Simple answer to a major problem

A few years ago, our daughter said, “I finally figured out what is the matter with this crazy world; everyone is totally selfish!” We agreed with her sage observation, as does the Word of God.

Tozer does too. He begins today’s devotional with describing true Christianity as dealing with “the problem of the self-life, with the basic matter of ‘me, myself and I.’” The reason for these statements is found in God’s description of sin:

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6)

Without intervention, everyone goes their own way. For some, this does not seem too bad. For others it becomes serious to the point of destructive behavior. In either extreme, God’s solution was to lay that sin and selfishness in His Son Jesus Christ and set us free from the tyranny of self.

Now, as a Christian, I must live that out. Instead of being bound in my own way, God has set me free to serve Him. Yet living righteously has its challenges, most of them being old habits and the pride of thinking I know what to do and how to think — without asking God or relying on the Spirit of God. Self is still a problem, but as Tozer writes, “This selfish I cannot live if God is to be glorified in this human life.”

“But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:17–23)

God gave me Jesus as the solution. He also restored my ability to choose. Before Christ, I was a slave to sin and self. With Christ, I can choose how I will live, knowing that God has no interest or support for that old way of life. In it is the “essence of rebellion and disobedience and unbelief.” My pride of me, myself and I is anti-God and very sinful.

Jesus told us to take up our cross daily. Many interpret this cross as something nasty in our lives that we need to tolerate, forgetting that a cross is a place of death. His words are better understood as dying daily to that old life and living in the power of my new life. I need to, yet I cannot do this without Him.

Yesterday, I was filled with joy and singing in my heart through the day. At one point, I thought that I didn’t want this to stop, but was acutely aware that if I started enjoying the joy instead of enjoying my Savior, that joy would elude me. Joy is a by-product, not a goal.

^^^^^^^^^

Jesus, You are the goal. When my heart and mind are taken up with You, then the slavery of sin is not even casting a shadow. Yet I know that I cannot make this happen; it is a result of Your grace and the work of the Holy Spirit. My part is to take up that cross and remember that self and sin died there, with You and forever. Alleluia what a Savior!

   

Cross-bearing and amazing joy

The biblical idea of taking up our cross is often thought to refer to endurance in the difficult circumstances of life. That is, a cranky mother-in-law is a “cross I must bear” or a handicapped child, or anything we cannot change, so must endure and consider our cross.

However, that is not the idea of cross-bearing intended by Scripture. When Jesus bore His cross, He was on His way to die. He was going to make the ultimate sacrifice for the eternal good of others. All through the New Testament, God speaks of sacrifice in terms of giving up what my human self wants in order to glorify God and edify others. The example of Christ is used saying I’m to have His mind, think the way He thought, that I might put others first and die to self.

The Old Testament prefigures the death of Jesus Christ in those sacrificial offerings for sin. A lamb was burned on an altar in place of the sinner or sinners who deserved death for their rebellion and disobedience. While smaller sacrifices were made, the ultimate sacrifices were about blood and death, about yielding all on the altar.

We who believe in Jesus Christ know that we are to be sacrifices. Romans 12 says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).

In presenting myself to God, I am making a sacrifice that involves dying to my old life. This happened in salvation where the Spirit of God regenerated the old me and the new person now lives. I think of it as an identity change, sort of like becoming a soldier. However, when God enlisted me, I had no idea how a soldier should think, talk, or behave. I’ve been in boot camp ever since, learning the ways of Christ and how this new person should live.

One of my early lessons was about dying to self. The Bible uses various terms, but this means choices. When push comes to shove, I am to ignore, even put to death, my old ways and obey God. While this is at first difficult, there is great joy in it.

This “obey-die to self-experience joy” described in the New Testament is also prefigured in the Old Testament. One example is how a a wicked king led the people of God astray for many years, then a new king came to the throne and “he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord” and restored worship in the temple . . .

Then Hezekiah commanded that the burnt offering be offered on the altar. And when the burnt offering began, the song to the Lord began also, and the trumpets, accompanied by the instruments of David king of Israel. The whole assembly worshiped, and the singers sang, and the trumpeters sounded. All this continued until the burnt offering was finished. When the offering was finished, the king and all who were present with him bowed themselves and worshiped. And Hezekiah the king and the officials commanded the Levites to sing praises to the Lord with the words of David and of Asaph the seer. And they sang praises with gladness, and they bowed down and worshiped. (2 Chronicles 29:27–30)

Later, Jesus was the ultimate burnt offering for sin. The Bible says we need to look to Him now, “the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1–2).

After the horror of His great sacrifice for us, Jesus experienced great joy. It was in anticipation of this joy that He endured the suffering and shame of yielding, of saying, “not my will but thine be done” and then willingly experienced the excruciating agony of dying.

Today’s devotional says, “It is not till the burnt offering begins that we ever hear a single strain of music.” The author of this says that every human life has got its cross and we need to distinguish that from only the shadow from the cross. The shadow is something we enter and pass out of, but the cross must be taken up and carried to that place of death.

I know that the cross is about sin, my own and the sins of others that give me pain. A deep question is how I think about these. Do I cling to and cherish my own sin, wanting my own will to be done? Do I hate the sin of others and want to condemn and fling them away from me? The reading says that if those are my choices, there will be no song, only hardening of heart and a growing bitterness.

But if I can take up that cross and consider myself dead to sin, most certainly to my own, but also to the sins of others in that I do not let them affect me personally, my heart experiences the strangest thing — joy. There is harmony, even perfect music that begins only when I yield to the will of God and become that living sacrifice. When the burnt offering begins, so also do the songs of the Lord.

