Today we turn to one of the hard sayings of the Lord Jesus, and that is in Luke chapter 14. Luke 14 and verse 26. But we shall read the entire passage from verse 25. Luke 14, verse 25 to 30:
"Now great multitudes accompanied Jesus, and he turned and said to them, '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. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 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? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build and was not able to finish.'"
We often think that to have made a beginning is equivalent to having finished, that having made a decision for Christ is equivalent to having completed the road of salvation. How different are the Lord's words here.
But now today we must address ourselves to a very difficult saying. The week before last, I mentioned what is the Lord's vision for His church: a church of spiritual giants. The kind of quality the Lord Jesus expected of His people. Such was the quality of these people that everyone, least though he may be in the kingdom, would be in spiritual stature greater than the prophet John the Baptist. That was the Lord Jesus' vision for the church. And we saw as we look at the church today that we don't even begin to approach, even remotely, the kind of vision, the kind of stature that the Lord Jesus expected of each one of His saints.
What we look at in the church today is frankly, for the most part, mediocrity. Spiritual mediocrity. Everything is of the lowest possible standard. Grace has been cheapened to the point that it costs absolutely nothing. And here the Lord Jesus says, "You go and count the cost." But we are told that it has no cost to count. There isn't a cost to count. It is cheap. No, it is not cheap. It is free. So a great truth concerning the grace of God has been depreciated into something that the Lord Jesus did not intend to say. For if it is all that cheap—no, indeed, not cheap, it is free—then what cost do we have to count?
So given this kind of cheap or rather free Christianity, we see a church full of bargain hunters who have come for what is free. And this we declare to be the wonderful aspect of God's grace. There is some truth in that. Of course, there is an aspect of grace in which, because of its sheer value, there is no way that it is possible for us to earn it. But we think that if something cannot be earned, therefore it is free. That is the logic by which we work. You can't earn it, therefore it is free. Is that right? That is not what I read here. A gift may be so precious that it is beyond your powers to earn, but it doesn't mean that it is free. A gift may be a gift, but the reception of that gift can cost you everything so that the gift itself turns out to be far from free in its consequences.
But we have been brought up, all of us, we have been so conditioned, myself included, to a kind of Christianity in which we come for what is free. We come for the handouts, and we have been brought up on handouts. And this—what kind of people do you expect to find in churches who come for free handouts? We talk about, and we speak almost with a sense of despising, those Christians who are called rice Christians. And we all know what rice Christians are. In China, in the Far East, there used to be great famine, and the churches did relief organization, and rightly so. So we brought vast quantities of rice and food to these famine-stricken areas of the East, and we dished them out in the name of the church. And people came, of course, to church. What for? To collect free gifts, the rice. And we look down with greatest pleasure at this—of our own creating, of course, we did this ourselves. And so, these are rice Christians. They come to church only for the rice. But what are we so much better about? What did we come for? We came for the free handouts as well. They came for free handouts. We also came for free handouts. And we have a church full of people who came for free handouts. And then we expect to find in the church spiritual giants. A lot of transforming would have to take place between the free handouts and becoming giants.
What I read here is that the gospel costs us everything. So we've got to reconcile this thing once and for all in our minds. Is it free or is it not free? "Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." Well, the cross is what? It's death. We're all aware of that. "Whoever does not take up the instrument of his own execution cannot be my disciple." Is that free? Well, the cross is free. You can guarantee that. That's the free handout you get. You don't have to go and buy your own cross. The Lord Jesus didn't buy His cross. His cross was a free gift from the Roman state. Absolutely free. Never cost Him a penny. That free gift cost Him His life. A free gift from the Jewish state and with the compliments of the Roman state. The cross is free. The only trouble with that is that free gift will cost you your life. So, take up your own cross. The Lord Jesus didn't say go and make your cross. Nobody has to make his cross. The fact is that when you walk in the way that Jesus calls you to walk, the world will put you on the cross. He is only saying you've got to be prepared to accept it. He didn't say you have to go and make it. No, no. The cross will be your free gift with the compliments of the world.
Let us make up our mind. What kind of Christianity are we talking about? Here is the free gift: the gift of the cross. But we prefer something nicer than the cross. Well, the Lord says without the cross you can't be my disciple. Without the cross you cannot have salvation. Isn't that what He says? How do you receive salvation without being a disciple? If so, we all can be Christians without being disciples, or being Christians without being Christians, since "Christian" and "disciple" is the same word, the same meaning in the Scriptures.
So, let us address ourselves to this difficult saying. A saying that maybe most of us would be happier to run away from. Verse 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." Oh, what a terrible saying. Now, if Jesus said any hard sayings, this must be one of the hardest of them all. In John chapter 6 verse 60, as you remember, many of His disciples were so offended with what Jesus said in John chapter 6 that they turned away from Jesus. They said, "Look, up to now you spoke things rather nice, but this got stuck in my throat and I'm choking on it and I can't stand this anymore. So bye-bye, Jesus. I've had enough of this."
