Self-Denial and the True Gospel

“Exemplifying Christ starts with self denial.”

When Jesus called His disciples, His words were simple, “Follow me”, and that is exactly what they did. They left everything they knew behind, without a word, without question, and followed Him. What’s more, his disciples soon found that following Jesus was much more than literal, but following also meant, in deed, in speech, in act. As disciples today, we have been called to do the same, to follow Him. But it seems so vague, so vast, and maybe confusing at times as to what that looks like. Yet, the command is simple, from Jesus himself, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross DAILY and follow me.” (Luke 9:23).

Jesus gave the command, the simple blueprint to follow…if you want to follow Him, YOU must DAILY, deny yourself and take up your cross. It is interesting that Jesus starts here in His call to discipleship. He starts with the call for one to understand their need to view self in the light of God’s holiness. Jesus is ultimately saying that if you want to be with me, if you want to enter my kingdom, you have to start by hating everything YOU are apart from me, knowing the only good that you may see in yourself in my eyes is filthy rags. You must see your good works as wretched, the way I do, and come to a place where you are in desperate need of mercy, seeing how truly unworthy you are. This is not a message that would sell well in society today. In fact it is opposite of what we see preached from pulpits even, and of course across mainstream media, in homes, and in schools across the world. We are all about self-esteem, pride, and seeing the “good” in people. Jesus was not about that, in fact in Romans 3 Paul reminds us that, NOBODY IS GOOD, NO NOT ONE!” You must deny yourself.

But why does Jesus use the idea of taking up the cross with this self-denial? Crosses at this time were instruments of death, of execution. Jesus is simply saying that you come to a place that you have denied yourself so much that you are willing to die. John MacArthur put it well, “Now if you want to follow Me, if you want to come after Me, you're going to have to feel this, you're going to have to understand your true condition, you're going to have to be emotionally overwhelmed with this condition, sorrow, shame, to the degree where you are eager to deny yourself, you're willing to go whatever the cost you're going to follow Christ, even if it's death. That's repentance. That's what it is. It is self-hate, self-denial.”

You see people hate the true Gospel message, not because it is so difficult to grasp, but for the very same reasons it was hated thousands of years ago when Jesus himself preached it…because people LOVE themselves far too much. “Jesus said, "You want to come into the Kingdom? It's going to take more than believing there's somebody up there. Where's the shame? Where's the remorse? Where's the overwhelming conviction of one's sin?"
And so, the principle is just basic. It's basic gospel truth. You want to follow Jesus, do you? Then hate yourself. The utter disavowing of oneself as having any value in unredeemed condition, and even in redeemed condition our only value is as a tool picked up by the sovereign Lord. So there is self-denial, and then cross bearing, and then following that is righteous obedience as we follow after Christ. That's just reminding you of what's involved in that principle.” (John MacArthur)

And for the believer it is an EVERY DAY thing, self-denial, must mark our daily lives. We must find ourselves seeking to bring glory and honor to God through our denial of self. We must love Him so much that we are willing to follow Him, no matter what the cost, even to death. A life marked by self-denial is a perfect picture to a fallen world of Jesus because it was what He was marked by. Practice self denial in the little things, say no when you have every right to say yes, train your body as Paul said, so that it doesn't master you, so that when you MUST deny self, you will be able to. And a life marked by this self-denial goes against everything man seeks to promote, it looks radically different in this world, and it brings the Gospel to the forefront…bringing Jesus all the glory.