Forsaking All 3

It is vital to understand the principles explained in part one and part two before reading this page, because here we will be building on the foundations laid down in those pages.

We have seen so far that ‘forsaking all’ is absolutely essential for every believer. All believers are to refuse to allow anything to come between themselves and God. Nothing that may entice us away from Jesus should be given any place in our life and heart.

Here again is the list of points summarising our conclusions. In parts one and two we have covered the first five of these points.

Every Christian must forsake all.
Forsaking all is not an entrance test for Christians who want to do more for the Lord, or to become a missionary, for example. Forsaking all is a requirement for every Christian.
God requires every believer to forsake anything that comes between that person and God.
Forsaking all is first a spiritual act, a letting go of anything that obstructs our relationship with God.
Specific items are forsaken not because there is a particular time that Christians should forsake them but because we must not allow anything to come between ourselves and God.
Forsaking all includes, but is by no means limited to, people, secular jobs, possessions, wealth. Forsaking all encompasses anything and everything, all that is within a person’s understanding, except for God Himself.
While forsaking all is primarily a spiritual act, it is manifested in the physical when the believer literally cuts ties with the things he or she is required to forsake.
Forsaking all is not done in obedience to a particular group or church. Forsaking all is done only as we follow Jesus Christ Himself, not any organisation, and it certainly should not be done as a means for admission to a church.
There is no set formula as to the specific things that every Christian should physically forsake. Some will be required to forsake their employment, family and wealth. Others may need to forsake other things. There is no set rule as to when every Christian should forsake a particular thing.
There is no precedent in the Bible for the Family to insist that its members forsake all as a precondition of membership, neither is forsaking all supported in the Bible as a means of income for church administrations.
Christians forsake all as they follow the personal leading of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit leading their life. We forsake all as we follow the personal call of God, not by imitating the way someone else forsook all.

Luke 14:27 “And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.

The ultimate fulfilment of this verse, of course, was in Jesus’ own cross bearing, as He struggled up the road to Calvary, dragging on His back the beam of wood to which He would be nailed. Jesus knew all things and when He told the crowd of people that they would have to carry their cross, He knew that He Himself would be the first one to do so. Knowing how Jesus died, we may gain many deep lessons from this verse.

One point, however, is often overlooked. Jesus was speaking to a great multitude of people who had no idea of the fate that would befall Jesus. Many of them would remember His words when they saw the crucifixion, but at the time they would have had to take this exhortation without the retrospective advantage that we have. How were the crowd of people to understand what Jesus meant? He was not calling for everyone to join the twelve apostles as they roamed around Palestine. He was, as we have already brought out, calling the multitude to come to God through Him.

For a Jew who had been brought up to believe in the one true God, this was a major stumbling block.

Crucifixion was the Roman method of execution for non-Romans. Every Jew standing in the field listening to Jesus knew that should any of them fall out of favour with Rome, they could expect a cruel death on a cross.

In Luke 14:26 Jesus made it clear that no person should ever be allowed to come between us and Him. Our Christianity is defined by our utter dependence on God our Saviour through Jesus’ atonement for our sins. Here in Luke 14:27 we have the message that not even our own life is more important than our salvation.

It may be that the most dangerous person who attempts to entice us away from God is in fact ourself. Our own sins, the lusts of our flesh, the pride of our life all conspire to lure us away from God. What is Jesus’ response? Let them die! This is why the epistles say we ‘die to sin’ upon our salvation.

6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.

We cannot say that we are Christian if we continue to allow our sins to entice us away from God. So, in Luke 14:27, Jesus said that we cannot be His disciple, we cannot be a Christian, we cannot be born again unless we are willing to let our life of sin die.

28 “For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it--

29 “lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,

Jesus is helping His audience to ‘count the cost’ of their salvation. The entire passage we are studying, from Luke 14:25 to the end of the chapter repeatedly specifies that these principles are specifically for those who would come to Jesus to be His disciple (disciple, not apostle).

