“When He had called the people to Himself with His disciples also, He said to them, ‘Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?’” (Mark 8:34–37)
The heart of the gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is not only the heart of our faith as recorded in our confessions, but it is the heart of our faith as it must be lived out in the daily-ness of our lives. This is what it is to follow Christ. Christ has called us to a life of death that leads to life.
How do we, like Paul, “die daily”? Certainly we must be willing to be killed for the sake of Christ and the gospel, just as He was put to death for our sakes and for our salvation. And there are Christians throughout history and throughout the world today who make this sacrifice. But is there no application for those of us who are not under the immediate threat of being put to death for our faith? On the contrary, if we are not dying to ourselves through the self-denial Christ is speaking of here, it is highly unlikely we will make the greater sacrifice of laying down our lives on a literal cross made of wood.
To many Christians the doctrine of Christian liberty is far more appealing than the doctrine of self-denial. And certainly extremes in either of these doctrines are dangerous distractions from the true life of a disciple. One of the dangers is that of reacting to extremes in the one by embracing the extremes of the other. Indulgence is no proper substitute for asceticism, just as standing barefoot in the snow eating stale crusts of bread is not the only answer to overfeeding “the flesh.”
But in modern American Christianity it would appear we do not have as much of the struggle against ascetic extremes as we do in actually following Christ in the call to self-denial. This is due at least in part to our broad and flashy but often shallow depth of faith. We often do not really believe we will find life by losing it. We do not believe our cross is actually the road to our resurrection. We like the part about being forgiven of sins and having extension of life, but we all too often chafe under a new life in Christ that means humility, self-control, looking out for the interests of others, “buffeting” my body so as not to be disqualified in the race of faith. Life is found, Christ’s call repeats, through losing it for Christ's sake and for the sake of others.
As with all other virtues, self-denial is to be “put on” and worn every day and for every moment, not only on special occasions. Self-denial gets up in the middle of the night to comfort a crying baby, sacrificing sleep—“your life”—to bring life and love and the gospel to a child in need. Self-denial takes on the risk of the trouble and pain and patience it takes to make a friendship—or a marriage—work in a sinful but redeemed world. Self-denial does the dishes, takes out the trash, sympathizes with his spouse’s headache because the part of him that wants to do what’s right wins out over the part of him that doesn’t.
“Dear God, Author of Life and Teacher of Mankind, teach us how to die. We give You thanks again for the willing sacrifice of our Savior, Your Son and our Lord, Jesus Christ, who lay down His life—and took it up again—for our sakes, that we might have life through Him. Make us like Him, dear God, and help us to deny ourselves for the sake of others, for the sake of Christ, for the gospel’s sake, and for the sake of our own souls. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.”
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