When Jesus finally returns “in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels” (Luke 9:26), and when we finally see all we could have had by being his, he will turn his face away from us. In his mercy, Jesus warns us of the end of that pursuit: we will lose our lives. Do whatever it takes to keep Jesus and his all-encompassing commands on the other side of what we call “myself.” Devote all your energies to marriage and family. Make a name for yourself in your career or social circle. Wrap yourself round with possessions and entertainment. The alternative to self-denial is self-protection the alternative to losing your life for Jesus’s sake is to save your life for your own sake. Why would anyone exchange comfort and security for a life of self-denial and cross-bearing? Jesus tells us why: “For whoever would save his life will lose it” (Luke 9:24). But after giving the call, he moves on to the warning. If Jesus ended his invitation to follow him here, we might well wonder if self-denial is worth it. It will mean persistently dying to every thought, affection, ambition, or desire that resists Christ’s kingdom. It will mean ruthlessly forsaking the “self” that stands in rebellion against God. Jesus wants us to know exactly what following him will mean. Yet here, at the entrance of the Christian life, Jesus gives those two blunt commands: “deny yourself” and “take up your cross.” And not only once, but “daily.” And “take up your cross”? To his hearers, the cross would not yet have evoked ideas of love and self-sacrifice - only of pierced skin and streaming blood, of horror, guilt, and humiliation. “Deny yourself” would have sounded as threatening to them as it does to us. But Jesus, in one of the most famous passages in the Gospels, goes to war with this ancient falsehood with a call, a warning, and a promise.Īs Jesus made his way to Jerusalem, he turned toward his disciples with a call that cuts us to the core: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Obedience will make you miserable. That lie is as old as the garden of Eden, as powerful as Satan himself. The lie, the deception, is that if you give yourself up wholly to God for him to do whatever he pleases to make you holy, God-glorifying, and fruitful, you will be joyless, miserable. Naturally, we find ourselves in the grip of what John Piper calls “the number-one lie of the universe”: The trouble is that no one naturally believes that self-denial leads to joy. And not only in one climactic act of surrender, but every single day. If we want the kind of joy that is “inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8), then we must give what we call “ourselves” wholly to Jesus. The deepest joys in this world - the most durable delights, the sweetest pleasures - come only on the other side of self-denial. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. (Luke 9:23–24) If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
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