Christian Cliches - "Die to Self"

"Die to self" is such a commonly used Christian phrase that most people never question where it came from.  But "die to self," as a phrase, isn't actually in the Bible.  When Jesus was teaching along these lines, he never used those three words in that order.  Here's one of the things He actually did say:

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? Matt. 16:24-16

This teaching is in the context of Jesus asking His disciples who they thought He was, upon which Peter said He was the Christ.  Jesus then told His disciples that He was going to Jerusalem, where He would be crucified.  In the parallel passage in Mark 8:35, "whoever loses his life for me will find it" is rendered "whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it [emphasis added]." He was asking them to have the same mindset as He had in taking up His cross-- willingness to give up their own reputations and lives for Him, just as He was giving up His life and reputation for the gospel that He preached.  That gospel, according to Matthew 4:17 and Luke 4:18, was that the promises of the coming of the Messiah were fulfilled in Him, and that He had come to bring God's kingdom on earth.

In John 12:23-24 Jesus used similar words about life and death as He rode into Jerusalem the week before His death:

Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, 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. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

The ideas of self-denial and losing one's life (or dying) are all present in these teachings.  But none of the passages actually, literally say "die to self."  "Die to self" can be considered instead a reworking of Christ's teachings into a sort of shorthand or slogan.  But slogans have a way of being somewhat less than accurate.  Does it accurately bring across the meaning that He saw fit to convey in several sentences, to reduce it to just three words?

These passages use the words "deny" and "self" together.  They also use the words "die" and "life" together.  What they do not do is use the words "die" and "self" together.  You see, when we "deny ourselves" we are simply making a decision to give up something we want.  But when we "die" we are letting go of something-- and that thing we are to let go of, Jesus says, is not our "selves," but our "lives."  Jesus was talking about having an attitude of willingness to sacrifice, of considering Him and His kingdom worth more than our own lives, of turning our plans and dreams over to Christ.  He was not talking about obliterating our very selves.

The difference is subtle, but I think it's important.  To deny the self still leaves the self intact.  To lose one's life is not the same thing as losing one's self.  What is getting lost in "die to self" is the idea that the individual human being, created in the image of God, has an identity that should be preserved.  When Jesus took up His cross, He did not lose His identity.  I don't believe He intends us to do so either.

I'm not saying that everyone who uses the words "die to self" is thinking this way.  Most of us aren't consciously saying or intending to say,"I'll turn self-denial into self-abnegation."  But words mean things, and over time, the words we're using as shorthand for a text, can change our mindset about what we're talking about.  In a very real sense in some Christian practices, the words "die to self" have had a way of removing  boundaries that should be there for the protection of healthy relationships between ourselves and others.  They have had a way of shaming us for wanting to keep our selves, our very identities-- what we mean when we think of who we are-- strong and intact.  They have had a way of making us feel we're doing something wrong when we take time to care for and rest ourselves, our bodies, our minds and emotions.  "Die to self" thus can easily become a tool for spiritual abuse.

Nancy Campbell, in her Above Rubies website article "Happiness or Misery?" is a prime example of this mindset:

Mothers are encouraged to take time for self-pampering. Does this make them happy? Unfortunately, no. I find that women who are so concerned about having time for themselves are usually more miserable than those who forget about themselves in the joy of serving their family.

It is a God-given principle that never fails to work. When we try to pamper self we lose our life. When we lay down our own life to serve others, we find our life. Jesus said in Mark 8:35, "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it."  [Emphasis in original]

It's questionable in my mind whether the women who are supposedly so much happier never taking time for themselves, are actually simply less vocal about their own needs.  But look at the difference between what Nancy Campbell says the Bible is talking about and what Jesus actually said.  Jesus never said we would save our lives by laying them down to serve others.  He said we would save our lives by laying them down for Him and for the gospel-- the good news of the coming kingdom that He is inaugurating as Messiah.  Serving others is good, and it's something Christ wants us to do-- but it's not what He was talking about when He said "lose your life for my sake."

In fact, what Jesus did when He and His disciples had been serving others all day long, was this:

Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” Mark 6:31

Later in this passage, the people ended up following Jesus and His disciples to that quiet place, and Jesus, having compassion on them, went ahead and taught them.  This was self-denial.  But then, after performing a miracle in which everyone (including His hungry disciples) got fed, He again sent His disciples to a place where they would be away from the crowds-- this time in boat in the middle of the lake-- and He went off by Himself to be alone with the Father and refresh Himself (verses 45-46). That was self-preservation.  Jesus denied Himself, but He did not die to Himself.  He didn't serve to the point of losing His very Self.  He took the opportunity to get away, to take care of His own needs, as soon as it was practicable.

