As we mentioned a moment ago, last week we studied the Lord's teaching in Matthew chapter 11, where the Lord Jesus declared that he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater, not just will be greater, but is greater than John the Baptist. And we saw what a striking word that is from the Lord Jesus, and whether we can measure up to his expectations of his church. We asked, why is it that when we look around today, we do not even see people halfway to the caliber of John the Baptist, spiritually speaking, let alone to be greater than John the Baptist? We find ourselves in a generation of spiritual midgets, a generation of spiritual midgets or pygmies. We cannot find these spiritual giants that the Lord Jesus died to bring into being. And today we need to look at the cause for this. What is the reason for this?
Now I mentioned to you that these are basically the messages that I preached in Hong Kong recently. But I also have to mention to you that if you do hear the Hong Kong message, that the message today will be quite different in structure. The subject is the same, but the approach and the analysis and the details will be entirely different. This is because we need to keep, in each situation, in each church, we need to present the matter in a way that more meets the level and the needs of that particular congregation. And as I consider that you are somewhat more mature, spiritually speaking, I will present the matter today at a somewhat deeper level. I hope that if there are some who are not Christians in our midst, that you will not find it too difficult to follow. But I shall try to make the language and the wording as simple as possible.
Now why do we not find these spiritual giants in our midst? In another way, why are we not the kind of spiritual giants that the Lord expects us to be? I considered at what cost He redeemed us, that He purchased us with His blood, at what risk to Himself, as I trust you saw the Easter messages that were published in the Oasis, to begin to realize at what risk to Himself He redeemed us, what kind of risk He took in order to set us free from sin and to make us the people of God. And what the church gives Him in return is just pitiful to consider. This kind of half-hearted, this kind of wishy-washy thing that we give to Him as a presentation of the offering of our faith is simply too shameful to consider.
If we are certain, as indeed we should be, that we have been redeemed by His blood, that He has redeemed us at unspeakable cost to Himself, where we live, this kind of Christianity that goes by the name of Christianity in the world today—why do we not see the spiritual power, the spiritual glory of Christ in His saints today? If indeed we are His saints. And this is what we need to look at.
Today I will look at something very basic. But sometimes when we find trouble with our spiritual life, we need to go back to the basics and examine the root of our faith, the foundation of our spiritual life. This we shall do today, and then in the next two messages we will continue ever deeper in our analysis, so that if by the mercy of God and by His grace we will implement His teaching, we will do what He calls us to do, I have not a shadow of doubt in my mind that the fullness of Christ's power, something even greater than John the Baptist, will be manifested in our lives in each one.
It is my spiritual ambition that each one of us may become spiritual giants in this generation. Not so that we may have some kind of glory for ourselves, but that we may become effective in the work of salvation. I am concerned about evangelism. I am concerned for outreach. When we are ready for the outreach—today churches are all rushing for outreach. Imagine spiritual kindergarten people who can't even stand on their own feet, they cannot read the word of God and understand what's there—they want all to do outreach. They are not ready for this. You are sending infants to battle. You will be overwhelmed by the enemy long before you get anywhere.
What do you do when you want to fight a war? You train an army. And the better trained the army is, the more effective will be what they can do. We want to win the world for Christ with what? With a bunch of untrained people? Even worse than that, with a bunch of totally uncommitted people. We cannot win the world for Christ like this. If evangelism is winning the world for Christ, there is a long preparation before we can begin to go out to spiritual battle. And therefore, we have concentrated these years to build the Lord's army. We have not worried for outreach, because the larger the number, the harder it is to train an effective army. You cannot give each the personal attention that they need.
And therefore, I have been contented to move in a small way just as the Lord did. Only twelve men. He put His time and His energy. He, the Lord of glory, who left behind millions of angels, countless multitudes in the heavenly places, gave His attention to twelve ordinary men. And He concentrated on these twelve ordinary men until they were not so ordinary anymore. They were equipped with His power. They became the kind of people who truly began to represent in their lives and in their thinking, not only in their words but also in their words, the kind of men in whose lives Christ became manifest. These twelve men were all the Lord needed to turn the world upside down. That is His strategy. But we don't learn very well.
So we have a young Christian, we say, "Go on, go on, evangelize." We want the evangelism explosion. Why do we have an explosion? What you end up after an explosion—you've got fragments. You've got bits and pieces here and there and everywhere. I don't want an explosion. What we want is something that is constructive, that goes growing steadily into the fullness of the stature of Christ. And you don't get the fullness of the stature of Christ by any explosion, let me assure you of that. So we want to have quick results we can count, we can see. The Lord's not interested in that. For three years, His precious divine time was spent to build twelve ordinary men. If we understand that well, this is what we need to do.
