The Death of Self
Christ bids us, "Come and Die" that we might truly live. Have you experienced your own funeral?
Have You Been Crucified With Christ?
Beloved, if you have not made the decision to die to self and begin the struggle that this death sets up in your flesh, then you are living beneath your privilege in Christ, and you are restricting your spiritual growth more than you can possibly know.
Galatians 5:17 tells us clearly that,
“For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.”
For some, the moment of absolute surrender comes at salvation, but for most, it comes subsequent to salvation. At salvation, we have seen the light and we are generally sick and tired of being sick and tired, but we are usually determined in our heart to come apart from our sins of commission. These sins are the flagrant sins that make our life unmanageable and bring pain to those we love the most. At the point of salvation, we rarely have a sufficient understanding of scripture to see the sanctified life in its larger perspective.
If the new believer doesn’t find this knowledge or conviction within themself, they likely have a hard time finding it in churches today. The mainstream institutional church is no longer teaching or holding to the standard that Christ is clearly calling us to. If they did, they would lose a large percentage of their members overnight. This “cost” simply goes against the financial directive that truly governs the majority of churches in this nation.
It is generally after salvation that the Holy Spirit starts shining a light on the finer issues of the crucified life. It is in these seasons that He starts convicting us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (read Philippians 2:12-16). Even before that happens, we must discover and respond faithfully to the command to bend every effort to “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). In Wuest’s exegesis of this passage he renders “Be diligent” as “bend every effort.” To which, the Spirit would add “as if your life depended on it” because your spiritual life does depend on it. This only comes through faithfully studying and applying the word of God to our life as a lifestyle. As we draw near to God and dig into the word, the Spirit starts engineering our funeral and the long battle that should leads us there.
DO YOU WALK IN WHITE?
by Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
“We were buried with Him … that just as Christ was raised from the dead … even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).
No one experiences complete sanctification without going through a “white funeral”—the burial of the old life. If there has never been this crucial moment of change through death, sanctification will never be more than an elusive dream. There must be a “white funeral,” a death with only one resurrection—a resurrection into the life of Jesus Christ. Nothing can defeat a life like this. It has oneness with God for only one purpose—to be a witness for Him.
Have you really come to your last days? You have often come to them in your mind, but have you really experienced them? You cannot die or go to your funeral in a mood of excitement. Death means you stop being. You must agree with God and stop being the intensely striving kind of Christian you have been. We avoid the cemetery and continually refuse our own death. It will not happen by striving, but by yielding to death. It is dying—being “baptized into His death” (Romans 6:3).
Have you had your “white funeral,” or are you piously deceiving your own soul? Has there been a point in your life which you now mark as your last day? Is there a place in your life to which you go back in memory with humility and overwhelming gratitude, so that you can honestly proclaim, “Yes, it was then, at my ‘white funeral,’ that I made an agreement with God.”
“This is the will of God, your sanctification …” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). Once you truly realize this is God’s will, you will enter into the process of sanctification as a natural response. Are you willing to experience that “white funeral” now? Will you agree with Him that this is your last day on earth? The moment of agreement depends on you.
Most Professing Christians Never Embrace the Crucified Life
According to multiple Barna surveys, a large majority of professing Christians in America never make it to this point of crucifixion. The results of Barna surveys indicate that 95% of professing Christians in this nation have never shared their faith with another human being.
Therefore, the irrefutable declaration of scripture is that those who have failed to evangelize have been out of fellowship with God for virtually their entire Christian walk, and according to doctrine, they do not have any evidence or assurance of salvation. They may be saved, but they have been carnal Christians since they never recognized that the ministry of reconciliation, our ambassadorship to the lost, is an inescapable command and mandate from God throughout scripture.
Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do, and does not do it, to him it is sin. (James 4:17)
Remember, beloved, you do not get a certificate of salvation from an angelic messenger. Scripture is clear that only those who are obedient to be led by the Spirit will get a testimony from the Spirit of God to their spirit that they are truly children of God:
For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. (15) For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!" (16) The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, (17) and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him. (18) For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (Romans 8:14-18)
See also 2 Peter 1:5-11 and Hebrew 10:38.
Part of the “suffering” is bowing down our will to God’s will and sharing our faith and testimony at every opportunity. The suffering and rejection will come, but some will be saved by your ministry. Sharing the gospel is our second highest calling, and comes under loving our neighbor as ourselves. The first is to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. But 1 John 4:20 tells us that,
“If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”
So, if you say, “How have I hated my brother,”
God will respond, “You have not shared with Him the gospel of life, the cure for the human condition, without which every person will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire out of the presence of their Creator.”
