Following After Jesus

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. 
For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother,
​and the daughter in law against her mother in law. 
And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that
loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 
And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. Mat 10:34-38

Total Surrender

"​Earthly love may be a worse foe to a true Christian than even the enmity of the dearest; and that enmity may often be excited by the Christian subordination of earthly to heavenly love. So our Lord passes from the warnings of discord and hate to the danger of the opposite-undue love.
He claims absolute supremacy in our hearts. He goes still farther, and claims the surrender, not only of affections, but of self and life to Him. What a strange claim this is! A Jewish peasant, dead nineteen hundred years since, fronts the whole race of man, and asserts His right to their love, which is strange, and to their supreme love, which is stranger still. Why should we love Him at all, if He were only a man, however pure and benevolent? We may admire, as we do many another fair nature in the past; but is there any possibility of evoking anything as warm as love to an unseen person, who can have had no knowledge of or love to us? And why should we love Him more than our dearest, from whom we have drawn, or to whom we have given, life? What explanation or justification does He give of this unexampled demand? Absolutely none. He seems to think that its reasonableness needs no elucidation. Surely never did teacher professing wisdom, modesty, and, still more, religion, put forward such a claim of right; and surely never besides did any succeed in persuading generations unborn to yield His demand, when they heard it. The strangest thing in the world’s history is that to-day there are millions who do love Jesus Christ more than all besides, and whose chief self-accusation is that they do not love Him more. The strange, audacious claim is most reasonable, if we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, who died for each of us, and that each man and woman to the last of the generations had a separate place in His divine human love when He died. It is meet to love Him, if that be true; it is not, unless it be. The requirement is as stringent as strange. If the two ever seem to conflict, the earthly must give way. If the earthly be withdrawn, there must be found sufficiency for comfort and peace in the heavenly. The lower must not be permitted to hinder the flight of the heavenly to its home. ‘More than Me’ is a rebuke to most of us. What a contrast between the warmth of our earthly and the tepidity or coldness of our heavenly love! How spontaneously our thoughts, when left free, turn to the one; how hard we find it to keep them fixed on the other! How sweet service is to the dear ones here; how reluctantly it is given to Christ! How we long, when parted, to rejoin them; how little we are drawn to the place where He is! We have all to confess that we are ‘not worthy of’ Him; that we requite His love with inadequate returns, and live lives which tax His love for its highest exercise, the free forgiveness of sins against itself. Compliance with that stringent law, and subordinating all earthly love to His, is the true elevating and ennobling of the earthly. It is promoted, not degraded, when it is made second, and is infinitely sweeter and deeper then than when it was set in the place of supremacy, where it had no right to be.
But Christ’s demand is not only for the surrender of the heart, but for the giving up of self, and, in a very profound sense, for the surrender of life. How enigmatical that saying about taking up the cross must have sounded to the disciples! They knew little about the cross, as a punishment; they had not yet associated it in any way with their Lord. This seems to have been the first occasion of His mentioning it, and the allusion is so veiled as to be but partially intelligible. But what was intelligible was bewildering. A strange royal procession that, of the King with a cross on His shoulder, and all His subjects behind Him with similar burdens! Through the ages that procession has marched, and it marches still. Self-denial for Christ’s sake is ‘the badge of all our tribe.’ Observe that word ‘take.’ The cross must be willingly and by ourselves assumed. No other can lay it on our shoulders. Observe that other word ‘his.’ Each man has his own special form in which self-denial is needful for him. We require pure eyes, and hearts kept in very close communion with Jesus, to ascertain what our particular cross is. He has them of many patterns, shapes, sizes, and materials. We can always make sure of strength to carry the one which He means us to carry, but not of strength to bear what is not ours." (Alexander Maclaren)

