Mysteries in Jesus' Teaching

Mysteries in Jesus’ Teaching

The Forgotten Secret of Spiritual Power

The Gateway to Fulfillment and Supernatural Joy

Deny yourself.   Die to self.   Crucify the flesh.   Take up your cross.   A living sacrifice.

Dry theology? Outdated platitudes? Spiritual mystery? The heart of Christianity?

This webpage is best understood after reading the previous page, 

Spiritual Secrets

The world says love yourself, Jesus says deny yourself

Jesus and the entire Bible poured much effort into expounding this concept, but few people grasp what Jesus longs for us to know because it sounds so dreary, even scary, that we are loathe to investigate it. And it is only those who seek, who find. Only if we delve deeply into this truth, will we ever discover how exciting it is.

Denying ourselves makes not the slightest sense until we realize we have a God who is so devoted to us that he eagerly fills us with his goodness when we trust him enough to give him room to move.

Few non-Christians can face the truth of what they are without Christ – morally corrupt and doomed to hell – but true Christians can face the full truth because we know we are not without Christ. We can make what to the world seems enormous sacrifices because we have a God who delights in looking after our interests better than we ever could. All our Lord requires is for us to take our hands off the steering wheel of our lives, letting him steer us to eternal fulfillment.

The Perfect Marriage

What is the quickest, easiest way to soar to cloud nine and become wealthy, honored and the envy of millions? Fall in love and become united in marriage with someone rich, famous and adorable. God not only fits the bill like no one else, he has the love and integrity to remain devoted to you forever.

To illustrate the consequences of being spiritually united to Jesus, let’s put it in financial terms, whilst remembering that it applies to your abilities, moral achievements, wisdom, in fact everything about you. You have $154.75 in the bank. Jesus has trillions. He wants to have joint bank accounts with you so that you can enjoy his trillions and delight in them as being your own. Instead of being excited, however, you see problems. You worry about what Jesus might do with your $154.75. And if Jesus really kept his word and you gained his riches, you’re concerned that everyone would know that those trillions became yours only because of Jesus’ generosity and love for you, not because of your hard work or skill. Although you could spend the trillions as if they were yours, you could never be credited with the honor of having earned them. If, however, you refuse to merge Jesus’ assets with yours, you can continue to boast that you have earned every cent you possess. So you have a choice: risk your $154.75 and lose your right to boast that you earned all your money and you will have trillions, or retain your right to boast and you will have $154.75. This creates a dilemma: we like the thought of being rich, but boasting makes us feel good. The Lord gave us feelings and he would like us to enjoy even the nice feeling that boasting creates. Here’s how to do it: “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:31; 2 Corinthians 10:17). When we truly understand the utter oneness that we have with Christ, boasting about his greatness and perfection will excite us even more than when we used to boast about our own puny achievements.

We all know what a thrilling, fulfilling experience being in love is. It’s not perfect – there is usually a hint of selfishness in being in love – but it is a giant leap in the direction of what the Bible calls dying to self. When in love we hardly think about ourselves other than wanting to make ourselves more desirable for the one we love. Our thoughts and dreams revolve around the other person. There is a huge shift away from ourselves. The one we love becomes the center of our universe. Does this make us feel half dead? Is this losing of our pre-occupation with ourselves a painful, miserable experience? Of course not. Anyone in love has never felt more excited or more alive. Falling in love with the King of kings, the most exciting Person in the universe, is the ultimate solution to self-consciousness and low self-esteem. The answer is not to try to boost ourselves, but to delight in our God and make him the center of our universe; to thrill in his perfection.

Everything you could ever hope for is found in Jesus. Get Jesus and you get honor, knowledge, joy, fulfillment, power – everything. Delight in all his wonderful qualities, knowing that they are all yours because he is yours. Seek any of these without Jesus, however, and even if you temporarily obtain a little, you will eventually end up with nothing.

Scripture indicates that although King David let many of his sons run wild, he carefully trained Solomon from childhood. Presumably, David was grooming Solomon to be king from a young age. Solomon did not take the throne until he was fairly mature. All the ground-breaking work of establishing and structuring the monarchy had already been done by Saul and David. So Solomon had many reasons to be confident that he had all it takes to be a good king. After he had reigned for a while the Lord offered Solomon whatever one thing he asked for. He could have asked for security. A few of his subjects would like him dead, and some foreign countries that were subject to him would like to rebel, whereas some other nations would like to invade and plunder Israel. But he did not ask for security. He could have asked for world-wide fame. But he didn’t. He could have asked for wealth. But he didn’t. He humbled himself so much as to ask for what he must have been tempted to think he already had – the wisdom to rule. And he sought it not so he could boast of his intellectual prowess but so he could better serve God and God’s people. Humble yourself to see inadequacies within you and you will be exalted. Lower yourself, seeking to serve, and you will be raised high. Because Solomon sought wisdom, he got everything – wisdom, security, fame and wealth. Jesus is the Wisdom of God. Sacrifice everything to get him. Get him and you get everything.

