“Counting His Cost”
Original sermon given on Sunday, September 7, 2025 written and delivered by Pastor Jeff Leininger at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church.
Watch the sermon live.
“Counting His Cost”
Luke 14.25-33
In the name of the Living God and His Risen Christ. Amen.
It’s a dramatic moment. Perhaps more dramatic than you might realize. Our Lord is on his way to Jerusalem, and the cross that awaits him there. Large crowds throng behind him, perhaps too eager to follow, not knowing what this will fully mean. He turns around. Abruptly. Faces them. Directly. And instead of commending them, or blessing them, or encouraging them ever forward, he warns them. “You need to stop and think about this, because this is going to be far harder than you think.”
Counting the Cost. We all know what it means to “count the cost” in the works of this world. A musician, before undertaking a recital looks at the music, measures the measures — the hours of rehearsal time needed — and considers whether there’s time to perform well. A manager of a business or institution, before hiring someone, looks at the resume, does an interview, and considers the costs of an extra person on payroll. A young couple, before jumping into a relationship, consider if they’ve got the time or the commitment and energy to make it work. Jesus gives two more examples from the first century: a man estimates the cost of a building project before he begins, and a king evaluates the chances of victory before waging war.
Our Lord then applies this same principal to the Christian life of discipleship — of following him. But the costs here are astounding, dramatic, and even offensive. The large crowds walk with him for any number of reasons: some sincere, others for selfish reasons, others because there’s nothing much better to do on an afternoon in Palestine. Jesus turns suddenly and warns this crowd who would “follow him” and casts the Christian life in uncompromising terms: nothing can stand as a barrier between a disciple and the Lord — not family, not possessions, not self; everything needs to be second place to that relationship with Jesus; anything that we fear, love and trust in above God is a false idol, to use Marin Luther’s phrase.
We’re not comfortable with the word “hate” here: “Anyone who comes to me and does not “hate” his father and mother… or even his own self.” What’s going on here, aren’t we supposed to love? True enough. We are called to love all people — even those we disagree with, even our enemies, and even our own selves, through God’s grace. We are called to honor our father and mother. We are permitted to make good and godly use of our possessions and wealth. But we are not to love anything more than our Lord. If anything becomes a barrier to our relationship with the Lord; if anything stands in our way in the Christian life; if anything would stand as an idol in the place of the Living God, Jesus uses the word “hate.”
The Cost of Discipleship is a famous a challenging devotional work by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor who faithfully confessed Christ in the face of the Nazi program of the 1930s and 40s. In this work, Bonhoeffer makes it clear that every Christian bears a cross — although our crosses all may look different. That is, we all will be asked to give up things which stand as a barrier between us and our Lord. But secondly, Bonhoeffer also makes it clear that all individual crosses can only be understood under the shadow of his cross.
So, how have you been doing with counting the cost of discipleship? Our Lord turns towards us and asks us to stop and consider where we are in that large crowd walking behind him. We are confronted in those rare, honest moments so often with those things we haven’t sacrificed then with those we have: that sin which we so easily give into, which we love rather than “hate”; that pathetic list of possessions which we hold so dear; even that part of our very selves, which has pushed its way into god-like status in our life. Every Christian bears a cross — sin we must shun; suffering for Christ’s sake; self which stands as an idol.
If you’re like me, then by the time you get to Luke 14 and the end of this parable, you are confronted and convicted and conflicted by the long laundry list of things you haven’t sacrificed, given up, “hated” enough.
If that’s where you’re at (and I hope it is), then you can begin to understand what Deitrich Bonhoeffer meant by our crosses living under the shadow of Christ’s: Whose cost, in the end, is it best to be counting? Not ours, but his. As Jesus sets his face to Jerusalem and gathers speed on his journey, he knows precisely what it will take: he can see the whips, and thorns, and nails, and pain, and death. And what’s more, in his eternal mind he can see also a group of people gathered in worship on Chicago’s North Side — a group who have not “hated” this world nearly enough. And he still goes for you, for me, and for all the world. In this act of greatest sacrifice and greatest cost, Jesus took upon himself all of our idols and barriers and paid the penalty once and for all our sin. In this gift of his righteousness, we are made right with God and are given eternal salvation. In his third day rising, he gives us the assurance that not even the worst of this world can ultimately separate us from him. Every Christian has a cross. Every Christian fails at carrying it. And every Christian must ever remain under the shadow of his cross.
May the Lord bless us in this; and in all our “cost counting.”
Come soon Lord Jesus. Amen.