Not to share the gospel, the power of God unto salvation, with everyone in your circle of influence is hating them with the most malevolent form of hatred that exists here below. What worse transgression than to willingly withhold the means to keep a person from plunging into everlasting pain and agony? This is the sin of spiritual murder in God’s eyes.
When I say to the wicked, 'You will surely die,' and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. (19) Yet if you have warned the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered yourself. (Ezekiel 3:18-19)
We Are Not Our Own
But even joyously taking up the mantle of evangelism and being obedient to share your faith is not necessarily a sign of the death or the funeral of which we speak. First, we must realize that we are not our own and that we were bought with a price, the precious and priceless blood of our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ.
When verses like 2 Corinthians 5:15 (below) start coming alive to our understanding, we begin to be convicted of the degree to which we waste our time and resources on serving ourselves and our appetites. Our bondage to the world system is what stands in the way of abdicating our rights to ourselves and allowing Christ to live His life through us in the Spirit.
He died for all, that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf. (2 Corinthians 5:15)
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me. (Galatians 2:20)
It is when we can no longer casually repeat Galatians 2:20 without being gripped by conviction for all the areas of our life into which Jesus is denied admission that we start to feel the higher calling. Only then will we feel the Spirit removing our addiction to self-indulgence that we had been experiencing from insisting on our rights to ourselves.
It is at this point that we come to a true Cross-road. Here, we will either denounce self and embrace our “white funeral,” or we will take the broader path and hold to a form of godliness (religious ritual and the observances of man-made religion). As long as we are insisting on our rights to ourselves we will never attain the higher life of spiritual power to which we are called. If we reject the upward call of God at this point, then we will find that we have grieved and quenched the Holy Spirit, and there is only a fading memory of the former days (Ephesians 4:30 and 1 Thessalonians 5:19).
Identity and Allegiance
It is often at the point when people fail to press forward to lay hold of the fullness that can be theirs in Christ that Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Assemblies of God, Nondenominational, or some other label becomes primary on the throne of their life. It is not going to one of these churches that is the snare, but that you allow any identity other than Christ alone to be foremost in your heart. If there is any name, any identity, or any allegiance here below that supersedes your identification with the Lord Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, then you have compromised your identity in Christ.
Beloved, you cannot believe how insidious and deceptive this process is. Every member of every denomination will tell you that Jesus is their first allegiance, but their confession does not stand the test of their life. Pick up any denominational book, especially concerning missions, and count the number of times the mission outposts, buildings, organizational positions, and people are designated by the name of the denomination or organization. Compare that to the number of times the name of the Lord appears. Once you do, it will grate on your nerves thereafter.
If the book has the name of the denomination on the cover or in the forward, that is sufficient credit; from there on out, if there is anything worthy of note, it was completely wrought by the hand of God. Continuously repeating the name of a particular “division” of the body of Christ is not giving Christ all the glory that is due to Him alone. Their words may give Him the glory, but their primary allegiance betrays their words.
How sad it must be for the Spirit to break someone loose from the carnal bondage of the world system only to lose them to the spirit of religion!
Choked Out
And others are the ones on whom seed was sown among the thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word, (19) but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. (Mark 4:18-19)
However, the majority of believers and those on the path to salvation are sidetracked by insisting on their rights to themselves regarding the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, position, popularity, entertainment, and the acknowledgment of man. This weapon of the enemy defeats the majority of the saints in that wide expanse of the battlefield before they reach the enemy’s strongholds and are in a position to overthrow his sway over those in their circle of influence.
Although this is largely the fault of pastors and church leaders preaching a watered-down, feel-good gospel, it is also a failure of the individual to seek truth by faithfully studying the word of God while in fellowship (having no unconfessed sins) on their own as a daily lifestyle. If they did, the Holy Spirit would lead them into the clear truth of scripture that would prevent this error.
The result is that due to false teachers teaching the doctrine of demons as well as the sin of omission on the part of those who decline to take a stand against the error, people become focused on the things here below. This violates countless scriptures like those following that try to steer us away from the fiery darts of the enemy in our thought life:
Do not be anxious then, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'With what shall we clothe ourselves?' (32) For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. (33) But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. (Matthew 6:31-33)
He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. (38) And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. (Matthew 10:37-38)
You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (James 4:4)
All it requires to be a friend of the world is to let gaining wealth (or any worldly priority) be more important to us than serving Christ. Judge yourself by examining your priorities.
Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test? (2 Corinthians 13:5)
If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. (2) Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. (3) For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (4) When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. (5) Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. [This includes allowing anything into the ear, eye, mouth, or mind gate of your temple that depicts any of this. What you put into your temple will conform you to its image. Do not be deceived. Therefore, pour in Christ and stop pouring in the world.] (6) For it is on account of these things that the wrath of God will come, (7) and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them. (8) But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. (9) Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices. (Colossians 3:1-9)
Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. (4) No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier. (2 Timothy 2:3-4)
And put a knife to your throat, If you are a man of great appetite…..(4) Do not weary yourself to gain wealth, cease from your consideration of it. (Proverbs 23:2, 4)
And if we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. (1 Timothy 6:8)
Let your character be free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, "I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you." (Hebrews 13:5)
Pursuit of His Calling
Beloved, when we are called to the “white funeral,” and there may be more than one. As God keeps calling us higher, we realize that anything that we could possibly choose in human wisdom or on the line of our fleshly agenda will fail to attain the highest good for our lives. The very pinnacle of our temple and the hinge pin of our faith has to be that Jesus has saved us to serve Him and Him alone and that in the pursuit of His calling, I will experience the highest possible good for my life.
That means that if we could expend an unlimited amount of money and power trying to seek a sense of significance, meaning, value, and purpose on any other line than Christ, we would fail to achieve the joy, peace, satisfaction, love, and the condition of inner and spiritual well-being that is available to us in Him. Of course, that even pales to insignificance and worse compared to spending eternity in the presence of our Creator and Lord, Jesus Christ. Do not let Paul be talking about you in Philippians 3:18-19, but realize that your calling and destiny in Christ are described in verses 20-21:
For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, (19) whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, [They boast of and take pride in their sin.] who set their minds on earthly things. (20) For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; (21) who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself. (Philippians 3:18-21)
The Deceitfulness of the American Dream
Prosperity, materialism, and worldly gain are the very heart of what is commonly called the “American dream.” The search for wealth, popularity, and power are the primary driving forces in the fabric of American culture today. Churches have largely abandoned the idea of self-denial to avoid alienating the large majority of churchgoers. What attracts pew dwellers today is bigger orchestras, luxurious family centers, and plenty of social functions.
A church that started classifying seeking the American dream as a sin would soon be losing its carnal members left and right, let alone if they preached self-denial, giving up your rights to self, and living as a bondservant of Christ. Today, when scriptures like 1 Corinthians 6:9 are read that declare that we “are not our own, and that we were bought with the blood of Christ,” they are received in some ethereal or supernatural sense. Surely, God could not have said anything that would compromise the American dream. After all, isn’t God an American?
God’s position is simply that what He freely gives us here below and in eternity in Christ will compensate us millions of times over for forfeiting our rights to be self-destructive in our selfish, self-centered, and futile attempts to find happiness in worldly terms. Millions of Americans have become so blinded by their sin and the false teachers they have tickling their ears that they have been deceived into believing that it is alright to spend their whole life lusting after their fleshly appetites as long as they attend church. So, we find professing Christian families soaking every day in television programs that enthrone messages and behavior that God declares in His Word to be sinful abominations.
Total Submission to Christ
Beloved, God is not an American, and to seek the American dream rather than to be in utter submission to Christ is diametrically opposed to the truth of scripture. Please let the clarity of this message get through whatever bondage you are into in the world system and let it cause you to desire to be completely obedient to Paul’s exhortation in Philippians 4:1, the verse that follows his message in Philippians 3:18-21 (above):
Therefore, my beloved brethren whom I long to see, my joy and crown, so stand firm in the Lord, my beloved.
If you are not willing to die a little more to yourself every time the Holy Spirit brings the call/conviction, then you are living so far beneath your privilege in Christ that mere words cannot express what you are missing and what it will cost you both on earth and in eternity. Think about the fact that every time you sit in a pew and hear the truth preached to you, only to leave that place and not apply that truth in your life you bring judgment on yourself.
For ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled, receives a blessing from God; (8) but if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned. (Hebrews 6:7-8)
Better that you not go to the cup of communion than to go to it unworthily (out of fellowship with God) because of having unconfessed sin. Because if you do, you curse yourself:
Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord… (30) For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep (have died). But if we judged ourselves rightly, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord in order that we may not be condemned along with the world.”(1 Corinthians 11:27, 30-32)
Scripture also tells us that to achieve greatness spiritually, we need to humble ourselves and be the servant of all, which violates every mandate for success embraced by this nation.
Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:4)
But the greatest among you shall be your servant. (Matthew 23:11)
And sitting down, He called the twelve and said to them, “If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all, and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35)
Are you beginning to see a pronounced contradiction between scriptural guidelines and what is being embraced by much of the mainstream religion and our culture in this nation too much of which is focused on prosperity?
God tells us in the following scriptures that loving one another is of supreme importance to Him, second only to loving God:
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. (35) "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13:34)
Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself. (Philippians 2:3)
There is no better way to be obedient to these instructions than to dedicate yourself to evangelism and to serving the cause of Christ by becoming an agent of the Holy Spirit to accomplish the highest good for others. This is the definition of agape love. Moreover, the highest good for a person is whatever brings them into a closer relationship with Jesus Christ.
