McGeown’s Fables (2)

Introduction

In this series of articles, I am examining Rev. Martyn McGeown’s recent sermons on the antithesis. I think I have never read or listened to anything more absurd and Christless than Reverend McGeown’s second sermon on the antithesis.¹ How does this pass as a good sermon in the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC)? It is a reflection on the elders of Providence Protestant Reformed Church that they even shook McGeown’s hand after this dumpster fire. It is a reflection on the congregation that the members eat this garbage for spiritual nourishment. The sermon is filled to the brim with applications and examples. Applications take up so much of the sermon that I cannot profitably mention most of them. And yet with all the applications that fill space in the sermon, somehow, mysteriously, none of them ever really come close to offending anyone. The word of Christ in Luke 14 was highly offensive to the multitude, and it is highly offensive to the flesh. Christ offended the sensibilities of his would-be followers.

Reverend McGeown’s definitions are weak at best. He does not begin in God, continue in God, and finish in God. McGeown holds the gospel out to the congregation at the very end of the third point after spending most of the sermon telling them what man must do and what Christ did as an example. He continues to weave his tall tale and to conjure his myth, daring to put the name of God on his lips and contradicting the clear instruction of Christ in Luke 14. McGeown chose verses 25 and 26 as his text and “Hating Our Family” as his theme. Verses 25 and 26 read as follows:

25. There went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them,

26. If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

What becomes immediately apparent is that McGeown splits the text in two and completely misses the last half. There is a very clear indication in the chapter that verses 25 and 26 belong with verses 27 through 33 as one thought of the Holy Ghost. In verse 27 Christ says, “And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.” There is the gospel for the disciples of Christ only because there first is the cross of Jesus Christ as salvation for them. Jesus Christ begins verse 28 by saying “for.” By that little conjunction Jesus Christ illustrates in the plainest of terms what he is talking about. The builder who intends to build a tower counts the cost to finish it. The king who anticipates going to war counts his soldiers to see whether he has enough men to conquer his enemies. There is a cost to being Christ’s disciple, and the believer counts that cost.

28. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?

29. Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him,

30. Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.

31. Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?

32. Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace. (Luke 14:28–32)

Then in verse 33 Christ gives the application of what he had just illustrated in the preceding verses: “So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.”

The theme of the text is not simply about hating one’s family, but Christ is teaching there, in the plainest and simplest language, the cost of being his disciple. Jesus Christ takes away the excuse that a man did not know that being Christ’s disciple means that he must hate his ungodly, unbelieving family for Christ’s sake, and out of that hatred he forsakes them and refuses to have fellowship with them.

The Significant Cost of Discipleship

In the context in Luke 14, Jesus concludes his parable of the great wedding feast, which was occasioned by a follower of Jesus who had said, “Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom” (v. 15). Many of Christ’s followers had in mind a kingdom, but it was not the heavenly kingdom. It was an earthly kingdom of bread that they desired. They desired a kingdom on earth and the restoration of the Jewish nation to power, honor, glory, and peace. They wanted ease, food, luxury, power, and earthly benefits. They hoped to share in such carnal benefits of Jesus’ kingdom.

There went with Jesus great multitudes. Large numbers of would-be disciples were following after him. Throngs and hordes of men and women were coming to him, traveling with him, and associating with him. There were so many followers that at times Jesus had to teach them from a boat while they remained on the shore. At one point he fed five thousand. At another time he fed four thousand. Jesus was immensely popular at the height of his ministry, and his following grew larger and larger. This huge multitude of followers confessed him as the savior of Israel, but they had in mind not the savior they needed but a savior they desired.

And in verse 25 Jesus stops and turns to the great company of followers that was traveling with him. He addresses them in the plainest language about what it means to be a disciple. There could be no misunderstanding about what he was teaching. There is a significant cost to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Do you think that is what that multitude wanted to hear? Is Christ the savior whom they wanted—the savior who demands that his disciples lose their lives for his sake? Not at all. They were offended at him and his teaching. Later we read that they would walk no more with him. Here he wants the whole multitude of those who followed after him to know that there is a significant cost. The Lord Jesus Christ is talking about the reality of discipleship.

