What Does Jesus Know About Self-Denial?

What is self-denial?

We might know that Jesus calls us to it, but what exactly is He is calling us to?

In the Gospel of Mark, as Jesus moves toward the cross, it becomes clear that He both knows what is coming and that He has a choice in the matter. When He eventually arrives in the garden of Gethsemane, His prayer to God is simply this: “Not what I want but what you want” (Mark 14.36). Those don’t sound like the words of someone being coerced; those sound like the words of someone being obedient.

As the passion scene unfolds Jesus’ resolve to the Father’s will remains, even though He has full knowledge of what it entails. When the mob shows up to arrest Him, He welcomes them (14.43-50); When He is accused by the chief priests before Pilate, He stays silent. All of this occurs with Jesus knowing not only the suffering that awaits Him, but also knowing that He is perfectly innocent and undeserving of it all.

Execution by cross was not akin to getting lethal injection. There was no more degrading way to die in the ancient world than by crucifixion. New Testament Professor Helen Bond describes it in detail in her article, “A Fitting End? Self-Denial and a Slave’s Death in Mark’s Life of Jesus.” She writes:

“Stripped naked, the victim was humiliated and shamed as he suffered extreme agony, perhaps for several days, until, overcome by suffocation and exhaustion, he met his merciful end. So offensive was the cross that civilized people preferred not to talk about it, and few Roman writers ever dwelt on any of the details. Cicero described crucifixion as ‘the greatest punishment of slavery,’ while Josephus labelled it ‘the most pitiable of deaths.’”

Becoming a Slave

Several chapters before the passion narrative, in Mark 9, Jesus sits his disciples down and He tells them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9.35). Perplexing words to hear. I have to imagine that the disciples were left wondering in that moment what Jesus meant and what a servant of all really looked like. Thankfully, they would not have to wonder for long.

Remember Cicero’s words, quoted by Bond, “The greatest punishment of slavery.” What happened on the cross was not Jesus simply dying the death of a citizen. He was dying the death of a slave, and that for the sake of others. He was innocent of all charges and unworthy of the death he was being served, and yet in obedience to the Father’s will He embraces all of it.

In other words, Jesus doesn’t just teach the disciples, on the cross He fully embodies for them what He’s been teaching. He becomes His teaching. He teaches the disciples that to follow them they must become a least of all, and then on the cross He becomes the least of all. He teaches them that to be his disciples they must be a slave to all, and than on the cross He becomes a slave to all.

Becoming Like Jesus

If we ever wonder what self denial looks like, here it is. It is to become a servant to all.

If we ever wonder what it is to be a servant to all, here it is. It is to choose obedience to the father, over and above obedience to ourselves.

And if we ever wonder where we look to see the servant-of-all-self-denial, here it is. Not only is Jesus our Savior, who denied Himself for us. He is our model now for what it looks like to deny ourselves for Him.

Where do I go to find rest?

I amaze myself sometimes, at just how irrational I can be.

Life can feel so extremely busy these days, with a family, a congregation, a home, a yard, vehicles, pets and so forth. I find myself regularly seeking out moments of rest; little chances in the day or in the week to catch my breath and to feel some level of emotional and spiritual refreshment. More times than not, I seek this rest in things like movies, news websites and skateboarding. The reason I seek rest in these things is because I have this unspoken belief that rest will come through more “me time;” through forgetting about my responsibilities and tasks and burdens for a few moments and focusing on the things that I enjoy and that I can get lost in; things like movies, news articles, skateboarding, etc. The funny thing is though, very often I come out of those “restful” activities, more fatigued than before, or at least no more rested.

Now at the same time, I continually come to passages in scripture that speak about rest, and they always point in the same direction, and it is not more “me time.”

Psalm 23.2 - He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.”

Matthew 11:28 – “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Hebrews 4:10 – “For whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.”

In these passages and so many more, God is the source of the rest. He is the one producing it and the one inviting us to receive it.

The Irrationality Part

Here is the irrationality of it all. I know that the things I choose to find rest in won’t every give me the kind of rest I am seeking from them. I know it deep it down. I also know that God can and will give me the kind of rest that I need. And yet, still I continue to choose the one at the expense of the other.

