<p>10:37&nbsp;<em>He that loves father or mother more than me is-&nbsp;</em>This is the language of Levi (Dt. 33:9), encouraging the disciples that they, secular men that they largely were, must consider themselves the new priesthood by whom Israel were to be taught and saved.</p>
<p><em>Not worthy of Me-</em>&nbsp;We must supply something for the &ldquo;Me&rdquo;; the idea is surely that we are not worthy of His love and death for us, of&nbsp;<em>His&nbsp;</em>family, if we love&nbsp;<em>our</em>&nbsp;family members more than Him. The contrast is between &ldquo;Me&rdquo; and our earthly families. &lsquo;Worthiness&rsquo; was an idea associated in the first century mind with families. We cannot be worthy of membership in His family if we choose to identify ourselves as members of our natural family first and foremost. On one hand we are never worthy of Christ, and yet He implies here that He does consider us worthy of Him&nbsp;<em>if</em>&nbsp;we respond. This is not the same as salvation by works in the sense that Paul later decries; it is salvation by grace through faith, but faith without works is dead. There must be some response. The idea that we can never be worthy of Christ is therefore quite simply wrong, or at best poorly worded and inadequate. He speaks here of being worthy of Him by sacrificing family relationships; and being not worthy of Him by refusing to sacrifice them.</p>
<p><em>And he that loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me</em>-&nbsp;<em>Huper</em>&nbsp;Christ means just that in the accusative, &ldquo;more than&rdquo; Him. But the idea of&nbsp;<em>huper</em>&nbsp;in relation to the Lord is used many times in the NT concerning His death &ldquo;for&rdquo; or&nbsp;<em>huper</em>&nbsp;us. It would seem likely that the Lord had His death for us in mind at this point, for He goes straight on to speak of how we are to take up our cross and follow Him to His death on Golgotha (:38). The shift of thought towards the cross in :38 is more natural if we perceive that He is already thinking of it in :37 when speaking of our being worthy of &lsquo;Him&rsquo;, i.e. His death for us.</p>