And what did the Lord say in John chapter 6? It sounds rather mild compared to this. What He said in John chapter 6 was, "Except you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you cannot be saved. You cannot have eternal life. Eternal life is through eating my flesh, drinking my blood." Now, that is a rather stomach-turning statement, but one can still manage with it because after all He is giving something. Free gift, you see. I mean, He is giving you His flesh, He is giving you His blood—a free gift. Why should you be nauseated by a free gift? So even the free gift is not so tasty, not so palatable. We like to choose our own free gifts. We either take what He gives or we leave it. So there is the free gift: His flesh, His blood, and your cross. What else do you want? You don't like these free gifts? Those are the gifts you got. Those are the gifts of salvation.
Now, the disciples got sick by that statement. How about this one? It seems to me this one is even more difficult. To hate? To hate my father and my mother? I mean, can He be serious? What is this kind of statement?
Now, some may say, "Well, maybe this kind of statement one should not deal with in a sermon like this. We should get a bunch of really dedicated Christians in one corner and speak to them. I mean, they have a better appetite. They are used to swallowing these nasty things. So you just tell them that." No, we're going to tell non-Christians and other people these hard things, because that puts them out. "Well, I would like to do that except for the first verse in verse 25 here." Who does the Lord address this saying to? He addressed it to His disciples? No, indeed. He addressed it to the multitudes, to the crowds. "Now great multitudes accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 'If anyone comes to me, anyone, and does not hate the father and mother and so on.'" Oh, well, since the Lord addresses this to everyone, how dare I speak only to the initiated, to those who have already been hardened by many other hard sayings and can stand this better. He said it to them; how dare I say otherwise. What is more remarkable, He says this without further explanation. He doesn't even explain His statement. Very offensive. I mean, He didn't say, "No, no, no, before you misunderstand what I mean—no, no, I didn't mean it quite like this. So don't get me wrong now, don't all run away, just stay here, I've got something better to tell you in a moment." He just gives them the hard saying, and that's it. You look in vain for another explanation. It's as though He is deliberately driving the people away. The crowds are coming to Him and He is driving them away, because He knows that the only people who will stay back in the face of this kind of saying are people who are drawn by the living God in search of the truth.
Now, so difficult and unpalatable is the saying that—I say this for the benefit of our translators—you will find that the Chinese translation has done away with the word "hate." They have just taken the word "hate" out and, thank you, into the garbage pit. Beautiful. The translators are marvelous. You know, they have decided that since we can't take it, they will help us along and simply take the offense away. So we can be grateful. So I was going to preach on this text in Taiwan, and lo and behold, there wasn't such a text to preach on, because the translators had done us the favor of removing the word "hate." And they translated the word as "love less," or rather in the sense: if you love father and mother more than me, then you can't be my disciple. If you love your brother or sister and anybody else more than me, then you can't be my disciple. Well, that we can swallow. I mean, that's very fair. Of course you've got to love God more than— I mean, even the Pharisees would agree with that any time. No problem with that. If that's the way it means, then that's fine. I have no problems. I mean, the Pharisees would have clapped Him too. "Hey, that's right, right, man. This is the right saying. You've got to love God more than everybody else." Whether they do it or not is another matter. They have taken the word out of the text, and somewhere in the footnote in very small print you will see it in the Chinese Bible—assuming your Chinese Bible has a footnote there underneath, in the version that gives references and footnotes, you will see in very small print the original says "hate," but hopefully you don't look at footnotes when you read the Bible.
You see, this is what happens to the church. This is what we do. We find something in the word of God that sticks in our throat, so we decide that before it sticks in our throat we will just throw it out in the garbage bin. And we settle the problem quick and easy. We have decided that we have the right to change what Jesus says.
Ah, you say, "But not so fast. I mean, that's not being very fair to the translators. Because after all, if you compare this passage with Matthew 10 verse 37, the Lord did say that in Matthew 10:37. He did. So therefore we are justified to take this verse and change it according to taste, because Matthew chapter 10 verse 37 the Lord does indeed say that." He does say that if any man loves father, mother, wife, children, brother, sister, anybody more than me, then he cannot be my disciple. Ah, well, that saying I can stand. There's no problem. As I said, even the Pharisees could stand that one. No problem.
And here I have to come into some exegesis. But first, there is further justification for changing the saying. We have Matthew 10 verse 37 which says that. So we have justification, at least the translators thought so—or I mean the Chinese translators thought so. And what is more, if we don't change the word, the translator may think to himself, then we are having the Lord Jesus in a hopeless self-contradiction. Why? Why self-contradiction? Because Jesus said that we are to love or at least to honor our father and our mother. He did say that. Right? Now how can He one moment say honor your parents and the next moment say hate your parents? I mean, this is absolute self-contradiction. You cannot say that. Jesus cannot be guilty of self-contradiction. So though He does use the word "hate" here, I will simply remove it.
