God designed the family as a linchpin of his creation. Adam came first, but didn’t care for the loneliness so God brought Eve to the
dance, so the two could become one. Then he helped Eve conceive a child. Yeah, check out Genesis 4:1. 😉 And in his guidelines for people that we call the Big Ten, honoring your parents took the middle ground, the only one with a promise: of long life. And when some religious leaders tried to avoid honoring their parents, Jesus proclaimed they abandoned the word of God. Families count, so in another challenge to deepen our faith, why did Jesus tell us to hate them?
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). Pretty harsh, pretty hardline. Hate your family, or you cannot be his disciple. And the context of Luke 14 gives more examples of Jesus’ hardcore requirements, which this series examines.
But since families are people, did Jesus contradict himself with another command in John 13:13-35, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Sounds like he says if we don’t love others, we can’t be a disciple, and families are people. Paul adds to the confusion, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8). We can accurately paraphrase him as saying, “If you don’t provide for your family, you can’t be a disciple.”
Perhaps Jesus used hyperbole to make his point. Vine’s Expository Dictionary says that hate can involve “a relative preference for one thing over another.” Later in our Luke passage, Jesus gives some context, “"No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money” (Luke 16:13). The specific application involves the tension between God and Money, but the underlying principle applies to God and family. We cannot prioritize them the same. Only God deserves to be preeminent.
He clarified that back in Matthew, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (10:37). Or, to reword Jesus’ sayings, even while we love our families and take care of them, our love for God so exceeds our love for them that the gap seems like hatred.
Kick Starting the Application
Does your family, or part of it, compete with your primary allegiance to Jesus? In what way? How might you have contributed to that? Without loving your earthly family less, how can you increase your love for the Father?