Discipleship Without Excuse

3/19/25 Bible Thought (Luke 14)

Photo by Eric Rothermel on Unsplash

I’m sure we’ve all experienced a time when we try to make plans with friends or family and find that it’s incredibly hard to pull off. You try and invite people over for any sort of get-together but it’s nearly impossible. Truly, the stars align before our schedules do! Whether it’s personal things, work things, trips, or kids in sports, whatever it might be, people are incredibly busy.

They would love to get together, but they have competing priorities. In a word, they have to offer an excuse for why they can’t come. Their calendar is already filled with a commitment that they can’t shy away from. So, if you’re like me and my wife, you try a couple times and then end up doing nothing because most people are just too busy.

The Lord Jesus offers a parable in Luke 14 that I think illustrates this well. As He’s dining at a Pharisees house with a group gathered, one man cries out, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God” (Lk. 14:15). Jesus responds with His parable.

A man hosts a great banquet and invites many, but when the banquet is ready all of his guests are too busy to come. One has bought a field and has to go see it, one has bought five yoke of oxen and needs to examine them, and another had just recently gotten married and needed to be with his wife (Lk. 14:18b-20). In summary, “But they all alike began to make excuses” (Lk. 14:18a).

So, the man rejects the invited guests in favor of any who would come. The poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame were all invited and came without excuse. In conclusion, none of those who were originally invited ended up coming and the man declares that they won’t be permitted to taste of his banquet (Lk. 14:24).

Following this, Jesus teaches about the cost of discipleship. Saying,

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. ²⁷ Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple” (Lk. 14:26-27).

It’s certainly clear that Jesus never read any of the books on church growth strategies. His teaching was offensive and blunt. Surely, it shrunk the crowds that had been accompanying Him. But does He really want us to literally hate our relatives, when in the sermon on the mount he warned against hatred?

It’s helpful to look at the Greek word underlying “hate” in Luke 14:26, which means, “to be disinclined to, disfavor, disregard in contrast to preferential treatment.”^[1] In essence, what Jesus is saying is that He is to be preferred above all other loves. Even love of self must be disregarded. Hence in another place He says to deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Him (Lk. 9:23).

Jesus isn’t asking for us to be a jerk. Obviously, this would be counter to the rest of His teaching! But what Jesus wants is a whole-hearted discipleship, a discipleship without excuses. He wants to have the preferred treatment where others are disregarded. In another word, He wants to have the predominance in our calendar over any competing appointments.

Jesus doesn’t want disciples who reject their invitation to the banquet with excuses. A field, oxen, or a new wife, could wait. They had a special invitation that they refused. Jesus doesn’t want to be rejected as the man with the banquet was by all our manner of excuses.

Truly, discipleship is costly, and it’s a cost that must be counted (Lk. 14:28-32. Jesus didn’t want people stepping into discipleship without understanding the cost. He didn’t want to pressure or manipulate people into the Kingdom with a raised hand while every head was bowed, and every eye was closed. Jesus wanted devout, fully-devoted, disciples without excuses. He wanted them to know that following Him was a costly endeavor. The passage ends with another hard saying, “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Lk. 14:33).

I wonder how frequently we offer excuses to our Lord as His followers. We would go to church, but we’ve had a tough week, and we need to sleep in. The extra hour of our time on Sunday is far too great a cost. We’d like to spend more time in prayer, but we’re too busy with other competing desires or we’re distracted. We might consider volunteering at church or a local mission, but that would take away some of our personal time. We can come up with any gamut of excuses, for why we are lack-luster at times in our faith. But Jesus is looking for disciples who will jump in with both feet, without excuse. He’s looking for those who are willing to cast aside all other competing desires and to follow Him with their whole hearts for their whole lives.

Are we up to the challenge?

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^[1] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 653.