Are Christians Dead To Self? Pt 3

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast making Theology Central. Good morning everyone, It is Friday, April eighteenth, twenty twenty five. It is currently eleven five am Central Time, and I'm coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Now, in churches across the country, many will have a good Friday service today, a day to remember Jesus Christ and his death for us. And I hope in all of those churches the focus really is on Christ dying for us, on what He has done for us. And I hope today that is the focus.

0:55 I hope that is what is proclaimed. I hope everyone leaves those good by services really understanding Jesus died for us. Jesus did this for us, his death, burial, his resurrection for us for us. That idea of for us is what we would theologically refer to is a gospel message. The gospel is what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, what Christ did for us. That's a gospel message. But over and over and over the church likes to flip it and we'll say it's preaching the gospel. But it immediately becomes what you must do. You must do this, you must do this, you must do this, you must do this, you must do this. Now they'll play a little game and they say, well, you don't have to do it in order to be saved, but you have to do it in order to prove you are saved, meaning if you don't do it, well, then you're not saved.

1:55 And it all becomes about what you must do. And time and time again, when we talk about what we must do as Christians, you'll hear something along these lines. If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. And so typically it will be proclaimed something like you must die to yourself. You must deny yourself, and you must stop following yourself and following Christ. That is what you must do. You must consider the cust this is what it means to be a Christian. You have to do this. Now again they'll say, you don't have to do it to be saved, but you have to do it if you are saved. Well, if I have to do it in order to prove that I'm saved, I don't know if I've ever actually truly ever died to self, deny self and stop following self.

2:47 So then that means I don't know if anyone is saved. And all of a sudden, the gospel is no longer about what Christ has done for you. It's all about what you must do. And this happens over and over in the evangelical world. So I hope today, at least for this one day, the focus will be Christ died for you. Christ died for you. He did this for you, and I hope that can last throughout all of the attempts to turn the gospel into what you must do, because the Gospels the good news of what Christ did for us because we cannot, we never will be able to do what is necessary. So I hope that somehow becomes the message today, and that message fits perfectly with what we've been trying to do in this series. Because what we've been trying to do in this series is be very honest and very real with I don't know ourselves, very real with ourselves. And here's what we've discussed that as human beings, we are created with needs and desires that are inside of us. And we talked about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We have these needs. These needs are a part of who we are as human beings. They are there, and if one of those needs are not met, two of those needs are not met, it impacts us physiologically, psychologically, it impacts us in every way, and it also impacts

4:19 us spiritually. So we talked about that in many cases, sin is simply us attempting to fulfill these unmet needs and desires, but in a sinful way. And and and it's very frustrating in Christianity because some people have much. They can take Masslow's hierarchy of needs and they can say I get that check, I get this check. They got almost everything listed, right, they have almost everything listed. But then they'll look at other people who don't have those things listed, and if they commit some sin, they'll be like, well, just stop doing it, Just stop doing it. It's like, well, hey, you talk a big game. Your spirituality is not because you're spiritual, it's because most of your needs are being met. If your psychological needs, physiological emotional needs, need for intimacy, need for physical pleasure, if they're being met, well, then it's much easier for you to pack yourself on the back going look at how godly I am. Yeah, look at people who don't have those needs met. Then it becomes something different. We talked about all of this and great detail. And not only do we have these needs and if they're not met, we have all of these problems we often forget, we also have a sinful nature. So we have needs. We have a sinful nature. Now the sinful nature it has needs too. Its needs are just automatically just wrong and corrupted.

