February 13th, 2025
by Raef Chenery
by Raef Chenery
Self-denial is near the center of the Christian faith. In fact, the great reformer John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion dedicates an entire chapter to the theme of self-denial, the title of which is A Summary of the Christian Life. Of Self Denial. According to Calvin and the great Reformed tradition “We are not our own: therefore, neither our own reason nor will is to rule our acts and counsels. We are not our own: therefore, let us not make it our end to seek what may be agreeable to our carnal nature. We are not our own: therefore, as far as possible, let us forget ourselves and the things that are ours.” Where does Calvin get this idea? From Christ. We read in Luke 9:23-24 Jesus’ words.
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.
This “self-denial” that Christ speaks of is so central to the Christian faith, that one cannot “follow” him without it. In this post I will attempt to lay out ten separate aspects of self-denial and cross bearing to help shape our understanding of what Christ meant. The aim here is not to systematize self-denial in such a way that it becomes a checklist of do’s and don’t, but rather to sketch a portrait of the full picture of self denial, to counter some of the false caricatures that we tend to believe, and to challenge us to push deeper into our faith and dependence on God.
A Self Denial is a Renouncing of One’s Own Will: The word for deny is a very strong word. It carries the ideas of disregarding or renouncing oneself. This word is used in the exact same way in Titus 2:12 which reads,
Titus 2:12 “training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions…
In the same that we are instructed to turn from and renounce ungodliness, we are told to turn from and renounce ourselves. In other words, we must train ourselves to reject the pursuit of our own wills, our own desires, our own ambitions, our own agendas, and to fully submit ourselves to Christ’s will, Christ’s desires, and Christ’s agendas. Anywhere in our life where we discover our will and Christ’s will at odds with one another, we reject our will and choose his instead. As Calvin writes, “For as the surest source of destruction to men is to obey themselves, so the only haven of safety is to have no other will, no other wisdom, than to follow the Lord wherever He leads.” This this the beautiful life. This is the life that is truly life. Following Christ fully, surrendered to his design, hungry for his will. Anything less that his is settling for shadows when God has called to the substance.
B Carrying our Cross is an embracing kingdom suffering: Carrying a cross is connected to the idea of denying ourselves, but it is different. What Jesus experienced when he carried his cross to his crucifixion site was common in the Roman empire. The purpose of this was two-fold. On the one hand it was a public shaming, and on the other hand it was a symbol for the man that his life and his will were over. There is at least two ideas here worth considering. First, is that each of us is called to a kind of faith that would follow Christ unto death. We cannot follow Christ when it is easy and forsake him when it is difficult. Our denial of our own will and adherence to Christ is such that were Christ to call us to die, we would willingly do so.
Second, the idea implicit within “carrying one’s cross” is that God will lay before each Christian unique challenges, callings, hardships, and sufferings to bear for the sake of Christ and His Kingdom. There will be times when in order to serve our King, Christ will ask you to endure some hardship. When those moments come, our responsibility is not to flee form the crosses God calls us to bear, but to pick them up, and to carry them as a soldier in Christ’s army. For in the carrying of our cross we find our faith deepens, our understanding of Christ thickens, and our obedience to His will over our own is confirmed. As Calvin says, “I say that by the cross they are also trained to obedience because they are thus taught to live not according to their own wish, but at the disposal of God. Indeed, did all things proceed as they wish, they would not know what it is to follow God.”
C Self-Denial & cross bearing do not mean pursuing a life of misery: Throughout history some sects of Christianity have mistaken the language of “self-denial” and “cross bearing” to mean that God desires Christians to be ascetics, to essentially abandon and forsake anything and everything that might give us pleasure in this world. This could not be further from the truth. While the life of an authentic Christian is full of many hardships, it is also saturated in joy, and the life that is truly life. Jesus and his disciples were full of joy very often. David leapt for joy before the ark of the covenant. The Christian can confidently read Psalm 23:6 which reads
Psalm 23:6 “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
We might sacrifice much in this life in order to follow Jesus. But, that which we gain, both in this life and the next, is not worth comparing with that which we may have given up. In fact, what we discover on the path of self-denial, is that the very things God calls us to give up, are the very things that are hindering us from deeper intimacy and greater abiding in Christ.
