You may be acquainted with the book, “The Cost of Discipleship,” authored by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  The author did not apply that title to his book. The American publisher supplied it. Bonhoeffer entitled it, “Following After.” Perhaps the publisher in America had read this passage from Luke. In it, Jesus lays out the cost of following after him… the cost of discipleship. Jesus makes it clear that, in failing to account for the price, you would be liable for mocking and defeat.

How costly is discipleship? In the first cost comparison given by Jesus (vs. 26), following after Jesus will cost you the most precious possessions possible, your family… family was everything in Jesus’ social milieu. It will cost you your life—that is, everything you had before that you could count as life-defining will be lost to you (cf. Phil. 3:7-8). Your previous life is counted as loss. In the second cost comparison provided by Jesus (vs. 27), he tells you that the cost of discipleship is cross-bearing… your cross. Two parts make up this cost. First is the cross-bearing itself. The cross—like Jesus’ anticipation of his death at the hands of sinful men—must be borne by you throughout the days of your baptism. You always carry that death with you; you bear it. You bear it with a single-minded focus, just as Jesus had when his face was set… set like flint… to Jerusalem where he would be taken up (cf. Luke 9:51ff). The second part of this cost is the crucifixion… your crucifixion—that is, there’s no glory to be had in following Jesus while you are in this world broken by sin and passing away. Your end will be shame, humiliation, and scandal just like Jesus’ death was. The Apostle Paul declares this, “the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:13) as the work of the cross of Christ. The final cost, Jesus reveals (vs. 33), is to “renounce all that you have…” If the other costs had not daunted you and made you reconsider the cost of discipleship, surely this one will. Complete and total renunciation of all that you have, especially when it comes to the self and to your ego, proves impossible in this sin-broken and mortal world. Thanks be to God!  Our victory is in Christ and not in our success at discipleship, for there we have but mockery and defeat.

Table Talk: Discuss the ways that we discount the cost of discipleship.
Pray: Heavenly Father, grant confidence in Jesus’ faithfulness. Amen

Luke 14:25-36 English Standard Version

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.”