It wasn't "self-pampering" for Jesus and the disciples to go off and try to find some time for themselves.  It was self-stewardship.

The Missionary Care website describes the Christian doctrine of self-stewardship like this:

When Jesus came, he gave the promise of the Holy Spirit who would not live in the temple in Jerusalem but in his people (John 14-17). Paul later wrote about our being God's temple, the temple of the Holy Spirit and God living in us. . . .

As God's temple and his messengers to make known his gospel to those who do not know him, we have a responsibility to care for his dwelling place - us. . . We are not selfish to care for ourselves if our reason for doing so is not only for our own benefit but is also out of respect for our own value in God's eyes and so that we stay fit enough to be good servants of others. [Emphasis added]

Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend's book 12 Christian Beliefs that Can Drive You Crazy says:

 This crazy-making assumption-- "It's selfish to have my needs met"-- fails to distinguish between selfishness and a God-given responsibility to meet one's own needs. . . The Bible actually values our needs, which are God-given and intended to propel us to growth and to God.  Neglecting them leads to spiritual and emotional problems. [p. 17; Emphasis in original]

Here are a few more Bible examples.  Matthew 26:36-46 is the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He is just about to give His life for the world. A greater example of self-sacrifice could not be shown. But listen to what He says to Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, His closest friends:

“My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” Isn't Jesus here expressing a deep emotional need, and asking His friends to help meet it?

"Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. 'Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?' he asked Peter." Isn't this an expression of disappointment that His needs have not been met, telling His friends honestly that they have let Him down?

Jesus did think about His own human needs and ask for things for Himself.  Even though in Gethsemane He was actually in the process of laying down His life, He didn't "die to self"-- instead, He asked for what He needed, and then spoke out about how He felt about not getting His needs met.

And then there's Paul in the city of Philippi, in Acts 16:12-40. He and Silas are preaching, and a group of powerful men arrange to have them arrested, beaten and thrown in jail. When the magistrates send for them the next day, saying “let those men go,” Paul says (verse 37), “They beat us publicly without a trial, even though we are Roman citizens, and threw us into prison. And now do they want to get rid of us quietly? No! Let them come themselves and escort us out.” Is Paul "dying to self" here?  Or is he standing up for himself and practicing limits on submission to those in governing authority over him? Isn't he acting in his own best interests? Isn't he asserting his own rights?

Yes.  And the passage says nothing to condemn what he has done, nor does Paul ever express remorse or show in any way that he believes he has done wrong. Paul was taking care of himself as best he knew how.  He knew he was made in God's image, valuable and loved.  He knew Jesus had said "Love your neighbor as yourself." He apparently didn't agree with the Christian teaching we hear so often nowadays, that Christians should not consider their rights, but only their responsibilities. Going to prison for preaching was self-denial.  But Paul stopped far short of self-death.

Finally, let's talk about the Proverbs 31 woman for a moment.  The Proverbs 31 woman is held up to evangelical women as their role model. Women are taught to focus on verse 13: “she . . . works with eager hands,” verse 15: “She gets up while it is still night; she provides food for her family” and on verse 27: “She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.” But look at verses 21-22: "When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of them are clothed in scarlet.  She makes coverings for her bed; she is clothed in fine linen and purple." [Emphasis added.]

Here we see a woman who treats herself to the finest. She clothes her household with scarlet  – good, high-quality clothing. But she makes her own clothes fine linen and purple – the very best! Yes, she gives and makes sacrifices for her family. But she makes herself a priority too. And nothing in the passage faults her for self-indulgence; in fact, she receives nothing but praise.  

In the way she dresses, the Proverbs 31 woman "pampers herself."  Perhaps Nancy Campbell ought to read this passage a little more closely before condemning other women who do so. 

In fact, if we say that it is wrong to seek good things for ourselves, or that it indulges our flesh to take care of ourselves, then what are we saying? Since Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” then if it is wrong to seek good things for ourselves or to take care of ourselves, then it wrong to seek good things for others or to take care of others. If good things for ourselves indulge our own flesh, then good things for others indulge their flesh, and the best thing we could do for others is to help them deprive themselves. But obviously, since the Bible teaches us to do good to and give to others, it cannot be wrong to do good to and provide for ourselves-- as long as that doesn't become our sole focus, at others' expense. 

