<p>14:33<i> So therefore whoever of you does not renounce all that he has, cannot be my disciple</i>- See on Lk. 12:22; 14:23; 21:3. The weak king who sends ambassadors asking for conditions of peace is understood by the Lord as the man who forsakes all he has in order for peace with God. This is the importance of forsaking wealth&nbsp;(Lk. 14:33), as the merchant did (Mt. 13:44-46), as the blind man left his garment (Mk. 10:50), as the widow threw in her two mites, rejecting the temptation to be 'prudent' and keep one for herself to use as capital for the future&nbsp;(Lk. 21:2), as Matthew &quot;left all, rose up and followed&quot; (Lk. 5:28), and as the disciples in that beauteous childlike innocence could say &quot; Lo, we have left all...?&quot; (Mk. 10:28). What this surely means is that in our <i>attitudes</i> we must be as if we possessed nothing, as if we have in our heart of hearts resigned everything, even the very concept of personal 'possession'. See on 2 Cor. 6:10.</p><p>When the Lord speaks of leaving all and following after Him, He surely had in mind the well-known story of Mattathias, who began the Maccabean revolt by saying: &ldquo;Let every one who is zealous for the Law and supports the covenant <i>follow after me</i>&hellip; and they <i>left their possessions behind</i> in the town&rdquo; (1 Macc. 2:27). And again the Lord seems to have had this in mind when He says that when He comes, His true people are to flee Jerusalem and not worry that their &lsquo;stuff is in the house&rsquo; (Lk. 17:31). For an itinerant teacher like Jesus of Nazareth to offer his ideas and his interpretation of the Old Testament, and then have men following Him, was not out of place in first century Palestine. But the Lord twists the whole figure of &lsquo;follow me&rsquo;. Unlike the other teachers, his teaching didn&rsquo;t lead to taking arms and fighting Rome. His men are to follow Him in wilfully taking up and carrying a cross, imitating His supreme human bravery in both His life and above all in His death, a bravery which He showed in facing sin in the eye and conquering every temptation, whatever the cost, whatever the human implication. &nbsp;</p><p>The Lord followed right on from the supper parable with the demand to hate one's own life, pick up their cross and follow Him, without which we cannot be His disciple. He also told the parable of God coming with a huge army to meet us who are far weaker- and our need to make peace with Him and forsake all that we have in order to follow Christ (Lk. 14:25-33). These radical demands of Jesus are in fact a development of His parable about the supper. For amongst some Middle Eastern peoples to this day, refusing the invitation to enter the banquet for such a meal- especially after having signalled your earlier acceptance of the invitation- was &quot;equivalent to a declaration of war&quot;. And so the parable of <i>us</i> as the man going out to war against a far superior army suddenly falls into place in this context. &quot;So likewise, whosoever he be of you that doesn't renounce all that he has, he cannot be my disciple&quot; (Lk. 14:33). The renouncing or forsaking of all we have refers to the man with 10,000 soldiers renouncing what human strength he had in the face of realizing he was advancing against a force of 20,000. The picking up of the cross, the 'hating' of our own lives, the renouncing all we have... obviously refers to doing something very hard for us. But the context is the parable of the supper, where the 'hard' thing to understand is why people refused the invitation, why they just couldn't believe it was real and for them; or why they just let petty human issues become so large in their minds that they just couldn't be bothered with it. Simply believing that we will be there, that in all sober reality we have been invited to a place in the Kingdom, that God is compelling / persuading / pressurizing us to be there... this is the hard thing. This is the hating of our lives, picking up our cross, forsaking our human strength and surrendering to God.</p><p>&ldquo;Whoever of you does not <i>renounce</i> all that he has cannot be my disciple&rdquo;. Renouncing is something we do in our hearts and deepest feelings and attitudes. Have we truly <i>renounced </i>it all? Even if there are still bank balances and pension plans and property deeds and cars and treasured possessions&hellip; made out in our name. Have we in our hearts <i>renounced</i> them? That they aren&rsquo;t <i>really</i> mine. I have no personal long term security from them, because they&rsquo;re <i>not mine</i>. I&rsquo;m just holding in stewardship what God gave me. And the Lord Himself drives the point home- if we have any <i>other</i> attitude to these wretched things, these <i>almost</i>-nooses around our necks, then we are <i>not</i> His disciples. It&rsquo;s one of the scariest thoughts for Christianity. The fearless, gripped-by-Jesus approach to life which we see in the early church is the very opposite of the passivity of our post-modern world. We are called to a passionate, emotional life; a life where we each have someone to save, someone to die for, to live for, to sacrifice our self for. And this approach to life will naturally take care of how we use &lsquo;our&rsquo; money. It is the passion-less life which results in a mean, careful approach to the spending of &lsquo;our&rsquo; resources for others. See on Acts 4:32.</p><p>The Lord appears to make discipleship dependent upon giving up our possessions and forsaking all we have. But it&rsquo;s quite apparent that His disciples didn&rsquo;t literally do that. Zacchaeus only gave away half of his possessions (Lk. 19:8); and other disciples of Jesus clearly retained their homes and some possessions. The Lord must therefore mean that He expects us to <i>in our minds</i> resign all personal ownership of absolutely everything which we have- even if those things remain, to human appearance, &lsquo;ours&rsquo;. This is really a challenging thing, in this world of savings and acquisition.</p>