Author Encourages Christians: Make Self-Denial Your Lifestyle

by Jim Brown
November 5, 2003

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(AgapePress) - A pastor and best-selling writer is discussing "the high cost and infinite value" of abandoning one's own desires in favor of what Jesus Christ wants.

Self-denial is a concept that Dr. John MacArthur says has been lost in contemporary Christian culture. In his new book Hard to Believe (Thomas Nelson, 2003), he explores what it really means for believers to deny themselves, take up their crosses daily, and follow Christ.

MacArthur says coming to Christ means "coming to the end of yourself." He says Christians often talk about the gospel and salvation as if Jesus were a genie who jumps out of a magic lamp and gives believers what they want.

"The truth of it is the gospel doesn't offer self fulfillment, but it does offer true, spiritual fulfillment, both in time and eternity, through self denial," MacArthur says.

The author says self-denial is embodied by what Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane -- "not my will, but thy will be done" -- but yet is made even more profound for Christians because their personal will and ambitions are polluted with sin.

But even as believers must struggle with their corrupt flesh, sinful pride, and selfish ambitions, MacArthur notes that God often uses surprising means to help His people "get over themselves." For instance, the pastor says, the Lord chooses weak, nonintellectual nobodies that are despised by the world to share the gospel in order to "shame the wise."

According to the author, there can never be a human explanation for Christianity or for the spread of the gospel because "the message is too hard."

It is "too demanding, the call to self denial is too strong, and the people who proclaim the message are too insignificant to ever spread the gospel, as it were, on the backs of any human power," MacArthur says, "and therefore the glory all goes to God."

John MacArthur is the author of a number of other Christian works, including Twelve Ordinary Men and The Gospel According to Jesus.