This one is a hard saying. I've heard it debated and wondered myself. It`s the carnal mind which debates this, instead of understanding it spiritually. We have to understand this spiritually because hating our neighbor is not in any of Jesus's teachings of love. In this context...`Father and Mother` mean our origin, the old concept of Faith and Traditions.
`Wife` and `Brothers and Sisters` are our passions and the 'Children' mean our desires and ideas.
To follow Jesus the right way, we must hate all of this.
There is more to this if we examine the scripture:
Jhn 12:25 "He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal."
Mat 10:37 "If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine."
Eph 4:22 "that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit"
Rom 8:13 "For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live."
These verses are all related, saying the same thing in different ways. It has to do with sinful desires, in which we need God's power to overcome those desires to put them to death, so that we can live rightly before God.
Therefore, Luke 14:26 is not allegorical, but literal, in the sense of a comparison, where Mat. 10:37 is a parallel verse. Jesus is saying for us to hate this life in comparison to our love for Him. IOW our choice to follow Christ might look like hate to our own family, from their point of view, since Christ should be our priority over them.
Also hating "one's own life" doesn't mean that we hate life as a Christian. It means we are to become serious and sober about following Christ. To dispel with the "fun" agenda and the party spirit. To "count the cost" of following Christ (the context of Luke 14), and carefully weigh what it takes to do what Christ commands.
It takes living by faith that Jesus did what it took to connect us with God by the gift of the Spirit, and His power is available to us at all times to help us do what He commands us to do. 1 John 5:4 "for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith."
The burden of righteousness is too great to bear on our own. We need it as a gift from God, both positionally and conditionally. We need the gift of God to make us right with Him, and we also need the same gift to make us righteous in all our actions. Grace for our acceptance, and grace for our witness. It is the free gift of God, let us believe for it, and put our feet to action on it.
TD
