“‘And when Jesus had called the people unto Him,’ the great multitude that went with Him (Luke 14:25), ‘with His disciples also, He said unto them, ‘Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me (Mark 8:34).’
Let him first sit down and count up the cost, and the charge he is like to be at, if he follows Me. For following Me is not like following some other masters.
The wind sits always on My face, and the foaming rage of the sea of this world, and the proud and lofty waves thereof, do continually beat upon the sides of the bark of the ship that Myself, My cause, and My followers are in.
He therefore that will not run hazards, and that is afraid to venture a drowning, let him not set foot into this vessel. So whosever doth not bear his cross, and come after Me, he cannot be My disciple.
For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it (Luke 14:27–29).
True, to reason, this kind of language tends to cast water upon weak and beginning desires, but to faith, it makes the things set before us, and the greatness, and the glory of them, more apparently excellent and desirable.
Reason will say, Then who will profess Christ that hath such coarse entertainment at the beginning? but faith will say, Then surely the things that are at the end of a Christian’s race in this world must needs be unspeakably glorious.”
–John Bunyan, The Greatness of the Soul in The Works of John Bunyan (London: Blackie and Son, Paternoster Row, 1862), 1:105-106.
