Counting the Cost

Today's Scripture

Jesus tells would-be disciples to do the math before they start building — and Paul tells us who actually finishes the building.

Luke 14:28-30 — "For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him."

Philippians 1:6 — "And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ."

Matthew 5:48 — "You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

The Big Idea

When Jesus said "be perfect," he meant it — and that is both the most frightening and the most hopeful sentence in the Gospels. Frightening, because God will not settle for making you a bit nicer. Hopeful, because he himself intends to do the work, pay the cost, and not stop until the job is gloriously done.

Reflection

The dentist you were afraid to visit

Lewis opens this final chapter of Mere Christianity's spiritual core with a memory every reader recognizes. As a boy, he often had a toothache — and he knew that if he told his mother, she would take him to the dentist. He wanted something for the pain. He did not want the dentist, because dentists do not stop at the tooth that hurts. They start poking at all the others.

That, Lewis says, is how we approach God. We come to him about the one tooth — the habit that is embarrassing us, the anxiety that is keeping us up. We want relief, not renovation. But our Lord, Lewis warns, is like the dentist:

"Make no mistake, He says, if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than that." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

This is why Jesus told the crowds, with startling honesty, to count the cost before following him — like a builder estimating a tower, like a king weighing a war (Luke 14:28-30). He was not running a recruitment drive with the hard parts hidden. And the standard he names is the highest there is: "You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). Lewis refuses to let us soften it:

"He never talked vague, idealistic gas. When He said, 'Be perfect,' He meant it." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Before you panic, keep reading. The command is not "make yourself perfect." Something far stranger and better is going on.

The cottage and the palace

Here is the picture this chapter is famous for — one Lewis borrowed from his hero George MacDonald:

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house... You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

At first, the work makes sense to you — the drains fixed, the leaks stopped. Those were the repairs you asked for. But then he starts knocking down walls that seemed perfectly fine, and it hurts abominably, and you cannot see the point. The explanation is that you and God are reading different blueprints. You wanted a tidy cottage: manageable sins, respectable habits, a faith that fits in the spare room. He is building something he intends to inhabit.

This is precisely what Paul says God is up to in the verse people half-quote. "We know that for those who love God all things work together for good" (Romans 8:28) — and everyone stops there, as if "good" meant comfortable. The next verse defines it: "to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Romans 8:29). The good God is working all things toward is not your convenience. It is your Christlikeness. The renovations are not random; every one of them is on the blueprint.

And so suffering gets a new meaning — not punishment from an angry judge, but craftsmanship from a committed Father: "The Lord disciplines the one he loves... he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness" (Hebrews 12:6, 10-11). Charles Spurgeon, who knew deep affliction in body and mind, looked back over a lifetime of God's renovations and concluded:

"The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction." — Charles Spurgeon

Paul could even do the accounting: "This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" (2 Corinthians 4:17). Preparing — a builder's word. The hammering is not the destruction of the house. It is the construction of the palace.

Easy to please, hard to satisfy

But doesn't a perfectionist God crush people? Here MacDonald hands Lewis the sentence that holds the whole chapter in balance:

"God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy." — George MacDonald, quoted in Mere Christianity

Both halves are pure gospel. Easy to please: like a father watching a toddler's first stumbling steps, God delights in your smallest, clumsiest movement toward him. He is not standing over you with a clipboard and a frown. Your wobbly prayer this morning genuinely pleased him. Hard to satisfy: precisely because he loves you, he will not stop at wobbling. A good father is thrilled by first steps and would be heartbroken if his child still walked that way at thirty. Delight now; destination still ahead. Paul lived in exactly that tension: "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own" (Philippians 3:12).

J.I. Packer adds the note that makes the whole process safe:

"There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me... and quench his determination to bless me." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

The Builder saw the full condition of the property before he bought it. Nothing he uncovers mid-renovation will make him walk off the job.

The rumor in the sculptor's shop

Step back from the renovation for a moment and ask what the finished work is actually for. Lewis answers with the image that opens this whole final section of his book:

"And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Picture the shop. Rows of statues — some polished, some chipped, some half-finished — all of them stone. The respectable statues and the vandalized ones differ in condition, but not in kind: none of them breathe. And then the rumor: the Sculptor does not merely intend to repair his statues. He intends to make them alive.

This is why the dentist hurts and the renovations go deeper than we asked. A museum restorer only needs to make a statue presentable. A father is making sons and daughters. Paul says all creation is standing on tiptoe for the unveiling: "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God" (Romans 8:18-19). The whole shop, it turns out, is waiting for the statues to wake.

And the rumor has a name and a date attached: "When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory" (Colossians 3:4). Christ who is your life — the Zoe, the good infection, the life that entered the stone the day you let him in. What is now hidden under the dust sheets of ordinary days, aching joints, and slow progress will be unveiled with him. Every chisel stroke you are currently enduring is aimed at that morning.

The cost has already been counted

Now the gospel turn — and after fourteen days, you can see the whole arc of Lewis's book bending here. Yes, count the cost. But notice who pays the decisive share. The command "be perfect" would be a death sentence if it ended there. It does not end there. The Perfect One came down into the ruin himself; the perfect penitent did the dying we could not do; the good infection entered the house. And so the promise stands over the whole project: "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion" (Philippians 1:6). Not might. Will. Paul prays the same certainty over a whole church: "May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely... He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it" (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).

And the finished house? Lewis gives us one of the most breathtaking sentences he ever wrote:

"If we let Him — for we can prevent Him, if we choose — He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature... a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

That is what he intends to make of you — the feeblest and filthiest of us, he says, not the promising candidates. The cost is everything; the cost was paid at a cross; the work will not stop; and the Builder plans to move in. The only tragedy left on the table is preventing him.

Going Deeper

Find the renovation that currently makes no sense to you — the hardship you would never have chosen, the wall God seems to be knocking down for no reason. Write it at the top of a page. Under it, copy out Philippians 1:6 word for word. Then pray one sentence: "Lord, I cannot see the blueprint, but I trust the Builder — keep building." Keep the page somewhere you will find it in a year. Palaces take time, and he finishes what he starts.