What is the Christian Reformed Church in North America's views about Luke 14:32 with regard to the doctrine of discipleship?

Another answer gave a link to the commentary on verse 31 which also explains v32. The deficiency was immediately pointed out, but the answer was voted up, indicating a theological bias, rather than recognising a coherent answer.

In summary, it states that it is better for the non elect to make peace with the devil rather than offer to follow God and fail, bringing shame to Christianity. Apart from being a view which is never held by the main official Calvinist denominational statements of faith, either Anglican or Reformed, since it amounts to salvation by works (tower building, battle winning, works required to become disciples of Christ) the view requires for a strange situation to occur, differing from the TULIP model*, which is:

1. People hear the Gospel, “Believe in the Lord Jesus (believe His claim that His death paid for our sins, confirmed by God raising Him up: 1 Cor 15:3-8) and you will be saved”.

2. The elect believe and are saved because God regenerates their minds to believe and their belief never goes away (Irresistible grace, Preservation of the saints)

3. The non elect are not regenerated to have the faith required to believe such a bold, seemingly unrealistic, claim and are not saved. (Total depravity)

*Is it possible for a person to be saved but not predestined?GotQuestionsOrg

Quote

It is also true that, in order to be saved, a person must make the choice to believe. Most believers can point to a time in which they considered the claims of Christ and surrendered to Him. We chose to surrender in faith; if we had not chosen to do so, we could not be saved. However, examining Scripture and looking back on the process of our salvation, we recognize God’s hand at work all along the way—we see the conviction of the Holy Spirit; we see how God was changing our unregenerate hearts to enable us to believe; we see the series of events that God orchestrated so that we could hear the gospel.

The claims of the Pulpit Commentary on v32:

1. Persons hear the Gospel, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved” The minds of the elect are regenerated to have the faith required to believe and are saved because their belief never goes away.

2. The non elect are not regenerated to have the faith required to believe such a bold seemingly unrealistic claim and are not saved even if the content of their belief not given by God is true, because it is changeable.

3. Among those who believed in the Lord Jesus are those whose belief was false: they thought Jesus could save but later changed their mind because that belief was not real. In other words they confessed with their mouth and believed in their hearts that their sins were forgiven by the cross and they could go to heaven, but later that belief changed. They promised to build a tower/win the battle of persevering, but when they were persecuted they apostasised, because their belief changed.

4. The non elect should have known the weakness of their own faith, realised that God had not given them the faith needed to continue to believe, and not be a shame to Christianity, by making peace with the Devil!

Questions

1. The fault is stated to be a false belief, but the description of the fault in the commentary is that it was a changing belief. In other words the fault was a temporary faith not a false faith. Faith can be real in terms of agreement with the content of a claim, faith can't be real in terms of being temporary or permanent, weak or strong. Apparently the faith the person received was not from God, who only gives clear understanding and unchanging understanding.

2. How would a person have the capability to know if their faith was from God, meaning long lasting?

3. Why would a non elected person be interested in maintaining the good name of Christianity?

4. Building a tower/going out to battle is equivalent to giving up everything and following Christ, the high cost of becoming a disciple. Why is this not the view of the Reformed Church?

My view

The Bible teaches in many places that upon baptism, proof is given by God, water from the Rock, that He can protect when difficulties are faced when a person takes up his mandate to become blessings to the world. The believer must allow these proofs, gifts, talents, revelations to take root deeply in his heart so that he can have a different spirit, be born again, like Caleb, so that when he hears God's voice to face the challenge, he will not look at the opposition and feel like an ant, feel inadequate, but obey, to manifest God's great works like Moses and Christ, so that people can be motivated to leave selfish living, and in turn to manifest said great works, and even when said difficulties occur, they can persevere. You can tell if you have allowed the word to take root. You can tell if you have enough faith to begin. You can plan to ask for terms of peace, when you feel God is about to call. Moses did that when he said he was not prepared enough to bring people out of Egypt. The disciples of Christ did that when they asked for more faith, more signs to encourage them, in their obligation to bring people out of selfish living. This is a coherent explanation of the teaching.

The Pulpit Commentary proposes the personal view of an individual, not of the official Reformed Church, which would never accept it as their authorised doctrine, because of incoherency:

Those who do not believe they have what it needs to face persecution should not become believers because it would bring shame to Christianity.

Nowhere does the Bible teach people to make peace with living the selfish life because they have not built up their faith. Rather, buy oil without money!

