First Reading: Luke 14:25-35
Second Reading: Philippians 3:1-16
Focus Text: Philippians 3:8

“Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ…”

INTRODUCTION

In our first Scripture reading, the Lord Jesus Christ presents one of His more difficult sayings:

“Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and He turned and said to them, ‘If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not carry his cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple’” (Luke 14:25-27)

To the superficial eye, there is an apparent contradiction here; for Jesus seems to be encouraging the breaking of God’s moral law, which says “honour your father and your mother…”. Hating your parents? What’s that all about? This passage of Scripture is about Discipleship — about what is involved in becoming or being a disciple, a follower — of the Lord Jesus Christ. “But”, you may say, ”How could hating your parents possibly make you into a disciple of Christ? Do you have to hate those closest to you before you can follow Christ? How can I ever evangelise people if there is that demand? I don’t get it”.

Well the secret to understanding this passage is in the last verse: ”He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” (Luke 14:35). Having the ears to hear means having the spiritual insight necessary to understand properly what is being said. For without that spiritual insight, we will misjudge everything said by the Lord Jesus Christ, as did most of those who heard His words at the time. So let us go ahead now and acquire that spiritual insight by lifting some stones in these portions of Scripture.

We are going to look at: 1) Understanding the Conditions of Discipleship; 2) Calculating the Cost of Discipleship; 3) Lamenting the Loss of Discipleship. So, first…

I. UNDERSTANDING THE CONDITIONS OF DISCIPLESHIP

In all these instances where the Lord Jesus Christ says that “without such-and-such you cannot be my disciple”, (e.g. Luke 14:26,27,33), He is laying out what you have to do, and be prepared to do, if you want to be a disciple of Christ.

I am assuming that because you are reading this you seriously want to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. I also assume that you are either already a disciple of Christ and you want to deepen your relationship, or that you are not yet a disciple of Christ and you would like to find out how you can be.

Well it’s really important that you understand what the conditions are when you do so. That way, you will not be surprised by what happens. In fact, with the right spiritual insight, you will be highly attracted to follow Christ and be His disciple. So here are the conditions. The first condition of discipleship is:

1. Coming to Him

 Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to me…”

This refers to a spiritual activity. Coming to Christ means a removal of the gulf which exists between unbelievers and the Lord. It means that there will be no more alienation.

The first thing you have to do if you want to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ is to “come” to Him — to make a definite movement towards Him. We refer to becoming a Christian as “coming to Christ”. First you see Him from far off. You want to be closer. You come to Him. As His promise says: “the one who comes to Me I will never drive away” (John 6:37).

In fact, what you find is that your first tentative move in coming to Him brings Him right to you. This is a glorious spiritual reality. Although there is a huge gulf between the unbeliever and the Lord, no sooner has he made the initial move to come to Christ, that gulf is instantly bridged as Christ comes to him. This is always the way it is; and it is such a wonderful thing. This is why it is silly for the unbeliever to say, “It’s no use, He’ll never have me because I’m too bad”. For as soon as you make that first tentative but genuine move in faith… bang! Christ is right there for you, bringing you into His Kingdom.

The extraordinary thing is that even that first movement of “coming to Him” which was enacted by you had a blesséd reason for it which was revealed by Jesus: “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44), and again: “This is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless the Father has granted it to him” (John 6:65), and again: “Everyone the Father gives Me will come to Me” (John 6:37). Your very coming to Him — even that very first movement of it — was because God had put it into your heart. “Many are called but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). So when you come to Him, it is because of that extraordinary chosenness.

So the first condition of discipleship is coming to Him. But we are not robots in this matter, as that would be senseless. We really do come to Him by our own volition, but that very volition is energized by the Him to whom you are coming. “God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses” (Ephesians 2:5). The very act of faith is a gift from God, precisely so that we cannot go round boasting about it (Ephesians 2:8-10). From our volitional point of view, this “coming to Him” involves two things, motivation and movement:

i. Motivation

You have to be motivated first. You have to fully realise that the way you are presently heading is going nowhere good. You have to acknowledge your own helplessness. You have to want salvation more than your next breath of air. An acute awareness of your own innate spiritual inability to save yourself or do anything truly good naturally leads on to the strong motivation to come to Christ.  That is essentially the motivation in the hearts of all those who want to come to the Lord in repentance and receive forgiveness.

