Luke 14:26—“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother …”

 

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26).

 

HYPO-CALVINIST ARGUMENT:

“Sure, Romans 9:13 says that God ‘hated’ Esau. But ‘hatred’ there is surely not in the sense that is understood in everyday speech … The word ‘hate’ can be taken as merely hyperbole, or, as simply ‘to love less’ … For example, when Jesus said in Luke 14:26 that we are to ‘hate’ father, mother, wife, children, etc., surely He didn’t mean literal ‘hatred’ or ‘abhorrence’?? (lol) … Doesn’t He mean to say, as is popularly understood, that ‘our love for God must be such that our love for our family members must seem to be hatred in comparison to it’?

  

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Rev. Martyn McGeown

Check out the following sermon on Luke 14:26: “Hating Our Family: Necessary for Christian Discipleship” (Luke 14:25-35), demonstrating that when Christ calls us to “hate” our family, He means that we are to “oppose,” “forsake,” and “reject” them (for His sake) whenever they desire to lead us into sin, and to detest and abhor their attempts to hinder us in our Christian walk.

https://www.britishreformed.org/conference/category/behold-i-come-quickly-the-reformed-biblical-doctrine-of-the-end-castlewellan-castle-2016-zzs7m

 

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Rev. Angus Stewart

[Source: “Hating Your Own Life,” in Covenant Reformed News, vol. 15, nos. 4-5 (Aug-Sept, 2014)]

… What then is it to hate your life? Hating your own life involves hating your own sinfulness and sin. Every disciple of Jesus Christ must and does hate his or her old man of sin, the old nature. Paul laments in Romans 7, “in me (that is, in my flesh), dwelleth no good thing” (18) and “what I hate, that do I” (15)! Thus, Christ’s command to hate your life includes hating the old man, the evil source of all your evil thoughts and lusts and words and deeds, and your sinful works. God hates them and you do too!

God’s children hate themselves as those who are sinful and who sin. Job confessed, “I abhor [or loathe and detest] myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (42:6). Isaiah exclaimed, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (6:5).

True Christian disciples also hate their own self-righteousness. The Apostle Paul explains, “But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ” (Phil. 3:7-8). We loathe these things because they would rob us of righteousness in, and fellowship with, the Lord Jesus.

Those who follow their Saviour, in hating their own lives, detest and reject those things which hold them back from serving Him wholly … 

 

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More to come! (DV)