Where did the Lord Jesus say honor your parents? Well let's take Matthew chapter 15 verse 4. And there you have the evidence that He did tell us to honor our parents. Chapter 15, verse 4. We start from verse 3 where He condemned the Pharisees. He answered the Pharisees, "And why do you transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? Verse 4: For God commanded, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him surely die.'" There Jesus quotes these words with approval and says to the Pharisees, "There you are. You, for the sake of your tradition, fail to honor your parents." Again He repeats this in Matthew 19 verse 19, so that this is not an individual and independent thing. Here He is quoting the commandments, and He says in chapter 19 and verse 19, He quotes the commandment: "Honor your father and mother" and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." These words then are being addressed to the rich young ruler when He told him, "Go and keep the commandments." And the young ruler said, "Which commandments?" And these are the commandments, and among these commandments are "Honor your father and mother." There is no doubt then that the Christian is to honor his father and his mother.
So how can he hate what he is to honor? Surely that's a self-contradiction, and therefore to remove the self-contradiction we simply take the word "hate" and throw it out. That however will not do. That will not do. This is the way to escape problems, not to face up to the truth.
Exegetically we cannot do this for these number of reasons. Firstly, when we compare Luke chapter 14 and Matthew 10—Matthew 10 verse 37 where it says that anyone who loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me—there He does in fact say that. But these two passages are not parallels. That's very important to understand. These two are not parallels. Matthew chapter 10 verse 37 is an entirely different context, also at a different period of time in the Lord's teaching. First of all, it is addressed in the mission context when the twelve apostles in Matthew 10 were being sent out. And these words in Matthew 10 are addressed only to the apostles, not to the multitudes. And in the point of time, some scholars would place Matthew 10 verse 37 in the spring of A.D. 29, or approximately in the middle of the Lord's ministry, in the middle period of His three years' ministry. Luke chapter 14 verse 26, the passage we are studying today, comes from an entirely different context and a different period in time. Luke 14:26 comes from the last part of Jesus' ministry. So Matthew 10 belongs to the middle part and is addressed only to the apostles. Luke 14 is at the end of the Lord's ministry, addressed to the multitudes. Two entirely different periods. Two entirely different contexts. These are not parallels at all. Now that is the first step in expounding any scripture, that you must look at the context. You cannot just take a piece out and say that's it. The context tells us that this belongs to the end period of the Lord's teaching. What does that mean? That means that often a teacher will take a truth deeper. He will take it deeper after a period of time. He may preach the same thing but He takes it at a deeper level. And this is indeed a much deeper level. And here at the end of the Lord's ministry, the Lord takes the same truth but at a much deeper level. What that deeper level is we shall have to look at in a moment.
Secondly, if all the Lord Jesus wanted to say was simply to love God more and love your father and mother less, that is hardly the way to convey this sentiment or this idea by using the word "hate." I mean, if you want to say "love less," and the Lord Jesus did say that before, He can just use the same expression, "love less." Now when you want to say "love less," you don't use the word "hate" because hate doesn't mean "love less." It's a very much stronger expression, and you don't have to be an expert in linguistics to understand that. Hate is a very, very strong word to use and most likely to be misunderstood if all you wanted to say is "love less," isn't it? If the intention was simply to wake people up who are fast falling asleep, and when they are all nodding away, and then you are saying—if you said "love less," nobody takes any notice, and then He suddenly says, "Unless you hate father and mother," and everybody jerks up. "What did He say? Did I really hear correctly? Did He say that?" And suddenly everybody woke up. Then you would say this was a gimmick or a device by which to wake people up who are falling asleep or to catch their attention. That kind of device is really not acceptable at all, especially not from the Lord Jesus. When people take His words very, very seriously—"My words, they are spirit and they are life," the Lord Jesus said in the very same passage in John chapter 6—and you don't use this kind of gimmick when you want to convey truth. That's far too serious a thing to say, simply to wake people up.
But thirdly, the proper exegetical method is to see how the Lord Jesus uses the word "hate" elsewhere. Does He mean, in the other places when He uses the word "hate," does He also mean "love less"? Because if consistently He uses the word in the sense of meaning "love less," then maybe it could have this meaning. So the proper procedure is to examine how He uses the word elsewhere. And all you have to do is take a concordance and have a look at the word "hate" as used by the Lord Jesus, and you will see that it certainly doesn't mean "love less." He uses the word "hate" as hate. Everywhere He uses the word.
Let's take within Luke itself. Within the gospel of Luke, let's take a look, for example, at Luke chapter 6 verse 22. And here He uses the word "hate." "Blessed are you"—Luke 6 verse 22—"Blessed are you," that is blessed by God, happy are you, "when men hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and cast your name out as evil on account of the Son of Man." What does hate mean? It means that they simply decided to love you less? Not at all. It means they exclude you. They revile you. They say bad things about you, nasty things about you. They cast you out as evil, on account of the Son of Man. Does that sound like loving less? It's hate. Hate is exactly those kinds of nasty actions against you. But the Lord says when they do that to you, rejoice, because blessed are you in the presence of the Lord.
