Teach Your Children to Hate You

What does it mean to be a disciple? Quite literally, the word that the Bible uses for disciple means a learner or student. But that might not be the most helpful way to think about a disciple, given the way we often think about students. We tend to think of a teacher conveying information and students receiving that information. But that's not quite the biblical idea of discipleship.

To be a disciple means that you have taken a teacher, and your goal is to imitate the teacher's way of life. It is not simply to receive information, but to imitate the way the teacher thinks, the way he speaks, and his character. To be a disciple is to be a follower. And Christ, as the Teacher, sets the terms for our discipleship.

In Luke 14:25, we read, "Now great crowds accompanied him." What the Evangelist writes flows out of the parable Jesus had just told, the parable of the great banquet. The invitation to the banquet went out, only to be met with one excuse after another.

Now, with great crowds surrounding him, Jesus turns to challenge their curiosity with the demand of commitment. He says in shocking terms, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple" (v. 26). Unless you are willing to meet that demand, Jesus says, you cannot follow him. Discipleship is costly.

What does Jesus mean by this language of hate? After all, we most often associate Jesus with love, yet here he speaks of hatred as a demand of discipleship. That seems out of place. First, we need to understand that he is speaking of a comparative hatred. Jesus isn't speaking absolutely, but comparatively. In Matthew 10:37, he says, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Jesus is making a comparison. He's not saying that a disciple must absolutely hate these family relations. He's saying that you cannot love them more than you love him.

It's a conditional hatred as well. There are times when love for Jesus means that we cannot love people the way they think and want to be loved. Our love for Christ must, in all things, have priority. When we come to a crossroads, when loving Christ conflicts with what another person demands of us, Jesus is saying, you must choose me. This requirement is bound up in the greatest commandment: to love God with all your heart, mind, and strength. The second commandment is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. But it's the second command – when needed a love for God must trump love for neighbor.

A third aspect of this hatred has to do with a spirit of contentment. Jesus doesn't deal with the relationships that are farthest from us. The demand might be simpler if he did! He speaks of those that are closest to us. These relationships are often among the greatest sources of joy in our lives. But you hear what Jesus is saying: you have to be willing to part with them. You must be content to surrender the comforts, joys, security, and safety that these relationships offer. If you're going to be a disciple of Jesus, you need to hold even these relationships with an open hand.

Is this challenging? Of course. But when Jesus lays down this demand, he's not pushing his disciples into some kind of self-reliance. He doesn't make this demand and leave us to ourselves. He gives the grace so that when the moment comes, he makes us willing. This is one of the promises of the gospel: "For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13). And he motivates us with the further promise that those who leave house, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and children for his sake will receive a hundredfold in this life, and in the age to come eternal life (Mark 10:29–30).

These words are not, at least immediately, about parenting. But we can turn Jesus' words in a direction that is faithful to what he says and particularly applicable to parents. The Bible clearly teaches that the discipleship of children belongs primarily to mom and dad. That's the ultimate priority of any Christian household. Everything parents can and should provide for their children is subordinate to discipling them to be followers of Jesus.

That's a significant responsibility. There are many things we can delegate to others: childcare, a measure of schooling according to conscience, and opportunities for others to speak words of guidance and counsel into our children's lives. What we cannot delegate is the discipleship of our children. That remains the primary responsibility of every Christian parent.

And here's the lesson we can extract from what Jesus says about the cost of discipleship: Christian parents, you must raise your children to love Jesus Christ more than they love you. You must raise them to be more committed to Jesus than they are to you, even if that means one day they must hate you for the sake of Christ. If our children will be disciples of Jesus, they must love him above all things.

How do we disciple our children in this way? Let me suggest four ways:

By Our Own Example
It's hard to expect your children to rise higher than the example you set for them. Parents are called to take up the mantle of costly discipleship themselves. Jesus' demand isn't only that we be willing to hate father and mother, but also our children. Parents must love Christ more than they love their children.

In his moving autobiography, Scottish missionary John G. Paton remembered the day he left home to prepare for the ministry. He had forty miles to walk before he could take the train to Glasgow. His father accompanied him for the first six miles. As they approached the place where they would part, their conversation gave way to silence. His father's lips moved in prayer, and tears fell from his eyes. At the parting place, he grasped his son's hand and said, "God bless you, my son! Your father's God prosper you, and keep you from all evil!"

Years later, when Paton prepared to leave Scotland as a missionary to the New Hebrides, his parents told him that they had long since given him to the Lord. In fact, from his infancy they had prayed that God might prepare him for missionary service. They loved their son dearly, but they were willing to surrender him to the service of Jesus Christ.

If we will not, by our example, communicate to our children, even without words, the cruciform life of discipleship, we cannot expect them to live higher than our example.

By Our Insufficiency
One of the best ways to teach your children to love Jesus more than they love you is by making much of your own insufficiency. Every parent knows what it is to be willing to do almost anything for the sake of their children. And yet, while parents are willing to do anything, parents cannot do everything. That distinction is enormously significant for our parenting because, at the end of the day, what our children need most is the very thing we cannot give them.

What do they need most? They need salvation. They need to be rescued from the sin in their hearts and in this world. Parents are insufficient to provide that. No mom or dad can stand in their place and fulfill the righteousness the law requires. No parent can, in an atoning way, lay down their life for their children or stand condemned in their place. No dad or mom can stand as the mediator between their children and God because there is only one mediator, Jesus Christ. No parent holds the power to grant their children eternal life.

You cannot believe for your children. You cannot repent for your children. You cannot sanctify your children. And your children need to know this.

By Means of Worship
Think about what Jesus says: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate [...] he cannot be my disciple." It would be an absurd demand, one of the worst things uttered in human history, if Jesus had no right to make it. But Jesus has that right because he is God and man in one person. He has the right because he is worthy of this kind of commitment. He's not a megalomaniac. He is worthy.

And isn't that what worship is all about? Worship comes from "worth-ship," the worthiness of someone. Worship is about ascribing and recognizing the worth of God.

If we will disciple our children to love Christ more than they love us, we need to make much of worship. By his grace, God has given us one day a week in particular to do that. Teach your children to value worship because worship is about declaring that Christ is worthy. If worship is nothing more than a burdensome obligation in our households, our children will not learn why Christ is worthy.

By Opportunities for Sacrifice
As parents, we want no harm to come to our children. We want them to be safe and protected. But if we will disciple our children to love Jesus more than anything else, to be willing to part with everything for his sake, then we need to take the opportunities, even when they're young, to teach them that there are sacrifices for Christ they must be willing to make.

Those sacrifices may be small in their younger years, but they're still sacrifices. Teach them the cost of not fitting in. Teach them not to stand in the mainstream of culture, but to swim against the stream. Teach them that sometimes faithfulness to Christ means their peers will mock them. Teach them that commitment to the Lord requires guarding his day against the encroachment of sports and other activities. Teach them, as they grow older and begin making significant decisions about their lives, that sometimes they must sacrifice their wants and feelings for the sake of Christ.

All of these opportunities, presented again and again through the years, become the training ground so that, if the time comes, our children will choose Christ over us—over our approval, over our ideas, over the trajectories we have set for their lives, and even over loyalty to us. They choose Christ.

This is the demand of discipleship. And that's the aim of our parenting: to raise children who will love Christ, who will be more committed to him than they are to us. By his grace, may he do it: "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it" (Prov. 22:6).