We must get to the roots of this matter. We shall reach out and we certainly will reach out. When the army is ready for battle, we shall conquer in the name of Christ. But until that is done, we shall not be able to win any spiritual battle. I've had to learn this the hard way. The mistakes we made in London—I well remember in the Chinese Christian London—oh, we had an explosion, I tell you, we did. The church expanded by explosive force. We multiplied 500% within a year. The church just grew. People rushed from all over England to see what's happening with this Chinese church. Phenomenal. Fantastic. Church growth. Oh yes, I know all about church growth.
We had an explosion and we ended up with fragments. That was the problem. That's really exactly what we had. We blew apart. The church was wide in scope, weak internally, couldn't stand. The first attack of the evil one—collapsed. I don't mean collapsed. The numbers were still there, but spiritually the inside was gone. And then, five years later, when I looked at the church that I had helped to build and put some of the best years of my life into it, putting my academic career on the line to build this church, I could see 98% of the people had fallen away from the Lord. I determined never again to build this kind of church. I asked the Lord who would just teach me how I should do it right, to go back to the beginning. What did the Lord do? Not worry about explosion. Concentrate to build the foundation firm, or to change the imagery, concentrate until those reach the fullness of the stature of Christ. Then they can reach out. Then there will be the power. Then the people will be drawn to the Lord. And then when they come, you can concentrate on the building of disciples. That's the way the Lord did it. I had to learn this lesson the hard way. We often think we are smarter than the Lord. We can do greater things and we make a mess because we didn't do it His way.
Let's come back to this. Why do we not find mighty men today? Well, because of our explosion. Where is the mighty man? Hard to find. You scan the modern days through the churches and you look for the mighty man—oh, it's hard to come by one of those. Whenever you meet the mighty man of God, tell me about him. I'll rush there to meet him and have fellowship with him. Oh, I'm longing to meet this mighty man of God. What is the cause?
Well, let's look back at the Lord's teaching and look at Mark chapter 8 and we will read from verses 31 to 38, to the end of the chapter. Mark chapter 8, verses 31 to the end of the chapter:
And Jesus began to teach them, that is, to teach the disciples that he had already been doing for a couple of years, and after all this He is coming back to the fundamentals, the foundation truths. He was now nearing the end of His ministry, at a critical point in His ministry. His disciples had been following Him for some time and He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, all the religious leaders of His day, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And Jesus said this plainly. And Peter took Him and began to rebuke Him. Turning and seeing His disciples—turning means He turned away from Peter, of course—and seeing His disciples, He rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan, for you are not on the side of God, but on the side of men."
And He called to Him the multitude with His disciples, and He said to them, "If any man"—now this is a statement not just for the disciples, but for every disciple, every would-be Christian—"if any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? And what can a man give in return for his life? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my word in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."
Now, this passage I'm sure is very familiar to you all, if only because of its importance, you have certainly read it many times. It says that no man can be His disciple without doing these things mentioned here, namely, to deny himself, to take up his cross, and so to follow Him.
Now, the link between these verses is very plain. Peter had just made a confession of the Lord Jesus as the Son of God. The Lord Jesus told him that he did not discern this by his own insights, but that the Father had revealed this to him. Then the Lord Jesus goes on to say, before you get too elated that I am the Messiah, the Christ, and before you get the wrong idea about what Messiahship is all about—Messiah means king, the king of Israel—they acknowledge that He was king of Israel, the Christ, the Son of God. But before they get the wrong idea of what His kingship was about, if they thought this in terms of worldly glory, then they misunderstood the matter, and He immediately began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, that instead of glory in Israel, the whole religious establishment was going to reject Him. They were going to turn their backs on Him.
This seemed very difficult for the disciples to understand at that stage, because up to now, the opposition, the religious opposition, was not so obvious. It was smoldering, but had not come out fully into the open. And it was also difficult to understand because Jesus was apparently so popular with the crowds. But the Lord Jesus said this whole situation is going to change. The smoldering resistance is going to become an outright and open rejection. More than that, "I am going to be killed." And He said this plainly. He didn't say this obscurely, and as I said last week, when the Lord Jesus speaks, He speaks plainly. He doesn't try to confuse us. He wants us to understand.
But Peter didn't like what he heard. And so he began to argue with the Lord Jesus, to rebuke Him. "No, no, you don't want to do this kind of thing. You don't want to go and die and things like this. Don't be so negative in your thinking. You've got to be more positive—the power of positive thinking. This business of getting killed is rather too negative. Think positively, otherwise you don't sleep too well at night." So he began to argue and to reasonably rebuke the Lord Jesus. But for his troubles, he himself, Peter himself, got severely rebuked. "Get behind me, Satan, my adversary, my enemy. For you do not stand on the side of God, but on the side of man. Yours is a human way of thinking. It is not God's way of thinking."
