Luke 14:26-35 says, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and moreover, even his own soul-life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, wanting to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Lest perhaps, once he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all those looking on will begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build and was not able to finish. Or what king, going to engage another king in war, will not first sit down and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet the one coming against him with twenty thousand? Otherwise, while he is yet at a distance, he sends an envoy and asks for the terms of peace. In the same way therefore everyone of you who does not forsake all his own possessions cannot be My disciple. Therefore salt is good; but if even the salt becomes tasteless, with what will its saltiness be restored? It is fit neither for the land nor for the manure pile; they will throw it out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” When people hear this passage, they often find it difficult to take, because what is spoken of in this portion is very high and absolute.
It is normal for a pursuing Christian to believe and obey the Lord’s word before Him and to live and act according to His word. However, the requirements in Luke 14 seem too high. Verse 26 says that if we do not hate our own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and even our own soul-life, we cannot be the Lord’s disciples. Who can do this? Even if we already hated people, we would not be able to hate to the degree that we would hate our own relatives, including our parents, our children, our wife, and our brothers and sisters. The Lord used the examples of building a tower and engaging in war to ask those who were following Him to calculate the cost (vv. 28-32). It seems that there is no way for us to follow the Lord, because if we want to follow Him, we have to hate all the people, things, and matters that are related to us.
However, 2 Peter 1:3-4 says, “Seeing that His divine power has granted to us all things which relate to life and godliness, through the full knowledge of Him who has called us by His own glory and virtue, through which He has granted to us precious and exceedingly great promises that through these you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption which is in the world by lust.” The precious divine power has granted to us all things which relate to life and godliness. Therefore, it is not we ourselves who do anything or leave anything. Rather, the life in us does everything. We may be unable to get through in Luke 14, but we are greatly released in 2 Peter 1.
We often think that the Lord wants us to abhor ourselves and to forsake everything by our own strength. We may tell ourselves, “I want to be a Christian, I want to abhor myself, and I want to forsake myself.” However, everything that the “I” wants is from the self, and ultimately, we are unable to do anything that it wants. The requirements of the Lord Jesus that are shown in the Gospels are fulfilled by the things which relate to life and godliness. All these things have been granted to us by the divine power of God. We may be unable to respond to and to fulfill the requirement in Luke 14, but after we were saved, a life came into us. This life has power and is able to do everything. One significance of salvation is that our sins have been forgiven, but the highest significance of salvation is that we have received the life of God. That we have received the life of God is not a philosophy or a religion but a fact.
We all know that when we repented, confessed our sins, prayed to the Lord, called on His name, believed in Him, and received Him, He became the true and living God to us. He as the life-giving Spirit actually entered into us. This was what transpired in our salvation. Once we were saved, we received the eternal life. The apostle Peter had formerly been a Galilean fisherman. One day the Lord Jesus saw him and told him to let down his nets, and immediately he caught a great number of fish. He was very surprised and amazed at what the Lord had done, and as a result he followed the Lord Jesus (Luke 5:2-11). Later, after he had walked with the Lord outwardly for three and a half years, he saw that the Lord had died, resurrected, and entered into him to be his life. Hence, he gave a testimony in his Epistle, testifying that God’s divine power has granted to us all things that relate to life and godliness.
After seeing this light, we will be released. We may jump up and say, “O Lord, I am able to fulfill the requirement in Luke 14, yet it is not I who fulfills it. Rather, You have put the power of Your life into me. You have granted to me the things related to life and godliness. It is not I who fulfills the requirement. Rather, the things that relate to life and godliness are lived out from within me without constraint or hindrance.”
Second Peter 1:4 says, “Through which He has granted to us precious and exceedingly great promises that through these you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption which is in the world by lust.” God has granted to us precious and exceedingly great promises in order that we may escape the corruption which is in the world by lust. Today the whole world, no matter where you go, is full of corruption. Even though the island of Taiwan is flourishing, is economically prosperous, and has a peaceful and stable living, corruption is everywhere. When a man is in poverty, he only knows to work hard for his livelihood, but once he becomes rich, he begins to do many corrupt and fallen things. How can we escape this kind of trend? Only through the life that God has granted to us inwardly and the promise that God has given to us outwardly can we escape the corruption which is in the world by lust. This is the confirmation of the great promise in Matthew 6:31-33.