In Colossians 2:22-23 Paul talks about the kind of service to God which looks good, but is actually "merely human commands and teachings." This type of service, he says, is characterized by "self-imposed worship, false humility and harsh treatment of the body." Humility to the point of neglecting our own bodies is not true worship to God and does not help us become more godly. This is not the kind of self-denial Jesus wants. The rest of the verse says that these practices "lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence."  The reason for this is that we have within ourselves a strong instinct for self-preservation.  If we continually "die to self" to the point of ignoring our own needs and immolating our own identities, it will eventually backfire on us. Our own neglected needs will become so pervasive that we will be unable to concentrate on anyone else; nor will we have anything to give to others.  We may also become self-congratulatory over how "godly" we are in our self-abnegation, which is the antithesis of the humility Jesus taught.

Now, many of my readers may be saying, "But I never meant any of these self-destructive things when I said 'die to self'!" Aren't you just taking an innocent short-hand version of Christ's teachings, and making too big a deal out of it?

For many of us, that may indeed be true.   And I'm not saying to never use the phrase "die to self" ever again.  But I am saying we should be aware that Jesus never actually said "die to self," and that it can have this destructive meaning to it.  Samantha over at Defeating the Dragons knows exactly what I'm talking about.  As she puts it:

You might be used to being told that concepts like “self care” come from the “pseudo-science” of psychology, that “self care” is just psycho-babble for selfishness. You might have grown used to coupling “being a good Christian” with what is, in reality, burning yourself out. You might have been trained to dismiss the notion that “healthy people take care of themselves.” I’ve watched many of my childhood friends and women I grew up respecting have nervous breakdowns because of this. You might have been trained to be constantly looking for “areas of service.” You might have been trained, not even intentionally, to volunteer for everything. 

If you’re like me, you were taught that having boundaries and respecting your own needs was wrong. 

It’s taken me a very, very long time to learn that “taking care of myself” isn’t selfishness- it’s just plain necessary.

So let's love ourselves and care for ourselves-- because self-denial for the sake of the kingdom, and sacrifice when necessary for the good of others, are different from self-deprivation and self-neglect.  “Deny yourself” is supposed to be about putting His kingdom first (Matt 6:33). But we are part of His kingdom too!  And we have good desires and legitimate needs that God values.

Let's all value ourselves as God values us.

The Atonement: Did God Just Really Need to Punish Someone?

It's called the "penal substitution" doctrine of the Atonement.  It means that God, being just and holy, demands that all sin be punished, and that Jesus Christ substituted Himself for us and received in our place the punishment that is due to us.  And according to certain branches of Christianity, it is the only allowable version of the Atonement you can believe and still be a true Christian.  As Southern Baptist minister Al Mohler says in his article, "Penal Substitutionary Atonement is the Gospel":

This either is the Gospel, or, it is not. The dividing line is abundantly clear; we either believe that the sum and substance of the Gospel is that a holy and righteous God—Who must demand a full penalty for our sin—both demands the penalty and provides the penalty, through His Own self-substitution in Jesus Christ—the Son—whose perfect obedience, and perfectly accomplished atonement, has purchased for us all that is necessary for our salvation—has met the full demands of the righteousness and justice of God against our sin.

We either believe that, or we do not. If we do not, then we believe that the Gospel can be nothing more than some kind of message intended to reach some emotive level in the human being, so that the human being would think better of God, and might want to associate with Him. . . .

If you will deal with it, if you will read it, if you will honestly reflect upon it—if you will work through the biblical texts—it will become a matter of [ir]refutable truth; that the central thrust of the Scriptures atonement, is that God demanded a punishment for sin, and requires it by His own holiness and justice, and that He provided it in Jesus Christ—Who died on our behalf—paying in full the penalty for our sin.

The problem, of course, is that if this is really what the Atonement is all about-- if it's about a God who just cannot be appeased unless He can punish somebody-- it doesn't speak very well for the character of God.  And if the One God chooses to punish is His innocent Son-- well, many who have left Christianity or who refuse to embrace it, reject it because God seems to them to be a monster.  A "divine child abuser," I have heard them say.  "Fixated on punishment."

Many Christians disagree with this idea for the same sorts of reasons.  New Testament Professor James McGrath's blog Exploring Our Matrix puts it like this:

First, the Bible regularly depicts God as forgiving people. If there is anything that God does consistently throughout the Bible, it is forgive. To suggest that God cannot forgive because, having said that sin would be punished, he has no choice but to punish someone, makes sense only if one has never read the penitential psalms, nor the story of Jonah. The penal substitution view of atonement takes the metaphor of sin as debt and literalizes it to the extent that one’s actions are viewed in terms of accounting rather than relationship. It is not surprising this is popular: in our time, debts are impersonal and most people have them, and it is easier to think of slates being wiped clean and books being balanced than a need for reconciliation. But the latter is the core element if one thinks of God in personal terms. . .