The Love of Christ Above All

He that loveth father or mother more than me,.... The design of these words, is not at all to lessen the due affection of children to their parents; or to detract from the respect and esteem, in which they ought to be had by them: it is the duty of children, to love, honor, and, obey them; who have been the means of bringing them into the world, and of bringing them up in it; nor do any of the doctrines of Christ break in upon the ties and obligations of nature, or in the least set aside any of the duties of natural religion: but the intent of this passage is, to show, that as Christ is infinitely above all creatures, he is to be loved above the nearest and dearest relations and friends; being God over all blessed for ever, and also the Savior and Redeemer; which itself, makes him more amiable and lovely than a common parent. That man therefore, that prefers father and mother to Christ, and their instructions, and orders, to the truths and ordinances of Christ: who, to please them, breaks the commands of Christ, rejects his Gospel, and either denies him, or does not confess him, our Lord says-
Is not worthy of me; or, as in Munster's Hebrew Gospel, he is not ראוי לאותי, "fit for me": it is not fit and proper, that such a person should name the name of Christ, or be called by his name, and should be reckoned one of his disciples; he is not fit to be a member of the church of Christ on earth, nor for the kingdom of heaven, but deserves to be rejected by him, and everlastingly banished his presence: for otherwise no man, let him behave ever so well, is worthy of relation to Christ, and interest in him; or of his grace, righteousness, presence, kingdom and glory. The same is the sense of the following clause-
And he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me: whoever, to gratify a child, drops the profession of Christ, renounces his Gospel, and neglects his commands, it is not proper and convenient that he should bear the name of Christ, be accounted one of his, or be treated as such, but all the reverse.  (John Gill)

Public Allegiance

Whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven: The disciple must confess Jesus publicly - before men. If we will not be public about our allegiance to Him, we cannot expect Him to be public about His allegiance to us.

"Everyone Jesus called He called publicly". There is really no such thing as a “secret” Christian, at least not in a permanent sense. This is a contradiction in terms - an oxymoron.

"Each individual Christian life should supply enough evidence" - evidence that can be seen by the world- that they are indeed Christians. It is to be feared that many modern Christians, if arrested for the crime of following Jesus and tried in a court, would have the charges dismissed for a lack of evidence.

 “What Christ is to you on earth, that you will be to Christ in heaven". I shall repeat that truth. Whatever Jesus Christ is to you on earth, you will be to him in the day of judgment. If he be dear and precious to you, you will be precious and dear to him. If you thought everything of him, he will think everything of you.” (Charles Spurgeon)
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Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword:
The message of Jesus - as reflected in the Sermon on the Mount – is indeed a message of peace. Yet since it calls the individual to a radical commitment to Jesus Himself, it is a message of peace that divides between those who choose it and those who reject it. The division between these two choices explains how Jesus did not come to bring peace but a sword.

'For I have come to “set a man against his father”…and “a man’s enemies will be those of his own household”: The dividing line between those who accept Jesus and those who reject Him would even run through families. The sword Jesus spoke of would sometimes cut through families.

"He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me": In strong terms, Jesus explained that the disciple must love and follow Jesus supremely. Our devotion to Jesus must come above even our own household.

"We should expect that normally, following Jesus makes us better husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, sons, daughters and so forth." Yet there are times when the presence of Jesus divides rather than unifies.

"The greatest danger of idolatry comes not from what is bad, but from what is good"  like love in family relationships. The greatest danger to the best comes from second best.

"Take his cross and follow after Me" The disciple must follow Jesus even to the place of taking his cross. When a person took a cross in Jesus’ day, it was for one reason: to die. The ancient Roman cross did not negotiate, did not compromise, and did not make deals. There was no looking back when you took up your cross, and your only hope was in resurrection life.

His cross: Your cross isn’t really your particular trial or trouble. The cross means one thing: death - death to self, but resurrection life unto God.

"This is the first mention of the cross in Matthew’s Gospel, and it is not directly associated with Jesus' own crucifixion". Such an extreme statement – likening discipleship with the horror of crucifixion, something too terrible to be mentioned in polite company – must have jarred the disciples.

"Yet they knew what the cross was all about". “Crucifixion itself was not an uncommon sight in Roman Palestine; ‘cross-bearing’ language would have a clear enough meaning, even before they realized how literally he himself was to exemplify it.” (France)
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"He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it" The disciple lives in a paradox. He can only find life by losing it, and he can only live by dying. Resurrection life can only come after we take up our cross to follow Jesus.

“Bearing the cross, we are to follow after Jesus"- to bear a cross without following Christ is a poor affair. A Christian who shuns the cross is no Christian; but a crossbearer who does not follow Jesus equally misses the mark.” ( Charles Spurgeon)