“Let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me” (Luke 9:23).

      The ordinary thought of self-denial, whether among saints or the people of the world, is giving up. There may be many different ideas as to what is to be given up. Some would limit it to certain worldly things such as card-playing, dancing, or the theater [or, nowadays, television, videos, computer games, or Internet surfing]. Others would confine it to a certain season during which time pleasures that are freely indulged in the remainder of the year are rigidly avoided. This, that, and the other is to be given up, as deemed to be pleasing to the natural man. However, it is possible that this may tend to foster spiritual pride, for does not one deserve credit for relinquishing so much?

      But is this the thought of the passage, “Let him deny himself”? Self is to be refused, to be given up. A man may give up anything, and well-nigh everything, but so long as he holds fast to himself, he has not learned the first elements of self-denial. “I am crucified with Christ,” says the apostle. Did he mean that he was doing this or that distasteful thing, and so practicing self-denial? Ah no! Paul himself was denied; he was done with himself, and now it was Christ who lived in him. Can we think of Paul as occupied with a multiplicity of questions as to whether he had to give up one thing and another? The cross settled all that for him. There was an end to himself, as well as an end to the world, so far as he was concerned. And with this went the entire mass of questions that monasticism has tried in vain to settle.

      Does not this explain the taking up the cross, which comes in the immediate connection? Let him “take up his cross daily and follow Me.” The ordinary thought of taking the cross is doing something that is disagreeable. So people talk even of prayer and public confession of Christ as taking up the cross. But to the disciples the cross meant something very definite. They looked upon it as the sign of death, and death at the hands of the Romans. In modern language, we might substitute the word gallows [or electric chair] for the cross. The ignominy, judgment, and reproach of a shameful death go with it. To follow Christ, to take up the cross, then, means something more than doing a few distasteful duties. It means an end of self. Reckoning ourselves to be dead indeed to sin.

      But beloved, what relief we have here, what rest of soul. The root is cut and soon the fading leaves of human pride will drop off. Does the world persecute? does it threaten with the cross? It can have no terrors for one who knows the preciousness of the cross in his own soul. He has already taken it up, applied it, not to a few details; and in the end of himself, he has reached the end of struggling. The whole thing has gone, he is alive now in Christ Jesus, and can walk in the newness of life that goes with it. Now he will find power for laying aside every weight, and instead of a path of sorrow, he has one of unutterable peace and joy—the path of the cross, which ends in the cloudless glory of God.

            (From Help and Food, Vol. 18.)