The second thing that “coming to Him” involves is

ii. Movement

Once you have been really motivated, you can then make your move. You must then repent and believe. ”Repentance towards God and faith toward our Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21). For He has done that thing which heals the breach between us and God. He has taken our own hellish experience that we are due in the “second death” in Himself on the Cross. That’s what the Cross was all about. Expiation. Substitutionary atonement. A completely alien concept to the world but desperately attractive to those who are about to come to Christ. They know it’s true.

So “coming to Him” is the first condition of discipleship; and it involves motivation and movement.

The second condition of discipleship is

2. Forsaking All

 Luke 14:33, “Any one of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be My disciple…”

Examples of this have already been given in v.26: “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be My disciple”.

This idea of hating one’s family has often posed a problem for people. We are told, in the Ten Commandments, to honour our father and mother. How can one honour someone if they have to be hated in the interests of Christian discipleship? Well it would only work if the hatred commended by the Lord is different to the kind of hatred which we are used to.

We need to be aware that this hatred is not a sinful hatred but a holy hatred. There is a huge difference between the two. There are some good examples of holy hatred in Scripture: “You who love the LORD hate evil!” (Psalm 97:10). “I hate every false way” (Psalm 119:104). “Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate You? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies” (Psalm 139:21-22). The hatred here is a holy hatred in the sense that anything which comes between us and the Lord must be avoided and despised. Everything must take second place to Him. If He says “Go!”, we must go. If He says “Wait!”, we must wait.

Forsaking all doesn’t mean becoming a mystic or a monk and giving away everything we have and taking a vow of poverty. It means that HE, the Lord Jesus Christ, must come at the top of the list in your life. It is He who must have the pre-eminence (Colossians 1:18). Everything else must pale into relative insignificance next to Christ, if it has the potential to interfere with our spirituality. I wonder if it does? It certainly did for Paul:

“But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:7-8).

The Lord Jesus is using a form of hyperbole when he speaks of us having to “hate” our family in order to be His disciple. We find the same sort of hyperbole in Matthew 5:30: “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you”. The Lord is not really desirous of having a church full of amputees! He is simply using a shocking image to convince us of the importance of overcoming sin. In other words, if that thing which is closest to you creates a stumbling-block in your relationship with the Lord, then remove it. Either distance yourself from it or, ultimately, go away from the presence of it. By the way, this does not mean that can have no passionate interests other than God! We are free to involve ourselves in anything which is not sinful and which will not enslave us (1 Corinthians 6:12). However, problems arise if any of those things comes to interfere in our relationship with the Lord.

The same applies to our families. It is great to have good relations with our families, but if they stand between us and the Lord, the choice is to go with the Lord. Nothing is to come between us and Him. We must be prepared, if necessary, to forsake everything for Him. He reiterates more or less the same thing in Matthew 10:34-39:

“Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household’. Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me; and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it”.

These are the family stumbling-blocks. If your family gets between you and Christ, you need to make some choices. The key there is in the words ”He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me”. Families can be a real emotional blackmail job. To shock us out of acquiescence to that blackmail, the Lord Jesus says that we must “hate” with a “holy hatred” those members of our families who get between us and Christ — who are a drag on our spiritual lives. That may mean abandoning our relatives and moving on. In as respectful way as possible, we have to put a distance between us and such family members if they will not respond to our evangelism and try instead to destroy our spiritual life.

People who come to Christ need to realise that they are part of a new family and it is that new family which takes precedence. The Lord Jesus illustrated it like this:

“Then Jesus’ mother and brothers came and stood outside. They sent someone in to summon Him, and a crowd was sitting around Him. ‘Look’, He was told, ‘Your mother and brothers are outside, asking for You’. But Jesus replied, ‘Who are My mother and My brothers?’ Looking at those seated in a circle around Him, He said, ‘Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of God is My brother and sister and mother’” (Mark 3:31-35).