D Self Denial & Cross Bearing are not only for those in intensely hostile cultures: It would be easy to see our brothers in the persecuted church around the world and throughout history and to imagine that this verse mostly speaks to them. It is those precious saints in the Middle East, in underground churches in China, and throughout India, that really need to deny themselves and carry their cross. This vision of “cross bearing for thee, but not for me” is a tragic mistake. Luke 9:23 begins “If anyone would come after me.” This is a word that is a general statement that is to be applied in every follower of Christ’s life wherever and whenever they live, whether that be the Bible Belt or Afghanistan. The crosses we bear will certainly look different from place to place, but all Christians are called to this spiritual duty. Again Calvin writes,
“For as we do not all equally labor under the same disease, so we do not all need the same difficult cure. Hence, we see that all are not exercised with the same kind of cross. While the heavenly Physician treats some more gently, in the case of others He employs harsher remedies, His purpose being to provide a cure for all. Still none is left free and untouched because He knows that all without a single exception are diseased."
E Self Denial and Cross Bearing are essential elements of standard Christian faith: Jesus very plainly teaches that if we do not deny ourselves, or if we do not carry our cross, then we are not followers of Jesus. However much we might know about Christianity, however much we might have studied the Scriptures, and however we may be perceived by others in the Church, to fail to deny oneself is to “lose or forfeit” one’s life.
How then does “denying oneself” not become a good work that our justification is based on, some spiritual deed we must do to prove our worth to God? To answer that question we must understand God’s grace in our life. Self-denial is a work of grace, against our fleshly natures, to produce in us repentance and faith in Christ. In other words, the Holy Spirit first moves in us and produces a desire to deny ourselves and to submit to Christ. Therefore, if no Christ centered self-denial has taken place, then the Holy Spirit has not yet intervened in our life. We are still dead in our trespasses and in need of salvation.
F Self Denial and Cross Bearing are exceedingly broad commands: Jesus in this passage speaks about “losing our life,” the whole of us. This is to say that denying oneself is not something that impacts or affects only one part or one aspect of our life. All of our life is to be regularly submitted to these simple principles of submission to Christ. Like sugar well mixed into a cake batter, it permeates every part of the cake in equal amounts. If we deny ourselves in our marriage, but fail to deny ourselves in our finances, we have not yet learned fully the way of Christ. If we deny ourselves on our Sundays, but fail to deny ourselves on our Mondays, we have not yet learned fully the way of Christ. If we deny ourselves when others are watching, but fail to deny ourselves when we are alone, we have not yet learned fully the way of Christ.
The Christian life is a journey of increasingly learning how to practice self-denial. There is an initial surge at the moment of faith, when Christ first instills in us a sense of the divine. But the work of self-denial is not finished. Our sanctification is intricately woven around our justification. Those who denied themselves at the point of saving faith, in order to receive Christ, will indeed continue to learn to deny themselves over time. As Octavius Winslow says so beautifully
“Are you, my reader, a searcher of this life? Are you breathing for it, panting after it, seeking it? Then, be it known to you, that he who inspired that desire is Himself the Life for which you seek. That heaving of your heart, that yearning of your spirit, that feeling after God, if haply you may find Him, is the first gentle pulsation of a life that shall never die”
G Self Denial and Cross Bearing are not mystical ideas but rather are practical ideas: Many Christians believe in their minds that they are those who deny themselves regularly, but when pushed to share something practical way they have denied themselves, or pushed to reveal a time in recent history when Christ laid a cross before them to bear, and they willingly carried the cross, they go hush, or they describes something that is just a normal part of every person’s life, both believer and non-believer. That is because many men believe self-denial to be something simply of the soul, something totally hidden, something uniquely between God and man. That is not what Christ intends in this passage. Self denial is very practical. It works itself out in the real world with real decisions that we actually feel. The cross of Christ caused pain and discomfort upon our Lord, and when we carry our cross, for the glory of Christ, it ought to cause us pain and discomfort. Each Christian ought to be able to look back at the last year, and tell the story of how they submitted their will to the will of Christ.