5:40 And then the sinful nature will take those needs that we have that are not sinful in and of themselves. But if we don't get them met, we have a tendency to try to pursue getting them fulfilled in a sinful way. Well, your sinful nature will say, always fulfill them in a sinful way. And so you mix this together and well it makes the human life very difficult and very complicated. And we talked about all of the issues. And Christianity comes along, and on one hand they will say, all you need is Jesus. All you need is Jesus. He satisfies completely, you should be completely satisfied. Again, the people who tend to preach this are the people who have all of those needs met. So are they really satisfied in Jesus. Are they just simply satisfied because they have most of their needs in life met? And it's a game the church loves to play. And then if it's not Jesus is all that satisfies, the next thing the church will say is, well, take up your cross, die to yourself, deny self, and stop following self. So you have these needs, you have those desires, will just die to yourself. If you'll just die to yourself, you can you can live a life without those needs being met. Again, it's always easy for the people who are getting most of their needs met to say that. We talked about how the game is kind of played within Christianity. We talked about some of the very messed up ways it can take place. Right, you can have people in the

7:11 church who are married, get divorced, get remarried, and possibly according to a biblical definition, they're literally living in adultery. They're committing adultery. The church will be like, that's okay, you got divorce, you got remarried, but there's nothing you can do about it, so you go on. So they can have all of their needs met, but if anybody else does something else, they'll be no, no, no, no, you can't like, wait a minute, Biblically, you're living in adultery. But you're condemning this person and this person telling them they have to abstain. They can't be satisfied. Why is it the game played this way? And we talked about a number of other examples as well. So we've been having this conversation about needs, satisfaction, dying to self. We've been talking about all of this, and as we've been discussing it, what I've noticed, and I've paid close attention to myself, is I have discovered over and over and over that in my own life how all this plays out. Needs, desires, sinful nature, not being truly dead to self, having expectations, and when things don't go very well, things don't work out, how it can impact you, even when it's something small.

8:28 It's just amazing. One little thing can go wrong, and the way we react though, our emotions, our frustrations, our irritations are we see that, man, we're not dead to self. Self is very much a lot. We want things to go our way, we want things to we want to be happy, we want to be content, and it just takes one little thing and it manifests itself and even this week, I've seen it in my own life, my own frustrations and irritations and just downright depression and discouragement and just like, oh man, some weeks can just go bad in your life and you're just like, what do I do? And well, Christianity's just like, well, you've got Jesus be satisfied. Hey, just die to yourself. And there's a part of me I wish I could. I wish I could just completely be dead to self. I have no desires, no needs, no wants. I wish I could be there, but I just can't get there. So we've been talking about this. Now what we're going to do today is and that's just trying to I know that's a little long introduction, but it just puts it all back together. Our goal today is we're going to just kind of back up a little bit, kind of do just a reminder of some basic concepts that we put forth, and then we're going to go through the history from the eighteen hundreds to twenty twenty five showing how Christianity has handled this subject of die to self. We're going to look at how lordship salvation has handled this, and then we'll move forward. At some point we're gonna come to a very in depth exegetical study of Matthew sixteen

10:02 twenty four, which is the famous verse about deny self, take up your cross that passage and see if there's a better way to actually understand it. So that's what we're going to try to do. Hopefully this will be beneficial. I hope, so, I hope. So it's Friday. Now, it's been a long weeks. I don't know how your week has impacted you, but I know this. I know I'm not supposed to say this, But the good thing is I can say it in a podcast, where if I said it in a church, I'd be fired, but I can say it in a podcast. I cannot say that because I have Jesus this week I've been truly satisfied or been truly content, because I haven't. I cannot say that this week I've so died to self and denying self and not following self that nothing bothered me and everything was just perfect and wonderful and great. I cannot say that because that would all be a lie. It would be horrible lie. So you could say, well, you're going into this bias. Maybe I am, but I'm trying to go into it being as realistically as possible. So let's just remind ourselves if someone truly and fully and consistently died to self, denied self, and no longer followed their self, but followed Christ. If someone truly did that, fully, did that, consistently did that, that would be perfection. It

