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“If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26).
When we first come to know the Lord Jesus as Savior, we enjoy the wonderful privilege of having salvation given to us as a free gift. We cannot pay for it, for the Lord Jesus has already paid the full price on Calvary’s cross. But we soon learn that though salvation is free, to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus is costly. That is what the Lord Jesus was reminding people about in today’s verse.
It does not mean that we actually hate our closest relatives and family. Rather it means that in our lives, the Lord Jesus must have the first place, even before our families. Sometimes people get saved when their parents and family are not saved, and in some countries in this world this means that the one who gets saved is literally sent out of the house, and not allowed to live at home anymore. I have known more than one young person to whom this happened, and it was very hard for them. But they would not give up the Lord Jesus, because He meant so much to them. We cannot be a disciple of the Lord unless we want to give Him the first place in our life.
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