Well, let us look at chapter 21 verse 17 which makes the matter yet more specific. Luke 21 and verse 17. And this is what we read here. We read from verse 16 to get the context. Verses 16 and 17: How much will they hate you? "Well, you will be delivered up, delivered up even by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends." Now notice the relevance of this passage, because it talks about father and mother and brothers and kinsmen and friends. "And some of you they will put to death. You will be hated by all for my name's sake." What happens when they hate you? They will deliver you up. Deliver you up means to whom? To the authorities, of course. They will hand you in. They will betray you to the authorities even though they may be your parents, father, mother, brother, sister, whoever. There will come a time when they will hate you so much that they will deliver you up. This has happened in China, of course, time and again, where blood is not thicker than water. Where no matter what their relationship was, they will hand you over to the authorities and you will be sent to hard labor. And not only hard labor—it says here they will even—some of you will be put to death. That is how much they are going to hate you. Does hate mean "love less"? Does the Lord Jesus use the word "hate"? It's loving very much less if they are going to put you to death. And so we can go on, and there are many such references that I will not now take you through. But these you can find—further examples of this are, for example, how the Lord uses the word "hate" in Matthew 10 verses 21 and 22, Matthew 24 verse 9, which is a parallel here to Luke 21.
So here is the evidence as we look through how the Lord uses the word "hate." It always means to hate. And not only so, but so also is true throughout the New Testament as also in the Old Testament. The same remains consistently the case. The word "hate" is used very frequently in the Old Testament, and it certainly doesn't mean to love less.
Ah, but somebody will remind us, of course, that in the Old Testament, in Genesis chapter 29, it does appear to have the meaning of "love less." In the example of, of course, Rachel and Leah, that Jacob loved Rachel and hated Leah. Does it not here mean "love less"? At least so it has in some translations. But when you look at the facts of Genesis chapter 29, you will find that it certainly doesn't mean merely to love less. There the word "hate" undoubtedly means rejected, disliked, indeed despised. Very strong words. Because the parallel passages to this are found in Deuteronomy 21 verses 15 to 17, which for those of you who would like to can study this passage for yourself—a similar instance, and the same word "hate" is used, which the RSV translates as "dislike."
What happens here is not hard to understand. You remember what happened as far as Jacob was concerned. He really loved Rachel, and so he worked for his father-in-law, you see, seven years to get Rachel. Well, that's pretty, pretty a lot of money. Given today's standard of living, and you worked seven years, and assuming that you earned a rather low salary, and in seven years even if you earned about $12,000–$13,000 a year, which is much lower than most people earn, you would still come to about $100,000 of service. $100,000 for a wife is quite something. But he said, as we read the other day in the Herald that reminded us of this important passage at the engagement last week as you will recall, that for Jacob, I mean all those seven years were as a few days—so much he loved Rachel. A few days. But that was not the end of the problem, you see. He worked seven years and he thought he had Rachel, so he went into the marriage ceremony and says, "Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife?" "I do." Maybe before even the minister had time to finish, "I do." Only problem was, of course, that when he lifted the veil he discovered that that wasn't Rachel. It was Leah. He got tricked by his father-in-law into marrying Leah. And when he demanded to know what is the meaning of this trick, his father-in-law said, "Well, I mean, it is not very right to marry off the younger daughter before the elder daughter, you see." So he said, "What do I have to do to get the younger daughter?" "Well, work another seven years." Another seven years. Fourteen years now.
It is not hard to see in that context why he really was so fed up with Leah. I mean, as a result of Leah he had to work fourteen years instead of seven years. No wonder that he never had any love for Leah. He just got tricked into marrying her, so he disliked her. Maybe for other reasons too, but this may be one of the main reasons. So it is much stronger than just "love less." He certainly loved her less, there is no doubt, and there is truth in that, of course, he did love her less, but very, very much less—to the point of dislike, rejection. So Leah complained to the Lord, "I am hated." That was her own sentiment she is expressing in verse 33 of this passage: "I am hated by my husband." And the Lord accepts her complaint, as you see in verse 31. He accepts that she is really hated by him and is utterly rejected by him. That doesn't sound like a very soft meaning. So if you like to take that meaning—"unless a man dislikes his father and mother, or rejects his father and mother, he cannot be my disciple"—I don't know if that makes the passage nicer for you, or tastes better to you, more palatable to you. I don't see it has made much difference. It may slightly weaken the intensity, but the meaning remains the same.
