Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it. (Matthew 10:34-39, NKJV)

I was reading this passage from Matthew recently and was struck by the reality that I have a tendency to read passages like this very quickly before skipping right on to the next section! It is not a “nice” passage and it doesn’t leave us feeling very comfortable. It is also the sort of passage we who preach and teach are very quick to say, “What Jesus really meant was…”. And yet we cannot do this with the Bible. We can’t be pic-n-mix Christians who only meditate on the passages which make us feel good or contain happy promises. We need to grapple with the tougher teaching of Scripture and see how we should respond in light of it.

So what is Jesus teaching us through these few verses? Well it does need to be said that Jesus isn’t being anti-family. That is not His point at all. He is saying though that nothing can come before God, and that does include our family. Following Jesus is all or nothing and we cannot be half in, half out. And Jesus is pointing out to us the potential (even probable) consequences of following Jesus and making His kingdom our priority. When we become kingdom-people we will start to put ourselves at odds with those - including family members - who are not themselves kingdom-people or are only interested in nice, comfortable religion.

It has become too easy to forget that Jesus was a revolutionary. We all today tend to quickly lose sight of this as we attend nice services and spend time with other nice religious people. Christianity for too many of us in the western world is little more than a comfortable religion with nice churches and nice songs and nice Bible readings. And yet the Gospel is radical and revolutionary. It is counter-culture and its principles and standards are at direct odds with the worlds. The Gospel of the kingdom may be Good News for those who respond to it, but it is not something that is merely nice and nor is it comfortable.

Following Jesus is costly. Jesus spent His life getting into trouble and if we are following in His footsteps we are more than likely to do the same. We could even go so far as to say we are meant to be getting in trouble! The important thing that we must always remember is that following Jesus must always come first. We are to give up our lives and let Him, by His Spirit, live through us. It is not our will, but His that must be done…and not just when we’re at church or praying. We are no longer to live for ourselves but solely for God. And that kind of radical life will inevitably cause us some problems. Some of our family members won’t understand our committment and will accuse us of being “too religious” and things like that. But we must never forget that we are to be God-pleasers, not people (including family) pleasers.

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