cost him dearly, though the benefit of following Christ would make it all worthwhile. THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP (VV. 26, 27) The Relational Cost Jesus’ opening declaration was a shocker: “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” (v. 26). Joseph Ernest Renan, the nineteenth-century author of the blasphemous The Life of Jesus, seized this text to declare that Jesus was “trampling under