And then He goes on and puts the case to the disciples. "Not only am I going to go to the cross, you are to go to the cross too, if you follow me. Because if that's where I'm going, that's where you are going, if you follow me." Now, He then speaks about this denying of the self, and this is what we have to study today.
The problem here is this: with this idea of self-denial, we seem to know what it means. I mean, deny itself means deny yourself. The language seems very plain. What self-denial means, simply you say no to yourself. We seem to know what it means, but in fact, when it comes down to the specifics, we don't seem to know what it means. And there is the confusion of this term self-denial, denying self. We don't seem to know what it means, and yet we think we know what it means. And yet when we are asked to define this thing more specifically, then we don't know what it means. And this is where we have to look into. This is what we must understand carefully.
I've seen many people who say that they are totally committed, and yet all the marks of a non-committal are seen in their life, and yet they genuinely think that they are totally committed. That's the strange thing about it. So either they don't understand what self-denial means, or they don't want to understand what it means. And I hope it is rather the former than the latter.
Now, further looking at the connection of these verses, what is the connection of verse 35 to verse 34? Verse 35 says, "Whoever would save his life will lose it." Well, the connection is quite clear, that to lose one's life is precisely this matter of denying oneself, taking up the cross, and following Jesus. That is losing your life. You take up your cross, you lose your life. Because on the cross you are going to be crucified, you are going to die there. The cross is the instrument of death. But the Lord says, if you think that you will save your life by not taking up the cross, then you are mistaken. Because by not taking up the cross, that is precisely how you will lose your life.
Then what is the connection of verse 36? "For what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world?" Now this, we have to understand that for the man who thinks he is saving his life, the worldly man thinks that he saves his life by gaining the world. For him, his life is understood in terms of gaining the world. Look at the artist. What does he live for? He lives for the applause of men. For him, the applause of man is the gaining of the world, the applause of the world—gaining the world. For many people, they are happy not necessarily to gain the whole world. They can't have that much ambition to gain the whole world, but they are quite happy if they gain some small corner of the world. Some people think he's a great success because he's a millionaire, but a millionaire in terms of all the money in the world is a very small amount of money. There are countless billions and billions in the world, and if you gain a million, that is a very small slice of the pie. So it's not a question of talking about gaining the whole world, as it says here. But even just one fragment of it will be quite sufficient for the worldly man.
His whole eye is seeking to gain the world. For him, the world is life. The Chinese authors are saying, "Money is even more valuable than your life." People are willing to die for it. How many people die in treasure hunting? They know what kind of danger it is to go and get this submerged treasure down there. The danger of attack by sharks, the danger of even skin diving, all kinds of dangers attached to it. You may pass out in the depths and drown before you can recover and things of this sort. You might result in serious problems when you come to the surface and so on. Of course, the techniques of skin diving are improving, but there are constant dangers of being trapped in the wreck and so forth that you can't get out. If you're swimming with a pipe, the pipe may be cut on some sharp metal and you drown before you can get to the surface and so forth. But people are willing to risk their lives to get this treasure so that the treasure is more valuable in some sense than their own life.
We risk our lives all the time. You like to learn flying, the plane may crash. You like to learn driving, you may crash. We seem to be all the time risking our lives. And so for them, what we risk our lives for is the important question. For some people, they're willing to risk it for the world, to gain the world. I'm quite familiar with this. I mean, those of us who have military ambitions, of course, are all the time putting our life on the line. We gain the world through military adventure, but we may lose our life before we gain even one fraction of the world. But we are willing to put our life on the line. For the worldly man, he stakes his life in order to gain the world. But what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his life—not just his physical life. Even more important, if you lost spiritual life, if you lost the possibility of eternal life, what do you do with the world? So we see this connection going through this passage.
But now, let us look at verse 34, which is the passage we need to look at in greater detail. This passage then has three elements in it. If any man come after me, he has to do three things. The first, he must deny himself. Secondly, he must take up the cross. And thirdly, he must follow—a present continuous tense—he must keep on following me. Not just follow me once or for a while, but constantly follow me. He must do these things.
Now, let us come quickly to look at this matter of denying oneself. First of all, why is it so important to deny oneself? Wherein lies the importance of this matter? What is the danger of self that it has to be denied? When we look at the history of mankind, we find that in every failure, the reason for that failure is the failure to deny self. Why did Eve eat the fruit that was forbidden? The answer is simple: God said no, but I say yes, or I'm willing to give it a try. We are doing this kind of thing. The self gives way. We have not denied the self. Eve certainly didn't deny the self. If she had denied herself, she wouldn't have eaten of the fruit that was forbidden. So why did Adam fall? Again, he didn't deny himself. Why did anyone fail in sin? Because of the self, isn't it? There is a reason, and the reason is always lodged in the self.
I find it very interesting. When I talk to people who fail, it's incredible. They always have a reason for their failure, or what they think is a justification for their failure. And the failure is always, when you trace this what to them is a very convincing reason—convincing, because for them, self is what counts. You see, your whole logic, your whole thinking is governed by the self-principle. To the spiritual man, that is not a reason. "Why did you fall into this sin?" "Oh, you see, the circumstances were such that I found it so hard to resist." That's exactly what Adam was saying when he presented the fruit. He should have said, "No, I am not eating of this thing. I love you very much as my wife, and God has given you to me. Indeed He has. There is no denying this. But I shall not eat of this, even if it offends you, even if you get really angry at me, even if you're going to grab that fruit and throw it in my face."
So when he failed, what is his reason? "The woman." And the woman passes the blame to the serpent. The serpent has nobody to pass the blame to. It's shameful even to say, "I failed because of the woman." You only failed because of yourself. You don't fail because of her. You don't fail because of anybody else. A person who fails always likes to put the blame on someone else. We must understand one thing scripturally, that that will not do in the day of judgment when the Lord comes in His glory. We have to answer for our failure. And you fail because of yourself.
Sometimes when it comes to sins, it's always the same thing. "Why did you do this?" "Oh, I was in an impossible position. I had to do it." You don't have to do it. You did it because you did not say no to yourself. So what is the danger of not denying self? The danger is that you may not make it at all. You cannot survive spiritually because like Eve you will go down. Like Adam you will go down. Like David—why does he go down? He sees this beautiful woman there and he can't resist. His flesh gets the better of him. He looks and keeps looking. And then he keeps looking and then his heart gets more worked up. And what does he do? He commits murder to get her. He sends her husband to the battlefield. He dies in the front so he can marry her. What is he doing? Well, you see, there it is again—all the time, self.
So the failure to deny self is going to be absolutely fatal. We've got to understand this very clearly, and I have the feeling that you probably already do. The problem is that when it comes to the actual sinning, we cannot seem to remember this truth. When we sit in the coolness of our chair and we think coolly about the matter, we understand. But then why do Christians sin? If you know it, why don't you do it?
# Self: The Hindrance to Christ's Fullness in Our Lives (Part 2)
We speak about the world, the flesh, and the devil as the enemies of the Christian life. Do you know that these are not three different things? All of these operate on only one principle: the self. The world operates on the principle of self. The flesh is what motivates us in the self to do what my flesh wants me to do. And the devil—the devil of course is always motivated by self. Why do you listen to God? Do what you like? You do not stand on the side of God, but you stand on the side of men. What do you mean by men? Men, in the sense of unregenerate men, is always motivated by self.
Why do Christians fall? Why do young people fall into sexual sins? The answer is plain. You have not been able to deny yourself. Therefore you go and do these things. And then afterwards you are sorry about it, you regret it. But you have already done it. Why have you not denied self? Do you understand that when you do these things and you haven't denied self, you cannot be a disciple of the Lord? That is what He said. That is not what I said. He said this.
Now, let's look at the world. The world functions entirely on the principle of self. When we say that we must not love the world, of course we love the world if we love ourselves. There is no way there is any difference. The world functions on the basis of the self. The whole society in which we live functions on the principle of self-interest. If you took away this principle from the world, the whole society of this world would collapse, because they haven't got another principle to function on. This whole society works on this principle.
You look at all the advertisements that you see around. It wouldn't take you long immediately to discern that the whole society works on self. You buy a new car. Now, how does the car advertise itself? Well, the car tells you—if you look at the advertisements and study them, they are very revealing. One advertisement says, for example, I was looking at an advertisement for car stereos. The thing was too funny, too ridiculous to look at. It shows, as you may have seen, that usually comes immediately before or after the news, this kind of advertisement. And what do you see there? You see a very attractive girl who is a waitress, serving at some take-out store or something like this. And then she goes—who does she serve? She serves the guy in a particular car. She ignores all these other cars parked there, and she serves the guy in one particular car.
And so the advertisement says, why is she doing this? Why does she serve this guy in this car? Is it because he drives a very magnificent car? And then you see that it's a mini. So, is it because this guy is dressed in the latest style suit? You see, he wears a very ordinary suit. Now, is this guy a very handsome guy? No, he is only a middle-aged, balding fellow, you see? Competing with me, you see? So, it leads to the question, why is she ignoring all these handsome guys sitting in these beautiful cars around there and coming to this mini with this middle-aged, bald-headed fellow sitting in a rather ordinary suit in this little yellow mini? Well, the answer, of course, is because of his car stereo. Oh, boy. This is advertisement for you. This is how to advertise a car stereo, you see. It draws this attractive waitress to your car to serve you, you see. How ridiculous. But, you see, it plays on all the elements of self—the desire for attention, particularly the attention of a very attractive girl, of course. And the desire for food that she not only brings herself, but the food along too. And she, moreover, ignores the entire crowd. And you are the one that she pays attention to. Therefore, get this car stereo. It's incredible. The appeal to self. And the lowest elements in self are always there. You can just study any of these advertisements and look at it for yourself.
Or there's the advertisement of a car, you see. And what happens? You see this guy coming up. And this car, of course, is parked outside the Hilton, very significantly, because you see a little neon sign which says Hilton, you see. And what has the significance of Hilton got to do with this car? Well, the idea is, of course, to suggest to you that people who drive this kind of car go to the Hilton. So if you drive this kind of car you will be in the class of the people who go to the Hilton. Or you see a watch. Who is wearing this? Oh, some well-known personality. Maybe Muhammad Ali. So, if he—and there he is wearing this watch—ah, so what is the idea? The idea is, of course, what's he got to do with the watch? Well, the idea is that if you wear this kind of watch you will be in the class of people like Ali. Well, if you don't happen to be interested in boxing, well, they got somebody else that suits your tastes. Well, if you like hotel management, there is this great guy who is the boss of the whole chain of hotels around the world, and what is he doing? There's a photograph of him sitting there and his watch is shining in your face and that is the watch that he is wearing. You see, this is the appeal to self. The irrelevance of all this hardly strikes you because you might suggest that another owner of another chain of restaurants in fact wears the cheapest watch in the world, but that, of course, is not advertised.
So all the time these are the things that are being hinted at you. The appeal to self. This whole society is built in this kind of way. Oh yeah, the Royal Bank was running a series of advertisements very interesting: "We succeed when you succeed." I'm sure you heard this one from the Royal Bank. Oh, this one is really absolutely honest about their selfish motives. Why do we want you to succeed? Because we succeed when you succeed. So, of course, we don't want you to fail because if you fail then we don't succeed, because when you fail you've got no money to put in the bank, so we hope that you succeed, you put more money in our bank. That is as honest as you can get about the self-centered interest. Now, if my business would prosper through your failure, then I suppose the Royal Bank will say I hope you fail so that we succeed. But in this case they are rather interested that you succeed so that they can get more money out of you, and of course we succeed when you succeed. So this holds true, and Steinberg of course is on your side—especially on the side of your purse, of course. Thank you. It's on your side.
And the most remarkable thing is that if you want to motivate a worldly man to be moral you have to appeal to his selfishness. Otherwise even his morality will not function. The morality of this world—and there is a morality in the world—the worldly morality is also built on selfishness. That's remarkable, isn't it? You can even persuade people to be moral by being selfish. For example, "honesty is the best policy." What does that mean? Well, if you are honest then you stay out of trouble. So that's the best policy. I mean, if you are not honest you might end up in jail. And that's not a very good policy. So the way to stay out of jail is to be honest. Appeals again to the self in order even to be honest.
Or "you scratch my back and I'll scratch your back." And the reason I scratch your back is so that I have somebody to scratch my back. So the reason that I'm doing this for you is purely out of self-interest. I'm kind to you so that you'll be kind to me. If I'm not sure you're going to be kind to me then I won't be kind to you. So let's agree first: if I scratch your back, you'll remember to scratch my back. So in this way we have a morality, a concern for others, which is based on self-interest. I'm going to help you now when you're in trouble so that when I'm in trouble you remember to help me. This is the natural man. Of course it's very reasonable on the logic of the self. I don't want to give you something if I don't get something back. You know, if I give you something, you remember last time I gave you was about five dollars' worth—the next time make it five fifty because of inflation when you buy something for me. Otherwise I'm going to lose out on this exchange. You've got to be fair. So this is the whole logic of the carnal man. The natural man, even if he's being good, if you can call it good, is motivated by selfishness. If this guy breaks down, I help him to repair his car, and I hope the next time when I break down he'll help me to repair my car. I mean, this is very understandable. So you say, well, these people are so nice—of course they are so nice, they want to get something out of you.
Now sometimes of course worldly people can be nice simply because it feels good to be nice. I always like to say when you put a few coins in the hat of a beggar it suddenly makes you feel so good—the beggar can't give you anything back—how good you feel is more than sufficient reward. I mean, you only put the dollar there but oh, the good feeling for one dollar is worth every bit of it. So even there, or maybe you did something wrong and by doing a bit of good it helps to improve your conscience. You see? I did some wrong here so I balanced it out by doing some good on the other side. Even the morality is motivated entirely by the feeling within, the self-interest within. That is the natural man.
So this is the nature of our society in which we live. That is why I said the world is motivated by self. That the flesh is motivated by self requires no explanation. That the devil is motivated by self we also know already. That is why he tried to take the place of God. He wants to be number one, and of course the self always wants to be number one. And as every psychologist knows, the way to get somebody else to do something is to make him feel that he is going to be good as a result of doing that something. "You will become number one if you wear the suit that I make, and you come to our shop and you put on this suit, you will really be number one. You will be something. You will be like the prince of Monaco."
Now all of this we must understand. We are not facing a multitude of enemies. We are facing one enemy. It's not that the world is some kind of enemy and the flesh is another. This is simply self functioning in different spheres. The enemy is always the same. We are our greatest enemy when it comes to spiritual life and spiritual reality.
Now the question then is, how do we know whether we are delivered from the self or not? Speaking, I should think, mostly to people who are Christians who consider themselves to be disciples, yet I find it alarming that among people who think that they have already disposed of the self, one sees everywhere the marks of the self. Well, what are the marks of the self? Let us examine our own thinking, for example. We just saw that it says that the carnal man seeks to gain the world. But let's look at ourselves. You are given a promotion in your company—oh, how good it feels, this is something really great, suddenly you feel yourself six feet high. Or what are the things that give you pleasure? Does the applause or the praise of man really make you high? I wonder. When people praise you and say something good about you and it makes you feel so great, you should be careful about that, because if praise has that kind of effect upon you, the chances are that your self is very far from having been denied. Very far from having been denied. Or do the things of this present age matter more to you than the things which are eternal? Or are they equally important? Do they bring equal excitement to you? Signs of danger there. The marks of the carnal man.
What about the struggle with pride? Pride of life. The Apostle John speaks about that in 1 John. He says these are the things: the pride of life, the lust of the eyes. These are the marks of the carnal man. So I find even in conversations sometimes with Christians the things that they gloat about—you see everywhere the self has not been denied.
Another sign of self, of course, is individualism. Particularly painful to me often is to see, for example, at times in the training team, individualism raising its ugly head again. What is individualism but self-assertion, the assertion of the self to do it my way? In Frank Sinatra's wonderful song: "I did it my way"—right down to the grave, "I did it my way." And what's he going to do in his way at the judgment, I don't know. But the problem here is always individualism. I want to do this and I want to do it in my way. The insistence, for example, in the discussion that this is the way I want to have it done. This is the only way that is right. Or if you don't like to go along with me, I do it my way anyway. I go ahead and do it all the same. I don't have to consider whether you like it or not or whether you think it's good or not. I'm going to do it. And these are not talking about matters of doctrine. It's matters of how we conduct ourselves. Sometimes we have to let people go from the team. We have to ask them to leave even, because the individualism makes teamwork impossible. Such people cannot associate and function properly in a team because they are going to split the team before too long. They're going to insist on their way of doing things.
I don't mean to say that we have no thoughts or ideas of our own. By all means we should have thoughts, helpful suggestions, present them. It is rather difficult when somebody has no opinions on anything whatsoever. I mean, after all, when you have a co-worker, you want some feedback, you want some opinions. And you say, "How about this way?" "Oh, that's okay." "And how about the other way?" "It's okay too." "Is it this way?" "Okay, anything." "Okay, I mean, it's okay to you." The question is, as far as the Lord's work is concerned, which is better? I'm not asking you which you prefer. You see, the self can even be expressed in this no-opinion position. Do you see that? One is simply, "I don't care which, either way it will do." The question is, that is not selflessness. Because if self has been denied, I am concerned about the Lord's interest. Therefore, I will consider which of these ways is best for the Lord's work. So don't think that when anything is okay for you, whether it's coffee or tea, "I don't mind either"—that means most people don't care too much about that. But in many arrangements, if you have no suggestion to make, you may be shirking out of your responsibility. And that isn't a sign that your self is dead. It's simply that you are unconcerned about what is best for the Lord's work.
Now, another sign—and I'm speaking about signs which are very common among Christians—is the sign of moodiness. Moodiness is a sure mark—if you think you have denied yourself, watch for that. Moodiness. You all know that. The guy's in good spirits one day, he's in bad spirits the next. What is moodiness? It's simply that you are focusing your attention on your inner feeling. That's what a moody person does. He does not look away from himself to the Lord. The Lord is always the same. Whether the weather is good or the weather is bad, what difference does that make to the Lord? Whether somebody has been nice to you—you see, a person who fixes his mind on the Lord, who fixes his heart on the Lord, he does not become moody. He fixes his attention, he is absorbed with the Lord, and therefore he doesn't have to go up and down in these moods.