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with enjoying enjoyable and relaxing activities. God gave us all of them, and I am sure thankful that He did! But the fact of the matter is that true rest will never come from those things. It will come from Him. It will come from Him as we come to Him and, and whether for the first time or the five hundredth time, we place our trust in Him. It will come as we, by faith, through prayer, in worship and with Scripture, throw all of our worries, anxieties, doubts, sins, pressures and ambitions before Him. That is where rest lives! In the arms of an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful Father.

And it makes sense doesn’t it, that rest would be found in Him alone? In dictionary terms to rest is to cease all movement; to make no effort; to be still. It is to be relieved of all of the weight that we are carrying. Well, God is the only one who can fully support us, the only whose shoulders are able to bear the weight that we carry and so to relieve us of everything we’ve been carrying. He is the only one strong enough to carry us, so that we can cease moving; so that we can feel light, as if we are being carried on wings of eagles. No relationship can do that. No sport can do that. No sit back and relax type of entertainment can do that.

The Plan

To be honest, I plan to continue watching films, reading the news and riding a skateboard, as time allows. But by God’s grace, I will stop expecting those things to be the answer to my stress and fatigue, and will stop doing those things at the expense of time spent with Jesus. At the risk of sounding cliche, I plan to seek and find my rest this week not in more “me time,” but in more “He time.”

How Much Is Too Much To Give?

How much is too much to give to Jesus?

Can you give too much of your time to Him? Too much of your energy? Too much of your resources? Too much of your life? Is there a limit to how devoted and surrendered you should be? Can expressions of love and devotion to Jesus ever be too costly and extravagant?

THAT’S TOO MUCH

I remember years ago hearing a sermon from a pastor where he talked about giving a commencement speech at a high school graduation. His message was about holding nothing back. He told missionary stories, He talked about dying to self, and he expounded on the glories of Christ. He did all he could to convince these young students that Jesus was worthy of the greatest and most radical sacrifices; that He was worthy of their whole lives. After the speech, a father of one of the students, a Christian himself, found the pastor and began rebuking him, saying something to the degree of, “How dare you try and persuade my daughter toward this kind of sacrifice. Loving Jesus is fine, but we don’t want it to consume her life.”

I was so blown away by that story when I heard it, that someone could claim to love Jesus and yet put limits on how much He is worth. But as the years have gone by, I have since realized that even if I don’t say it like that father did, I live it. Everyday I live like Jesus is only worth a tenth of my finances, only worth a quarter of my energy and only worth two-thirds of my life. I hold back from going all in because I rationalize in my head that giving Him everything would be unreasonable. It would be foolish and wasteful. And obviously Jesus wouldn’t want me to be foolish and wasteful with the things He has given me.

A BEAUTIFUL THING

For the last week or so I have been stuck in Matthew 26, reading over and over the story of the woman who anoints Jesus. This woman (who was Mary, according to John’s gospel) takes an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and pours it all over Jesus’ head while he reclines at the table in Simon the Leper’s house. Now, to our twenty-first century minds it is such a wild story. Why would anyone do such a thing? But at the time it was a pretty normal situation. It was just good hospitality in the first century to anoint your guest’s heads with oil, especially distinguished guests. The crazy part seems to be not that she anointed Jesus’ head, but just how much of the expensive ointment she anointed Him with.

As soon as the disciples see it, they say, “Why this waste? For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor” (Mat. 26-8-9). Their interpretation of the event is that the woman wasted this ointment on Jesus. It was irrational, illogical, unwise, foolish and wasteful to put it all on His head. She should have perhaps put a little bit on Him and used the rest for a different and more rational purpose. But the woman clearly wasn’t thinking about what the most rational thing to do was. She was interested in performing a lavish gesture of love, obviously because she thought Jesus was worthy of it. She thought that this would be a good use of what she had.

Well, somehow Jesus becomes aware that the disciples are grumbling about this woman’s actions and he speaks directly to them, beginning with these words, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me” (Mat. 26.10).

EVERYTHING

Put it all together. The woman makes an incredibly costly and extravagant sacrifice to honor Jesus. She dumps out the entire bottle of what Matthew says is a “very expensive ointment.” If John’s account of Mary anointing Jesus is in fact this same story, then it’s a bottle worth tens of thousands of dollars, upwards of an average year’s salary. What a waste! From a logical and rational standpoint, the disciples are absolutely right. The bottle could have been sold and the money could have gone to the poor or to a thousand other things. You would think Jesus would have rebuked the woman for being a bad steward. Instead, he approves wholeheartedly of what she has done. He welcomes it. He says to his disciples with the woman probably in ear shot, “She has done a beautiful thing to me.”