H The need for self denial is rooted in our own corruption of mind and flesh: The Christian denies themselves because they don’t trust themselves. One of the core doctrines of the Christian, as taught in Scripture, is that sin has so rampantly worked its way through our heart and our mind and our flesh, that were we to rely on our own mind and our own will, we would always be lead astray, we would always steer away from God.
Jeremiah 17:9
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
Then again we read in Psalm 53
Psalm 53:3 “They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.”
Therefore, self-denial is simply practically living out what we say we believe. We don’t trust our own wills because we know how deep sin goes. Our wills have been affected deeply the rebellion against God! If we don’t deny ourselves, then we are lead by sin filled corrupted mind and heart, nothing less.
I Self Denial & Cross Bearing is the absolute belief that every word of God’s Word is to be our standard for life: If we connect this with the previous point. Denying oneself accepts that if left to ourself we will make a mess of it. We will fail to glorify God. We will live in sin ourselves, and propagate sin around us. Therefore, we must cling to the wisdom that comes from God for all of life. Self denial requires that we make decisions for our life from God’s Word and not our own. His is the unchanging standard that gives life. His is the unchanging standard that builds righteousness and goodness in life. And so to deny oneself is to choose to say no to what you might do if left to your own will, and choose instead to say yes to what God has revealed according to His Word. Not according to a premonition we had. Not according to a feeling we had. Not according to a word that someone has spoken over us. If we base our direction from God on premonitions and feelings we will find that our premonitions and feelings tend to align with our own will. God’s Word, the Bible, dictates how life ought to go!
J Self Denial and Cross Bearing are to be done daily: This is not something that we do once in our life and then can confidently say, “Yes I have denied myself.” Christ says in verse 23, “daily” we must pick our cross and follow him. Each and every day of our life we must wake up and confirm our commitments. We are to be like the prophetess Anna Luke chapter 2, who we are told “did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.” Our self-denial must be daily, an ongoing, perpetual submission to God, waiting on God, following God. One of the best ways I have discoved to do this is through morning devotions are filling our minds with God’s Word, and engaging God in prayer, especially the prayer of confession and forgiveness of sin. It sets our minds properly at the beginning of the day. It is both an outward act that posits us beneath God, and an inward act that renews the spirit at the start of each day.
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.
This “self-denial” that Christ speaks of is so central to the Christian faith, that one cannot “follow” him without it. In this post I will attempt to lay out ten separate aspects of self-denial and cross bearing to help shape our understanding of what Christ meant. The aim here is not to systematize self-denial in such a way that it becomes a checklist of do’s and don’t, but rather to sketch a portrait of the full picture of self denial, to counter some of the false caricatures that we tend to believe, and to challenge us to push deeper into our faith and dependence on God.
A Self Denial is a Renouncing of One’s Own Will: The word for deny is a very strong word. It carries the ideas of disregarding or renouncing oneself. This word is used in the exact same way in Titus 2:12 which reads,
Titus 2:12 “training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions…
In the same that we are instructed to turn from and renounce ungodliness, we are told to turn from and renounce ourselves. In other words, we must train ourselves to reject the pursuit of our own wills, our own desires, our own ambitions, our own agendas, and to fully submit ourselves to Christ’s will, Christ’s desires, and Christ’s agendas. Anywhere in our life where we discover our will and Christ’s will at odds with one another, we reject our will and choose his instead. As Calvin writes, “For as the surest source of destruction to men is to obey themselves, so the only haven of safety is to have no other will, no other wisdom, than to follow the Lord wherever He leads.” This this the beautiful life. This is the life that is truly life. Following Christ fully, surrendered to his design, hungry for his will. Anything less that his is settling for shadows when God has called to the substance.
B Carrying our Cross is an embracing kingdom suffering: Carrying a cross is connected to the idea of denying ourselves, but it is different. What Jesus experienced when he carried his cross to his crucifixion site was common in the Roman empire. The purpose of this was two-fold. On the one hand it was a public shaming, and on the other hand it was a symbol for the man that his life and his will were over. There is at least two ideas here worth considering. First, is that each of us is called to a kind of faith that would follow Christ unto death. We cannot follow Christ when it is easy and forsake him when it is difficult. Our denial of our own will and adherence to Christ is such that were Christ to call us to die, we would willingly do so.