But exegetically you have a further problem, and the further problem is this: we cannot take a selective definition that we wish to choose. Because when you look through the Old Testament, not only in the Lord's teaching does the word "hate" not have the meaning "love less," but when you look through the Old Testament the word "hate" does not mean "love less." So if we are going to use a selective way of saying, "I reject all the other dozens of other examples and I simply choose this one for my definition," this is not the way to do exegesis. This is a very selective way of doing it. What is more, we see in the examples the way the Lord Jesus uses the word "hate"—hate often results in death. "They will hate you and put you to death." That's what He said. So that hate is closely associated with the idea of death. This is true also in
# Hate to Offer Up What You Love (Part 2)
The justification to pick and choose our definition of hate—Genesis 27 verse 41 speaks of Esau's hatred for Jacob to the point that he wanted to kill him. "I will slay him." Why? Because of course Jacob took away his birthright. Or rather he didn't take it away; he sold his birthright to Jacob and then he regretted it. And having regretted it, he wants to put Jacob to death. He wants to kill him. Hate expresses itself time and again in death, both in the Lord's teaching and in the Old Testament.
This is true also in Genesis chapter 37, where you remember his brothers, Joseph's brothers, hated him so much that they wanted to put him to death. And only the eldest brother's pleading prevented the other brothers from putting Joseph to death. This you can see, for example, in verses 4, 5 and 8 you have the word "hate," and then you have the word "kill" in verses 18, 20, 21, 26 and so forth. So here we find that hatred expresses itself in killing, in death. This is very important to understand as we shall see in a moment.
In Deuteronomy chapter 19 verse 4, we have in this whole passage the same discussion about the relationship of hatred and killing. What happens when you kill somebody without having hated him? That is, you killed him unintentionally. It was a mistake or an accident. And there the legal discussion is: how do you deal with a person who killed somebody without having hated him? Because the normal conclusion is that you only kill when you hate. But having not hated the person yet killed him, how do you legally deal with this person? This same problem is discussed also in Joshua chapter 20 verses 3 to 9, dealing with the legal aspect of this matter.
In the Bible, hate therefore certainly is the opposite of love. It is understood this way, even by way of definition we can see that in Judges chapter 14 and verse 16. And we need not multiply examples of this. I am simply going through this to establish firmly the exegetical foundation, that you understand clearly that whether the Lord Jesus uses the word "hate" or whether the Old Testament uses the word "hate," it means hate. There is no doubt about it, even to the point of killing.
By this time you are beginning to stagger. You are saying to yourself, "I don't suppose you are trying to tell us that the Lord is actually teaching us to go and kill our parents. Are you? Surely you can't be serious." And then He goes on to say, "Even hate your own life." Wow. In this case we all have to commit suicide in order to be disciples. The best disciples should be suicide patients. So maybe the place to recruit good disciples is to go to the psychiatric clinic and ask the psychiatrist, "Who are the people here who are suicide cases?" And then we are going to preach the gospel to them, because since they all want to commit suicide and the condition for discipleship is suicide—not to mention murderers—maybe we should go into the prison and look for murderers. The patricides, the people who killed their fathers, and matricides, people who killed their mothers, killed their brothers. All these kinds of people, we should go there and evangelize them. They will all make the ideal disciples. The only problem is they may have to be disciples in jail. And having committed murder, you can't get out of jail.
So, what is the Lord saying? To understand this thing—is the Lord telling us that the only perfect disciples are people who hate themselves? So we should all go about hating ourselves? Only so can we become perfect disciples? Now, if this is the case, we should all go around with a very negative view of life. We should all boil with hatred in order to be good Christians. We hate everybody. I mean, who else is there to love? You hate your father, mother, brother, son, yourself—everybody. You hate everybody. So the doctrine of the Lord's teaching of love suddenly becomes a doctrine of hate. And the best disciples are the people who hate everybody. Because if you can hate your father and mother, there's no trouble with the people on the street. I mean, these guys mean nothing to us. We can hate them all. So maybe tomorrow we should go and buy a machine gun and prove that we are good disciples. Mow them down. "There, Lord, I fulfilled Your teaching. You told me to do this, and here I did it."
What is the Lord saying? He said this is a hard saying, but it's not only becoming hard, it's getting to be impossible. I think I'm completely stuck with this teaching. Maybe we better go back to the Chinese translators and throw this word in the garbage bin and settle the problem once and for all. Got our neck out of the noose. Because the more we go, the noose seems to be getting tighter, and we find ourselves stuck with an impossible understanding.
What then is the Lord saying? Let me put it like this. It is not difficult to love what one loves. But it is very difficult to hate what one loves. What am I saying? Let's say this. Supposing here that I ask you to give me something that you love. It's very difficult. Take Ealing, for example. I mean, she has lots of little stuffed pets, stuffed toys, and things like this. And they all have names and they're all very precious to her. And the room is so full of these things, these little stuffed things, that you have sometimes a traffic problem inside the room. And they all have names. And she gives them lessons, you see. She has a blackboard and she writes on them and she teaches them things. And they all, of course, sit there very attentively to her teaching. And they never make a noise. They never interrupt. They're very ideal students to have, of course.
