Counting the Cost
Read the parable
- Luke 14:25-33 Primary account
Context
Great multitudes were traveling with Jesus toward Jerusalem, and he turned to thin their enthusiasm with the hardest terms of discipleship — loving him above family and life itself ("hating" them, in Semitic hyperbole) and bearing one's own cross. He reinforced it with two mini-parables drawn from public life: a man building a tower who must first sit down and reckon whether he can finish it, and a king with ten thousand men calculating whether he can meet twenty thousand.
Meaning
An unfinished tower invites public mockery; an unwinnable war forces humiliating terms — both picture the folly of beginning to follow Christ without sober reckoning. Jesus does not want crowds swept along by momentum but disciples who have counted the cost: "whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." The demand is total, yet the parables imply the reckoning is worth making — as the treasure and pearl parables show the same surrender made with joy. Half-hearted discipleship, like salt without savour, is good for nothing.
Go deeper
Two free lessons walk through the parables as a whole: The Parables of Jesus and Interpreting the Parables.