Self Denial

UV 3420/10000 Self Denial

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to follow Me (as My disciple), he must deny himself (set aside selfish interests), and take up his cross daily (expressing a willingness to endure whatever may come) and follow Me ( believing in Me, conforming to My example in living and , if need be, suffering or perhaps dying because of faith in Me).

Luke 9 v 23

Following Christ as Lord and Saviour comes with a cost though it has many rewards, eternal and earthly. We need to set aside our personal agenda and deny our old nature of the gratification of pride and lusts. We should be willing to obey Christ and endure till the very end. We need to be willing to suffer for Christ and if needed, even make the ultimate sacrifice with our lives. We need to give up a part of our old nature every day of our lives in the sense we should keep changing degree by degree till we match the very image of Christ. This amounts to a daily dying to ourselves, to our own flesh and egos and living more and more for Christ as His representative in this world.

Hence, being a follower of Jesus is never easy. But He gives us the grace and help to do so if we just make the commitment or express our willingness to do so. Committing our lives to Jesus is committing to a lifelong process of learning, changing, improving in all areas of our lives- our speech, our conduct, our choices, our relationships, our work and our contributions. We can never cease or take rest from this process. The Holy Spirit will prod us and help us along by guiding and counselling us.


A life of self denial is not one of renouncing this world. We are to be in this world though not of this world, implying that while we live in this world we will conform to the patterns laid out as an example by Jesus, the patterns described in the Word of God. We are not to be set in our ways but always ready to give up something that hinders our faith or the faith of others. We should always also be ready to embrace or adopt whatever will increase the pace of our spiritual growth and our fruitfulness in Christ. It is more about getting rid of ingrained traits and attitudes than to give up superficially a mode of living, comforts or something that we enjoy doing.