Context No. 2372 of 4322 · Luke

Luke 14:25-35: in context

25Now great multitudes were going with him. He turned and said to them, 26“If anyone comes to me, and doesn’t disregard his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he can’t be my disciple. 27Whoever doesn’t bear his own cross and come after me, can’t be my disciple. 28For which of you, desiring to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and count the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it? 29Or perhaps, when he has laid a foundation and isn’t able to finish, everyone who sees begins to mock him, 30saying, ‘This man began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ 31Or what king, as he goes to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an envoy and asks for conditions of peace. 33So therefore, whoever of you who doesn’t renounce all that he has, he can’t be my disciple. 34“Salt is good, but if the salt becomes flat and tasteless, with what do you season it? 35It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile. It is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Great crowds are traveling with Jesus, and instead of thinning his message to keep them, he raises the cost. Anyone who will not put him ahead of father, mother, spouse, and even his own life cannot be his disciple. Then he tells two small parables: a builder who sits down first to count whether he can finish the tower, and a king who weighs whether ten thousand can meet twenty thousand before he marches out.

The point of both is deliberation. Jesus is not recruiting an impulsive crowd; he wants people who have sat down and reckoned the price before they follow. The half-finished tower and the outmatched king are pictures of enthusiasm that never counted the cost and collapses in public. Discipleship, he says, is like salt: useful only while it keeps its savor. A following that begins in a wave of feeling and never faces what it will actually require ends up flat and thrown out.

Have I sat down and counted what following Christ will actually cost me, or am I building on a burst of feeling?

Sources

Luke 14:28: For which of you, desiring to build a tower, doesn't first sit down and count the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it?
Luke 14:33: So therefore, whoever of you who doesn't renounce all that he has, he can't be my disciple.
Luke 14:34: Salt is good, but if the salt becomes flat and tasteless, with what do you season it?