11:34 would be sinless obedience. It would be a life of unbroken alignment with God's will, without rebellion, without selfishness, without distraction, without divided desire. I mean, you would be content. I mean basically, it would be heaven. So in other words, it would be glorification. It wouldn't be just sanctification. You would already be in a glorified state. If you could do this, it would be it would be the end goal of the Christian life, not its ongoing struggle. It wouldn't be like something we're struggling to do. If we could really do it, it would be the goal. Would we have reached it, we would have accomplished it. Now, Christianity teaches it's possible die to self, deny SOLF. Now, sometimes Christianity plays this game. Sometimes it preaches it as if it's achievable, but then by doing so, they kind of reduce actually what it's called. Well, it's just it's trying to do it. I mean, you can't do it perfectly. No, either you are dead or you're not dead. Okay, there's not like this in between the situation. So most Christians teaching, most Christian teaching, I should say it that way, most Christian teaching tends to treat die to self as an ongoing lifestyle or daily command, but then fails to acknowledge what it's actually demanding. That's how a lot of Christians play this game. They they want to say it's something they're supposed to do every day. It's a daily command,

13:05 So every day you have to die. Every day you have to deny. Well, so then it's like, well some days you will, some days you won't. That's kind of weird, Like I'm dead today, but then tomorrow I'm back alive again. I'm dead for an hour, And in many cases they have to I don't think they really want to acknowledge what's actually being demanded, because what's actually being demanded is a total rejection of every single impulse, every single motive, every single thought, or action rooted in my own will. If I'm truly dead to self, if I'm truly denying self, then I'm rejecting every impulse. I'm rejecting every motive. I'm rejecting every thought or action that's rooted in my own will.

13:49 I've never experienced that for two seconds. In fact, that's not even discipleship, that's not growing spiritually. I think that's if you could really do that, you've reached perfect holiness. So what these verses are actually describing. If we truly can take up across, die, deny and no longer follow, is I mean you would have no You would have no more sinful desires? How could you have a sinful desire? You're dead, You're denying self. You would have no more self centered thoughts? How many of your thoughts is about you? How self centered are you? Everything is about you? You? You, every situation, what do you get from it? It's all about you? You, Your needs are being made, your being happy, You're being satisfied. No more resistance to God's will. If we truly died, deny and no, we would not be resisting God's will. Do you still resist God's will? In any way? Shape? Or form. There would be no more attachment to comeffort, to ego, to personal ambition. There would be no attachment to any of that. There no there would be no more choosing your way over his way, not even once, because well, there's no your way because you've died. You're denying, you're not following self. It would be moral perfection. And here's where the Christian teaching typically

15:25 breaks down. It says, die to self, deny self, stop following yourself, follow Christ. But then at the same time, some will then say, however we all sin, Well, so are you giving me something to pursue which I can never do? Then what do I How do I understand this? You see, we can't really have this both ways. This is what you're supposed to do. However, you're never going to do it, unless maybe we realize that the command these commands to deny I die, all of the all of these, these three, these commands in Matthew sixteen twenty four deny self, take up your cross, meaning die to self and follow Christ. Unless we can truly understand those are what we would call law philologically, you cannot fulfill it.

16:18 In practice, you cannot, you will not. It's impossible. That's why Paul says, I do not do the good I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. That's Roman seven nineteen, Roman seven twenty fourth through twenty five, and it's that famous. The things I want to do I don't. The things I don't want to do, well, Paul, just die to yourself, deny self, follow Christ. Now we put forth the law gospel idea. I'm gonna repeat it again. I said we would be repeating it. The law says, if you truly followed Christ and deny it yourself fully, you would be holy. And that's true, but it condemns you because you haven't and you can't. So the law says, do this to be holy, do this, do this to follow him, And you're like, yes, but you can't. It's impossible. But then this is what the gospel says. Hey, Jesus denied himself perfectly.

17:21 He died the death you couldn't. He followed the Father perfectly and by faith, his obedience is yours. That's what good Friday is all about. He died because you you you can't die to yourself, you can't do He did everything for you. So in Romans sixty six, you have died in Christ. I have died Colossians three to one. I have been raised in Christ. I'm seated with Christ. Ephesians two six. My life is hidden in Him. Positionally I'm perfect, even while practically weak. So take up your cross and die. I do that, and deny self. I do that in Christ. Follow him in Christ. I do that.

