What Does Luke 14:26-33 Mean?

What this means is that God comes first. (Christ is God in flesh, God with man)

Christ was declaring that He is God in flesh and so He could demand
that all love Him more than all others, even Father, Mother, wife and children
as God comes first.

God should be our first love above all others.

When we compare our love for God to love for others,
our love for God should be so strong and comitted that if
anyone else got between us and God, we would reject or hate
their hold on us that would demand greater love and come between us and God.

So...if someone has more influence, hold or power over you,
so much so that it would prevent you from loving God, you would be
better off to hate that hold on your life (not the person) than miss the
salvation that God offers us in Christ.

If you had a choice between anyone else and God who would you choose?

This is the comittment God has asked us to have towards Him, to love Him
above and more than anyone else.

God loves everyone but He tells us plainly for our own good that
if we allow our love for any other to cause us to turn away from Him,
we would be better off to hate that stumbling block (not the person)
than to lose everything God offers us in Christ.

If we put God first, we will have the proper perspective for all
other relationships and then we can love even our enemies
with Godly love.

What is the first comandment?

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.

So if we allowed anyone else to be loved in our lives more than
God, we have made them into an idol that we place above God.

God first and above all others and then we can love others from the
place of being fully devoted to God so that we can love others as God
has loved us.

It is like a marriage between us and God in Christ...forsaking
all others and clinging to Christ (God with man) alone as our only true love.

All others come second to God.

Hope this helps..

.

great post Pal Handy!

Luk 14:25 KJV
(25) And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them,

...

Luk 14:33 KJV
(33) So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

Jesus wasn't saying that all people throughout the rest of time had to forsake everything that they have to be His disciple, but that those who followed him at that time had to do this, as Jesus was a traveling minister, and for someone to be discipled by Him while He was on the earth as a man, they would have to physically go with Him in His travels - thus forsaking all that they had - but look at what they would receive if they did:

Mar 10:28-30 KJV
(28) Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee.
(29) And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's,
(30) But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.

DiscipleHeLovesToo said:

great post Pal Handy!

Luk 14:25 KJV
(25) And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them,

...

Luk 14:33 KJV
(33) So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

Jesus wasn't saying that all people throughout the rest of time had to forsake everything that they have to be His disciple, but that those who followed him at that time had to do this, as Jesus was a traveling minister, and for someone to be discipled by Him while He was on the earth as a man, they would have to physically go with Him in His travels - thus forsaking all that they had - but look at what they would receive if they did:

Mar 10:28-30 KJV
(28) Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee.
(29) And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's,
(30) But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.

Click to expand...

Good balance.. Thanks for sharing this...

Our salvation isn't dependent on how much we love God but how much God sacrificed
Himself in the name of love through Jesus Christ (God with man)
so that if we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for our forgiveness and
our only righteousness before God the Father, we will be saved.

And yet how can we believe , place all of our tust in and depend
upon Christ alone for our only means of salvation if
we let our love or fear of others keep us from Christ?

So our salvation is an all or nothing proposition on this one point,
that we reject the opinions and constraints of all others and
cling to Christ alone as our only hope of forgiveness and eternal life.

Is this not love?

Isn't forsaking all others and their opinions and trusting in God through Christ,
our declaration of love and comittment to God above all others?

Each person must make this decision to reject the world and
its declaration that the gospel is fantasy and embrace God
with man, Jesus Christ.

I say this is hating the world with all its false opinions, fears, sin and doubt,
when we trust in Christ alone for our salvation.

This Trust, confession and clinging to Christ alone for salvation
is loving God above all others!
You can not have it both ways, you can not love the world and
adhere to its denounciation of Christ as God with man and still
say you have faith in Christ as your only hope of salvation.

Each of us that have accepted Christ as God in flesh and trust in Him alone for salvation,
have declared before heaven and earth that we love God above all others.

I think it means putting God's will first before any and all other concerns.

Luke 16:13 gives clarity to the verse in question.

''No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.''

He is talking about something that we completely have forgotten most of the time as Christians. Following christ cost us everything. When we become a christian we must be willing to give ourselves completly over to god. We don't get to hold back and give him all but 10% of our life, we don't get to give him all but 1%, or even .00000000001%. He gets EVERYTHING.

When its talking about hating your own self and all the people in your life. I believe he is talking about sin. You see, as humans, we are on 1 of 2 sides, with god, or against him. There is no neutral ground. When we are unsaved, we hate god, even if we don't realize it. we despise his ways, and we live in sin. When we are saved, we have to instead hate the sin. We have to hate our own fleshly bodies, hate the sin in ourselves, and hate the sin in others. Now, that doesn't mean we don't want their soul saved. Its also a reflection of the fact that if we follow god, the world will turn against us. If you truly follow god, you WILL be punished by the world for it. If you don't think thats true in our society today you need to open your eyes, its as true now as it was then. I heard this quote once, I don't know who its by but its this "The cross beckons the man who is sick of himself." I think its true, when we realize, with what little we can as a human, just HOW bad we are in our sin, we will hate ourselves, or at least, the flesh we live in.

When he says you have to take up your own cross to come after him, thats the modern equivalent to saying you have to jump in the electric chair to follow him. When we follow him, the old man DIES. He is DEAD. The sinful nature that is in use still, it no longer has dominion, when christ saved us he nailed that sin on the cross with him. The sin in our lives right now? Its like a chicken with its head cut off, its dead, but its still running around, but soon (When christ comes back) it will truly fall over dead.

Where he is talking about builder and king. He is basically (I believe) saying that you really need consider if you are willing to be his disciple and follow him. because it WILL cost you everything .However, I think its important to remember what we GAIN. A personal relationship with God, Yahweh, the creator of the entire universe. He not only wants to know us personally, to speak with us, to love us. But he adopts us as his son, brings us into his house, and makes us his heir with jesus. Thats CRAZY. I mean, compared to simply giving everything in this live thats COMPLETELY worth it.

At the end, when he says you have to give up all your possessions, I think he quite literally means thats. Not that you have to go give them all to the poor, but rather, everything you own is just gods property that he has given to you to care for, at any time he can take it away, or tell you what to do with it, and you are to obey.

What does "terms of peace" mean?