Now, all of these mean a lot to her. Now, supposing you said to her, "Ealing, how about you give me one of these?" "Oh, oh, what? This one? I mean, there's so many names I can't remember what the names of each one are. But this one? Oh, no, no, no. This will not do." "How about that one then?" "Oh, no, no, no. This will not do." Well, she might bring herself to part with one torn and rather disabled, lame doll in one corner. Why? Because that one she doesn't like too much. She likes stuffed animals. Dolls—not too hot on dolls. So if you want the doll, okay, well, you can have that one. But not these stuffed animals. That one, you can have it. Why is she willing to give it to you? Because that one doesn't mean much to her. She doesn't have much love for that one. But she loves all the others. She calls them her children. She loves all her children. But not this one—you can have it. She doesn't have much love for that.
What are we saying? If we already hate our lives and we are suicide cases, it's very easy to give what you hate anyway. If you hate yourself and you say, "You want my life? You can have it. I'm about to take my life anyway. So you want to kill me and it makes it easier for me. Why don't you just kill me then?" Because you already hate yourself for whatever reason. You hate yourself. So it's very easy to give yourself away. If you hated your parents, it's very easy to offer your parents because you hate them anyway. "Do me the favor of taking them away. I don't like them anyway. Just take them away." But if you love your parents, it is very difficult to offer them up, is it not? Very difficult.
Now, what makes the Lord's teaching difficult is precisely because I love myself. Of course I do love myself. Unless, of course, I have something wrong with me mentally. I mean, people who—why do they put suicide cases in the psychiatric ward? It's because suicide cases are mentally unbalanced. There's something wrong with them. And surely the Lord is not suggesting that the best disciples are people who have mental problems. Because whatever you hate—now, if you hate your brother and somebody says, "Would you like to offer your brother?" you say, "Oh, no problem. Take him away. I have no time for him anyway. He makes me sick. Take him away." Now, whatever you don't like, it's very easy to give.
That is why in the Old Testament, under the law of sacrifice, no animal could be offered to Yahweh unless that animal is perfect. It cannot so much as have one slight defect in that animal. You cannot offer it to Yahweh. A shepherd cannot say, "Okay, I have all these sheep and this lame one, this one I bring to the temple to sacrifice." That cannot be done. If you read in the law of the Old Testament, you will see it again and again. Not only can you not offer a lame animal, you cannot offer it if it has so much as one spot on it. It has to be spotless. It has to be absolutely the best. Nothing but the best can be offered to God.
Do you begin to get the picture? What are we speaking about here? Let's put the facts together and the picture begins to emerge. First, understand that if you offer what you hate, you have given nothing at all. If you offer what you love, only then is there a cost to count. The Lord speaks of counting a cost here, does He not? Now, if you offer what you hate anyway, there is no cost to count because you are happy to take it away. What you hate is garbage. Take it away. But what cost is there to count? To count the cost is only necessary when you offer something that you dearly love. I love my parents. I love my parents dearly. And the more you love something or the more you love someone, the more difficult it is to offer up. More difficult. It is because I love myself so much that when the Lord says to me, "You must deny yourself," oh, that's so difficult. If I'm sick of myself anyway, there is no trouble to deny myself. The people who have the most to lose, the people who love themselves most, have the most difficulty struggling with the Lord's sake.
And you are not normal if you don't love yourself. I love myself. I'm not ashamed to say so. Of course I love myself. Do you love yourself? I think you would be a hypocrite if you said you don't love yourself. Either a hypocrite or a mental case. One of these two. I mean, there is no other choice. Surely, you love yourself. In fact, the Scripture tells us that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. Now, if I don't love myself, I certainly won't love my neighbor. If I don't love myself, why should I love him? The more I love myself, the more I will love my neighbor on this principle: "Surely you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Now, clearly, if I love him as myself, the more I love myself, the more I am to love him at the same standard.
The whole essence, even in the Old Testament, the law is summed up in the expression, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and your neighbor as yourself," so that in the commandment, self-love of the right kind is acceptable. God doesn't expect us to go around hating ourselves. Otherwise, every time we start feeling good, we should start feeling guilty. And I think many Christians do feel guilty about feeling good. You get up in the morning and you feel so good. "Praise the Lord, so good to be alive." And you say, "Oh, sorry, sorry, Lord, I shouldn't be feeling so good. I must hate myself, hate myself some more." And so you're walking in the park and you're enjoying the singing of the birds, it's so wonderful, and you're just beginning to feel good and say, "I've got to hate myself, deny myself. I should not be loving the singing of the birds. Away with this." So you grit your teeth. Surely this is nonsense. We make no apology for having the joy of life. And Paul is full of the joy of life. "Rejoice in the Lord," he says. "Rejoice. Again I say to you, rejoice." As though the first time he said it you might not have got the message: "Again I say to you, rejoice." Ah, joy—what's wrong with that? The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.
So how do we understand this thing? Well, there's nothing wrong with the right love for yourself. Of course there isn't; there's nothing wrong with it. And it is precisely the difficulty that the Lord is saying—that to hate what you love, that's where the difficulty lies.