The more I read this story the more I am convinced that when it comes to us giving to Jesus, there is no such thing as waste. There is no surrender too great, no act of devotion too strong, and no gift too extravagant, because He is worth it. He is worthy of it. If the living creatures can say in the book of Revelation, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing,” then He worthy of anything I could possibly give, even the entirety of my short little life on this earth (Rev. 5.12).

The reality is that a Christian life lived well, will always look strange to others; it will look like a waste. But that is ok, because at the end of the day all that matters is if the One whom we are living for approves of how we have lived. Giving your life to Jesus on the mission field may look like a waste to the world, but Jesus says, “He/she has done a beautiful thing to me.” Giving your finances to furthering the work of Christ in the world may look like a waste to even people in the church, but Jesus, “He/she has done a beautiful thing to me.” Laying down your time, your career, your energy, your resources at the feet of Christ may seem to everyone around you too radical of a sacrifice, but Jesus says “He/she has done a beautiful thing to me.”

While we think about how we will live for Jesus today, and tomorrow and next year, the question we should ask should never be, “Is this too much to give to Jesus?”

If the woman with the alabaster jar has taught me anything, it is that Jesus is worthy of it all.

J.I. Packer, a Skateboard and the Bible

When I was four my parents took me into my first skateboard shop and bought me my first skateboard. I guess it was a big moment in my little life, because everything about it has always stayed with me. I can still picture the layout of the room. I can still see the worker reaching up with some kind of long metal instrument to bring the board down off the wall. I can still remember the board itself, black and neon green with the words Hot Stick written across the bottom in a kind of Friday the 13th styled lettering. And most importantly I can still feel that feeling of pure excitement as I got on the board for the first time and headed down the hill with my parents jogging to keep pace beside me.

Ever since that early memory, I have always had in me this gnawing and drawing desire to find more and more adventure. I don’t know if my parents buying me a skateboard at four years old was the catalyst for it or if they were just responding to what they could already see growing in me; but either way, the yearning for and pursuit of excitement has never waned. I think it is for this reason that school always proved difficult for me. It just felt boring. Reading books and learning equations felt dull and tedious. I wanted to be outside on a skateboard, or up the mountain on skis, or on the water behind the boat. I wanted to be thrilled.

Now I tell you all that not for no reason, but because it has a lot to do with how and why I started really following Jesus and then how and why I became obsessed with studying God’s Word.

Half-hearted at best

I became a Christian like lots of little kids do who have parents and/or grandparents that love Jesus. Being maybe six or seven years old (a few years after the skateboard purchase), I sat on the side of the spare bed in my grandpa’s house and prayed along with him, asking Jesus to forgive my sins. For many years after that, based on that moment and prayer, I called myself a Christian. Whether I truly was or not I don’t know, but what I do know is that I definitely was not thrilled about any part of the Christian life. At best I gave it all a half-hearted effort. It was again the same situation as school, it just felt boring.

Skipping ahead a bunch of years and over a bunch of situations and circumstances, I ended up reaching the ripe old age of twenty-four years and I found myself back in school and sitting in a Bible College classroom. If you’re thinking that something must have drastically changed in terms of that need for excitement for me to have ended up in a college classroom, well you are wrong. Nothing changed. On a kind of whim, I followed some friends to Bible College just for something to do because I wasn’t doing anything else, and in every class I attended I wondered why I was there and how fast I could unenroll, get my surfboard and get to the ocean.

That Class on John

But then one day, against all odds, all of a sudden something did change. In fact, everything changed. I enrolled in a class simply called The Gospel of John. As I am sure you can guess by the course title, the class was aimed at one thing and one thing only: studying the Gospel of John. It was the first time I had taken a strictly Bible class, and it proved to be the most important class I would ever take. Just like remembering that skate shop when I was four, I remember everything about that class on John. I remember where I sat in the square seating arrangement. I remember where other people sat in the square, and what books we were assigned to read. And most importantly I remember the feelings that I felt from the first moments of the first class and on: pure, unadulterated thrill.