I note that the Reformed Protestant Churches (RPC) are often labeled and slandered as a cult. And those who put that slanderous charge on their lips shuffle out some Google-search definition of cult that they spend all of ten seconds reading and apply that to the RPC. Look at what Christ requires of his disciples: “If you are my disciple, you must hate your own family, take up your cross, and forsake all.” The difference between a cult and the true worship of God is Jesus Christ. If you have Christ, then you worship and serve God. If you do not have Christ, then all you have is a cult. We worship Jesus Christ, he who is very God and very man. We are his disciples.

A disciple of Jesus Christ is one who is deeply devoted to Christ. Christ instructs the multitude negatively about discipleship by using the word “hate.” Hatred is rooted in the heart. The heart is the spiritual, ethical center of man as he stands related to God, his creator. Out of the heart flow all the issues of life. As the heart is, so is the man. Discipleship begins in the heart. Positively implied then is that a disciple is one who loves the triune God and Jesus Christ out of the regenerated heart. God takes one who hates him by nature and makes that one a lover of God and of Jesus Christ. That disciple, before he hates anyone, is tenderly affected toward Christ. That disciple loves Christ.

For the source of that love of Christ, you have to go right into the being of God. God is love. He loves himself. He is tenderly affected toward himself in his own triune being. In love as his motivation, God chose a people for himself in election. He made a gracious choice of his people in love in Christ before the foundation of the world. “Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated” (Rom. 9:13). God in eternity chose his people in love and forgave all their sins. And God commended his love toward them, in that, while they were yet sinners, Christ died for them. And the Spirit of the risen Lord comes and sheds abroad the love of God in their hearts. Christ speaks to his elect people and justifies ungodly sinners. God’s love is manifested week by week in the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The voice of Christ kindles in his people true faith according to election. His disciples love him because he is the Christ, the Messiah, the revelation of God’s righteousness, truth, grace, and mercy. God determined and fashions the true disciple of Jesus Christ.

Why did those fishermen—Peter, Andrew, James, and John—forsake all they had and follow Christ? Why did they associate with Jesus and follow him? Christ laid hold on their hearts and worked faith in them. Out of that faith they loved him and followed him. They believed in him. They believed that he was their complete and perfect savior. They believed that he spoke the words of eternal life. They believed that he was the Christ, the Son of the living God, who took their sins upon his almighty shoulders. He was the Christ who merited righteousness and in whom they had fellowship with the covenant God. In his grace and love for elect sinners, God makes them disciples of Christ, and the fruit is that those disciples love Christ.

The high cost of that discipleship is paid in the relationships of this earthly life. “If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple…Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.”

The cost of discipleship is hatred.

What is the meaning of hatred?

Reverend McGeown never really defines hatred. He says what hatred is not. He tells his congregation that hatred is not a malicious or sinful hatred whereby we justify murder and violence toward others. It is a holy hatred. That is true. He says that we do good to all men and seek their salvation. That is true too. The closest he comes to defining hatred is this:

The hatred of verse 26 demands two things: first, forsaking our relatives and second, cutting off fellowship with them…To forsake is the decisive, deliberate rejection of someone or something. To separate oneself from them, to take leave of them, to put them away—that is to forsake. And so hatred of father and mother and husband and wife and children and brothers and sisters means that we reject them.

To understand the meaning of hatred, we must understand hatred in God. God is his attributes; he is the implication of all his perfections. God is love; God is not hatred. And so as an aspect of his love, he hates. God hated Esau. God hated Esau because God loves himself in his righteousness, holiness, beauty, and loveliness. He loves himself as the sole and highest good. God hated Esau and damned him to hell before he had done any good or evil.

