Self-Denial and the Daily Cross

We have reviewed some of the Possibilities of the believer’s life, as a life in which the promises of God are taken as they stand, and found to be true. We may just so far linger over this side of the great truth before us as to make a reflection at once humiliating and encouraging; the reflection that no one definite act of sinning, as I look back upon it, need have taken place. Every act of sinning, yes, down to the sin of acts of thought, or states of thought, displeasing to God, is a contradiction to first principles of the Gospel. Put the case of those inner emotions of wrong which seem most to defy repression. Take the last transient swell of petty impatience, or of unkind criticism; things which, to the unawakened conscience, look so small, to the awakened conscience, so large. There is not one that need have taken place. To me, as a living and believing member of Christ, resources are always open which can anticipate and prevent these things. Had I been walking that moment with God, abiding that moment in Christ, drawing that moment on the sanctifying Spirit’s power, I should not have lost temper, I should not have thought unkindly: not only should I not have lookea impatience, or indulged in needless severity of words. The occasion for the very feeling would have been as if it were not, because neutralized in Jesus Christ. And if that might have been true for the last five minutes, why should it not be true for the next five, for the present minute?

“I can do all things,” I have resources for

all circumstances, “in Him that strength- Phil, iv,

eneth me.”

But already the earnest soul, athirst for a personal experience of what we have been depicting, has asked itself, How shall I, with my thousand difficulties, get what I thirst for? In the present chapter we will try to deal with the one difficulty that underlies the thousand. That difficulty is “Self.” And SdS- denial is the first condition to this life of calm and humble spiritual victory, or better call it, spiritual deliverance.

It is no unconditional thing. Right and left, the highway of holiness has its edge, its limit, its sine qua non. On the one hand, the Lord, and childlike trust in Him and in His words. On the other hand, amongst other things, but supreme amongst them, Self-denial and the daily Cross. Of the Lord Himself we shall speak more directly in future pages. At present I look the other way, believing that this order may be most helpful for solidity of thought.

“If any man will come, willeth to

to come, after Me, let him deny himself,

and take up his cross daily, and follow

Luke ix. Me,” Let us study these familiar words

23’ a little in detail.

i. Observe the universality of reference. “If any man wills to come after Me; whoever desires to follow My lead; then let this man, be he who he may, do thus: Let him deny himself, and daily take up his cross, and follow Me. Let any man who wills to follow Me, and does not do thus, by no means marvel if his following, such as it is, proves to be a disappointing, a disheartening thing. Let such a one prepare to find My yoke uneasy, and My burden heavy., and My commandments grievous,”

2. Then “let him deny himself” Al ways let us emphasize, in thought and in tone, that last word, “let him deny himtelf.” And what is ^-denial? The word is often and much mistaken in common use, as if it meant much the same as self-control — the control of lower elements of our being by higher. If a man postpones the present to the future, resolving on present loss for the sake of future gain, this is often called Self-denial. If a man, for some high object of his own, abjures inferior pleasures, “scorns delights, and lives laborious days,” this is often called Self-denial. If, in the highest sphere, for the sake of rest hereafter, he inflicts on himself great unrest now, this too is often called Self-denial.

Now the doing of such things may be wrong or may be right in itself; but it is not self-denial, as the phrase is used here assuredly by our Lord. Take the New

Testament and try the case by the words “deny,” “denial,” in successive passages; I think it will be seen that self-denial is not self-control. In all cases at all in point, “to deny” much more resembles in idea “to ignore” than “to control.” It means to turn the back upon, to shut the eyes to, to treat as non-existent. “I Matt. x. wiH deny him “; I will say, I know him 2 Tim.ii. not. “He cannot deny Himself “; He I3> cannot ignore His own hand in His own written promise. “Let him deny him self”; let him ignore self; let him say to self, I know thee not, thou art nothing to me.