Next the answer offers the general view of Reformed Churches with regard to the need for discipleship and its requirements:

Reformed tradition is strongly saying that God will provide everything an elect's need for salvation and that the elect is supposed to receive everything with gratitude. At the same time, the elect has to work hard to discern and defeat any temptation to sin with the grace that God will faithfully provide continuously until we enter heaven. The elect has to be a disciple, there is no choice. As long as the elect sides with God by completely trusting Jesus and receiving all grace with gratitude, there is no bargaining for peace needed. Therefore, it is unlikely that the 20,000 troops King represents God, and to me the Pulpit commentary is quite congruent with the Reformed overall theology. Therefore, the king with 20,000 troops represents the king of the world, the Devil, and the elect has to engage war with the Devil, with God's help of course.

The teaching in the text, however, is to make peace with the opposing king.

The Reformed tradition moral lesson is thus: we cannot win against the Devil on our own, we need Jesus to save us. And please don't embarrass the cause by going halfway because it will damage the "brand".

The teaching in the text, however, is to make peace with the opposing king, so that you don’t become a laughing stock.

Then the "halfway believer", the farmer who started the tower or the king who initiated the war but who quit in the middle probably represents someone who isn't one of the elect because God doesn't give him/her the grace to persevere to the end (the "P" in TULIP) while the elect will be able to win against the devil (even if the elect has to die prematurely) and receive the eternal inheritance.

How will the non elect know that the conviction given to him is the non persevering one? He knows the extent of the persecution to be faced and the strength of the faith he has, in advance?

Rather isn’t it more coherent if the true believer knows the tower/battle is giving up everything he owns, and asks to be excused like Moses on grounds of inability, or like the disciples, on account of not being strong, having enough faith? In other words, talk to God, negotiate. Didn't God provide for Moses? Didn't Jesus give a good performance review about their capabilities to the disciples?

Pulpit Commentary

Your BibleHub link missed the Pulpit Commentary which treats verse 32 together with verse 31. While the Pulpit Commentary editor is Anglican, I think the answer is applicable to the Reformed tradition as well.

After relating a possible historical background of the war simile (which Jesus may have used) and relating a modern version with Swiss contemplating war against France, the interpretation is as follows:

The first of these two little similes rather points to the building up of the Christian life in the heart and life. The second is an image of the warfare which' every Christian man must wage against the world, its passions, and its lusts. If we cannot brace ourselves up to the' sacrifice necessary for the completion of the building up of the life we know the Master loves; if we shrink from the cost involved in the warfare against sin and evil - a warfare which will only end with life - better for us not to begin the building or risk the war. It will be a wretched alternative, but still it will be best for us to make our submission at once to the world and its prince; at least, by so doing we shall avoid the scandal and the shame of injuring a cause which we adopted only to forsake.

My paraphrase of the commentary

As we contemplate whether to follow Jesus or not, the decision has to be all or nothing. Halfway only causes embarrassment to those who decide to choose all (choosing all means to potentially suffer and die as disciple while warring against the devil). In other words, if you can only do halfway, you shouldn't be a disciple. Of course, choosing nothing means making peace with the devil, which is a "wretched" alternative.

Calculating the cost here means weighing our options: do we want to suffer as disciple of Jesus but with eternal life as a reward, or do we want to be comfortable in the world but with eternal damnation as punishment? Jesus presents the only two honorable options. Don't go halfway and bring bad name to other Jesus's followers by trying to be saints but quit in the middle.

The Pulpit commentary on Luke 14:28-30 about the builder made a similar point:

So in the spiritual life, the would-be professor finds such living harder than he supposed, and so gives up trying after the nobler way of living altogether; and the world, who watched his feeble efforts and listened with an incredulous smile when he proclaimed his intentions, now ridicules him, and pours scorn upon what it considers an unattainable ideal. Such an attempt and failure injure the cause of God.

Non Reformed Interpretations

The OP disagrees with this interpretation, saying that the other King with 20,000 troops represents God, so making peace to the OP means completely different:

"don't start following Jesus if you are not confident, but negotiate with Him", and sooner rather than later, when He is still far away, rather than when He is near, and notices you don't have wedding garments, or oil for your lamp, or faith.

I cannot find support for that interpretation from a Reformed source. However, I did find a 1908 Catholic commentary on Luke mentioning how St. Gregory (unlike St. Cyril) thinks that the double army King is Christ:

But S. Gregory (Hom. 37) gives another interpretation. “The king that is about to come against us is Christ, who will come with a double army against a single one. For while we are scarcely prepared in deeds only, He will discomfit us at once, both in thought and deed. Let us send Him therefore an embassy; our tears, our works of mercy, and propitiatory victim.”

I also find a very interesting research article on this parable from the 2nd Temple perspective, with focus on the Hebrew idioms current at the time, plus a redaction theory of how the parable came to the final version in Luke. (Warning: the website's project is not Christian, it's an attempt to uncover the Hebraism within the Synoptic gospels. See rebuttal in the next section below.).