It is unpopular to say that the believer hates because it is unpopular to say that God hates. The reason it is unpopular is because the church world today is enamored with a God who loves everyone and has a desire to save everyone. The church world is offended at this word of Jesus Christ. If men call themselves Christians, they conveniently disregard Christ’s words. But they are so plain and clear that they cannot be gainsaid. If you are Jesus’ disciple, you hate.

Hatred is a loathing and a despising of father, mother, wife, children, brethren, sisters, and even one’s own life. We hate people, real people, whom we know in this life. That is the hatred about which Christ is talking. And forsaking them is the result that shows itself in the life of the child of God. The believer hates his ungodly family, and the result is that he forsakes them. He will not fellowship with them. He will not be part of their lives. He will not get together with them during the holidays. He will not have fellowship with the works of darkness. He forsakes and rejects his ungodly family.

Reverend McGeown, however, effectively rejects his own definitions of hatred and forsaking by what he says next.

We forsake them in this sense: We reject their ideas, their opinions, and their beliefs when they are incompatible with following after Christ. Thus this rejection, this forsaking, is spiritual. We don’t throw them away. We don’t remove them permanently from our lives. We don’t live in separation from them. We don’t refuse to speak with them or to have anything to do with them. But we refuse to permit them such influence in our life that they would turn us away from our devotion to Christ. And insofar as our family is a hindrance to our following Jesus Christ, we forsake them. That is the idea of hatred here.

I am not sure, and McGeown does not explain, what “spiritual” forsaking is. It is left so vague that the members of the congregation can just be indifferent toward everything else in the sermon. They might as well have tried to catch up on their sleep during the rest of the sermon. It sounds like McGeown is saying that inwardly we might forsake our unbelieving family members, but outwardly nothing really has to change. The inward reality might be that we hate them, but in actuality we can do everything we did before with them. I am not sure what kind of disciple that would be. Perhaps Reverend McGeown can explain how the disciples in Jesus’ day would have “spiritually” followed Christ but not actually followed him. Or how they “spiritually” forsook their families but did not really forsake them.

God has given to man various relationships and connections to other men in the world. Believers have these intimate connections in Jesus Christ. We love our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, wives, and children in Jesus Christ. We love our spouses. We love our children. We love our parents and siblings. We love them with God’s own love. But as Christ says in the parallel passage of Matthew 10:34–39, when the sword of the gospel comes and it exposes family members in their doctrine and walk to be enemies of God, we must loathe and despise them for God’s sake. Those family members may not come between us and Christ. We are willing at any time to turn away from them and to reject them.

The Lord also teaches us that all true love is in him. If the child of God hates such enemies of God for Christ’s sake, he truly loves them. When I hate my family members who show themselves to be unbelieving and ungodly, that is my love for them. It is my love for them because I do not want them to perish. My life stands as one massive, unending rebuke for their sin and unbelief, through which rebuke the Lord may be pleased to bring one of his sons or daughters into contact with the word. The love the believer has for his family is such that if they turn away from the truth, he will hate them and forsake them and the relationship that they previously enjoyed. That is the love of God and Jesus Christ in the heart of the child of God.

How do you know if someone is a disciple of Christ? He forsakes his ungodly family. Only because hatred begins in the heart does it show itself in one’s life. The believer turns away from his ungodly family and separates from them. Exactly what Reverend McGeown derides is what Christ is speaking. We give them up. We do not have anything to do with them. We cast them away from us. We have no fellowship with them. If they want to get together, fine, but we are going to talk with them only about the truth. We rebuke them in their sin. We warn them. That cost of discipleship comes right into the family, into the nearest and dearest of relationships.

