Biblion Bible Commentary
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Counting the Cost
Luke 14:25-35
25 Now great multitudes were going with him. He turned and said to them, · WEB
Great crowds are following, and he turns around and tells them to work out whether they can afford it.
Now great multitudes were going with him. He turned and said to them Luke 14:25.
The setting is the point. The crowds are large and enthusiastic, and what he does is turn around and try to thin them. Nothing in this book treats a crowd as a success.
"If anyone comes to me, and doesn't disregard his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he can't be my disciple" Luke 14:26.
The strongest form of the saying, and the word behind disregard is the ordinary word for hating. Two things keep it from meaning what it appears to. Scripture uses that verb comparatively — Jacob is said to have hated Leah when the text means he loved her less than Rachel Genesis 29:30–31 — and this same teacher commands love of enemies Luke 6:27 and enforces honoring parents against a tradition that evaded it Mark 7:9–13.
What is being demanded is a rank order, stated in the most violent terms available so that nobody can soften it into a preference. And the last item on the list is his own life, which is where the real weight falls.
"Whoever doesn't bear his own cross, and come after me, can't be my disciple" Luke 14:27. Said to a crowd, in a country where they had seen it done.
Then two short parables, both about arithmetic, and both this Gospel's own.
"Which of you, desiring to build a tower, doesn't first sit down and count the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it?" Luke 14:28. The humiliation described is specific: a foundation laid and the work abandoned, so that everyone who sees begins to mock him Luke 14:29. An unfinished tower is worse than no tower, because it stands there advertising what happened.
"What king, as he goes to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?" Luke 14:31.
The second is not the same story told twice. The builder chooses whether to start; the king is being marched on, and cannot decline the war. His options are to fight at two-to-one odds or to send an embassy and ask for terms. There is no version in which he continues as he was.
Both parables say sit down first, which is the instruction to a crowd walking along behind him. Stop, and do the sum.
"So therefore whoever of you who doesn't renounce all that he has, he can't be my disciple" Luke 14:33. The conclusion is drawn from the arithmetic rather than from enthusiasm. What the calculation reveals in both cases is that the resources are insufficient — and the response is not to gather more but to hand over what there is.
"Salt is good, but if the salt becomes flat and tasteless, with what do you season it?" Luke 14:34. The closing image is of something that has lost the one property it existed for. It is not thrown away for failing; it is thrown away for being indistinguishable from the ground.
settled What this mark means