The moral issue with penal substitution is closely connected with the points just mentioned. Despite the popularity of this image, to depict God as a judge who lets a criminal go free because he has punished someone else in their place is to depict God as unjust.

So there is a serious disagreement between Christians like Mohler, who claim that if you don't believe the Atonement is about penal substitution, you don't believe the Gospel at all, and Christians like McGrath, who believe the penal substitutionary model is unhelpful and not actually what the Bible teaches.  

Where do I fall in all this?  Somewhere in the middle, actually.

It seems to me that at times the Bible does present the Atonement -- Christ's death on the Cross-- in the light of penal substitution.  Isaiah 53:8-10 does say, "[F]or he was cut off from the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. . . Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand."  But this is not the only picture or description of the Atonement in the Bible!  And it seems to me that viewing the Atonement in terms of penal substitution casts God as a monster only if you insist on taking it as a literal fact instead of as a picture or description to help us understand something which is actually beyond the ability of finite minds to fully understand.  

I believe that like many mysteries of the divine, the Atonement is not something we can even talk about except in terms of analogy and approximation.  Narrowly taking one of the Bible's analogies/approximations and claiming that it is the only truly Christian way to understand the Atonement, seems to me to leave out all the other analogies the Scriptures use to help us understand.  And rejecting the idea entirely, though it may help those who now find it barbaric, doesn't do much for those who really have been helped and comforted by the idea of their sin as a criminal debt that has been paid (see Colossians 2:13-14).  

But the Bible also presents the Atonement in terms of ransom.  Jesus said, "For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many."  We tend to look at ransom nowadays in terms of kidnapping or hostage-taking: a criminal has stolen your loved ones and wants payment before they can be released.  But in New Testament times, "ransom" was a word referring to the paying of the monetary value of a slave, in order to set that slave free.  Sharper Iron Forums puts it this way:

The ransom is the price that is paid to set the slave free. In the manumission ceremony, the money that the god paid to the owner to secure his freedom was the ransom. The verbal picture this word created in the minds of those in the first century was both graphic and meaningful. When Jesus announced that he was giving his life as the ransom, people understood that he was paying the price which would set them free. The analogy with slavery was graphic. They saw themselves as the slaves and Jesus as the one who paid the price. The price to set us free from sin and death was not 3 1/2 minae of silver; it was the very life of Jesus.

The Atonement is also presented in the Scriptures in terms of victory.  Colossians 2:15 says, "And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it [the cross]."   As theologian/apologist Greg Boyd teaches in his blog "The Christus Victor View of the Atonement":

The central thing Jesus did, according to Peter [in Acts 2:32-36], was fulfill Psalms 110:1. Jesus had been raised to a position of divine power (the Lord’s “right hand”) over his defeated and humiliated enemies (who are now his “footstool”). In an apocalyptic Jewish context, this is simply what it meant to say that Jesus brought the kingdom of God. To say the kingdom of God has come was to say the kingdom of Satan has been defeated.

The Atonement is also presented in the Scriptures in terms of sacrifice, which, though related to penal substitution, also encompasses all the meanings of the various sacrifices of the Old Testament.  Jesus is our sacrifice for sin according to Hebrews 10:2, but He is also our Passover Lamb according to 1 Corinthians 5:7 (a sacrifice that was more about deliverance than it was about sin).   His sacrifice is also about reconciliation and peace with God, as Colossians 1:20 says: "And having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things to himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven."

So all these different pictures, models and analogies define the Atonement for us in the New Testament.  It seems to me that all of them together are needed to approximate as closely as possible what the Atonement actually means.  The Bible's analogies are set forth in terms of what would be most helpful and understandable to the peoples and cultures in which they were originally presented.  If we take any one of them, such as penal substitution, and insist that this is the one and only way to view the Atonement-- when no one in our times and cultures, including ourselves, really understands deep down what a substitutionary sacrifice would have meant emotionally and intellectually to a reader back then-- is to hamstring the message of the Gospel as it might more deeply reach our minds and hearts today.  And to remove any one of them could mean to lose a piece of the whole picture.