Now you say, "Are you getting confused again? Just a moment ago I thought I got it clear, now you tell me to hate what I love. What do we mean by hate what we love?" The secret of understanding this passage is to understand Genesis chapter 22. That is the secret of this passage. Genesis chapter 22 verse 10 reads—what? There is the classic example of faith. We are saved by faith. And the Lord is saying without faith you cannot be my disciple. That's what He is saying. Paul understood Him perfectly. But how is faith to be expressed? Faith is expressed in offering up to God the very thing that you love. The very thing that you love.
What did Abraham do? God says to him, "Offer up Isaac." Now here you see the point. If Abraham hated Isaac anyway and God said, "Offer up Isaac"—"Oh, no problem, Lord. You want Isaac? Wait, can I do it now? Can I finish him now? I have to wait three more days? I can't stand it. Three days? How about now?" No, no, no. It is because Abraham loved Isaac. Loved him—when we say in Chinese *tong ai*, we can't translate that in English. It is love to the point of pain. He loved him so deeply that when God says, "You shall hate what you love, you shall kill him"—that's the ultimate expression of hatred. It says here, chapter 22 verse 10: Abraham takes out his knife to slay. Now, that's the ultimate expression. Here, hatred is not so much a feeling; it is an action. The action of putting someone you love to death. You don't normally kill somebody you love, do you? Of course not. Yet Abraham had to slay what he loved. He had to hate what he loved—not so much in his feeling, but in the action. That, as we see, was the ultimate expression of faith, repeated in the New Testament again and again.
What is the point of all this? Understand it again. We are to hate, not in the sense of any emotion, of course, but in the sense of finishing with, in the sense of sacrificing up to God. We are to hate ourselves, not in the sense of an emotional feeling, because that we cannot do. We would go quite insane even to attempt such a thing. Actually ridiculous. And that, as we saw in the scriptural teaching, is not the case. We love ourselves; that is, we value ourselves, we treasure ourselves. We value our parents, we value our brothers and sisters; they are valuable to us, they are precious to us. But the Lord is saying, "I want you to offer up as a sacrifice to me what is precious to you, even yourself, which is precious to you." Like Abraham offered up Isaac—slay, in that sense. Of course, we cannot offer up, and the Lord is not asking us to offer up physically or literally in any such sense.
I've often wondered where Paul got the idea of a spiritual sacrifice in Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and 2 that we quote so often. Where did he get the idea? I'm amazed at Paul's insight, as I have many times noted. Clearly it was in the very exposition of this passage that he derived this very insight: that as Abraham offered up Isaac, so we are to offer up all that is dear to us, including ourselves.
Why is this so? Because Paul also himself repeatedly said that we are saved by a faith like Abraham's. That is why Abraham is mentioned so often in the New Testament. You just look at the concordance, you'd be surprised how many times Abraham is mentioned in the New Testament. In Romans chapter 4 verse 16, he speaks of a faith like Abraham's, who share Abraham's faith in the RSV. We are saved by faith.
The problem with the Reformation was this. It brought a great truth to light which had been lost for years, when people were trying to earn their own salvation by good works. And Martin Luther, in the study of Galatians in particular, and Romans too, discovered an important insight. We are not saved by this kind of efforts that we make—giving money to the poor, fasting sometimes. We are not saved by all these efforts, eating fish on Friday and the like. But we are saved by faith. And that was an absolutely true insight.
What the Reformation failed to do for us, to our great cost, and which we are now beginning to discover, is that having given us the word "faith," it failed to define for us what faith means. The result today is that there are so many doctoral theses being written on faith. We are left to people trying to discover what faith means. If you say it's a trust—what is the extent of the trust? Any kind of trust sufficient? Many times you hear a preacher defining faith in terms of trust. You trust the driver of your car, or the bus, or the airplane, the pilot. And we all have faith in the sense that we trust the pilot. "We are saved by faith" means what? We trust God in what sense? What does it mean? The definition is far too vague. The result is: does any kind of trust in God mean that I am saved? Well, in that sense, almost anyone has some kind of a vague trust in God. You might almost say some people have faith in the sense of superstition. They hang a little cross on the car window in the hope that they won't have an accident because there's the cross hanging in the window. God can't allow the cross to get into an accident, and therefore you hang the cross there; otherwise God dishonors His name by getting a cross into an accident. Is that faith? Well, trust—they trust God. They trust God that He will protect His cross, do they? Is that trust? Is that saving faith?
You say, "No." "Why not?" "Well, you say, there's something wrong with the trust." "Well, what's wrong with the trust? Is it only a matter of the difference of degree then? How much trust do you have to have before you are saved? How much faith do you have to have?" Now, that was the problem that the Reformation left open and ever since we have inherited the problems. Therefore one evangelist feels himself justified to say, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you are saved." Now, what does "believe in the Lord Jesus" mean? You believe that He lived? There was such a person called Jesus? Or you believe that He once walked upon the earth? Or you believe that He died on the cross? No problem to believe all this. If you study it historically it's quite justified, yes. To believe that He died on the cross? Not only that He died but He died for everybody in the world including you? Okay, I can believe that too. Or you believe that He rose again from the dead? Okay, we believe that too. What else do you want me to believe? Just name it. I keep believing it. Just keep adding more items. It's a matter of doctrine. So you believe all these things so you have a creed. I believe in the Credo. I believe in the Nicene Creed, the Constantinopolitan Creed, whatever creed you like, I believe in all. That's what I'm saying. But what else do you want me to do? You see, that is the problem inherited from the Reformation.
