Whom Do You Love The Most?

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. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.

      Luke 14:26-27

In this final installment of “The Priority Of Christ,” we will look once again at where our love and devotion should lie. While some may find this passage of scripture harsh and difficult to accept, we should find it completely logical. The Creator of the universe, through whom all things were made, can make whatever stipulations He desires on His creation. But instead of struggling with this, we should embrace God’s instructions, if for nothing else, for this reason alone…God’s instructions always lead us to life!

When Christ compares our devotion to Him over other things, He doesn’t use money, sports, careers, hobbies, and so forth, as the things that must come second after our relationship with Him. He uses our family members and yes, even our own lives. This is important because, if God feels this way about prioritizing Him above our loved ones, what must He feel regarding those other things (money, sports, material things, and so forth?) But the truth is that we become better parents, better children, better spouses, and better people when we prioritize our relationship with God over and above everything else. 

So let’s break this down. Jesus is not suggesting that we not love our family members or even ourselves. But what He is saying is this…we must desire to please Him more than pleasing our parents (mother and father). We must prioritize our relationship with Jesus over that of our spouse or children. We must seek after Christ over and above that of our siblings and yes, even our own desires and wants. So the priority for anyone desiring to be a Christian adult would look something like this:

Christ First

Family

Everything else in life (career, job, personal interests, and so forth)

Jesus isn’t teaching us to hate our families (that would work against so many other passages of Scripture instructing us to love). But what He is saying is that “by comparison” to others in our lives, He is to take preeminence. God does want us to be saved, to have an eternal home, and to experience abundant life here on earth but in order for those things to happen and for us to rise above the futility of living only for this life, we must prioritize Christ in everything that we do!