I can understand why it doesn't make sense to to many people to look at the Atonement and say, "God just had to punish someone, and the perfect One to punish was His willing Son."  So I'm going to present a more modern picture of how the Atonement looks to me, based on the passages about it all taken together.  Keeping in mind that mine, too, is an attempt to describe the undescribable, this is how I see it:

The universe, as the Christian sees it, has a deeper reality underlying (and overarching) the physical world. The physical world came into being at the will of God. God is the Source of all Being-- but not in the deistic sense that God just started things off but remained detached or absent from them. God continually sustains the universe by His constant will.  [Note: this is a generic pronoun I'm using for convenience and is not meant to make a statement about the gender of God.]

All other consciousnesses spring from the consciousness of God. This doesn't mean God constantly directly interferes in the workings of the universe, however; God desires that humans, who are made in His image (having self-awareness and the ability to make choices) should be free agents.

The other thing about the underlying reality of God is what can best be described as pure, absolute goodness and love-- that is the nature of God. We can refer to it as spiritual Life. The free-will agents that God made, however (and I think God made other free-will agents than humans: beings without physical form, just as God is without physical form), having their own wills, separate from God-- they chose to separate themselves from God. But to separate yourself from absolute good and absolute love, is to become other than good, and other than loving. It is to introduce evil and hate. This evil and hate-- we can call it spiritual Death-- has stained the physical universe. It is a blight, an uncleanness, which exists in the universe but cannot ultimately survive within the absolute goodness and love which is God. And it is destructive. It tears apart the relationships which God intended His self-aware beings to live in, with God and with each other. This blight is known as "sin." It's like an infection which cannot be tolerated; it must eventually all be removed, because left alone, it will eventually destroy the creation.  God has to do something about Death.  He can't just leave it alone; it's going to have to go.

Now, here's the problem. Humans are not only infected with Death (remember, we are not talking about physical death, but something else entirely), but they are also making choices, every day, to continue in Death. So-- how to remove the infection without destroying the humans it has infected? God, being absolute Love, does not want to destroy the beings He made for the purposes of loving and being loved.

First of all, God has to get the humans to understand that the infection exists, and that it has to be removed. So He picks one human tribe thousands of years ago, for a start, and begins to restore His broken relationship with humanity through them. He sets up the Law, with its system of blood sacrifice of animals. He makes sure the people understand that the blood represents life, because only life can cleanse/remove the death that is sin.

Once the idea, Blood Equals Life (Leviticus 17:11), is firmly in the people's minds, then God can do what He intended to do all along. His absolute Life will cleanse the Death that is evil and hate. But He can only do this if He becomes able experience Death Himself. The Death is affecting the physical world, so God has to become physical. He incarnates Himself: He becomes human.

Now, because He is God, He can become not only a human-- He can become the Representative Human for all of humanity. In the spiritual world, as the Representative Human, He can identify Himself completely with all humans, so that all sin which has infected humanity can be imputed to Him. Once this is done, because He is also the Source of absolute Life, the physical blood He sheds can represent His Life. His Life can cleanse the Death, once for all time.

But there is one other problem. The free-will agents He has made are still free-will agents. He wants them that way-- because He wants them to love Him, and love that is forced isn't love.  It's worthless to Him. As free-will agents, they have to choose to partake of the cleansing He has accomplished-- or not. Also, because of the choices of the free-will agents, the cleansing of Death has not removed Death from the Creation. Eventually, God is going to have to destroy the Death entirely, and that will destroy any free-will beings who continue to embrace Death. But now there's another choice.

Just as God chose to spiritually identify Himself with all humanity, so each human can choose to identify him/herself with God. If the human identifies with God, then the act in which God's Life was poured out against Death is imputed to the human, just as the human's sin was imputed to God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

The choice the human makes is called "belief" or "faith" in God. But this is much more than just mental assent to the idea that God exists-- it means that the human places her/his trust in God, giving up her/his life of sin, and identifying her/himself with the pure Life and Love which is God. Through identification with God's Death, the human "dies" to sin (see Romans 6:4).  A spiritual transformation takes place within the human, in which the Death which was in the human's spirit is changed into the Life of God. To the human, this is experienced as an act of surrender. The human "loses his life for Christ's sake, and finds it" in Him again. The life which the human then walks in, is the life of God within the human spirit (See Galatians 2:20.)  Though the human's body is still living in the tainted universe, and the human still experiences sin as a struggle between the changed spirit and the unchanged body, one day we humans will live free from Death and sin, completely at one with God (1 John 3:2-3).

This is the "identification" model of the Atonement, and I have no doubt it has probably been described more eloquently by someone else, somewhere.   But I think it incorporates all the biblical ideas of penal substitution, ransom, victory, sacrifice and reconciliation, into a coherent picture that makes sense to me.

I hope it will be helpful to some of you, too.