Matthew 10:37-39 “The one who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and the one who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And the one who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. The one who has found his life will lose it, and the one who has lost his life on My account will find it.”

Many have stumbled over this passage and others like it, where a hard line is drawn by Jesus regarding our priorities, including relational priorities. Yet when we understand the absolute superiority of our God’s great eternal purpose in creating and redeeming us, Christ’s words make sense. 

We were created not for our own purposes and glory, but for our God’s purposes and glory. The purposes all revolve around His divine life lived in us in place of our own living. In Adam’s rebellion all humanity lost the opportunity to live by that divine life, and we all wandered into living our own way (see Isaiah 53:6). This is an enormously egregious sin, a total repudiation of our God’s will. It is worthy of our death.

All the redemptive work our God has accomplished including the incarnation and death of Jesus was not simply to remove that just and due penalty. Salvation as it is portrayed most often is not the goal of our salvation or our faith; it is a means to the goal. The end goal is our restoration to the divine life of our God in us here and now, in this life, and the return of our living to being completely consumed by our love for and restored union with Him. Our living is no longer primarily about us or about our relationships and desires. It is to be about our God and His life in us all day, everyday, and at the expense of every other priority.

Since this is our created and redeemed purpose and destiny, we will never know the fullness of joy, satisfaction or abundance of living until we surrender all our living, desires, and relationships to Him, and seek him first before all other pursuits. If such surrender is not a high priority for us, we are living in that egregious rebellion and repudiating our God’s divine life and eternal purpose in us.