In effect, may we not say, the Lord’s precept comes to this — the real displacement of self from the throne of life in its purposes and hopes, and the real enthronement of Another. It comes to — unqualified self-surrender. I attempt no refinements. We all practically understand what we mean when we speak about self and its surrender, and the enthronement of Jesus Christ. We mean that whereas yesterday our aims, many of them, some of them, one of them, terminated in ourself, to-day, so far as we know, they all terminate in our Lord. Yesterday, perhaps in some highly refined mode, perhaps in some mode not refined, we lived at least a part of our life to self; now, in full purpose, we live the whole of it to Him who died for us and rose again. Yesterday it was very pleasant, as a good thing in itself, if some action, some influence going out from us, brought back praise, spoken or not spoken, to our selves; now such a feeling is recognized as sin, if the pleasure terminates short of a distinct and honest reference to our Lord in us. Yesterday we were easy in the consciousness of purely personal gratification, when some intellectual success, let us say, or physical, brought credit to our selves and stimulated self-esteem. Oh, how much inner force have we spent in one phase or another of self-esteem! But to-day our deliberate choice is in the other direction. We prefer, with unaffected preference, that all our earnings should go straight to another, to our Lord. In true purpose and choice He is now the centre of our whole life; not of parts, but of the whole. We wish not to spend ten minutes irrespective of His interests, His claims, His will.

This is the self-denial of the saints. It is no fanatical, no visionary thing, ft does not mean a mechanical asceticism. It does not, of any necessity in itself, contradict or condemn the most natural activities and interests of human life, as such. It does not absorb nor cancel personality. Rather this is the very thing to enrich the resources of personal being, and to develop its exercises. But it has lodged it, as to its whole purpose and working, upon another centre, even Jesus Christ the Lord.

I need not follow the line of thought further into detail. Each heart will do this best for itself. It is a long line, for it has a deep sea to fathom.

3. “And let him take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” Every word is pregnant here, the “taking up” — the acceptance by the regenerate will, with a true surrender, of whatever may be meant by the cross! And then, the “cross “! Observe, it is not the yoke, the burden, but the Cross — a word of very definite imagery; a thing to be carried indeed, as any burden is to be carried — but whither, and why? To a Calvary, and because of a Crucifixion to be done there. The “self” just “denied,” just ignored, rejected, is to be also bound and nailed as to a Roman cross, and this with the consenting act of the regenerate will, which has taken up that cross for that end. And then, “daily”! Therefore, for one thing, there is a somewhat to be daily crucified. Here is one inexhaustible paradox of this great matter; on one side a true and total self-denial, on the other, a daily need of self-crucifixion. This is a thing which I am content simply to state, and to leave it as the Lord’s word upon the believer’s mind and soul.

But “daily “; without intermission, without holiday; now, to-day, this hour; and then, to-morrow! And the daily “cross”; a something which is to be the instrument of disgrace and execution to something else! And what will that something be? Just whatever gives occasion of ever deeper test to the Self-surrender of which we have spoken; just whatever exposes to shame and death the Dally Cross. 31

the old aims, and purposes, and plans, the old spirit of Self and its life.

Perhaps some great anguish on another’s behalf threatens you. Yesterday you shrank from it, you stumbled at it, very largely, if not mainly, because of what it would inflict on Self. To-day you take it up, as a cross, and upon it you execute that thought; and now your pain is pure pain, pain for the sake of another’s soul, and of the glory of God.

Perhaps it is some small trifle of daily routine; a crossing of personal preference in very little things; accumulation of duties, unexpected interruption, unwelcome distraction. Yesterday these things merely fretted you and, internally at least, “upset” you. To-day, on the contrary, you take them up, and stretch your hands out upon them, and let them be the occasion of new disgrace and deeper death for that old self-spirit. You take them up in loving, worshipping acceptance. You carry them to their Calvary in thankful submission. And to-morrow you will do the same.

4. “And let him follow Me.” This may refer specially to the last previous words, the Cross-bearing; it may betoken a following of Him, who “went out bearing His Cross.” But it may better be referred to the whole previous verse, to that mysterious Self-denial of the Son, whereby, throughout His blessed course, “His meat was to do, not His own will, Job. iv. but the will of Him that sent Him,” and T 34- .. “to glorify Him on the earth.” Thus

Joh. xvu ° *

4. we have more in view than the final “going out” to Calvary.

In ajiy case, let the disciple do all this always, wholly, with regard to Him, looking unto Him, “following Him.”

I leave upon the heart, with little attempt at system, just this utterance of the Christian’s Master calling His bondservant out to the path of holiness. Listen, weigh, and apply to the inmost self. Let the cost be counted before the results are claimed. Would you know what it is, in the strong but gentle realities of a happy experience, to be “he that overcometh,” to have “heart and thoughts Rev. Hi. kept by the peace of God”? Then PMI. iv. more is needed than even the holiest 7* aspirations. There needs certain definite demands on the regenerate will. You must draw for every victory upon divine resources. But you must do it as one who is, in full heart-purpose, self surrendered, denying the life of self, and daily taking up the cross. In the next chapter we will consider how we are to do this with self.