Your new family is those who have forsaken all and followed Christ, thereby doing the will of God. If your earthly family does not do so, then they are not part of your new family. You have then to find a way of ensuring that they cannot stand in the way of your spiritual relationship with your new family. You may, sensitively and with compassion, have to put some sort of distance between you and them. This is something that needs weighing up beforehand. This is part of the cost of discipleship which needs to be assessed.

Incidentally, this does not mean that we are free to divorce immediately a husband or wife who is not a believer. Once we are in a marriage bond, we cannot just pack our bags and leave home because our spouses are a spiritual annoyance. So what is to be our attitude to an unbelieving husband or wife who is a drag on our relationship with the Lord? That is clearly laid out by Paul with the apostolic authority invested in him by the Lord:

“Now to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord: A wife is not to depart from her husband. But even if she does depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband. And a husband is not to divorce his wife. But to the rest I, not the Lord, say: If any brother has a wife who does not believe, and she is willing to live with him, let him not divorce her. And a woman who has a husband who does not believe, if he is willing to live with her, let her not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy. But if the unbeliever departs, let him depart; a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases. But God has called us to peace. For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife?” (1 Corinthians 7:10-16)

The message is clear: Although the Lord Jesus calls us to “forsake all” and to have a holy hatred for anything which holds us back spiritually, this is not a licence to get out of a spiritually-awkward marriage to an unbeliever by walking out or obtaining a divorce. The principal reason is in the final verse: ”For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife?” Evangelism. That’s the reason. The presence of one of the spouses as a faithful believer is enough to bring divine grace and protection into the household (“For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband”). More than that, Paul wants us to see ourselves as missionaries if we are believers married to unbelievers. This can be hard, and I am not unaware of the challenge.

There is another mindset which we are to adopt in our marriages, whether we are married to believers or not. It goes like this: “What I am saying, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none…” (1 Corinthians 7:29). Being hung up on, or overly attached to, or obsessed with our marriage partners would be another stumbling-block in our relationship with the Lord and an extremely unhealthy one. So Paul calls us to a kind of detachment. Spouses can be deeply involved with each other, but need to ensure that this involvement does not interfere spiritually. Therefore, they have to be able to “hang loose” to each other despite the deep involvement. This is another way of “forsaking all” or implementing that “holy hatred” I mentioned earlier. This is a radical Christian teaching of which the Buddhist teaching on “non-attachment” is but a counterfeit.

In those verses, Paul counsels us not only to have a sense of spiritual detachment in our marriages but also in the whole of our lives. He says:

“those who weep, (should live) as if they did not; those who are joyful, as if they were not; those who make a purchase, as if they had nothing; and those who use the things of this world, as if not dependent on them. For this world in its present form is passing away”(1 Corinthians 7:30-31).

This is all about Christ’s command to “forsake all” if we are to be His true disciples. Living such a way of holy detachment from earthly delights is an art, for we are called to do it without unnecessarily alienating those around us, for “God has called us to peace” (1 Corinthians 7:15).

When people have interpreted “forsaking all” as meaning that we have to become ascetics or hive off into monasteries and convents, they have not only taken the easy way out but they have also not really ‘forsaken all’ at all. For they will have carried the same psychological attachments and spiritual issues into their supposed sanctuaries. You see the “forsaking all” is not so much a physical detachment as an emotional, psychological and spiritual one. It is in the mind and heart that the detachment has to take place. Living in a monastery or convent does not deal with the real issue which lies at the heart of “forsaking all” — which is why so many monasteries and convents are such hotbeds today of sodomy and lesbianism.

If we are to “forsake all” in the manner which the Lord Jesus intended, we must train ourselves carefully and grow. This is why Jesus said that in order to be able to to come to Him we must “deny ourselves” (Matthew 16:24), put ourselves on the back-burner, not make a big deal about ourselves. If our lives are more important to us than God and His Christ, truth and salvation, then we will lose those lives because we did not have our priorities right; but if we are willing to lose our lives for Christ, then we will preserve those lives for eternity (Matthew 16:25).

The central issue is this: Can we live fully in this world in such a way that we do not have any attachments which deflect us from our spiritual purpose?

So the second condition of discipleship is that we must “forsake all”.

The third condition of discipleship is

3. Bearing His Cross and Following Him

v.27a, “Whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple”.