And Christ adds something surprising in Luke 14:26–27: “Yea, and his own life also…and whosoever does not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.” It is true that we must be willing to die for Christ if put to the sword. I do not believe that to be the meaning of these verses though. They come right after Christ expresses the significant cost of being his disciple. You hate your family for his sake, and so heavy is that cost that it kills you. That is why Christ calls it a cross. It is an agonizing and excruciating death for the disciple of Christ. In this life God’s child loses his friends and family and even his own spouse who were so near and dear to his heart. He does that for Christ’s sake. That is the meaning of the text. That is the cost of discipleship.

There is more to it though. To hate yourself also is the condemnation of yourself in your works. That was the problem with the multitude that followed Jesus. The Jews held to the works of the law for their righteousness. They did not hate their lives. They actually quite liked their lives. Their lives were pleasing to themselves. They thought themselves to be pretty good people. To hate your own life means that as you view that life and take stock of it, you loathe and despise your sins and sinful nature. The believer desires the love of the regenerated heart to be the entirety of his existence.

Christ’s instruction is not that you have to do all these things. Reverend McGeown preaches his whole sermon as one lengthy admonition. He must have listened to Rev. Daniel Kleyn’s speech at the recent Protestant Reformed officebearers’ conference. But the form of the text is not an admonition. If it were, Christ would have used an imperative, which is a direct command or exhortation. The text does not read as an exhortation or an admonition. “Hate,” “bear his cross,” and “forsaketh” are spoken by Christ in the indicative mood. An indicative is simply a statement of fact. An indicative is not a command or an exhortation. A fact about Christ’s disciples is that they hate, bear their crosses, and forsake. There is nothing in the text as a basis for an entire sermon filled with “do this” and “do not do that.” Christ’s point is that this hatred and forsaking is a fact, reality, and mark of true disciples of Christ.

McGeown then sets himself up to give a myriad of scenarios of when a believer might need to hate his family out of his devotion for Christ. McGeown says that you need to have Christ in common with someone in order to have fellowship, and you need to have faith in common. When it comes to your unbelieving family members, you have nothing in common besides blood, and so

you must reject them, refuse to have fellowship with them. You may have social discourse with them, but you may not have true fellowship with them because you don’t have anything spiritual in common with them.

One of the scenarios McGeown gives is of a young man and young woman who are dating, and the woman tells the man that she hates the church and does not believe in God. McGeown then instructs his congregation that the young man should stop going out with her because she is clearly not the type of woman he should be dating. But I thought it was a “spiritual” forsaking. Why cannot the young man just continue to date and marry the woman and simply reject her opinions and ideas? Did not McGeown say earlier that we should not just throw away those kinds of people, that we do not remove them from our lives, and that we do not separate ourselves from them? Which is it, Reverend McGeown?

What McGeown says next is so queer and incongruous with the text and with what he said before that I simply am going to quote it for the reader to judge if this is in fact what Christ is saying in the text. What McGeown says follows upon his explanation that we do not hate people, but we hate their ideas, opinions, and beliefs if they are incompatible with following after Christ.

This also applies to Christians with a Christian spouse and believing children. There are times when we must hate them too. Never in cruelty, of course. Never in a mean-spirited way, but only in order to put Jesus first. Even family must come second to Jesus Christ. The devil is subtle. He tempts us in different ways. Sometimes with the world, but often by means of our nearest and dearest relatives. Think of examples from scripture. Think of Adam. Think of Abraham. Adam should have said to Eve after Eve fell first and when she offered him the fruit—Adam should have said something like this, “No, I will not eat of the fruit”…Or Abraham…In that sense, Abraham and Sarah should have hated one another, opposed one another, for the sake of their obedience and allegiance to God…

So to put it as strongly as we can, if your family insists on going to hell, you must not follow them. You must part ways. You must repudiate what they are doing. You must rebuke them in their sin. You must serve Christ without them. Adam should have hated Eve. Abraham and Sarah should have hated one another. They both should have parted ways.

