Which of you wishing to construct a tower
does not first sit down and calculate the cost
to see if there is enough for its completion?
Jesus wants to make sure that we don't take the call to follow him lightly. This is definitely still a risk in our own day, even a risk into which previously dedicated Christians can backslide. The risk is to see Jesus as one choice among many. If following him is one hobby among many, if being a Christian is just more more aspect of how we create our self-definition, this is insufficient. It is the lukewarmness about which the angel in Revelation warns the Church at Laodicea (see Revelation 3:14-22). Significantly for us, to try to follow Jesus only by half is going to leave us entirely disappointed. The blessings he has to offer activate for us when we decide to love him the most, to put him first, and to seek his Kingdom above all.
“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.
Everything else must be second place because only then do we surrender our weak and imperfect love for all of those people and things and allow Jesus himself to love them perfectly, in proper order, as they are meant to be loved. If we give away our possessions for a tower or send our troops to a war we may well find them insufficient. We need our resources to be dedicated to Jesus himself, toward the project of his Kingdom, in the service of his victory over sin and death.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.
We are called to carry our crosses, but not alone. Jesus promised to share the yoke of our burdens with us (see Matthew 11:28-30). It is only in this way that we can hope to make at all the way to Calvary without collapsing or turning back on the way. And only by finally arriving at this self-renunciation for the sake of the Triune God do we experience resurrection.
We are, after all, using our resources to build things. Our troops, whatever they may represent in our lives, are fighting battles. Are they fighting the right ones? If we have only put them partly at the disposal of Jesus now is the time to give them over to him entirely. This does not mean we do not have a life in the secular world or that we actually give away all we own. Rather it means that we live even our supposedly secular aspects of life together with Jesus and for his sake, and that all we have is ready at a moment's notice to be put to whatever use will please him.
Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another;
for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
We are called to see our primary obligation to others, not in financial terms, but as an obligation of love. This is the result of putting Jesus first and letting him reorganize and remodel our hearts, empowering us to put first things first. In the world we tend to see more of a sort of mercantile love, that of the contract, or the quid pro quo. Often this still seems a pressing concern even for Christians as we worry about whether we have properly paid a reciprocal response for every good we have been given. The revelation comes when we realize that what we owe others is not what they have earned from us or deserve as repayment so much as it is to love them as we love ourselves. This is not less than the mercantile approach but more. We may well be called to act first, to give more, or to go further in their service. This is part of what it means to carry our own cross. In doing so we imitate Jesus who first carried the cross for us before we ourselves could do anything to earn it (see Romans 5:8)
He dawns through the darkness, a light for the upright;
he is gracious and merciful and just.
Well for the man who is gracious and lends,
who conducts his affairs with justice.
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