The problem is not left unanswered. In fact, so great was the problem, as I said, many people are writing books on this or writing their doctoral dissertations on this. That included myself. That was what I was going to hand my doctoral thesis on—300-some pages of my thesis was written precisely on this subject: the meaning of faith in the New Testament. Because the more I thought about it, I didn't know what faith means. We are saved by faith and we don't know what faith means. Now, the problem here, of course—I never handed in the thesis. I finished the thesis before I got to Zurich, and I didn't have the money to spend three years in Zurich. I couldn't afford it anyway. So in the end, for financial and other reasons, I had to abandon the idea. But the thesis still sits there, 300-some pages. Why is this so? And I discovered another friend of mine in Manchester was writing a doctoral thesis on the very same subject—the definition of faith. And there are so many theses written on this subject, you can't believe it. Why are there more theses written? Because the previous thesis never solved the problems. You have another thesis, another thesis, everybody. And though you can't answer the question, you still get your doctorate because the professor also doesn't know the definition. No problem. Maybe you made a slight step forward and the other guy made another slight step forward.
What is the Bible's answer to this question? What is the Lord's answer? Quite simple, if we only understood His teaching. The faith that saves—and this is the reason why Abraham is mentioned so often in the New Testament—is the Abrahamic faith. A faith like Abraham, who hated what he loved. God. And therefore, to offer up Isaac was so painful to him, precisely because he loved Isaac so much. This very matter is mentioned as the example of faith in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 17. Two things are cited about Abraham as the example of faith. And that is why Abraham, as you know in the Bible, is called the father of the faithful. That is to say, if you are a son of Abraham, you have his kind of faith. You do what he did.
This is exactly what the Lord said in John chapter 8. He said to the Jews, "You are not Abraham's sons. Because if you were Abraham's sons, you would do what he did." That is exactly what the Lord Jesus says in John 8. You would do what Abraham did. What did Abraham do? He did two things that are cited as examples of faith in Hebrews. In Hebrews chapter 11 verse 8, when the Lord called him out of Haran, he left everything and followed God's command. He left Haran. And the second one is in Hebrews 11:17 that I just mentioned—the offering of Isaac. In both cases, they were steps of total commitment in each case. Leaving everything behind to obey God's command to go out of his homeland to an unknown land called Canaan. And the other step, the offering of Isaac. These are the two examples of Abraham's faith that are quoted in the Bible. And these are the examples of faith quoted also in Romans chapter 4, right at the beginning of Romans chapter 4 that we mentioned earlier. It is also quoted in James as the example of faith. In James chapter 2 verses 21 to 23, James quotes this very fact that Abraham offered up Isaac. That example of faith.
And this is exactly what the Lord is saying here in this very teaching. Just as Abraham hated what he loved, so nobody can be my disciple unless he has this total commitment of hating what you love. You love yourself, so you will hate yourself—that is, offer it up to God. You love your parents—offer that relationship up to God. You love your wife—rightly so. The Bible commands love for wife, yet it says here, "Unless you hate your own wife also." The Bible commands that we love our children, yet it says we are to hate our children. What does it mean? We offer up our wife to the Lord. That's very important, you know. Many people say, "I would serve the Lord if I were not married." In other words, my wife is the reason why I'm not serving the Lord. And you don't understand this teaching. You are right to love your wife. You should love your wife. But your love for your wife should not stand in the way to discipleship. Your love for God must not be obstructed by your love for your wife. So you offer up your wife to the Lord. That relationship is also offered. Many people say, "I would serve the Lord if I didn't have children. It's difficult." Love for your children also has to be offered up to the Lord. You hate what you love in the sense that you offer up to the Lord.
Here we can see: does this saying stick in our throat still? It will still stick in your throat if you are not a disciple and not prepared to be a disciple. This saying will certainly stick in your throat. You can't swallow it. But if you have the faith like Abraham, when God told him to offer what was most precious and dear to him, he did not hesitate in this sense to hate what he loved—to offer up to God truthfully. Hate in the sense of his direct relationship to Him—offer it up to God. Give it away. Part forever.
Beautifully stated in Hebrews chapter 11 too. It says here, therefore "in a figure he received Isaac back from the dead." In that sense, Isaac was never again his. He had actually, though not physically killed Isaac, yet in his heart he had finished with Isaac. In that sense, he never again regarded Isaac as his personal possession. He had offered him to the Lord, and from now on he was always the Lord's. So may we offer up to God, even in this sense, totally cutting the emotional personal mix, the desire to possess them as our own, to give them away, offer them up to the Lord totally.
"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple."
Let us be quiet before God in prayer.