Mat 10:37 He who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

"Love" is phileo, which means "to love," "to regard with affection," and "to approve of."

"More than" is huper, which means "for the sake of," "above," "over," and "beyond."

"Worthy" is axios, which means "having weight," "counterbalancing," and "worth" in the sense of one thing balancing another.

In all these discussions of "worth," the idea in Greek is one of balance. What is more important? What has the most weight? In that sense, no one is completely worthy of God, but Christ is saying that those who put God first are worthy of God while those who put the loves of their life first and not worthy of God. In other words, God is more important than our lives, the role that we are cast in.

As an aside, the mention of love here takes me to a larger theme in Christ's words. Generally, Christ divides the world into physical, social, and spiritual (interior, personal). God created the natural physical world. Christ comes to reform the social world, created by man, with the Kingdom of Heaven (universal rule). The Spirit, through the universal rule, privately moves the inner, personal world of individuals.

On an individual level, these three realms translate into our physical needs, intellectual needs, and spiritual needs. All of these needs can be either a source of blessings or burdens. Christ (unlike John the Baptist) seldom speaks against our physical needs. He does, however, often speaks against our "intellectual" needs to be accepted by society. This is clearly a burden. His teaching was meant to relieve us of this burden.

On the spiritual level, Christ always talks about spirit in terms of emotions, here, the emotion of love. These emotions also can be a burden or a blessing. Here, love can take us toward God and is be a blessing. However, if we let our caring for our families become more important than what is good, that same caring becomes burden.