Having had spent my life up to that point incessantly pursuing the feeling of thrill, I knew exactly what it felt like so I knew precisely when I had found it. And while I never in a million years expected to find it in the confines of a second level classroom on the campus of a small Bible College, that is absolutely and completely what I found.

Just to be clear, the professor didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. He didn’t show up on a skateboard or drop down out of a hole in the ceiling. He just showed up, prayed and began teaching us about John’s gospel. He spoke about contexts and backgrounds; He unpacked terms and metaphors. He explained the double entendres and John’s literary techniques. And through all of it, He made the story of Jesus come alive; He made God’s Word and the Gospel story it tells come alive. For the first time in my life I realized some seemingly simple or obvious things, like that there was history behind the stories in the Bible, and history that I could learn about. That there was actual meaning in the texts that really could be uncovered beyond just what I thought or felt they meant. All of this was a new revelation to me, and the result was a realness to who God was and what He had done. And there arose in me a newfound obsession with studying the Scriptures, and seeking to know the God of whom they spoke.

I began everyday sitting down with the Bible, opening piles of commentaries and books and just reading and studying and meditating on it all, believing for the first time that I really could come to know Him through His Word. And as I would sit their sifting through the pages of the Bible, God seemed nearer than He ever had before, His gospel became more and more powerful and heavy on my soul, and I found that I could only explain what I felt in one way: as I drew closer and closer to Him through His Word I over and over discovered the same thrill, only magnified, that I had felt and chased for years on skateboards, on surfboards, on skis and behind boats.

Today

Fast-forward, I am now thirty-nine years old. I still skateboard every morning before work. I am still on the ski hill in the winters and still in the ocean whenever I find myself near one. And yet now I know that those things could all go away, and I would be fine, because the feelings they produce are no longer what I am after. Not because I got old and boring (though that is possible), but because I found the superior adventure and excitement. On that day in Bible College and through the classes that followed, I found an infinitely more satisfying, unfading, ever-increasing thrill of which I have never stopped pursuing, and it is this: knowing God.

Shocking new to some, I am still in school, still in Bible classes, and everyday the most exciting thing I do is to study God’s Word, aiming and desiring to come to know Him more and more fully. And it is without question the most exciting pursuit I have ever and will ever experience on this side of the new heavens and new earth.

You know I used to quote famous skateboarders to sum up my life. Now I quote men like J.I. Packer, because now I understand what they meant, and I feel what many of them so perfectly identified: “Knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a man's heart.[1]”

[1] J.I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity: Chicago, 1973), 36.

To Live MUST Be Christ

Seasons of suffering do not always produce our clearest and most logical thoughts. The coming together of things like shock, sadness, anger, and confusion can sometimes lead to some wildly unhealthy and even irrational conclusions and decisions. And yet, I would argue that those difficult seasons of our lives can also end up being the moments when we see things with a surprising amount of clarity.

THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY

On February 4th, 2024, I went to the hospital to have a lump looked at. I expected to be home that evening with some medication to take care of a very mundane diagnosis. However, things do not always happen as we expect them to. That initial visit began for me a cascade of tests and appointments. The emergency room visit led to an ultrasound; the ultrasound led to another doctor’s appointment; that appointment led to a meeting with a specialist; the meeting with a specialist led to surgery; surgery led to more tests and scans; tests and scans led to lots of waiting, and all of which together led to the longest month of my life. Ill have you know that in my little part of North America, February is routinely the coldest month of the year, which seems to always make it the longest month of the year (even with only 28 or 29 days). As it would happen, February 2024 was the warmest February my town had experienced in ages, but the longest February I had ever lived.

Pretty early into the journey of tests and appointments I became aware of the expected diagnosis, and it wasn’t great. The effect of this knowledge was a flood of emotions and a spinning mind. I quickly called my elders team to request relief from preaching for the foreseeable future because I was finding myself unable to focus on anything except the situation before me. For days on end, I did nothing but walk. I would set out in the morning into the mountains and spend 8 hours of the work day walking in silence down dirt roads, petitioning the Lord and trying to come to grips with the likelihood of a shortened life. If you would have asked me in those days while I was walking those long dirt roads, if I was thinking clearly, I probably would have said “Unlikely.” Even while I was going through it, I could recognize in myself the list that I began with: shock, sadness, anger and confusion. This cocktail of emotions had me far too preoccupied to be imparting much wisdom or making any life-changing decisions. And yet, as I look back on my journal entries from that month, I realize that in some ways I was thinking about my life with a clarity that I’d never had before.

