Does Jesus Call Us To Give Away All Our Possessions?

It would seem that Jesus calls us to give away all our possessions.

So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:33)

This is a scary verse. I don’t know about you, but I like my possessions, and I don’t want to have to give them all away. In fact, when I was in grad school, I found this verse so troubling that I wrote a paper on it. I spent hours researching and reflecting on these words, and at the end of it all, I realized what my problem was: I was reading the verse out of context.

One of the cardinal rules of biblical interpretation is that we have to read everything in context. We can’t just take a single verse in isolation and expect to understand it correctly, and this one is no exception. In particular, this verse is part of a larger unit of teaching (Luke 14:26-33), so to properly interpret it, we have to figure out its role in that unit. Plus, Luke’s Gospel has a lot to say about money and material possessions, so we cannot find its entire teaching on the subject in any one verse. Instead, we have to let this verse be balanced by others.

And that is what I want to do here. I want to look at this difficult teaching in light of both its immediate context and the larger context of the entire Gospel. When we do that, we’ll see that Jesus is not really telling us to give away everything we own. Instead, he is calling us to follow him in a way that is arguably even more radical.

The Larger Context

Let’s start by looking at the larger context, that of the entire Gospel of Luke. Like I said before, Luke contains a lot of teaching about wealth and possessions, so let’s look at another passage on this topic, one that provides an important counterbalance to the command to renounce all our possessions. A few chapters after that command, we read a story about a man named Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was a great sinner, but when he met Jesus, he promised to change his ways. He said:

Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much. (Luke 19:8)

Then, in the very next verse, Jesus accepted this man’s resolution (Luke 19:9), confirming for us that his proposed lifestyle changes were sufficient. Jesus didn’t require Zacchaeus to give away everything he owned; giving away a large portion of it was enough.

So when we return to the verse we’re examining, we already have a clue that it is not really as strict as it seems to be on the surface. Jesus would not contradict himself so blatantly, so we have reason to believe that his teaching about renouncing our possessions does not actually mean that we have to give away everything we have.

The Immediate Context

But then what does it mean? The key, I would suggest, is to look at its immediate context. It is part of a larger unit of teaching (Luke 14:26-33), and to really understand what Jesus was saying, we have to understand how this particular verse functions in that unit. To do that, let’s take a quick look at the structure of the passage:

1) First Jesus says that we have to “hate” our parents, spouses, children, siblings, and even our own life (a biblical idiom meaning that we have to love these things less than Jesus), and then he says that we have to carry our crosses in order to follow him (verses 26-27).

2) Next, he gives two short parables to teach that before we begin something, we have to make sure we can finish it (verses 28-32).

3) Finally, we have the verse in question, the one about renouncing all our possessions.

The Logic of the Passage

At first, it can be tough to see how these three sections are connected. They seem to be loosely related at best, but the passage gives us two important verbal clues to help us figure out its internal logic. First, Jesus begins the middle section, the parables, with the word “because” (this word may not be in every English translation, but it is there in the original Greek), which tells us that these parables give the reasoning behind the opening section. Jesus is saying that we need to know what following him really entails and make sure that we can make whatever sacrifices our discipleship may require of us. We need to recognize that he is more important than anything else in this world because if we don’t, we may very well find that we don’t have what it takes to live out that commitment to the very end.

Next, Jesus begins the third section, the verse about renouncing all our possessions, with the phrase “so therefore” (again, it may not be present in every English translation, but it is there in the Greek), which tells us that this final teaching is a conclusion that follows from the parables that come right before it. In other words, the parables give us the reasoning behind this final section as well, just like they do for the opening verses.

So in one block of teaching we have two sections that say similar things and that have the same relationship to the middle section. This implies that they may actually be making the same point in two different ways, but we can’t be certain yet. It is very possible that several conclusions could all follow from the same premise, so we need to look at one more element of the structure of this unit.

The High Point and Summation

The requirement to give up everything we own is the final requirement of discipleship and the only one that comes after the two explanatory parables, so it naturally functions as the high point of the whole unit and a summation of the requirements given in the opening verses. However, when seen in that light, it is not the high point and summation we would expect. Giving up one’s material possessions is not nearly as big a sacrifice as giving up one’s family and one’s own life. In fact, it seems more like an afterthought than anything else, so there has to be a different way to understand this concluding verse.

Rather than seeing it as referring to our material possessions, we should take it to mean that we have to give up everything that belongs to us in any way, including our families and our own lives. Consequently, with this final verse of the unit, Jesus is not simply adding another requirement that potential disciples must fulfill. He is not saying that we have to be willing to sacrifice our relationships and our lives and then adding that we have to give up our material possessions as well. Rather, he is reiterating the previous requirements and amplifying them by giving a larger, all-encompassing one: potential disciples must give up everything that is theirs in any sense.

What the Verse Really Means

Once we understand this, it becomes clear that Jesus isn’t telling us to literally give away everything we own. To see this, consider his call to give up our lives. If we take the final verse hyper-literally, we would have to conclude that Jesus is commanding us to commit suicide, but that is clearly not right. Instead, he simply means that we have to be willing to lay down our life for him if the need arises, not that we have to actively give up our life. Similarly, when Jesus says that we have to renounce everything we have, he does not mean that we have to actively give away all our material possessions. Rather, he just means that we have to be willing to part with everything that is ours, including our relationships and our very lives, if they get in the way of our discipleship.

So in one sense, the verse we’re looking at is not quite as demanding as it seems at first. It does not mean that we have to give away all our possessions; we just have to be willing to do so if the need arises (but there is no guarantee that it will). However, in another sense, it is actually much more demanding. We have to be willing to give up more than just our material possessions. If push comes to shove, we must be willing to sacrifice our closest relationships and even our very life if our commitment to Jesus calls for it.