Luke tells the story of three men who claimed they wanted to follow Jesus but for various reasons, did not. The heading in my Bible for this section reads The Cost of Following Jesus because Jesus essentially tells the men that they need to be ready to give up their safe and secure lives in order to be his disciple (which has nothing to do with their salvation, by the way). But if I were giving this short passage a title, it would be something like this: The Low Expectations of Believers. Before I tell you why, let’s take a look at the scene.
The first man tells Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.”1 But when Jesus tells him what that might look like, the man does not respond and the conclusion is that the man changes his mind. The third man also announces, “I will follow you, Lord, but . . .”2 and it really doesn’t matter what his excuse is, so let’s just leave it at that. The second man, after being invited by Jesus to follow him says, “Lord, let me first go and . . .”3 and again, it really doesn’t matter what his excuse is, so let’s just leave it at that.
Why would three people announce their intentions of following Jesus but change their minds? Well . . . first of all, it’s what we humans do. We are notorious for making promises and then reneging on them. According to Matthew, the three men included “a scribe”4 and “another of the disciples.”5 The other guy was one that Jesus himself invited to follow. These guys said no, thank you to Jesus! Why would they do that? Well . . . we humans have really low expectations of God.
Most of us, when we come to Christ, have specific needs in mind—save my soul, fix my problems, give me peace, etc. Those are all perfectly good reasons to come to Jesus and based on scripture and God’s promises, he will meet our every need. Unfortunately, we humans don’t expect much else from God than those things: save my soul, fix my problems, give me peace. As a matter of fact, we really don’t want anything else from God!
But God has something very different in mind. God’s idea is that we would “be conformed to the image of his Son.”6 God’s plan is to change us! That’s the part that causes us to reconsider following him because although most of us want to change some. . . we do not want to change much—which is why the three men reneged on their promises to follow him: it would require change. If we believed the changes would be great, then we would all gladly agree to the change. But we don’t. We have low expectations of God. We just want him to save our souls, fix our problems, and give us peace . . . and just leave it at that.
But God has something very different in mind. Here’s how C. S. Lewis describes it.
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”*
God wants to build our lives into a palace! We, on the other hand, prefer—and are quite content with—”a decent little cottage” where there is not much room for God to reside. We often hear ourselves say, “Lord, let me first go and . . .” and tell God to leave it at that.
1Luke 9:57 2Luke 9:61 3Luke 9:59 4Matthew 8:19 5Matthew 8:21 6Romans 8:29 *Lewis, C. S. “Counting the Cost.” Mere Christianity, Macmillan, 1960, p. 174.