And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. Luke 9:23-24
Related to what it means to bear a cross, which I wrote about last week, is the call to die to oneself. Though Jesus talked about denying oneself, losing one’s life, or even hating one’s life (John 12:25), we call this dying to ourselves.
For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3:3
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. Galatians 2:20
Throughout the gospels Jesus calls us to this fundamental transformative shift. Our center has to be redefined as something other than self-concern and self-preservation in order to discover and experience the life that comes from God. Our living must be, in order to be like God, a love for the other which necessitates a “dying” to ourselves.
However, we confront a confounding impossibility when we consider how to do this. If I try to die to myself it is still “I” who is attempting to do it! If I am dying to myself there is still a very active and alive me, the one doing this. Clearly, I cannot die completely to myself solely through my own efforts. As long as I am the one losing or denying my life, I can still take some pride in the effort and therefore further strengthen that same identity that I am denying.
What do we say then? Do we simply give up the attempt because we cannot do it completely? Of course not. What we are able to do is practice a partial self-denial through the elevation of the concerns and needs of others. We can engage in ever-increasing self-giving love, even though we cannot reach the perfection displayed in the cross of Christ.
In the cross, the ultimate expression of what we are talking about, Jesus does not die to himself in the sense of taking his own life, but is put to death by others. His death, though he lays down his life willingly (John 10:18), is not his own act any more than our dying to self can be our own act. The only way I can truly and completely die to myself is to allow my self-focussed life to be taken from me. In the end, we must allow God to take that life from us, and give us a true and eternal life. The one he takes is the life we have made about ourselves, sin and all, while the one we receive is the life of Christ in Christ.
We need to work toward a willingness and readiness to give ourselves over to the love of God in all its fullness. We do this by imperfectly denying ourselves and taking up the cross we have to bear. By God’s grace we will arrive at the consummation of our efforts, and this is the mystery of God’s work. We are not able to do the work of God, which is his alone, but we may cooperate and offer ourselves to that work.
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