“For Me”

“Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it,” said Jesus (Matthew 16:25). Permit me to expound a little on one aspect of this divine principle:

Whoever tries to preserve his or her self-esteem will end up losing it, but whoever deliberately loses self-esteem – lowering his opinion of himself or exposing himself to ridicule for Jesus’ sake – will find genuine and lasting honor. Try to maintain or boost your self-esteem and you will end up riddled with shame. Take the opposite course for Jesus’ sake, however, and you’ll brim with joy and honor forever.

Central to the promise “whoever loses his life for me will find it,” are the words, “for me.” It is Jesus, and he alone, who turns the impossible into a spiritual law you can bet your life on. He is the all-powerful Lord, who transforms a fanciful idea into an immutable law. With him, a suggestion we would otherwise never dare attempt becomes a plan of action only a fool would refuse.

To understand the power and the necessity of Jesus adding those words, “for me,” recall the little boy in the midst of the famished thousands. For the boy to offer the crowds his lunch would be a noble but futile gesture. So rather than give the first hundred people half a crumb each, he gave his lunch to Jesus. Making Jesus the central figure transformed the situation. Suddenly, not only the boy, but thousands were being fed with something that moments before was utterly inadequate. Only after the boy had given his all and passed the point of no return, did what had seemed a foolish sacrifice prove to be the smartest thing he had ever done. The secret is to hand everything over to Jesus and then wait for him to move. Give yourself to Jesus, and he will give himself to you. Lose yourself in him, and you will find yourself in God – no longer restricted to human possibilities.

Just as the boy could not expect to be fed after giving away his lunch, so people cannot expect to thrive emotionally if they give away their self-esteem – unless they give it to Jesus. Then a miracle takes place.

Suppose your computer crashed and no matter how hard you tried, you could not fix it. Your only hope would be to give your computer away – to a repairer. You do this in faith that he will not only fix it with the care that he would if it were his own, but that he will then return the computer to you. With this same trusting attitude, we hand our lives over to Jesus, believing that not only will the all-powerful Lord do for us things that are humanly impossible, but believing that he will not exploit us. He will, in fact, pursue our best interests with greater passion than we ourselves would. This is backed by something infinitely stronger than any business agreement. It is backed by the unstoppable love of Almighty God who has invested everything – even the agonizing death of his only Son – on ensuring that you get his very best.

Too often we try applying a spiritual law with Jesus left out of the equation. We might as well expect a car to work with the engine left out of it. And then, when our attempt without Jesus doesn’t work, we have the audacity to imagine God has let us down!

Suppose Jeremy, a highly regarded investment advisor, tells you there is money to be made in the stock market and suggests you let him advise you. Off you go and make your own investments without consulting him. You lose badly, then blame him for your loss. “You told me there is money to be made in the stock market,” you complain bitterly.

“Yes, and those who have come to me for investment advice have done handsomely,” comes the reply, “but you thought you could do it without me.”

“Before doing anything I always asked myself, “What would Jeremy do?”

“You asked yourself. You didn’t ask me.”

“I took notice of your associates’ advice.”

You didn’t ask me.

“Well . . .” you squirm, “I sometimes asked you.”

“And did you follow my advice exactly?”

“Exactly? That’s a bit much! I followed the general spirit of what you said.”

“And now that you have lost everything you know that wasn’t enough,” replies Jeremy, with pain in his voice.

Bringing it together

Denise has a lump in her breast. Left untreated it will eventually kill her. Her life teeters on whether she admits to herself and then to a doctor that she has a problem. Denise might often visit her doctor, admitting to colds, migraines and so on. That is not enough. The doctor could even be a friend whom Denise meets socially several times a week, and she would still die from this cancer if she did not face the embarrassment of revealing the lump. She might have additional health problems she is keeping quiet about. Ironically, the more she admits to bad health, the healthier she will be. Similarly, the more we admit to sin, the holier we will be.

Let’s see how this spiritual law about holiness fits what we have been discovering. First, because God is a giver, not a taker, we know that anything God asks of us ends up being the best thing we could do. Whatever God asks us to endure, we can be sure that it is in our very best interest. Next, we know that to work infallibly, a law must be correctly understood. As we saw in the case of the boy’s lunch, a spiritual law will only work when Jesus is made the central figure. With health problems, admitting the problem to a non-medical person would achieve nothing. The crucial thing is admitting it to, and submitting to, a person who has the power to heal you. If we admit our spiritual sickness to Jesus and we submit to his treatment we will be made whole. On the other hand, those who tell themselves they are okay are in a terrifying predicament, whether they realize it or not.

Of course, there is much that makes people very reluctant to be examined for cancer. It could ruin your short term plans. Depending on the nature of those plans, that could be an enormous loss. Hospitalization means loss of freedom, loss of income and being somewhat cut off from friends and family. It could lead to the humiliation of suffering many indignities at the hands of doctors and nurses. Treatment could involve devastating disfigurement, severe physical pain and huge financial outlay. To risk all this would require great trust in your doctor – that his diagnosis is correct and that all that you suffer from the treatment is absolutely necessary. You would have to stake much on the belief that for the rest of your life you will look back with gratitude that you endured all the unpleasantness that treatment entailed. This brings us back to the beginning of this web series, where we noted that our spiritual life hinges on faith – how much we trust God’s love to propel him to supernaturally intervene in our lives. It takes quite a faith-leap to follow instructions that will only work if there really is a wise, loving, powerful God who cares for you so deeply that he will rush to use his limitless power to meet your deepest needs and allow you only to suffer what is absolutely necessary for your highest good. But that is exactly what God is like. The One who holds your molecules together and agonized on the cross for your welfare is trustworthy to the infinite degree.

Balance

In my desire to gently ease you into a radical re-thinking – moving away from the world’s view all the way to Christ’s view – my presentation of these thrilling truths is itself more self-centered than it should be. Enormous benefits await us, but ideally we should be seeking not the personal benefits but the joy of delighting the God who means everything to us. This shift of focus from our pleasure to God’s pleasure is the ultimate in discovering endless joy and fulfillment. It frees us from everything holding us down, allowing our spirits to soar heavenward.

How could we really enjoy a movie if during most of it we were looking in a mirror checking our hair, worrying about what people think of us, and so on? Our Lord is much more important and exciting than any movie. He is the Source of life, love, creativity, goodness, beauty, wisdom, joy, honor, power, purity, perfection – does the list ever end? Like our movie analogy, the more we forget ourselves and focus on God, the more enthralled we will be by him. We will not merely be transfixed, we will be transformed. We still, to use Paul’s expression, “see through the glass darkly” but when we take our eyes off ourselves and seize the grace made ours through Jesus’ shed blood, our eyes will begin to pierce the darkness that restricts our view of God. The more clearly we see God, the more we will behold such wonders that we will not only be captivated, our entire lives will begin to fill with the divine qualities that we focus on.

At the death of infatuation with myself, my spiritual senses become alive to the thrilling reality of God. I behold the most wonderful, exciting and beautiful Person in existence. The combined splendor of the entire universe; the pooled intellectual power of every intelligence in that universe; the greatest thing that the greatest minds could ever imagine – nothing compares with the One I am then empowered to fellowship with. To deny myself is get my eyes off myself – to stop distracting myself from focusing on the King of Glory. It is then that I truly live.

“Set your minds on things above” (Colossians 3:2)

When walking in an open field, it might seem best to keep focusesd on where you are placing your feet. We all know from experience, however, that if we only looked at our feet, we might think we are making good progress but we would actually stray off course; needlessly tiring ourselves and probably never reaching our goal.

To reach our destination with the greatest speed and ease, we must literally take our eyes off ourselves and set them on our goal, with only occasional, fleeting glances at the ground nearer our feet. Likewise, we make the greatest spiritual progress not by constant self-examination or preoccupation with our needs, failures or inadequacies, but simply by fixing our attention upon Jesus; filling our mind with an awareness of how wonderful he is.

Like Peter, I fix my eyes on Jesus, step out of the boat and take a couple of miraculous steps on water towards my Lord. Then I notice the wind. I look at the waves. I remember I’m human. I begin to sink. On the positive side, Jesus is ever-present to grab me in his strong arms and I had managed a couple of amazing steps. But it was ever so brief because my focus soon lowered from Jesus to circumstances and then to myself. As an alcoholic is addicted to drink, I’m addicted to focusing on myself instead of my Lord. What initiates my self-consciousness is more often feelings of inadequacy than pride. Whatever the cause, however, it gets my eyes off Jesus and I begin to sink. I have times when I wrench my eyes off myself long enough to gaze upon my Lord. For those brief moments astounding things are possible. Then the old addiction gets the better of me. Pride or self-protection, fear or selfishness, consciousness of my inadequacies or memories of past failures – some awareness of what I am without Christ – becomes so strong that I forget that I am not without Christ. Before I know it, the Lord has slipped from my thinking and I’m getting that sinking feeling. But although it happens so often, I know the answer is to re-set my gaze upon my Savior. So I try again. Will you join me?

