I was really intrigued by Pastor Gilbert’s sermon today when he quoted Luke 14: 25-27.
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
I’ve read this passage countless times before but I really didn’t think much about it because I knew that Jesus didn’t mean for us to hate our families just so we could follow Him. I mean, come on, think about it. If He commanded us to love one another and love our enemies, it’s so uncharacteristic of Him to even suggest that hating our families is a requisite to being a disciple.
So today, after a long day at Victory Caloocan, I decided to check my Strong’s Concordance again to do some word study and see for myself. Yeah, I know that sounds too geeky but, well, that just shows how a sucker I am at word origins and shades of meanings of ancient Biblical texts. So here we go with my findings.
The original Greek word that was translated HATE in the verse I quoted above is “miseo,” a derivative of the root word “misos” which means HATRED in English. Yes, you read it right guys, that’s hatred that goes along the same vein with persecution and detesting, which by extension also means to “curse while calling a deity to witness” in the original Latin.
If I may be frank, I admit I’m trying to find something else here. If discipleship is about loving people enough to bring them to Christ so they don’t suffer eternal damnation in hell, Jesus wouldn’t be saying this. More than that, HATRED is listed in Galatians 5: 19-21 as a major sin that would cause people NOT to inherit the Kingdom of God.
So how do we make sense of this linguistic conundrum? Are there other shades of meaning in the original Greek? Apparently, there is. If there wasn’t, the Pharisees would have had a field day abusing Jesus for this statement. Knowing their propensity in finding fault with Jesus, they would never let anything like this pass without making a huge issue out of it. The fact that there was no mention of their reaction could mean that they understood perfectly well what Jesus was saying. The other Greek definition of the word HATE clarifies everything.
According to Strong’s concordance, the word HATRED, by extension, also means “to love less.” It doesn’t necessarily means to loathe or denounce but to just love the person less than your love for God. In Pastor Gilbert’s words, it means “to prefer Christ above anyone else.”
Now if you look at the verse we quoted above, it could now read as, ” If anyone comes to me and does not (hate) ‘prefer me above’ his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.” The idea is supported in Matthew 10: 37, “Anyone who loves his father or mother MORE THAN ME (emphasis mine) is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”
The Amplified version says it more clearly: “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his [own] father and mother [in the sense of indifference to or relative disregard for them in comparison with his attitude toward God] and [likewise] his wife and children and brothers and sisters–[yes] and even his own life also–he cannot be My disciple.”
At least that’s very clear to me now!