I won’t make a habit of sharing my journal on the internet, but for the sake of the topic let me share a brief exert. February 6th, while sitting on a flat rock on a mountain side with a Bible flipped open to Mark 8.34 and Philippians 1.21 on my mind, I wrote, “I have never been more sure that death is real. I have never been more sure that Jesus lives. This season of life has changed death for me. And it has changed life for me. To die is inevitably a gain. And to live must be Christ. Anything less makes no sense. If God died for me, if He lives, if I will be raised up with Him, if He is all satisfying, good and sufficient, how could He have half of me and the world have the rest? How could fear and worry have any place in me? How could my life not be surrendered completely in joy? Either I would I have missed who Jesus is and what He has done and promised, or I have would have failed to believe it.”

THE POWER OF facing your mortality

If you haven’t guessed yet, I was diagnosed with cancer. As I type here on the morning of March 11th, just over one month after the original diagnosis, I have been declared cancer free. I still have some hoops to jump through, but for the most part I have a clean bill of health, for which I am thankful beyond what words can even express. Maybe some what oddly though, I am also thankful for everything that has led up to this point. I wouldn’t trade February 2024 for anything. It was this trial and all the pain and uncertainty it entailed that led me to thinking about the gospel in ways that I pray I will never recover from.

You see, before this whole cancer thing, death to me was just other people’s reality. As a pastor I would go deal with it on their behalf, but it never felt too real for me personally. It was something abstract, even kind of theoretical. The result, I realize now looking back, was a very cavalier following of Jesus. No real urgency. No Psalm 42 like desperation. No comprehensive surrender. And it makes sense, because without a real sense of death and just how certain it is and deserving of it we are, how can we ever truly appreciate the life Jesus came to give us?

So, there I was, just casually following Jesus, trusting more in myself then not. Following Jesus at a safe distance. And then cancer hit, and suddenly death felt like it was on my doorstep, or I on its. For the first time the end felt absolutely real; my life felt fragile and finite, and the gospel, and in particular the cost of following Jesus, made more sense than it ever had.

Let me try to explain. In Mark 8.34 Jesus lays out the requirements of anyone that would want to follow Him, and it is nothing short of everything. He calls them to deny themselves and take up their crosses, which is to essentially say, “You must throw your life away and recklessly abandon yourself to God.” That is a steep price to follow. It couldn’t be any steeper. Who on earth would pay that price? Well, only the one who understands the value of what they are receiving. Jesus goes on to say in the next verse, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” In other words, what is being received in the relinquishment of our lives is not just some added happiness, it is life itself. True life, eternal life, new life in Christ. A gift of infinite value!

Well if you are receiving something that is worth more than anything, what happens to the cost of that something? It disappears. And when the value of the life Jesus offers is understood, then the cost of following Him is no longer even worthy of being called a cost. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer so perfectly put it, “Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life worth living.”

THE COST, NAY, THE GRACE OF FOLLOWING JESUS

Here’s the thing, I had loved and followed Jesus for many years. I had contemplated and rested in the Gospel for many years. But I had always wavered in how much of my life I gave to Christ and how much I held back. Simply, because while never really comprehending the reality of the death I deserve, I had never understood the value of and felt the consequent gratitude for the life that Jesus gives. But when death became for me a real reality and an immediate possibility, then the abundant life that Jesus died to give me (the already and not yet) finally appeared as the real, invaluable, undeserving, and infinite gift that it truly is. And when that happened, the incredible cost of following Him dissolved into worship. It became the only logical response. The cost, as Bonhoeffer explains, was transformed from cost into grace.

It is probably good that I wasn’t operating heavy machinery last month. But in terms of thinking about Jesus and about my living and dying, I don’t believe I have ever thought so clearly as when I sat on a mountainside and paraphrased for myself the apostle Paul, “To die is inevitably a gain. And to live must be Christ. Anything less makes no sense.”