NOTES for Luk 14:28
Jesus often connects the path into the Kingdom with a kind of evaluation, calculation, and analysis of a person's possibilities. The one who is going to begin building must first assess his resources and understand whether they will be enough to complete the work; if not, it is better not to begin. Such an attitude is just in any case when the issue is a spiritual path.
Indeed, when setting out on a road, we always hope to reach the goal and always try to understand how difficult or dangerous the road may prove to be, and whether it will be within our strength at all. And if what has been said is true of every spiritual path, it is especially true when the matter concerns the Christian path: here the issue is 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 extent, a goal in itself.
And even if the issue is something greater than itself, every religious person can always comfort himself by saying that even if he has not reached that greater thing, he has at least 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 more: after all, he is not a saint or a righteous man, but an ordinary person. But that is precisely the point: 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 speaks about, giving as an example the owner's plan to build a watchtower in his garden. An unfinished or poorly built tower is not only useless; it can even harm by creating for its builder the illusion of safety where there is none. Then it is better not to build anything at all.
So also a Christian who has not reached the life of the Kingdom in all its fullness may fall into a trap: it may seem to him that everything is in order with his spiritual life because he fulfills certain "religious duties of a Christian," while in fact he is no closer to the Kingdom than anyone else who never thinks about religion at all. This maximum, this reaching of the goal, is what Jesus sets before His listeners, calling them to consider whether they are ready to go to the end, and if not, whether it would not be better for them to leave Him and live their ordinary life, the one they lived before.