His message in a nutshell is this: Nothing is more important than our salvation. Nobody should be allowed to entice us away from the Lord our God or from the salvation that is only available through Jesus Christ His Son. We should not let anyone pull us away from Him, regardless of who they are. In particular we should not let our own self pull us away from Him.

In verses 28 to 30, Jesus spells it out for all to hear. ‘Count the cost’, He says, ‘Understand the price you’ll have to pay.’ We should realise that nothing should be allowed to come between us and Him. Following Jesus is far more than joining a church or becoming accepted into Family membership. We should understand that following Jesus as a Christian is a life long commitment, it is a radical change of life and heart. It involves the death of our life of sin and our rebirth as a child of God.

When Jesus helps us to count the cost, we begin to understand that there is no such thing as someone who is Christian in name only. There is no such thing as a Christian who is not a disciple, or a Christian who has not yielded his life of sin to Christ.

We should realise that, as in the case of the tower-builder, at stake is everything that we possess, including our money and our reputation.

In fact it will eventually become obvious to others if we do not have Jesus in first place: all will begin to mock.

We may therefore add our money and our reputation to the list of things that we should not allow to entice us away from God, but more importantly realise that following Jesus is a total commitment in every aspect of our lives.

31 “Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?

32 “Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace.

In another illustration of the kind of total commitment Jesus is talking of, He makes the analogy of a king who realises that if he fights and loses the war, he will probably lose all that he has. The king who loses a war is often captured, killed or deposed. At stake is his life, his freedom, his power, his land and his people.

Every Christian must likewise be totally committed to the truth that Jesus brought. This is a simple statement of fact, that becoming a Christian will automatically place God at the centre of our life. At stake is our eternal life or death, so we must not enter casually into Christianity, or treat lightly the discipleship of Jesus Christ.

We can also deduce from these verses that we should beware lest our power or responsibility or even physical freedom entice us away from God.

Luke 14:33 “So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.

In the same way that Jesus explained the total commitment to God that is required of every Christian, so every believer, every Christian, every disciple must forsake anything and everything that could come between him or herself and God.

Following Jesus means that we refuse to allow any person to entice us away from Him, whether it be a friend, a spouse, a parent or another relative. Following Jesus means that we must not even allow those who call themselves prophets to entice us away from God, when they exalt their own words above that of the Bible. Following Jesus as a Christian means that we cannot be swayed by groups of people, or let those we fellowship with pull us away from the God of the Bible. Following Him means we must particularly beware of our own tendency to pull ourselves away from God. The only remedy for sins which entice us away from Him is the death of those sins in our salvation. Being a Christ’s disciple means that we forsake in our hearts everyone and everything that has the potential to lure us away from Jesus Christ, including our money, our reputation, our friends, our freedom, our power, or even our life itself.

Every Christian must ‘forsake all that he has’. We are to forsake anything that might pull us away from Him, anything that could endanger our walk with the Lord. Once we have come to that point, then our possessions and money will not mean much to us at all.

Please note that this is not to say that Christians should not ‘forsake all’ in the Family way, meaning give all that they possess to their particular church. Some people may be called to do just that. However, it is clear that Luke 14 goes much deeper than that. It appears that Luke 14 contains spiritual principles which may be applied in many different ways, including but not limited to financially.

Forsaking all includes, but is by no means limited to, people, secular jobs, possessions, wealth. Forsaking all encompasses anything and everything, all that is within a person’s understanding, except for God Himself.
While forsaking all is primarily a spiritual act, it is manifested in the physical when the believer literally cuts ties with the things he or she is required to forsake.

Just as the tower-builder makes a commitment to his project, and as the king puts his life and reign on the line when he goes to war, so we are to commit to God, forsaking all that could come between us and Him. This passage has nothing to say about commitment to a particular church or organisation, but refers to our absolute dedication to God Himself through His Son Jesus Christ.

