Jesus was not a popular man. In the 1^st century, throughout history, and today people have struggled not just in coming to him but also in going with him. I have written elsewhere on the cost of discipleship, so in this post I want to remind us of just one of Jesus’ stinging statements about following him, and then pick up a few challenging points from John Calvin. If you avoid the slew of secularised ‘Christian’ teaching that promises you your best life now, through pearly white smiles atop expensively tailored suits, you meet an unpopular Jewish rabbi, despised and rejected. Though there are many reasons Jesus was insulted, spat on, and ultimately executed according to the wishes of his own people, we might say that his enemies were threatened by what they did not understand about him, while his followers were offended by what they did. As Samuel Rutherford wrote in one of his letters, “‘Lord' is a cumbersome word; and to obey him, and to work out our own salvation, and to perfect holiness, is the cumbersome and stormy northside of Christ; and that we eschew and shift.”

One of Jesus’ most disturbing statements comes in Luke 14, ‘If anyone comes to me does not hate his own life he cannot be my disciple.’ Our immediate reaction is to shrug off the remark and conclude that Jesus was having a frustrating day. But Jesus’ point is that our love of and allegiance to him should dwarf our affections for this life. It is when we grasp this meaning that Jesus’ words really sting, for we love this life and its splendid pleasures. Our sight is constantly drawn from the glory of God to his gifts. But Jesus thought following him was worth more than our entire life and the sum of its contents. It is because we are so enamoured with this life that Jesus’ forceful words insult us. We must be careful not to love our lives so much that we begin to hate Jesus and his call to discipleship.

The danger in over applying Jesus’ words is that we recoil from God’s good gifts in a mood not dissimilar from ingratitude. Thus the Christian life is poised on a knife-edge. As Calvin says in the fourth chapter of his Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, our love for this world must be broken, and our hope for the new cultivated. The struggle is to learn proper appreciation of all we enjoy now, without those things displacing our affections for Jesus. Everything we enjoy comes from God and is a divine blessing to be gratefully received. But Calvin thought we needed to be constantly reminded that this world is merely a signpost to God’s glorious restoration of all things. We must be weary of vainly clinging to our lives and what is passing, and grateful for the brief and generous hints of what is to come.

I will conclude by returning to something I said above: Jesus’ enemies were threatened by what they did not understand about him, but his disciples were offended by what they did. Those who do no know Jesus cannot comprehend this tension, loving our Lord so affectionately that we appear to hate this world. It is only when we comprehend what Jesus has done for us that our gratitude and love for him will dwarf this life. So Calvin writes, in the Institutes (3.7.1), “We are not our own: in so far as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours.”