My, oh my, but Jesus sounds mean in Luke 14:26-27:

“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, and even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.”

Apart from the meanness, this seems to contradict what we find, among other places, in Paul’s teaching about family’s. We are to love our wives and husbands and children. To take care of our families. Right?

But in an effort to defend our commitment to those most dear to us, we tend to lighten what Jesus says here. Problem is that it’s meant to be harsh. Shocking. True, Jesus is using an idiom here, saying that there can be no relationship, no matter how dear to us, that should rival our love and commitment for Him. But His language is shocking nonetheless.

It’s also ironic.

It’s ironic because it’s only through hating your family that you can really love your family. What I mean is that most of us put so much stock in these relationships that they become the way we define ourselves. We judge our worth as people based on our marriages or parenting skills or our parents’ names. But is this love?

It seems, in that way, that it’s more like “using” than love. We are using those closest to us to make us feel better. It’s a self-centered kind of relationship we have with all these people, because though we say we love them, we are really loving ourselves. But when we truly give ourselves to Jesus, lock, stock and barrel, and hold nothing back, committing to and loving Him to the point that we hate all else when compared to Him, that we are freed to love these people for real.

We love and, more importantly, are fully loved in Christ. Because we are, we have nothing left to prove. We are then freed in our relationships to seek the good of another rather than using them for our own material, emotional, or physical gain. We are free to serve and give ourselves away – all this because we have first been loved by Jesus, and are now truly loving Him.