And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:32)
You will not forgive readily when your highest priority is struggling for earthly gain.
And be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. (Ephesians 5:21).
We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. (1 John 3:14)
Selfishness is Demonic
Could it be that when we are driven by our own selfish motives we are commiting sin and thus serving demons?
Anton LaVey, the founder of the First Satanic Church in San Francisco, teaches that Satan does not want us to do his bidding; rather, Satan wants us to do whatever we want to do. Satan does not care what we do so long as it is not what God commands us or is leading us to do. So when we serve our own selfish motives we are serving Satan.
Even scripture suggests that being self-centered and selfish is sharing with demons:
No, but I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God; and I do not want you to become sharers in demons. (21) You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. (22) Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? We are not stronger than He, are we? (23) All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify. (24) Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor. (1 Corinthians 10:20-24)
These passages have powerful implications for many key biblical doctrines. However, it is not by accident that God saw fit to put verse 24 following the admonishment not to sacrifice to, partake with, or share with demons.
It seems that when we seek our “own good” (verse 24) over that of our neighbor, we are serving and worshipping demons. Actually, the word “good” is added to make sense in the English. In the Koine Greek, “his own good” all comes from heautou, which here means “himself.” The clear implication is that when we are selfish or self-centered we are worshipping ourselves and become our own god.
Keep in mind that scripture declares that we worship God with our obedience, not by our sacrifice of convenience in a “worship service.” (Romans 12:1)
“We are not stronger than He, are we?” (verse 22) simply means, “Do we think we have the power and wisdom to accomplish more for ourselves than God can?”
In his commentary on the New Covenant, Lenski addresses verse 24, “Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor,” in the following:
He [Paul] purposely states the principle in the broadest form so that it may answer all of the questions that now await solution. Not to seek one’s own interest is, of course, not to be understood in an absolute way but must be considered in connection with the seeking of the interest of the other person. It excludes all selfish regard which cares nothing for the interest of other people. It demands that we have regard for the good of others also, for by doing this we shall serve also ourselves in the best possible manner.
God’s Best Is On The Other Side of Obedience
What Lenski is saying regarding serving “ourselves in the best possible manner” is that working for the good of others is not only an issue of obedience but that as we do for others we open the door for God to do for us.
The real question is whether we would rather:
Work for our own good and rely on our own wisdom and power, or
Live for the good of others and rely on God’s wisdom and power to lead, bless, and provide the things He wants us to have.
For a believer, this should be a no-brainer. But, as stated, less than 5 percent of believers operate at this level of faith and wisdom relative to evangelism.
It does not take much intelligence to realize that if you want to know the purpose of a thing, you ask the creator of the thing, not the thing itself. God has a perfect plan for our life. He knows the end from the beginning. He has total power to accomplish His purpose and He loves us unconditionally and way beyond our capacity to love ourselves. This is why we are told:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And do not lean on your own understanding. (Proverbs 3:5)
I wonder how many Christians are married to the wrong spouse because when God brought the opportunity to witness to the person who would have introduced them to the person that God had chosen for them, they were disobedient and too focused on their appetites here below.
Remember, beloved: God’s best for us is always on the other side of obedience, and obedience must be immediate, complete, and joyful.
Anything short of that is clear testimony that we have no idea who God really is and that we are darkened in our understanding and veiled from the deeper truths in His Word.
If we reflect on our life and the thousands of implications that follow upon the application of this concept, then we will begin to understand what living beneath our privilege in Christ is all about. An old axiom puts it very simply: “You choose, you lose!”
The problem with most nominal Christians is that they have never had a first-hand encounter with the living God because they have always insisted on their rights to themselves and have never acted in obedience while in fellowship. If they had, they would have experienced an unmistakable testimony of the Spirit to their spirit that would have increased their faith multiple-fold. This is why some Christians grow at lightspeed, and others end up going through religious motions and often become bankrupt in their faith.
Beloved, God gave you volition (free choice), and He is unwilling to compromise your ability to choose based on your own understanding and carnal appetites if you desire to do so. However, if you have a shred of spiritual insight or wisdom, then right now, you will initiate a funeral service - your own! You will fall on your face before God and repent and confess your sins and freely abdicate your rights to yourself!
Covenant from your heart this very moment that God will make every decision in your life from this moment forward and that He should convict you of every departure from that covenant. Ask God to identify everything in your life that does not glorify Him and stop it, get rid of it, or burn it.
Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:4)
If you make this commitment then one day, in the not-too-distant future, you will be celebrating this moment on your knees, with hands raised high and with tears of joy and supplication streaming down your face, repeating His name! JESUS!
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In Christ,
—Paul