The trouble with ‘dying to self’
The Bible has dozens of verses around the topic of “dying to yourself” and living for God. What does it really mean? And how can we tangibly do it?
It’s one of those Christian terms that we hope doesn’t come up on Sunday when we bring our new friend to church. Because, well, it’s difficult to explain. Even for ourselves.
In the modern day church, it’s treated as a trait of an ‘extremely devoted Christian’. We miss the Gospel entirely when we hyper-spiritualize a fundamental Christian attribute.
Let’s break it down to the basics. Dying to yourself means you aren’t living for yourself, you’re dead to your old way of life. While you live in your body, your new identity in God has transformed your heart.
In Luke 9:23b Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” When Jesus says, “take up his cross” it’s metaphoric and foreshadows what Jesus goes on to do, sacrificing Himself on the cross for our Salvation. Jesus’ sacrificed all His earthly needs for all of us. And so He calls us to do the same. He calls us to not live for ourselves anymore, but for Him.
Now, many of you may think that there are a lot of people who live their lives devoted to others, without any semblance of a Christian background or intention. And even further, you could easily argue that in the name of Christianity, living for others has ended in manipulation, hurt and abuse. Much good and much hurt have been born out of our human expression of love. But human love and human intentions can only go so far by itself. It will always be imperfect and messy.
The argument for Christianity, is that when you live for God you won’t ride the waves of the messiness of human flaws. That is, you're anchored to the inventor of love, who never changes and never wavers. So we are able to take the burden off of pleasing others from a human perspective, and to instead live our life for God. We have the freedom to sacrifice our life, as Jesus gave us the perfect example for us, for a life for Him.
There isn’t a way to halfway do this. Luke 14:27, “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” You either live for Him or not. This isn’t about being a “super Christian”.
This is hard. It doesn’t come naturally to us. It comes natural to us to live a comfortable life that we enjoy that at least mildly doesn’t bother anyone else. But this is not what God calls for Christians. We are supposed to actively work against that desire and instead shift our focus to what God would want for our lives.
Notice in passage Jesus said to bear our cross “daily”. He understands that we will daily need to die to our own desires. Because we need to remind ourselves nearly constantly who we are living for. But slowly, as we die every day, we will feel less connected with our old self and our new identity in God will become more familiar to us.
When you live for God and you die to your old self, this does not mean that you deny every good thing in your life and let people walk all over you. Whether intentionally or not, in some cases the term has led to a detrimental and distorted view of what God wants for your life. While on earth, Jesus enjoyed the fellowship of his friends and even strangers around Him - but all with good boundaries. He left the crowds to be alone and spend time with God because He needed to reset. He couldn’t be on-demand all the time. His human body had constraints. As do ours.
And living for God means something different for each of us. God calls us to different missions. He gives us different gifts and abilities. We all have unique situations with our backgrounds, our family, our friends, our work, our cultural environment. Living for God may look very different from one to another.
The denying of yourself means that you’re putting God ahead of your own needs. What would living for His kingdom instead of your own look like?
In order to figure that out for yourself, you must spend time with Him. You have to prioritize Him, or you’ll naturally start prioritizing other things. It may mean not watching that extra show at night so you can spend some time in prayer with Him. Or it could be that when you feel anxiety shocking through your body, you reach out to Him first instead of doom-scrolling social media to numb yourself. No matter how different it looks for each of us, living for God will directly affect how we orchestrate every aspect of our lives.
Think of it this way. Suppose you are a new parent. Your whole life has changed. Everything you do now is centered around this tiny being that just came into your world. Your job is to protect, love and care for their whole little self. You wouldn’t just say, “that’s great, I’m a parent now” and go on to live your life exactly as you had before with some minor adjustments. Your whole life changes. Your identity changes. Not that your unique self somehow changes, but your mission changes. Your unique self now has a clear goal set ahead of yourself.
As a Christian, our new identity should do the same thing. It should adjust the path you’re on in life. You aren’t thinking about what you can do to make yourself more comfortable, or successful or however you would previously live your life. You are living for God. For His kingdom. That should shape your whole world.
