Perhaps you can explain this passage to me and how it aligns with ‘forgiving’ and ‘loving’ Jesus:
Luke 14:26 If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters,yes,and his own life also,he cannot be my disciple. (NKJV)
I’ll be glad to.
First, we must take this verse in the context of the chapter. Jesus is teaching His disciples, and like any good teacher, He begins with a truth statement that is hard to understand in order to get His students thinking.
Then, He clarifies the difficult truth statement with a metaphor.
The truth statement is the confusing verse 26, “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.”
So, if we don’t hate our family and our own lives, we can’t be His disciple.
Now this confuses people because Jesus tells us to LOVE ONE ANOTHER. Does He mean we are to have real hatred for our parents?
But look at the verses closely again and don’t isolate the one sentence without looking at what He is telling us...
Jesus relates a metaphor about a man who builds a house without counting the cost and finds that he cannot follow through with what he set out to do. He leaves the house unfinished because he cannot pay what is required.
Jesus is showing us the explanation to His difficult statement -— that we must COUNT THE COST OF BEING HIS DISCIPLE. This is THE POINT of the passage.
In order to be a disciple, we must be willing to give up everything for Jesus. Therefore, if our parents will not follow Jesus, or even if they disown us for being Christians, we must still choose Him over them.
It is in THIS SENSE that we are “hating” our family members who reject the Lord or reject us because of the Lord. This is not easy, and of course it is right that we should love our family members and want our family members to love and follow God.
After all, 1 John 4:7-8 says “Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and everyone that loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God for God is love.” And that is only one of many passages commanding us to love others. But despite our love for the people we know, here is the key: if they don’t love Jesus, He must still be our first priority. We must esteem Him more highly than the people we love here on earth and we must love Him more than our own lives. In fact, we must love Him so much that our earthly loves PALE in comparison, even to the point of SEEMING LIKE HATE.
Second, let’s take it in context of other places in the Bible.
Matthew 19:29 says, “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.”
So, here is the promise: God has required total commitment from His followers, to the point of heart-breaking separation from any natural family members who reject Jesus, but in heaven we will have a hundred times what we lost—an entire family of believers who love Christ and who love us!
Even the material things that we had forsaken in order to follow Him will be given back to us in a form a hundred times better than what we lost! So, He is a good God, after all, and, no, He does not want us to literally hate (viciously despise or wish harm to) the members of our family.
All we are required to do is choose Jesus over them even if they force us to do so by rejecting Him.
Jesus may have chosen the word “hate” to show us that this is how a mother or father will perceive the actions of a child who chooses the Lord above them. They will see it as disloyal, especially if we try to witness to them.
I’m sure you can see that even today, the love of a Christian for a non-Christian is almost always seen as hatred, intolerance, bigotry, etc. But we must be okay with being seen as “hating.”
After all, our unbelieving relatives are part of the world, and Jesus said, “”If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first” (John 15:18).
And this is not even a theoretical discussion. Even as we speak, there is a woman named Meriam Ibrahim of Sudan ( search her name on the FR thread ), who was DISOWNED and ACCUSED by her brothers of apostasy for being a Christian.
Her father was Muslim but Meriam, who was raised by her Christian mother, was last month convicted of apostasy and sentenced to hang. She was also sentenced to 100 lashes for adultery after a court ruled her marriage to Daniel Wani, a Christian and US Citizen, was invalid.
Under Sudan’s penal code Muslims are forbidden from changing faith, and Muslim women are not permitted to marry Christian men. Meriam insisted she had been brought up as a Christian.
We found out later that it was her family members, specifically her brothers who accused her of apostasy to the Sudanese authorities.
She was asked to recant but she refused. With this, she was in danger of forfeiting her life, her children, husband and of course, she is now at enmity with her family.
I am certain that she harbors no hate in her heart for her family. But in the context of Jesus is saying... her love for Him pales in comparison to her love for her family such that it looks like “hate” in comparison.
This burden she faces is being replicated in many places around the world — especially in Islamic countries.
I recommend a book for you to read to understand the context of what Jesus is saying....
Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity by Dr. Nabeel Qureshi
See here: