6 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 7 You shall have no other gods before me. 8 You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.”
24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”
34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37 Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”
23 Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? 26 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.”
23 Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.”
6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin-- 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
1 Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. 2 As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God.
14 Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe 16 as you hold out the word of life--in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing. 17 But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. 18 So you too should be glad and rejoice with me.
45 “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
“In his masterful exposition of The Sermon on the Mount, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says that Christians become a light to the world to the degree that they stand out as different from the world. The world does not thirst for a religious imitation of itself; nor does it thirst for an “us against them” moral turf war with its zealous religious neighbors. The world thirsts for a different kind of neighbor—not the kind who deny their fellowman, take up their comforts, and follow their dreams—but the kind who deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Jesus in his mission of loving a weary world to life. The world also thirsts for a new vision for being human, for pursuing and entering friendship, and for leaving things better than we found them. Lloyd-Jones writes: ‘The problem isn’t with Christianity as much as it is with our flawed approach to and understanding of Christianity. We have let ourselves become imbalanced, lopsided, and unfocused (much like the rigid, holier-than-thou Pharisees and the materialistic, secular Sadducees of the New Testament). To regain our footing, we need to begin following the whole Jesus and the whole Scripture, into the whole world, the whole time.’” Scott Sauls
“‘Do not be deceived: God is not mocked,’ the apostle Paul writes, ‘for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life’ (Galatians 6:7-8). The trouble is that we fool ourselves into thinking there’s some safe middle ground — that we can make excuses and put off sowing to the Spirit, while still denying the flesh. But we always sow to something, very often to ourselves. And what we sow slowly reveals, and shapes, what we love most in life.” Marshall Segal
“The fact of the matter is that when you’re truly taking up your cross, you’re experiencing life. The objective is not to learn to love yourself; it is to deny yourself. If you actually want to find yourself, then lose yourself. And how do you lose yourself? You take up your cross and follow Him.” Greg Laurie
“Darkness is my point of view, my right to myself; light is God’s point of view.” Oswald Chambers
“When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.” John Ruskin
“When we deny ourselves, Jesus tells us, we find ourselves. We defy the devil. We join heaven’s side. We destroy our sorrow. The life we find on the other side of self-denial may look far different from the life we’ve always known. But it will not — it cannot — be worse. It is a life where we gain a hundredfold more than we ever give up (Mark 10:30). It is a life where we are no longer a broken note in the symphony of the universe, but are rather sounding the part God created us for. It is a life with Jesus: maker of all beauty, redeemer of all brokenness, fountain of all joy. The devil may be a lion, but we rarely hear his roar; more often, he appears in our most plausible reasons to avoid self-denial. If you deny yourself, you will not only find yourself, defy the devil, and join heaven’s side; you will be happy. For, as Jonathan Edwards once preached, ‘Self-denial destroys the very root and foundation of sorrow.’ All the world’s sorrow, grief, trials, and trouble find their beginning in our first parents’ choice of self over God (Romans 5:12; 8:20). So many of our own sorrows grow from the same bitter root. If we are going to destroy our sorrow down to the bottom, the self that loves sin must be denied. The deepest joys in this world come only on the other side of self-denial. In fact, the joy is so rich, so expansive and generous, that often it meets us in the very midst of our self-denial. The new life rises as the other dies; the new plant sprouts while we are still hacking at the root of the old. Just as we are ‘sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,’ so too we are ‘self-denying, yet always rejoicing’ (2 Corinthians 6:10). Scott Hubbard
“The real tragedy is the person who has lived a lifetime in fantasy, trying to deny weakness, and is left with nothing because he or she failed to become weighty of soul.” Jamin Goggin and Kyle Strobel
“They that deny themselves for Christ shall enjoy themselves in Christ.” John Mason
“Is God’s definition of love about breaking our happiness — or breaking us free from the self-love that threatens to imprison us all? This is the question that can reshape our world. God is love — doesn’t translate into: God is about my desires. God is love — doesn’t mean God is about self-fulfillment. God is love — means to deny self. Love doesn’t win if you’re really just loving your self.” Ann Voskamp
“The more a man denies himself, the more he will obtain from God.” Horace Bushnell
“When you lay down self, you find the deepest rest.” Ann Voskamp
“The dearest idol I have known, whate’er that idol be; help me to tear it from Thy throne, and worship only Thee.” William Cowper
“We can make idols out of – our work, our family, our friends, our hobbies, our adoring audiences, our wealth, even our ‘perfect’ children or our wonderful meals or our clean and ordered houses. We can make “Delilah’s” out of anything. Idols are whatever we have a tendency to hold on to with a grip that we will not let go. None of these things are bad in and of themselves – it is the priority we place on them that’s askew. If they become our ‘god’s’ it is wrong. If anything or anybody takes Christ’s rightful position on the throne of our lives it is an idol and must be removed for the King of kings and the Lord of Lords. Live your life with open hands.” BHY
“No one has ever lost out by exc essive devotion to Christ.” H. A. Ironside