One of the 2 goals of the article is to precisely address the question:

What is the meaning of ἐρωτᾷ εἰς εἰρήνην (“he asks for peace”) in the King Going to War simile (Luke 14:32; L18)?

Their conclusion is:

It therefore appears that the original meaning of Jesus’ simile was not that the weaker king negotiated terms of peace, but that his submission to his stronger adversary was expressed in offering a humble salutation. Luke preserved this Hebraism which he found in his pre-synoptic source, but its meaning was not understood by later copyists of Luke’s Gospel. They therefore attempted to make Luke’s sentence intelligible by improving the Greek, which accounts for the variant readings in New Testament manuscripts.

We believe that the Tower Builder and King Going to War similes are an attempt to explain why full-time discipleship is not suitable for everyone. Not everyone had the freedom and the ability to give up their livelihoods and leave their families in order to travel with Jesus from place to place, obligations that were incumbent upon Jesus’ full-time disciples. We believe that these historical circumstances must be recognized in order to appreciate Jesus’ teaching on this issue.

Jesus did not equate becoming a full-time disciple with salvation, nor did he regard non-disciples as hostile to his mission or exclude them from the benefits of his ministry. To the contrary, Jesus recognized that for the vast majority of people it was better that they enjoy his words and deeds as observers and beneficiaries and that they put his teachings into practice in their daily lives—like the crowds who listened to Jesus’ teachings and who held him in high regard—than to leave their homes and communities in order to become full-time disciples with absolute commitments and obligations to Jesus’ mission. Full-time discipleship was for the select few who could set aside their ordinary activities and engagements for a time in order to master Jesus’ message in order that they, in turn, might accurately pass it on to others.

In the Tower Builder and King Going to War similes it is not the willingness or the desire of the men to set about their tasks, but their ability to successfully execute their intentions. Similarly, we believe that the situation the similes address does not pertain to the sympathy of would-be disciples to Jesus’ message, but to their ability to do their job well. Jesus was willing to take on as disciples only those whom he believed were up to the task.

Personal assessment from the Reformed tradition

As we can see from the above, this parable has been interpreted in many different ways corresponding to one's faith tradition / principles of interpretation. Unfortunately I couldn't find a clear & certifiably Reformed interpretation for the "peace" that the OP wants to interpret.

The 2nd Temple research article is definitely not suitable for Reformed consumption because the Jerusalem school hypothesis has received decisive rebuttal and "discommendation" (his word) in a very well researched and well written 1992 article by Michael L. Brown, an expert in Near Eastern languages and a conservative Bible college faculty member. The article points out how the Jerusalem School project turns out to advance a theory that the Greek canonized gospels we possess today are corrupted in such a way that they can no longer be considered inspired. The article discussed at length how the project has deep flaws in their assumptions as well as their bias in NOT presenting a more likely theory based on the widespread use of Septuagint in the time that the gospels were written. So by extension, their interpretation of the simile should be discarded from the Reformed perspective.

As a side note, I highly recommend studying Michael Brown's 1992 article (pdf version here) in depth to arm believers with critical thinking against the rising tide of attempts (some very subtle) to discredit the trustworthiness of the gospels in the form that we possess today. This includes other past attempts like the Jesus Seminar or the still influential Bart Ehrman project. All conservative Christians from all denominations believe that the gospels present faithfully the teaching of Jesus, despite some difficulties in understanding some of the parables.

Reformed tradition is strongly saying that God will provide everything an elect's need for salvation and that the elect is supposed to receive everything with gratitude. At the same time, the elect has to work hard to discern and defeat any temptation to sin with the grace that God will faithfully provide continuously until we enter heaven. The elect has to be a disciple, there is no choice. As long as the elect sides with God by completely trusting Jesus and receiving all grace with gratitude, there is no bargaining for peace needed. Therefore, it is unlikely that the 20,000 troops King represents God, and to me the Pulpit commentary is quite congruent with the Reformed overall theology. Therefore, the king with 20,000 troops represents the king of the world, the Devil, and the elect has to engage war with the Devil, with God's help of course.

The Reformed tradition moral lesson is thus: we cannot win against the Devil on our own, we need Jesus to save us. And please don't embarrass the cause by going halfway because it will damage the "brand".

Then the "halfway believer", the farmer who started the tower or the king who initiated the war but who quit in the middle probably represents someone who isn't one of the elect because God doesn't give him/her the grace to persevere to the end (the "P" in TULIP) while the elect will be able to win against the devil (even if the elect has to die prematurely) and receive the eternal inheritance.