Cross bearing

A soft-spoken Christian gentleman preaching in a rural church said, “Just because I love my wife with all my heart does not mean that I hate everyone else.” This was his way of explaining the following words from Jesus…

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26–27)

Another preacher points to Abraham as an example, saying that apart from God, nothing could have been dearer to Abraham than his son Isaac. Then God tested him to uncover whether he loved Isaac more than he loved God. He adds that if we love God supremely, we will thank Him for what He is accomplishing through our trials and sufferings. Those are tests also.

I know from personal experience that when I love myself more than I love God, then I question His wisdom and become upset with those tests. In my selfish mind, God should treat me better than that. Yet I know the truth; loving God and doing His will is far better for me than having my own way. I also know that if I love anything more than I love Him, He must deal with that affection or remove its object so I will grow spiritually. 

Jesus does not ask me to hate anyone. Instead, He means that I must love God so much that I am willing to be separated from my family, even my desires for my own life. I am to love Him supremely and determine to do His will first. He is at the center of everything, no matter how strongly others or my own desires may appeal to me.

This is continually a challenge. I might think that I am wholeheartedly committed to the will of God, but when He tests me, I discover that I’m not as willing as I thought. 

Some of the challenges are simple, as in our current process of downsizing and moving. I must decide what to toss and what to keep. As I go through my stuff, I’m praying for wisdom. We don’t have space for those “useless” items with “ego significance” yet I noticed that it easier to toss college papers with red ink than those with 100/100 and “Excellent” marked at the top. At this, God kept whispering to me,

Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 9:23–24)

Other challenges are less complex but more difficult. For instance, when I have opportunity to speak of Christ to a family member, will I do it? Or will I freeze up, worried that I will offend them? When I am involved in a personal project and highly enjoying it, will I drop everything because a Christian friend (or an unsaved neighbor) calls with a long, long story to share?

The ultimate test is in that cross-bearing reference. Many spiritualize this to mean a heavy duty or responsibility yet, because of the context, this is likely more literal. In those days, bearing a cross meant going to your death. Jesus likely used this as an illustration for the first part of what He said. It refers to the extent of dying to myself and to all that is dear to me that I might live a new life for Christ.

Again, this does not mean that I hate others. In fact, it means that I love others with a more radical and extreme love than ever before, a love that denies self totally and is not interested in what they can do for me, but in what I can do for them. This radical love means giving up all that I want in order to sacrificially serve and bless God and other people.

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Lord, sometimes I forget the simple truth of the Cross. It is first a place of dying. Your Word tells me that I died with Christ; I was crucified with Him in His death. I know that being united with Christ includes having new life too. I’d rather focus on that, but know that the dying part is important. Without remembering I am dead in Christ and dead to all my selfish desires, I cannot experience the wonder of what You have given me in Your Son. Today, whatever the tests may be, remind me to take up my cross and, wherever it leads me, wisely follow You.  

Self-denial eventually benefits those who deny themselves

A man named Simon was in Jerusalem, no doubt for the Passover. He was in the crowd watching another man carrying a cross on the way to be crucified, not an uncommon sight in this city under the rule of Rome. Since then, the idea of “cross-bearing” has been associated with punishment, endurance, and even death.

As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross. (Matthew 27:32)

Most of the time, bearing a cross gets a bad rap. Christians talk of some difficult task or person in their lives that is painful to endure, but they must accept it as part of what God wants for their lives. It is their “cross” and they assume they must heroically bear it for Jesus, using these verses to justify the sacrifice they are making.

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” (Luke 9:23–26)

And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10:38)

John Piper, in his book Desiring God, invites readers to think about this in a different way. Instead of thinking self-denial as a strong indifference to what we want for ourselves and not caring whether we are destroyed, he sees this as a strong desire for something better. Being willing to bear a cross is more about a deep longing for true life, a better life, something greater than what we already have.  First Peter 3:10 says this desire for a “good life and better days” should motivate us to speak rightly and move away from evil. The same desire ought also move us to “deny ourselves all the lesser pleasures and comforts of life” so we might have something better. 

That is, if self-denial is a hatred of self, then Piper says we would be “indifferent to the value of God’s gift of life” and “would dishonor it.” He suggests that our longing for life should be measured by the amount of comfort we are willing to give up to get it. The gift of eternal life in God’s presence is glorified if we are willing to ‘hate our lives in this world’ in order to get it that better life.  

Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. (John 12:25)

This is how self-denial is God-centered, yet is still about what is best for me. It means that I give up the short-term benefits in favor of the long-term benefits. It is similar to what I do when saving money for a big item instead of spending it on immediate temptations, or when I eat less to lose weight. I do these things because I care about myself, not because I hate myself. I see a greater value in self-denial than in self-indulgence. 

This is what Jesus did when He went to the cross. He accepted the horror of it because of the greater glory that was coming beyond it, and bids me to think the same way...

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1–2)

Jesus denied self, but knew a greater glory was coming. For that glory, He endured the cross.

Simon didn’t have a choice when it came to carrying the literal cross of Jesus Christ. He was conscripted without any promise of a reward. On the other hand, God says that when I choose to deny short-term gain, or personal glory, or even what I assume is a safer way to live, then God will reward me. Do I want the very best? Or am I content with lesser rewards?

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Lord, daily You offer options. Do I take up whatever will reward me now, or can I fix my eyes on the rewards that will come after I deny myself to follow You? I also know that self-denial is not always about enduring pain or difficult people and circumstances. Instead, it is about walking so close to You that I can take on whatever You ask me without thinking that I might be missing something else if I refuse.