Every Christian is a cross-bearer. But there is so much more here than merely getting into difficulties or struggling with sin, which is how many interpret these words. For the Lord is here referring to the fact that we must not only follow Him and forsake all for Him but we must also be prepared to walk in His footsteps and expect to bear all the reproaches, afflictions and persecutions as He did, and even to be murdered in a savage manner such as He was.

This is a tall order but it is one of the costs of discipleship. “All those who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12).

“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master’. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:18-20).

This bearing of crosses and following Christ means obedience, hardship, even ridicule. But it also means that by walking behind Him we follow Him straight into heaven, where He has prepared a place for us (John 14:2).

Which is the more preferable of these two possibilities: 1) To have a totally easy time of it in this life, with no spiritual commitment whatsoever, no God to assist you or demand of you, and then to plunge into the torture of hell for all eternity… or 2) To have a difficult time in this life, to be often held in contempt and mocked, but to walk in the Spirit, to be conscious of the presence of Christ by His Spirit and then finally to enter into the glory of eternal life? Which is the more preferable? Surely I don’t even need to answer that question!

Coming to Him. Forsaking all. Bearing your cross and following Him. That is what being a disciple is all about. Those are the conditions of discipleship.

Next I want to speak of

II. CALCULATING THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP

Luke 14:28-32, “Which of you, wishing to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost to see if he has the resources to complete it? Otherwise, if he lays the foundation and is unable to finish the work, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, ‘This man could not finish what he started to build.’ Or what king on his way to war with another king will not first sit down and consider whether he can engage with ten thousand men the one coming against him with twenty thousand? And if he is unable, he will send a delegation while the other king is still far off, to ask for terms of peace”.

Here we see that the Lord Jesus Christ asks some probing questions of you if you want to become His disciple. The questions he asks are these:

1. Are You Willing to Go the Distance?

Luke 14:28-30, “Which of you, wishing to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost to see if he has the resources to complete it? Otherwise, if he lays the foundation and is unable to finish the work, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, ‘This man could not finish what he started to build’”.

Becoming a disciple of Christ is not only a full-time commitment, but it is also a lifelong commitment — an eternal commitment! Are you willing to stay the course? This isn’t a light thing at all. This isn’t about having a fit of laughter in a meeting one evening and then saying a prayer by numbers on a dog-eared card. It isn’t about blubbing one time when you sing a soppy chorus. Neither is it about having any other weird personal experience. It is about 100% serious commitment. People need to know this and to realise it before they get into something which demands more of them than they want to give.

I’m sure you’ve seen those public service announcements in December on television and in newspapers, saying: ”A dog is not just for Christmas” — referring to those who get a puppy for a Christmas present then grow bored of it and neglect it or even throw it away or have it “put down” once it has outgrown puppyhood. Well Christ is not just for an evening, or a week, month or year. He is for keeps. We need to know this before we attempt to become His disciples or we will be like the seed which springs up suddenly but which doesn’t have any roots and thus withers away very easily at the first sign of persecution or trouble (Matthew 13:5-6, 20-21).

Are you willing to go the distance?

The second question the Lord Jesus Christ asks you if you want to become His disciple is this:

2. Are You Going to Make a Mockery of Christianity in Front of the World?

Luke 14:29b-30, “If he lays the foundation and is unable to finish the work, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, ‘This man could not finish what he started to build’”.

It is important to check, when we are going to be one of Christ’s disciples, that we are sure that we can make the kind of commitment to which we will be called. For people will be watching us closely to see what happens. They will be following our story. If we make some superficial commitment and then drop out when the going gets tough, we will create a stumbling block for unbelievers, who will judge Christianity by what they see in us. This is why the inch-deep “converts” produced by “Easy-Believism” are such a bad witness to the Lord and to faith.

The third question the Lord Jesus Christ asks you if you want to become His disciple is

3. Have You Realised that the Christian Life is a Battle?

Luke 14:31, “Or what king on his way to war with another king will not first sit down and consider whether he can engage with ten thousand men the one coming against him with twenty thousand?”