Another sign of this failure to deny oneself, or the failure to put away self, is the lack of perception. This point worries me a lot. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, especially chapter 1 and chapter 2, that the spiritual things are spiritually discerned, and the carnal man cannot discern them. Many times in a conversation you see that the person you are speaking with has no spiritual perception, cannot discern the spiritual content of things at all. Because the spiritual things are discerned spiritually. And unless you are spiritual, you cannot understand them, you cannot discern them. This comes out in preaching, this comes out in conversation, it comes out in leading Bible studies. You see that there is not perception there. And this is a great problem. Now perception of course takes time to grow, but it will never grow at all unless the self has been put away.
Now we must come quickly to this question of how to deal with the self. This is vital for us. How to deal with the self, of course, is the problem that so many people have wrestled with and failed. This is the reason why we do not have the spiritual giants that the Lord has come to bring into being in His church.
Now look again at this verse: "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross." Now what "take up the cross" means I shall expound in detail two Sundays from now, "and follow me." Now, clearly there is a negative and a positive here. Deny oneself is the negative side of things; take up the cross is the positive side. But we should not expound this aspect of the positive side. Rather, we shall expound this verse today in the light of Galatians chapter 2 and verse 20. Galatians chapter 2 and verse 20. And what do we read here in Galatians 2:20? This is another well-known verse, often quoted but not so often understood: "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me."
Now let us draw a number of points very quickly from this passage. First of all, we are talking about the very basics. "I have been crucified." It is not something in the future, it is not something merely in the present, but it is something which for Paul is a reality already in the past—the perfect passive tense. "I have been crucified with Christ." When he came to the Lord, he understood that the self had to go. He denied himself. You cannot be crucified with Christ unless you have denied yourself. You have come to an utter end of yourself. You have seen that the world's way of thinking is self-centered. But when you become a Christian, you turn your back on this whole way of thinking. Your whole attitude has to change completely. So, at baptism, the whole meaning of baptism is that you died with Christ. But how many people having been baptized have really died with Christ, been crucified with Him? If that were the truth, in the fullness of its application, there would be within you a power functioning now that will certainly exceed that of John the Baptist.
The second thing we need to look at here right away is this: "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." Not I, but Christ. Now, what does this mean? The first thing that is clear to us is that so long as I live, Christ cannot live in me. Grasp this thing very clearly. If Christ could live within me without my having died, without my being crucified with Him, then why should I be crucified at all? You see, Paul is saying exactly the same thing as the Lord is saying here in Mark chapter 8 verse 34. Unless you deny yourself, you cannot follow me. Now, this puts us with a choice in this way: we have to choose either self or Christ, but we cannot choose both. If you do not deny yourself, you cannot follow me. If you follow me, you have to deny yourself. You either choose yourself or you choose me. That's exactly the same thing that Paul is saying here. Only when I was crucified with Christ can Christ now live in me.
It is precisely because we have not denied ourselves that Christ has not been able to function in our lives. The reason for this is that Christ and us in our carnal self are totally disparate. They cannot come together. They cannot function side by side. In Chinese they say you cannot have these two forces side by side. My self in my carnal nature is the opposite of Christ. Therefore if I am here, Christ cannot be here. If I am alive, then Christ cannot live in me. That's how it is.
Now, are you perfectly sure that Christ lives in you? We use the term "in Christ." Now we cannot be in Christ unless Christ is in us. We can see that from John chapter 15. Paul uses the term "to be in Christ" exactly deriving this from John chapter 15: "I in you, you in me." These are two complementary truths. You cannot be in Christ unless Christ is in you. Now if Christ lives in me in all His fullness—Christ is greater than John the Baptist—and clearly I am greater than John the Baptist because it is not I but Christ who lives in me. I wonder how many of you dear brothers and sisters know the truth of Christ living in you. I wonder how many.
If Christ lives in us, two things certainly will happen immediately. The first is that if He lives in me, then I will have a communion with Him. I mean, if somebody lives in your house, what happens? Well, you will see him every day, you will talk with him, you will communicate with him. And if you yourself has gone, if you are totally unselfish and the other person is totally unselfish, what sweetness of communion there will be. Do you recall, for those of you who are in love, why love between two young lovers is so sweet? I mean in the early stages, until self starts appearing, and this so-called falling in love at first sight is all very fine. It's all at first sight there's no problem because at first sight self has had no time to assert itself yet, and very sweet at that stage. It's precisely because the two people have put the other person for the moment first—oh, so sweet. But then when each person starts asserting their self and their self-interest and their own ideas and insisting on their own ways—oh dear, then the trouble begins, then the fighting begins. And when it comes to marriage—oh, everybody—the husband has so many ways: "This is the way it's got to be done." The wife says, "No, no, my grandmother always did it this way and that's the way I'm going to do it." And he says, "No, no, my father did it this way and that's the way I'm going to do it." And oh, they're at each other's necks, really fighting it out, you see. No fellowship can be sweet when self comes into it.