Savior,

I’ve wanted to follow you, but from a respectable distance. I haven’t wanted the humiliation of dragging my cross to Golgotha and sacrificing my self-centeredness, self-righteousness and selfish ambition. I’ve wanted to avoid discomfort, not voluntarily embrace it for you. And yet you said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” – follow the Lord who was crucified for me. You leave me no option. It is so basic that you even drive home the nails by placing the statement in three Gospels. You want the best for me and from me. It’s scary. I recoil from it as if I had touched red-hot metal. And yet, Lord, you’ve promised resurrection the other side of death to selfishness. And how can I hold back when you’ve sacrificed everything for me? Moreover, you gave your all for me when I deserve nothing, while you – my Creator, my Redeemer, the supreme Ruler and the God of perfection – deserve everything.

I’ve called you ‘God,’ but you haven’t really been my God. My life has revolved around myself, not you. I’ve followed my own desires, not yours. I’ve wanted to be your God, ordering you to do what I think is best for me, not let you in your love and wisdom tell me what is best. I’ve felt the need to look after my own interests because I didn’t think you would care enough to do a proper job of it. I thought if I completely stopped pursuing my own pleasure and focused on giving you pleasure, you’d just use me up. I’ve paid lip-service to your great love, but I haven’t really believed it. I have suspected you are almost as selfish and as self-centered as I am. I’ve praised your great wisdom, and then had the audacity to think I know better than my Maker as to what will bring me fulfillment. Even though you suffered incomparably more for my endless happiness than I’ve ever suffered for myself, I’ve stupidly thought I want my happiness more than you do. I loathe myself for even seeking my own happiness when you sacrificed all of yours for my sake.

I have been so infatuated with myself that I have seldom dragged my eyes off myself for long enough to see a tiny fraction of your love for me. Even when I thought I hated myself, I could think of little else than myself. I might have been tormented by self-hate but still my thoughts could hardly have been focused more on myself if I were in love with myself. Instead of being like a plant reaching up to you, my sun, I have turned in on myself. No wonder my soul has shriveled up.

From this moment I resolve to change my thinking. I now want to be Christ-centered, not self-centered. I will trust your love. I will take you at your word that if I seek nothing but your greatest good, you will seek my greatest good, which is what you longed to do all the time that I foolishly kept hindering you. I am in awe of your love because I know I get the best end of this deal; you don’t need me, but I desperately need you, and my attempts to please you are riddled with human frailty, while your efforts to please me are empowered by divine omnipotence.

Thank you, Lord. You are truly wonderful.

Climax

It’s a fundamental mistake to think that Christianity is about using God to get what we want. That would render us guilty of the treason of dethroning the King of kings and the blasphemy of hailing our desires as god. It would be to rob ourselves of God’s infinite love, goodness and wisdom and confine ourselves to our puny ability to know what is best.

Is it such a revelation to discover that Christianity is about being God-centered, not self-centered?

Dying to self might seem painful and scary but it is one of the most liberating experiences anyone can ever bask in. The results are mind-boggling, even mystical. For example, I have found it to be the secret to enjoying the peace that transcends all understanding when you reach that point of yielding to God where nothing – not life, happiness, material things, relationships, reputation, vocation, avoiding suffering, or anything else – really matters to you except God and him having his holy, wise and loving way in every aspect of your life.

Dying to self doesn’t mean ceasing to care about people – people are infinitely important to the God of love. It doesn’t mean giving up – through God we are winners. It doesn’t mean ceasing to put in enormous effort – Jesus sweat until it was like blood. Dying to self means no longer trying to get things for yourself – whether protection, fulfillment, achievement, peace or whatever. Such things are no longer your concern. If they come, praise God; if they don’t, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is God, because his way is perfect and can never be improved on. And when that attitude floods your heart, you have peace, no matter what horrors are exploding around you.

We’ve been following a guide since birth. One day we meet another guide who we discover has much greater wisdom, is a far superior companion and will take us to an exceedingly better destination. There is no question that following the new guide is the smart thing to do and will end up being the most fulfilling, and when our journey is complete we will forever be grateful we went with him, whereas if we go with our old guide we will forever regret it. The choice seems a no-brainer – except that in stark contrast to the final destination, the old guide’s journey starts off so much easier, more comfortable and enjoyable.

The new guide is Jesus. The old guide is our own heart. Where Jesus is going, our heart recoils from. It’s the way of the cross. Not even Jesus’ heart wanted to go there – hence the agony of the Garden of Gethsemane. The final destination is glorious but the only route is horrendous.

“. . . anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. . . . If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 10:38; 16:24). Where is Jesus going? The only place anyone drags a cross to – the place of torturous and humiliating execution where one’s self dies. And after that? . . . the place of triumph; the place of eternal honor; the place from which you will rule the universe with the risen Lord.

We long to follow both Jesus and our own heart but that is utterly impossible. They are going in totally different directions and to completely different destinations. When either is your traveling companion, the other is left behind. “For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). We might ache to follow both so much that we even deceive ourselves into believing it can be done, but it cannot. You know what you should do and you will regret every moment’s delay, but which will you choose?