Second, the idea implicit within “carrying one’s cross” is that God will lay before each Christian unique challenges, callings, hardships, and sufferings to bear for the sake of Christ and His Kingdom. There will be times when in order to serve our King, Christ will ask you to endure some hardship. When those moments come, our responsibility is not to flee form the crosses God calls us to bear, but to pick them up, and to carry them as a soldier in Christ’s army. For in the carrying of our cross we find our faith deepens, our understanding of Christ thickens, and our obedience to His will over our own is confirmed. As Calvin says, “I say that by the cross they are also trained to obedience because they are thus taught to live not according to their own wish, but at the disposal of God. Indeed, did all things proceed as they wish, they would not know what it is to follow God.”
C Self-Denial & cross bearing do not mean pursuing a life of misery: Throughout history some sects of Christianity have mistaken the language of “self-denial” and “cross bearing” to mean that God desires Christians to be ascetics, to essentially abandon and forsake anything and everything that might give us pleasure in this world. This could not be further from the truth. While the life of an authentic Christian is full of many hardships, it is also saturated in joy, and the life that is truly life. Jesus and his disciples were full of joy very often. David leapt for joy before the ark of the covenant. The Christian can confidently read Psalm 23:6 which reads
Psalm 23:6 “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
We might sacrifice much in this life in order to follow Jesus. But, that which we gain, both in this life and the next, is not worth comparing with that which we may have given up. In fact, what we discover on the path of self-denial, is that the very things God calls us to give up, are the very things that are hindering us from deeper intimacy and greater abiding in Christ.
D Self Denial & Cross Bearing are not only for those in intensely hostile cultures: It would be easy to see our brothers in the persecuted church around the world and throughout history and to imagine that this verse mostly speaks to them. It is those precious saints in the Middle East, in underground churches in China, and throughout India, that really need to deny themselves and carry their cross. This vision of “cross bearing for thee, but not for me” is a tragic mistake. Luke 9:23 begins “If anyone would come after me.” This is a word that is a general statement that is to be applied in every follower of Christ’s life wherever and whenever they live, whether that be the Bible Belt or Afghanistan. The crosses we bear will certainly look different from place to place, but all Christians are called to this spiritual duty. Again Calvin writes,
“For as we do not all equally labor under the same disease, so we do not all need the same difficult cure. Hence, we see that all are not exercised with the same kind of cross. While the heavenly Physician treats some more gently, in the case of others He employs harsher remedies, His purpose being to provide a cure for all. Still none is left free and untouched because He knows that all without a single exception are diseased."
E Self Denial and Cross Bearing are essential elements of standard Christian faith: Jesus very plainly teaches that if we do not deny ourselves, or if we do not carry our cross, then we are not followers of Jesus. However much we might know about Christianity, however much we might have studied the Scriptures, and however we may be perceived by others in the Church, to fail to deny oneself is to “lose or forfeit” one’s life.
How then does “denying oneself” not become a good work that our justification is based on, some spiritual deed we must do to prove our worth to God? To answer that question we must understand God’s grace in our life. Self-denial is a work of grace, against our fleshly natures, to produce in us repentance and faith in Christ. In other words, the Holy Spirit first moves in us and produces a desire to deny ourselves and to submit to Christ. Therefore, if no Christ centered self-denial has taken place, then the Holy Spirit has not yet intervened in our life. We are still dead in our trespasses and in need of salvation.
F Self Denial and Cross Bearing are exceedingly broad commands: Jesus in this passage speaks about “losing our life,” the whole of us. This is to say that denying oneself is not something that impacts or affects only one part or one aspect of our life. All of our life is to be regularly submitted to these simple principles of submission to Christ. Like sugar well mixed into a cake batter, it permeates every part of the cake in equal amounts. If we deny ourselves in our marriage, but fail to deny ourselves in our finances, we have not yet learned fully the way of Christ. If we deny ourselves on our Sundays, but fail to deny ourselves on our Mondays, we have not yet learned fully the way of Christ. If we deny ourselves when others are watching, but fail to deny ourselves when we are alone, we have not yet learned fully the way of Christ.
