was one who led him in the ways of truth and love. Allegiance to the Crucified implied a triumph over worldliness and self-seeking; it constrained him to care, not for his own interests, but for his brethren and for mankind.
Now what are the natural enemies of the family affections? Are they conscientiousness, devotion to truth, faith in God’s love, self-conquest, desire of the universal well-being, zeal for the will of the just and gracious God? Impossible! Surely they are vanity, self-esteem, jealousy; indulgence of appetite and passion; the desire of shielding what is discreditable by deception; distrust and misconstruction. If only these could be conquered, how happy the life of households would be! how spontaneously would mutual affection thrive! how closely the ties of mutual dependence would be knit!
Nothing is more certain than that the following of the Crucified wars against the lusts which impair the natural affections, and supplies the atmosphere and the soil in which they are made to thrive.
Therefore that early follower of the Crucified would be involved in a most distressing conflict.
He could not escape from pain and perplexity.
He could not be happy in displeasing his nearest friends. He would probably love father and mother, wife and child, all the more for seeming to hate them. He would feel mastered by that greater vocation of the cause of God and of mankind, which bade him sacrifice his own present happiness to the greater gain of the world; and he would be sustained, no doubt, by faith and hope in him to whom he knew his kinsfolk to be as dear as to himself. So whatever he might suffer, and whatever might be said as to his hating those of his own house, he. would cleave to his crucified master.
We may be unfeignedly thankful that the following of Jesus Christ does not for us involve such bitter trials. The lesson I would ask you to learn from the remembrance of them is, that we are called, at whatever cost of physical or mental or moral pain, to give ourselves up absolutely to the cause of goodness and truth, which is the cause of the Kingdom of heaven. There is a Master whose claim over us transcends all inferior obligations, and he is Truth and Love.
We are tempted, partly by reverence, to name Religion instead of God or Christ; but it is really unsafe to speak of the claims of Religion as being thus paramount. The Jews who persecuted our Lord and his followers were devotees of Religion, and it was in the name of Religion that they persecuted. The claims of Religion have often come into competition with domestic duty. But then Religion is not identical with the Son of man.
We read, God is Love, God is Truth; but not, God is Religion. It would be most dangerous to say, that if any one would follow Religion, he must hate father and mother, wife and child. By such a doctrine a man may really be seduced into the neglect or disparagement of family affections. But let a man be a follower of the Son of man, or of tJie heavenly Father, and then I say he may try, if he pleases, to hate father and mother, wife and child; he will not be able.
I admit that there may be perplexities about the degree and manner in which it is right for any one to devote himself to his family when wider claims seem to be made upon him. Ought such a one to become a missionary and go out to preach the Gospel in heathen lands? Ought such another to allow the business of his profession to take him away for long or indefinite periods from his home?
Ought fathers in general to resist the absorbing demands which their business is apt to make upon them? Such questions cause genuine anxiety to very many. We can hardly hope to solve them in particular cases to our perfect satisfaction; and the circumstances so vary in particular cases that it is not very helpful to lay down general rules about them. But I think I may venture to say, that such direct following of the Son of man as takes effect in the shape of voluntary endeavours to bring in and extend his Kingdom, hardly has its due consideration amongst us. The soldier or the sailor, the merchant, the engineer, the scientific explorer, take it for granted that domestic claims must be overuled. But domestic claims are much more easily allowed to dispute the obligation to do some voluntary work in promoting God’s glory and bettering the future of the world. The difficulty no doubt is, that when a man has a secular occupation, he sees his work and knows that he can do it; he is not tormented by uncertainty whether he has a genuine call and is able to do the good he wishes to do; he is not giving up more definite duties for the more indefinite. Of course, if any one of us were able to be a St Paul, we should not doubt that home ought to be given up for such a career as much as for that of a soldier. But who knows that he could be a St Paul even according to his smaller measure?
So, a man will ask whether he can persuade himself that if he were to give up time for such work as that of a Sunday School teacher or District Visitor, or for that of promoting any philanthropic movement, he would be sure to make the most valuable investment of the time. I admit the weight of such uncertainties. It is simpler and safer to do the nearest and plainest things than to give them up for more ambitious but more distant and difficult attempts. But I can hardly doubt that we should see our way more distinct, and the call more imperative, to voluntary efforts in the cause of the Son of man, if we were in the habit of contemplating that cause more steadily as the one comprehensive object for which we should live. Of this however I am sure, that no devotion to the Son of man or his cause would on the whole weaken the natural ties of human life. If we give up our cares, our interests, our affections, to God who makes and who places us, he does not throw them away as worthless things; he returns them to us purified and consecrated. The earthly selfish temper which mingles with our best feelings and with the discharge of our most sacred duties is dross and alloy to be got rid of. It is well that it should be purged away in the fire of love to God and Christ. God will teach us to love more unselfishly, not less earnestly, all whom we learn to love in him.