If we do not forsake the things that come between us and God, we may not call ourselves Christian, and this point is expanded in the remaining two verses in the chapter.

34 “Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?

35 “It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill, but men throw it out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

There are many beneficial object lessons we can derive from the salt analogy. In this study we are mainly concerned with understanding how these verses fit together with the ones before.

If we do not forsake all that comes between us and Jesus, we are not Christian. If we do not forsake the seductions of those who try to entice us away from God, we are not Christian. If we do not forsake the things that prevent us from committing ourselves to Him, we are not Christian. If we do not forsake these things we become like salt that is not salty. We become as useless as unsalty salt. In fact we become worse than useless, because just as the salt in verse 35 is not fit for the land, so we inhibit the spiritual growth of others. People who are Christian in name only will only hinder the work of Christ.

Although new Christians may take time to mature spiritually, and grow in the Lord, those who have not forsaken the seductions of sin that lie between themselves and God have not truly come to God at all. There is a dire warning regarding their end result: ‘Men throw it out’.

It is abandoning any and all temptations that prevent us from following Jesus. It is despising as worthless the worldly possessions that try to hold us back from committing to Him. It is allowing our sins to be crucified with Jesus that we may receive new life.

Luke 14:33 is the summary of a spiritual principle crucial to our eternal salvation and while it is true that the giving of our material possessions to our church is one way it can be applied, if this is as far as we go in our understanding of the verse, then we are confining ourselves to a very narrow interpretation.

Nevertheless, in part four we will look at the financial aspects of the Family’s application of this verse.

It is essential to remember is that Luke 14:25-35 illustrates the utmost importance of our eternal salvation. There are vital spiritual principles illustrated in this chapter, and before we can make any practical application of the passage, we must understand the spiritual law behind it. If we do not understand the spirit, it will be difficult to avoid making mistakes in the practical.

Many spiritual laws have practical applications, and in fact we may say that every practical law that we obey as Christians must have a spiritual truth behind it. Anything we do in our Christian life must be born out of a spiritual truth. As an example, we know that as Christians we should fellowship with other Christians. The reasons we do this is not because there is a law in the Bible detailing the amount of time we should spend each week with other believers but because the Bible explains the spiritual truth that all Christians are members of the body of Christ. We are united in Him, we have all been forgiven for our sins, and we are united in our new life, as the Holy Spirit teaches us, changes us and conforms us to Jesus’ own image. We physically meet together as Christians because spiritually we all have the same Lord and Master, and we are all filled with the same Holy Spirit.

It is a mistake, however, to legislate the fellowship. The fellowship is the practical application of the spiritual law; the fellowship is not the law itself. Once we understand the spiritual law, we may then go on to apply it to ourselves, but that application may vary according to our own circumstances or the circumstances of the country we are in. The physical, practical applications of the truth are not the law themselves and can never be taken as such.

In other words, we cannot say that the ultimate truth of Luke 14:33 is that all Christians should donate all their material possessions to their church, neither can we say that it justifies the Family’s insistence on this practice as a condition of membership. Luke 14:33 expresses the spiritual truth that nothing and nobody should be allowed to come between us and the Person of Jesus Christ our Lord. Any temptation that lingers in our heart has such devastating eternal consequences that Jesus said we should forsake them, regardless of how dear they may be to our heart.

Once we have learned this spiritual truth, we may then pray about how the Holy Spirit wants us to apply it in our lives. It is true that one Christian may read the verse and choose to donate their money to their church. Another Christian may quit their job in order to become a missionary. Still another may sever a friendship with someone who constantly tempts the Christian to sin, and so on. There are many varied practical applications of this verse, but it is a misinterpretation to claim that this verse legislates any particular item that we are to forsake, and much less to say it decrees to whom we should forsake it.

Organisations may decide their own entrance requirements, but the Bible does not give any such details regarding church membership. In particular, Luke 14:33 is no grounds for Family insistence on individual members resigning from their employment and donating all their possessions and money to the Family.