The Christian life is a journey of increasingly learning how to practice self-denial. There is an initial surge at the moment of faith, when Christ first instills in us a sense of the divine. But the work of self-denial is not finished. Our sanctification is intricately woven around our justification. Those who denied themselves at the point of saving faith, in order to receive Christ, will indeed continue to learn to deny themselves over time. As Octavius Winslow says so beautifully
“Are you, my reader, a searcher of this life? Are you breathing for it, panting after it, seeking it? Then, be it known to you, that he who inspired that desire is Himself the Life for which you seek. That heaving of your heart, that yearning of your spirit, that feeling after God, if haply you may find Him, is the first gentle pulsation of a life that shall never die”
G Self Denial and Cross Bearing are not mystical ideas but rather are practical ideas: Many Christians believe in their minds that they are those who deny themselves regularly, but when pushed to share something practical way they have denied themselves, or pushed to reveal a time in recent history when Christ laid a cross before them to bear, and they willingly carried the cross, they go hush, or they describes something that is just a normal part of every person’s life, both believer and non-believer. That is because many men believe self-denial to be something simply of the soul, something totally hidden, something uniquely between God and man. That is not what Christ intends in this passage. Self denial is very practical. It works itself out in the real world with real decisions that we actually feel. The cross of Christ caused pain and discomfort upon our Lord, and when we carry our cross, for the glory of Christ, it ought to cause us pain and discomfort. Each Christian ought to be able to look back at the last year, and tell the story of how they submitted their will to the will of Christ.
H The need for self denial is rooted in our own corruption of mind and flesh: The Christian denies themselves because they don’t trust themselves. One of the core doctrines of the Christian, as taught in Scripture, is that sin has so rampantly worked its way through our heart and our mind and our flesh, that were we to rely on our own mind and our own will, we would always be lead astray, we would always steer away from God.
Jeremiah 17:9
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
Then again we read in Psalm 53
Psalm 53:3 “They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.”
Therefore, self-denial is simply practically living out what we say we believe. We don’t trust our own wills because we know how deep sin goes. Our wills have been affected deeply the rebellion against God! If we don’t deny ourselves, then we are lead by sin filled corrupted mind and heart, nothing less.
I Self Denial & Cross Bearing is the absolute belief that every word of God’s Word is to be our standard for life: If we connect this with the previous point. Denying oneself accepts that if left to ourself we will make a mess of it. We will fail to glorify God. We will live in sin ourselves, and propagate sin around us. Therefore, we must cling to the wisdom that comes from God for all of life. Self denial requires that we make decisions for our life from God’s Word and not our own. His is the unchanging standard that gives life. His is the unchanging standard that builds righteousness and goodness in life. And so to deny oneself is to choose to say no to what you might do if left to your own will, and choose instead to say yes to what God has revealed according to His Word. Not according to a premonition we had. Not according to a feeling we had. Not according to a word that someone has spoken over us. If we base our direction from God on premonitions and feelings we will find that our premonitions and feelings tend to align with our own will. God’s Word, the Bible, dictates how life ought to go!
J Self Denial and Cross Bearing are to be done daily: This is not something that we do once in our life and then can confidently say, “Yes I have denied myself.” Christ says in verse 23, “daily” we must pick our cross and follow him. Each and every day of our life we must wake up and confirm our commitments. We are to be like the prophetess Anna Luke chapter 2, who we are told “did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.” Our self-denial must be daily, an ongoing, perpetual submission to God, waiting on God, following God. One of the best ways I have discoved to do this is through morning devotions are filling our minds with God’s Word, and engaging God in prayer, especially the prayer of confession and forgiveness of sin. It sets our minds properly at the beginning of the day. It is both an outward act that posits us beneath God, and an inward act that renews the spirit at the start of each day.
Posted in Article
Recent
Archive
2025
2024
June
Should Christians Use the Enneagram?Episode 86: David Brainerd - A Man Mightily Used of GodLiving in the Worldview of IsaiahListening to Experiential Sermons WellSix D’s of EldershipAre Christians Required to Honor the Sabbath?The Madman on Your Nightly NewsExperiential Preaching with the PuritansAlistair Begg and Attending LGBTQ Weddings
July
August
September
October
No Comments