In a few weeks we have a book coming out on the economics of Jesus. It’s all about what some of you know as the “Five Capitals,” and it will deal with how to invest our time, energy, and money in the things that really matter. We’ll be posting some thoughts related to the book on Mondays for the next several weeks.

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Last Monday we said that discipleship to Jesus is not so much a sacrifice as much as it is an investment. Today we want to highlight another aspect of how discipleship to Jesus is the best deal we’re ever going to get as human beings. It is an amazing bargain that any sober-minded shopper would jump at. It should feel to good to be true. Being with Jesus to learn from him how to be like him is the most remarkable opportunity ever offered to the human race.

Andy Crouch wrote a great article awhile back called “Learning From Fools” that teaches this same lesson. Crouch’s article is about Jesus’ parables in Luke 14 about a tower builder and an embattled king. In most English Bibles, this section is labelled “The Cost of Discipleship,” but Crouch says that “Jesus’ first hearers would have known that label was exactly backwards. For these stories are not about disciples, but fools.”

The tower builder doesn’t have enough money to finish his project. The king doesn’t have enough troops to win the battle. These aren’t models of discipleship, they’re models of non-discipleship. They are pictures of people trying to gain security through their own resources and strength, ambitiously trying to build monuments to their own ingenuity and ability. It’s a picture of people trying to get well-liked enough or rich enough or powerful enough to secure a place for themselves. It’s the tower of Babel all over again.

In other words, Jesus is saying, “Stop your foolish pursuit of security and reputation before you go spiritually bankrupt! Can’t you see you’ll never be able to complete your project? You’re throwing your life away on a pipe dream that you’ll never be able to pay for. Give up the foolishness, and come follow me instead.”

Which is exactly the same point Jesus is making when he says, “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their life?” The life you give up to follow Jesus is a ill-fated tower-building project that won’t work out anyway. It’s much more costly to keep on trying to finish your tower, because in the end you’ll fail, you’ll forfeit your life for a half-built tower.

At a Missional Community gathering awhile back someone said during a discussion, “What I’m realizing is that, if you think it’s hard being a disciple of Jesus, you should try living the other way.” This is exactly what Jesus was saying in these stories: living to make a name for yourself or secure your own future is way too expensive. Stop now before you ruin yourself utterly. Jesus was talking in these stories about the cost of non-discipleship, and it’s breathtakingly high.

In contrast, living as a disciple of Jesus means that you begin to understand what living really is. You “find your life,” as Jesus tells us. This quote from Dallas Willard’s book Revolution of Character gives us a picture of what we gain as disciples of Jesus.

“What an astonishing vision! The water of heaven flows through our being until we are fully changed people. We wake each morning breathing the air of this new world; we experience a new consciousness, and our character is transformed. We drop our deceitful practices, our insincerity, our defensiveness, our envy, and our slander, and we move outward toward others in genuine love.”

It isn’t “costly” to obtain this kind of life, you simply give up the old life and receive the new one as a gift. Those who engage in it aren’t spiritual heroes, they’re just responding to the deal of a lifetime. It’s the treasure in the field. Of course you sell everything to buy the field. There’s a treasure in it!

The book we are releasing in a few weeks refers to our life as disciples of Jesus as spiritual capital. We’ll be talking more about it (and the other forms of capital in God’s kingdom) in the coming weeks!