Any sensible ruler, before making war, will see if he has the resources and ability to do so. Similarly, the disciple of Christ must understand that the whole of the Christian life is a battle with only brief respite. As John Bunyan shrewdly observed in Pilgrim’s Progress: “Then Christian came to a Delicate Plain Called Ease… but he was quickly got over it”. There are watering holes in this life and there is comfort aplenty, but these are brief interludes in the Christian’s life full of struggle and warfare.

This warfare — which we must count the cost of before we get into it — is on two levels.

First,

i. There is the Battle Within

This is the internal warfare against sin. We must not imagine that all our troubles are over as soon as we come to Christ. Even though the believer’s sins are covered by Christ, he or she still has a battle to face as we still live in a fallen world with fallen bodies (although we should be steadily improving inwardly). “For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish” (Galatians 5:17). Part of this battle within involves putting to death all remnants of the sinful nature, which is known as the Christian art of mortification (Colossians 3:5; Romans 8:13).

There is a “striving against sin” in the Christian life which may even lead to martyrdom (Hebrews 12:4) — although for us that has not yet been the case. But the struggle against sin, for the sake of purity, is that serious. It places us outside the normal run of society because it outlaws much of what most people enjoy as “normal” and for which they actually crave. When one stands out of society like that, one is wide open to ridicule, persecution and even death. The battle is that serious (1 Peter 2:11-12).

That is the battle within. But also…

ii. There is a Battle Without (Outside)

There are two aspects to this battle without. The first aspect is that it is

1) Against Satan and his Fellow Demons

”For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

”For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 5casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).

This is part of the spiritual warfare we wage against an unseen foe which is always seeking ways to put us in “a sad, doubting, questioning and uncomfortable condition” (Thomas Brooks, “Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices”). Satan knows very well that joy is the stabiliser under the believer’s ship, giving him or her assurance and maintaining balance. Knowing that he cannot take away your salvation, he desperately wants to destroy your joy. It is a battle to sustain joy. I will be dealing with this in the second part of this CyberSermon.

The second aspect of the battle ‘without’ is that it is

2) Against the Human Enemies of God

As if we don’t have enough trouble in the battle against our sin and against Satan and his fellow demons, we also have a human foe. In this category would come all the intruders in the church and the scoffers outside it — of which there are many in both sections and growing daily.

Have you realised that the Christian life is a battle? It’s actually one of the ways that you know you are a Christian! The Christian life was never supposed to be easy. “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). The word translated as “difficult” there is θλίβω, thlibo, which means afflicted. “Afflicted is the way which leads to life”. That is the Christian pathway of discipleship.

This is the Lord’s way of chastening us — cutting out the rubbish and refining our characters. “Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11). “Trained by it”. The Greek there is γυμνάζω, gumnadzo, which is from where we get our word “gymnasium”. Welcome to God’s gymnasium. The Christian walk. Extreme spiritual fitness training. When we come to Christ we enter God’s school and training centre. Special Forces training!

The fourth question the Lord Jesus Christ asks you if you want to become His disciple is

4. Are You Going to Fight this Battle to the Bitter End?

Luke 14:32, “If he is unable, he will send a delegation while the other king is still far off, to ask for terms of peace”.

Do you see the meaning of these words? Rather than amass the resources and fight the battle, he tries to negotiate a peace treaty. While it may be preferable, in worldly terms, to have peace rather than war, this is not the case with the Christian life from a spiritual point of view. The cost of discipleship is “No surrender!” to our enemies, from a spiritual standpoint, be they physical or in the spirit realm. We cannot make a peace treaty with Satan, otherwise we become Faustian traitors (as in the medieval legend of Dr. Faustus).

So we need to work out beforehand — and all potential converts should have this pointed out to them — if we are willing to calculate the cost of discipleship and suffer that cost rather than try to negotiate some kind of compromise, of which there is none. Am I going to surrender at the first difficulty? This would stamp out Easy-Believism!

