Dying To Self

Jesus Christ is Lord, and He is asking us to follow Him so that we might gain everlasting life, bring praise to our Creator, and be of service to our fellow humans.

But we put up a fierce fight against it. As part of making us in His likeness, God gave us the ability to make our own decisions. We can choose to live or die, to submit to God or Satan, and to follow our own whims or Jesus' teachings.
Do you ever think about someone who has passed away physically? In what ways is a deceased person different from a living one?

Because their bodies are dead and rotting, the dead do not react in the same way that live individuals do. After being reborn with a new will, we engage in a spiritual war with Satan, who wants our new "selves" to act in the same ways that our previous "selves" did when they were obedient to the old will.

Who or what is "self?" According to the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, it's the mentality of prioritising one's own needs and wants over those of others. According to Vine's Comprehensive Expository Dictionary, a narcissist is "a person whose behaviour is characterised by excessive pride and the assertion of his or her own superiority over that of others."

To "die to self" is to reject an egotistical and self-centered outlook and instead submit one's hopes, plans, ambitions, and material possessions to God's will. It's making God the protagonist and ourselves the antagonist. As followers of Jesus, we should consider ourselves to be dead to sin and to the desires of the body. Consider oneself to be spiritually dead to sin but spiritually alive in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:11).

What it means to die to oneself
To die, in its most basic sense, is to submit one's will everyday to God's.

This is made possible by the Holy Spirit's indwelling power and our decision to submit to His will. As a sincere follower of Jesus Christ, one of the most important things you can do is die to yourself. An ever-present awareness that we are to live worthy of the calling (Ephesians 4:1-2) ought to inform all our choices and our words.

Humbling ourselves via dying to self and reaching out to others will fuel our desire to share life together. Reading the whole book of Acts might leave one feeling as though such steadfastness on the part of the disciples is unattainable. In truth, if we are to live under Christ's lordship, we must continually die to ourselves and develop a compassion that extends to the people in our neighbourhoods, towns, states, and countries.

Daily self-denial is an absolute need.
Every day, we disciples of Jesus must take up our crosses and follow Him. In Luke 9:23–24, Jesus said to His followers, "If you want to be my disciple, you must deny yourself and take up your cross every day and follow me." Because "he who finds his life will lose it, and he who gives up his life for me will find it." A lesson on dying to one's self seems out of place in our generation, which values self-sufficiency, self-effort, self-dependence, and self-defense.

In fact, God has not commanded us to prioritise "our lives" before His. And we must die to ourselves if we want to live His life. Confirming the aforementioned verse, Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:8-12 that he is really "dying daily" and "taking up his cross" as a disciple of Christ. He stresses the importance of dying to ourselves so that "the life of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." If a follower hasn't died to himself, Jesus can't utilise them.

The price of teaching the next generation to die to themselves deserves some thought.

Self-denial is best demonstrated through looking to Jesus.
Our Lord Jesus Christ denied His own desires and accepted the will of the Father (Luke 22:42). Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2), took the disgrace of the crucifixion in stride because He knew there was glory waiting for Him in the hereafter. Through the prayer, "Not my will, Father, but your will be done," Jesus completely submitted His life to His Father. John 12:23-25 is another passage that is fully realised in Jesus: The proverb goes something like, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." Because of his sacrifice, the Kingdom of God will flourish. Jesus is not asking us to do anything beyond of His ability or willingness to perform as Lord and Master of our life. What is required of us is not physical death but rather a death to self, so that the life of Christ may fill and dominate every aspect of our being. Sacrificing our own needs and desires earns us God's praise and glory. To be faithful servants of Christ, we must be willing to yield to the Holy Spirit's guidance as we daily pick up our cross and follow Him. Jesus must be the sole ruler of our lives; we cannot serve two masters at the same time. To make room for Christ's growth, one must die to oneself (John 3:30).

letting one's own interests come second
Putting one's own needs and desires aside takes time.

As followers of Jesus, we must exercise self-control on a daily basis. Defeating the world, the body, and the Devil is an ongoing struggle. We have the power to choose to resist temptation every time it presents itself. Through perseverance in the face of opposition, we are able to fill our hearts with the love and joy of Jesus Christ.

By looking through Colossians 3:5-11, 1 Peter 2:1-3, Galatians 5:19-21, and Mark 7:20-23, we may get insight into the areas of our lives where we need to make changes in order to experience the abundant life Jesus has promised us. The Word of God reveals hundreds of ways in which our sinful nature manifests itself during times of temptation.

The Apostle Paul explains what it means to be a follower of Christ. He understood the spiritual nature of the conflict. We share Jesus' crucifixion (Galatians 2:20), but our own resurrection has not yet taken place. Even though we now live in a world where death and life are at odds with one another, we know that the resurrection is our ultimate goal (Philippians 3:10–14). Baptism is a public confession that a person has died to their former life and is now alive in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).

A follower of Jesus must, without exception, be willing to die to one's own desires.
In many respects, we can learn from the Israelite people. Many of those who left Egypt failed to access God's promised land because they were unwilling to sacrifice their own desires in favour of God's will (1 Corinthians 10:1-11).

Right now, we're on a journey through the desert; the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ brought us out of the gloom of Egypt and into the glorious light. Our eternal residency in the Land of Promise depends on how we conduct ourselves here on Earth. The goal of our lives is to be fully set apart to God (1 Thessalonians 5:23).