A Disciple Counts The Cost
Pause:
Before you start reading this devotional, take a moment to stop what you’re doing, slow down and focus on Jesus.
Pray and ask him to open your eyes to see as you read the scriptures, and to open your ears to hear as you wait on the leading of the Spirit.
Read:
Luke 9v18-25:
“Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say I am?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.”
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.”
Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone. And he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?”
Luke 14:27-33:
“And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
“Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.”
Going Deeper:
I love that this passage of scripture from Luke 9 starts with Jesus asking his disciples “who do you say I am?”…
Really the answer to this question would prove to be central to their discipleship to Jesus, just as it is to ours.
Our answer to this question determines whether or not Jesus is worth denying ourselves for, forfeiting our lives for, in order to pick up our crosses and follow him.
The answer to this question helps us to evaluate and count the cost of what it means to be his disciple, and whether or not it is a price we are willing to pay.
We see in Luke 9 that Peter answers the question by declaring that Jesus is the Messiah, the promised one they had all been waiting for, the Saviour of the world.
The only thing is, Peter was over the moon about this revelation for all the wrong reasons.
Just like many people in Israel, Peter was waiting for the Messiah, a King, who would restore Israel back to its former glory. At the time Israel was being ruled by an oppressive and harsh government under the Roman Empire. They were a people who were essentially being held captive and they hated it.
In a sense they weren’t waiting for a Messiah to address their spiritual needs, they were waiting for a King who would get rid of the Romans and put Israel back in the place it used to be. They weren’t necessarily wanting to be redeemed from their sins, they wanted to be redeemed from Rome.
That’s why when Jesus says to Peter and the disciples that he is going to suffer and be killed it would have shocked them. It so shocked Peter that in the account of this story in Mark 8 we see that he rebukes Jesus for saying this. Peter wanted Jesus sitting on a throne and not hanging on a cross.
Jesus in this moment bursts Peter’s bubble of what discipleship to him will look like, and what the realities of following him would be. Not only does Jesus say that he will have to suffer and die for the sake of the world, but he ups the ante saying to them: “whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it”.
For Peter and the disciples, things quickly moved from Jesus is King, to Jesus is going to die, to I’m going to die.
Jesus is telling them that if they want to be his disciples they will have to take up their cross and follow him, losing their lives to find true abundant life in him. In this moment Jesus reveals that deciding to follow him would cost them everything. That’s why he goes on in Luke 14, urging them to evaluate and count the cost of following him.
The answer to the question Jesus poses to Peter and to us of “Who do you say that I am?” is so important because if Jesus is the messiah, our hope, our redemption and the abundant life we long and thirst for then he is more than worth it. If he is the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in a field, then he is worth giving up everything for.
Who do we say Jesus is and what implications does this have for our lives?
Have we counted the cost of being his disciple and of following him?
The truth is following Jesus is costly. It calls for us to deny ourselves and to choose him and his ways. But when we know who he is, when we know his great worth, we are able to mirror the words of Paul in Philippians 3v7-9:
"What things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith."
Pray:
Respond to God in prayer by speaking to Him about what stood out to you from this passage this morning.
Listen:
What is the Holy Spirit saying to you right now?
Apply:
What are you going to do in response to what God is saying to you from the text and by the Spirit?