NOTES for Luk 14:28
Jesus often connects the path into the Kingdom with a kind of assessment, calculation, and analysis of a person's capacities. The one who intends to begin construction must first assess his resources and understand whether they will be enough to complete the work, and if not, it is better not to begin. This attitude is certainly fair when the matter concerns the spiritual path.
Indeed, when setting out on the road, we always hope to reach the goal, and we always try to understand how difficult and dangerous the road may turn out to be, and whether in general it will be within our strength. And if this is true of every spiritual path, it is especially true when the matter concerns the Christian path: here we are speaking about the Kingdom, the path into which is harder than any other, even though the Savior Himself constantly accompanies us on this path. Of course, if Christianity were simply one more new religion, the situation would be different. Every religion is to a certain degree an end in itself.
And even if the matter concerns something greater than religion itself, every religious person can always console himself that, even if he has not reached this greater thing, he has still done something, and what he has done is valuable in itself. Usually in such cases a religious person tells himself and others that he did what he could and never counted on anything more: after all, he is not a saint or a righteous man, but an ordinary person. But the point is that Christianity as a religion has no meaning at all.
Christianity is the path into the Kingdom and life in the Kingdom, and the only goal of a Christian can be the Kingdom in all its fullness; otherwise it is not worth beginning. This is what Jesus is speaking about when He gives the example of the garden owner's plan to build a watchtower. An unfinished or badly built tower is not only useless; it can even harm by creating in its builder the illusion of safety that in reality does not exist. In that case it is better to build nothing at all.
So too a Christian who has not reached life in the Kingdom in all its fullness can fall into a trap: it may seem to him that everything is in order with his spiritual life, since he fulfills certain "religious duties of a Christian," while in reality he is no closer to the Kingdom than anyone else who does not think about religion at all. Jesus orients His listeners toward this maximum, toward the attainment of the goal, calling them to consider whether they are ready to go to the end; and if not, whether it would be better for them to leave Him and live the ordinary life they lived before.