What is your own response to these issues? Are you daunted by the prospect of what the Christian life holds in store for you? No doubt you will be. Does all this shock you? If it does, you have two choices: 1) You can either give up before you start; or 2) You can say “Yes I am daunted; but I still want to go on”. If you decide on the latter choice, what you’ll discover is that you will be given all that you need to continue the journey. The Lord will, as it were, say to you: “My grace is sufficient for you!” You will also discover that “God is faithful; He will not let you be tested beyond what you can bear. But when you are tested, He will also provide an escape, so that you can stand up under it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

You will also discover that the entire plan of salvation is being worked out to show that human beings cannot make it on their own. The Lord’s voice booms and echoes: ”Without Me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Zilch. Nada. Rien. Zero. I have always had this image in my mind of God’s voice echoing throughout the cosmos at the end of history — so that when you look out across the vastness of space, you hear an awesome sound which says: “Now do you believe that WITHOUT ME, YOU CAN DO NOTHING?!?”

If you are a believer, you are never on your own. You’ll never walk alone! Ever.

So Jesus speaks about us as first needing to understand the conditions of discipleship, and second as having to count the cost of discipleship. As you see, there is planning which goes into this. We are to think carefully about it beforehand — to weigh it up — to realise fully what we are getting into and what the commitment is going to be.

Finally, the Lord Jesus also speaks about

III. LAMENTING THE LOSS OF DISCIPLESHIP

Luke 14:34-35, “Salt is good, but if the salt loses its savour, with what will it be seasoned? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the dung heap, and it is thrown out”.

This saying rides on the back of the previous verses because it is showing the fate of false Christians — of those who have professed to have come to Christ but have not been willing to meet the cost of discipleship. They are “nominal” believers, fellow-travellers — dilettantes who were attracted to the ‘fashion’ of being ‘into Jesus’ but who never really underwent a heart conversion. This idea of salt here has a number of dovetailed meanings. Firstly, there is a link back to the use of salt in the Old Testament:

“All the holy offerings that the Israelites present to the LORD I give to you and to your sons and daughters as a permanent statute. It is a permanent covenant of salt before the LORD for you and your offspring” (Numbers 18:19).

All these provisions from the holy offerings for the priests were signs of God’s covenant blessings to them. Their share was an everlasting “covenant of salt”. This probably is a metaphor signifying its durability. As salt keeps its flavour so the Lord’s covenant will forever be in force.

Salt was used as a preservative in the Middle East. So the metaphor here is a sign of endlessness or the way that something endures. Salt has that preserving effect, combatting decay. So it also symbolises the holding back or neutralising of spiritual and moral decay. The saints — if they are true saints — are thus characterised by their saltiness.

Salt has a preserving effect in the world also. This is why Christians are described as the salt of the earth: “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its savour, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men” (Matthew 5:13).

If those who have been shown the knowledge of the truth and who have even become a part of the company of God, by identifying themselves with the church — if they cop out, their fate will be terrible, as we see from the verses above. They will have shown that they were never really part of the family of God but were interlopers who availed themselves of the benefits of hanging around in the church but who had no real part there.

The eternal fate of the false Christian will be worse even than that of a lifelong atheist, for we are judged according to the light we have received (Matthew 11:20-24), and hanging out in the church brings much light to one, but to the interloper this will only be a temporary sojourn.

CONCLUSION

Wouldn’t you rather be a disciple of Christ than anything else in the world? You see Christ’s concern is not with the quantity of disciples that He has — which is what so many in false churches are obsessed with, desperately trying to generate “revivals”, etc. Anyone can attract huge numbers of followers by using the right tricks, as you can see in so many so-called “megachurches” of today, and in the way that blasphemous bandwagons (such as the charismatic movement) attract so many huge numbers. But Jesus’ real concern is with the quality of His disciples. This is why, when He speaks about making ”disciples of all nations”, He also commends “teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded” (Matthew 28:18-20). Making disciples means creating learners. One cannot be disciple if one does not learn and grow through that learning.

So are you one of Christ’s true disciples? If not, do you want to be one of His disciples? He turns no one away if that desire is from the heart and soul. Do you seriously want to follow Christ and spend the rest of your life on earth following Him and then living with Him forever? If so, then count the cost and see if you are willing to pay it. I can assure you that it will be infinitely and eternally worth it — as you will see from the message which will form the second part of this CyberSermon that will come shortly…

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[Coming soon: “The Two Sides of the Coin of Christian Discipleship. #2) The Joy of Discipleship”]

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2026
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

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