Why is our fellowship and therefore communion gone, destroyed? Do you enjoy sweetness of communion with the Lord? Be very honest with yourself about this question. And let me say that if you do not enjoy sweetness of communion with the Lord, the answer is very easy to find. You have not denied self. He denied Himself, but you haven't denied yourself. He denied Himself to the point of death on the cross for us, for you. But we haven't denied ourselves. Let me say as an absolute certainty that when you deny yourself, He will grant you the sweetness of communion with Himself such as you dare not imagine. Sweetness—oh, how precious that is. Now if you experience trouble in prayer, you will know in a moment's diagnosis that the self is fighting you every step of the way. You kneel down and immediately everything starts coming against you. The self rises up in protest: "I haven't got time for this. I got so much homework to do. Don't you understand? I can't—we spend time kneeling talking to the Lord? That's fine—in eternity we'll do that when we get to eternity. Now we've got to get on with the realities of everyday life." Oh yes, the self has so many ways, and you think, "Oh yeah, very reasonable. Yeah, I should be doing this." So bye-bye, Lord. Communion—why not forget the whole business? It's either Christ or I. We have to choose one of these two things. If you want to choose the I, then do Christ the favor of saying, "I am not a Christian and I don't intend to be a Christian." Fine. Because otherwise people think you're a Christian and look at this kind of Christian—what a disgrace. People don't want to become Christian because of you.
A second thing, and we must close. If Christ lives in you, there will come a measure of power into your life that will soon become very obvious. You do not lose spiritual battles. You win them all the time. Do you always fail? Then clearly you have not denied self. Your self has not been crucified. A Christian who fails constantly cannot be a victorious Christian. But Paul says He has made us to be more than conquerors, and this I have already explained before—more than conquerors, not just barely enough to survive. It is enough super-abundance. There is no contest in the battle because of the power that is functioning within us. He is living within us to will and to do of His good pleasure, and yet we cannot do His good pleasure all the time because self is there.
Now as I said, we seem to understand what self-denial is and yet in daily practice self is there all the time. We must once and for all settle this question. If we don't once and for all settle this question, we are not going to make it as disciples.
Would that Christ live in us. But consider this final point. When you pray and God doesn't answer, you ask Him more and He still doesn't answer. And you say, "Lord, I prayed about this ten times already and You are still not answering. Are You there or are You not there?" The answer is, He is there, but you are not there. That's the problem. What do we mean, we are not there? We are not there spiritually. We haven't come. We haven't arrived. The self is still dominating our lives.
I would like you to remember one verse in James chapter 1 and verse 8, very clearly. James chapter 1, verse 8: "Let not the double-minded man think that he will receive anything of the Lord." You will not receive anything. He told you this in advance. Don't ask why He didn't answer, because He already told you He won't answer because you're double-minded. What does double-minded mean? The most dangerous form of the Christian life is the kind in which we partly deny ourselves, partly acknowledge the lordship of Christ, and yet partly we do not deny ourselves and therefore partly do not acknowledge the lordship of Christ. Now whether Christ is Lord or He is not Lord—this is something you must settle in your mind once and for all. Because if you pray and He doesn't answer, it's because self is still alive. You have not thoroughly denied it.
Of course what little so-called faith you have is going to disappear, going to go down the drain. God's reality comes to you how? Because you experience Him working in your life. And how does He work? Because you pray and He answers. You pray again and He answers again. And He is working all the time. And because He is working all the time, you say, "I know God is real." But can you say that? You pray, He doesn't answer. You pray again, He doesn't answer. He keeps on not answering, and then you say God is not real. Of course God is real. Those of us who have put His truth to the test, who have applied His teaching in our life, we know He is real. I would not be standing here preaching these things if I had the thought in my mind that God is not real. I should go do something else, make myself a good living elsewhere. No, no, I speak because I know He is real. And I want you to experience that He is real. And I am telling you the truth that God has said in His word that unless you come single-minded to Him, without self, totally finished with self, you will never experience His reality. Unless you do that, you have to make a choice between God and yourself, between Christ and the I. And this choice, I would say to you and urge you—not to say, "Oh, I have made this long ago." You have made it? So I can see you as a spiritual giant, having sweet communion with the Lord Jesus, the fullness of His power coming through your life? Do I see this? If I do not, examine whether indeed you have denied yourself.
Let us be quiet before God. Prayer.