But Christ is not commanding us to hate family who attend a different church. That’s not a proper application of the text. I will not forsake someone who attends a different church just because he may have some differences in doctrine and practice. That’s not me forsaking them or hating them. I might not approve of that church. I might see some serious weaknesses in doctrine and practice in that church, but I must not be blind to the sins of my own church either. But I will not hate a relative who goes to a different church. I’ll not cut him off. I’ll not charge him with apostasy from Jesus Christ. I’ll not judge him as hell-bound. I’ll not deny his Christianity. I’ll not say he’s going to a false church because he’s not going to my church. If he leaves my church and joins another faithful Reformed church, let’s say, I may be disappointed, I may be sad, I may disapprove, but hatred will not be my response.

This whole section of the sermon is one massive contradiction. On the one hand, we are supposed to hate other members of the church and members of God’s covenant when they sin? On the other hand, we are not supposed to hate those who leave Christ, go to a false church, and worship a false god of their imagination? Do we hate and forsake family who sit in a false church where the pure doctrine of the gospel is not preached? According to Reverend McGeown this is not what the text is teaching, but husbands should hate their wives and fellow believers who sin and hinder their following Christ. McGeown’s apotheosis is that there are believers in every church and that they must be called our brothers and sisters. In all four of his recent sermons on the antithesis, McGeown glorifies, deifies, and exalts this idea. This is the idea around which all of his fables are crafted.

Understand that in Jesus’ day, the disciples followed Christ to hear his voice by traveling with him wherever he went. They were literal followers of Christ. Today, the child of God follows Christ by joining himself to a church where Christ is present by his Spirit and where Christ’s voice is heard. Christ is not heard where the lie is taught. There are no followers of Christ in a false church where there is false doctrine, no matter if she has ministers, sermons, and liturgy. In the false church there is no voice of Christ and no Spirit working by the word.

The way McGeown tries to apply the text as a command to forsake members in the church and then dismisses the proper application of the text to those who will not follow Christ is asinine. The sermon is his own carnal idea of what he thinks the Spirit is teaching there. McGeown’s sermon is not the word of God. I am absolutely sure of that. The application that he makes is a fable. And the application that he upbraids and scolds is the proper application. Those who will not follow the voice of Christ are in fact unbelievers and ungodly. They are those whom we must hate and forsake.

The Reason for Hatred

The reason Reverend McGeown gives for hating your family members who are “incompatible with following after Christ” is that they will lead you away from your devotion to Christ. He says that they oppose your devotion to Christ. The ungodly and unbelieving family members are not opposing the believer’s confession as such, but they are opposing Christ. They are not opposing the believer as such but opposing Christ who lives in that believer.

The general thrust throughout McGeown’s sermon, and what makes it man-centered, is that you need to hate father, mother, and the rest of your family because by their ideas, opinions, and beliefs they will lead you away from your devotion to Christ. You must hate them and spiritually forsake them (whatever that means), and by doing so you will not be led away from following Christ. But that is not the reason at all. If the believer’s not being led astray depended in any sense on hating his family, he would certainly go astray.

Another reason McGeown gives is that “in short, we must seek to please Christ rather than our relatives.” That is not true either. Faith is the only thing that pleases God and that only because Jesus Christ crucified is faith’s object.

The reason that this high cost is a reality for the believer lies in the cross. Why do I hate my unbelieving and ungodly family? Is it because I desire to be preserved or because I want to please Christ? No, it is because Christ bore his cross for me. Why is there this cost in the believer’s life? Jesus Christ crucified is the reason.

That cross was man’s total rejection of Christ at the hands of the ungodly church world. The cross was Christ’s intense suffering of the wrath of God. The cross was the only way of salvation for you and me. Christ himself looked at the cost of the cross. There in the garden he prayed, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matt. 26:39). And Christ took up that cross. He willingly bore the shame, rejection, and suffering of that cross. And he saved at that cross all whom the Father had given to him. Christ saved his own from misery, death, and the punishment of hell and condemnation. He saved his elect with his justifying blood.

When we are joined to Christ by faith and are made bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, when we have him as our savior and partake of his life by his Spirit, we must and will bear his reproach. We take up our crosses only because there was the cross. The cross that satisfied for all our sins. We bear a cross, not as atonement but in the sharing of Christ’s own reproach. The world fills up God’s cup of iniquity by persecuting the church and God’s people until the world is ripe for judgment.

The cost of being Christ’s disciple is a light thing really because so great a cost was paid by God himself. God shed his own blood in the flesh of his Son, Jesus Christ. An infinite debt was paid by an infinitely precious sacrifice. God sent his well-beloved Son to the death of the cross in his love for you. God poured out on Christ his wrath for your sins. Christ was accursed and suffered hell for you. Christ himself, who loved God perfectly, willingly gave up his life. Christ hated his own life and his own earthly relationships in the sense of the text. God and his glory stood first and foremost to Christ. Christ came to do the will of God, and he did God’s will perfectly. And Christ gives you his mind, so that you become his disciple. You become nothing in the earth. You lose your life because you have already gained eternal life.

The fruit of Christ’s drawing the lame, the maimed, the blind, the halt, and the poor is that you bear your cross. You come after him. You follow him as his disciple. This all flows out of God’s love for you. You do not come to him in the Arminian sense of making a choice for Christ and accepting Christ. But you come to Christ as he really calls you unto himself by his voice as the good shepherd, drawing you unto himself by faith.

He sups with you, eats and drinks with you, and you enjoy God’s fellowship and favor as his dear child. This is God’s sovereign work of grace. God is first. In that he glorifies himself as God. His grace and majesty and power are extolled in that he takes carnal, ungodly men and women, justifies them, makes them holy, gives them his quickening Spirit, and they willingly come to Christ and follow him and count all things but loss and dung.

Counting the Cost

In Luke 14:28–33 Jesus Christ illustrates his point about the high cost of being his disciple. The point in both illustrations is that the builder and the king counted, made a tabulation, a reckoning. They made a calculation. When they counted, they had the end in view. The builder had in view a completed tower. The king had in view victory over his enemies.

Now, in the life of the believer with regard to his family there is a cost that no disciple of Christ can escape. And Christ often puts right before the believer a situation where he will have to count the cost and make a choice. Me or your family? Me or your mother? Me or your father? Me or your sister? Me or your brother? Me or your wife? The sure choice of faith is always Christ. Moses chose to suffer with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season (Heb. 11:23–25). Faith counts and reckons that cost with the end in view. The end is eternal life with God. “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18).

The unbeliever cannot count the cost. He always chooses himself, his pleasure, his family, and his peace and happiness. He says, “Christ is not worth it to me.” The members of the PRC will live nice, happy, carnal lives with their friends, families, vacations, and things. And there will only be shame and everlasting contempt for the sake of a few short years here on this earth. Reverend McGeown and the PRC, like the multitude that followed Christ, are offended by Christ’s word. They will get to keep their lives, but in keeping them, they shall lose them. He who loses his life for Christ’s sake shall find it.

The believer counts the cost, and the first thing he says is, “Lord, this is too much for me; I cannot bear it.” You have no ability to make yourself like what Christ teaches. You cannot pay that cost. You cannot bear up under that weight. You cannot and will not give a thing of yourself by nature. You would never renounce yourself. It is not something you have any power to do. It is so otherworldly and contrary to all human reason to lose, lose, and lose in this life. The power and strength of the child of God is the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit of Christ who dwells in the believer, so that the believer counts the high cost, bears the cost, and walks all his life with his end in view. Heaven is where Christ takes his true disciples. The life of heaven is the perfection of the covenant where God shall dwell with his people in perfection. The believer is going to live with God forever and ever. The church in glory shall dwell with God and see him in the revelation of his Son, Jesus Christ, in the perfected kingdom of his dear Son.

“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.” 

He who has an ear, let him hear.