18:04 All of that is done for me in Christ. So positionally it is true. I wish it was true. Practically, Oh do I wish it was true. What would my life be if I just could be completely dead to my own wants, my own needs, my own desires. There would be no anger, there would be no frustration, there would be no depression, there would be no discouragement, there would be no irritation. It would be peace. It would be wonderful. But I cannot find a way to do it in any meaningful way. So if we're truly honest, this dying and denying would be perfection, which then means no one but Jesus has ever done it. We're called to it, but we're crushed by it unless we understand it's law driving us to Christ. And in Christ we now walk not to achieve that perfection, but as those already covered by His. But this brings the question, how is the Christian Church interpreted this? Deny, die, take up your cross, these verses. And I'm just gonna go back to the eighteen hundreds and move forward. I'm just gonna go back to the eighteen hundreds. We could go back to even earlier. Now. If you go back early enough, I can tell you how it was basically understood. People left and joined monasteries. Remember there's the famous joke that in the early Church there were more Christians and monasteries than they were in the cities because they would see him verse like that and like, well, there's no way I can do this. I'm gonna go join it. I'm gonna renounce everything, I'm gonna die to self, deny self,

19:37 follow Christ. I'm gonna be living in a monastery. I'm gonna take a voleus celibacy of a vowl poverty. I'm not maybe a vow as silent silence. It's not gonna be I'm not gonna do anything. It's just all gonna be about God. But see people say, well, that's crazy, that's to the extreme. Yeah, because you want to be able to say you're dying to self, denying self and following Christ, yet get most of all your needs met and still make everything about us. But how is the church, at least since the eighteen hundreds have handled this, right? I think when we look, we're going to see kind of a clear historical trajectory where the interpretations shifts dramatically across eras. And I think that's important. Whenever sometimes we go back in church history, we can sometimes see wild shifts and interpretations based on the era in which we're looking at, which is kind of bizarre, right, because you think there should just be one interpretation. But I don't care what the scripture is, I don't care what the area of theology is. If you study church history, you see these wild shifts. Oh this is the error where everyone thought this, Oh, all of a sudden it changed, then it changed back, or it modified, And well why the scripture say what the scriptures say, which then comes to demonstrate to all of us then what the scriptures actually say. We never truly figure out because we change our views throughout church history. But I think we see

21:08 a clear trajectory where interpretation shifts dramatically across different eras shaped by cultural forces. That's interesting philological movements now that one makes more sense, and evolving views on human nature. So, in other words, once again, our interpretations of scripture are more a lot of times influenced by things outside of the church, more than we want to admit, or can be influenced by what's happening in the church. In other words, we are typically what influences our interpretation of the scripture most is not the scriptures themselves, it's these external factors culture, what our theological team is currently saying, what our favorite pastors are saying, what the books are saying, what's going on in Christianity. There's always external factors, see, which just strives me crazy because from a hermeneutical standpoint, external factors should have no influence on how you interpret scripture, but the reality is it does. So let's trace somewhat briefly from eighteen hundred to today. All right, are you ready?

22:16 Let's try to do this. Let's start the eighteen hundreds, the eighteen hundreds. Welcome to the eighteen hundreds. All right, are you here? Okay? Good? All right, let's talk about revivalism, pietism, and moralism. Revivalism, pietism and moralism, right, eighteen hundreds, So we'll classify this error as the era of revivalism, pietism, and moralism, and the nineteenth century, especially in Protestant evangelicalism, that deny yourself language was intensely moralistic and emphasizes external behavior, personal piety, and strict discipline. Were urged to abandon worldly amusements, deny bodily pleasure, and dedicate themselves to revival, to missions and to prayer. Stop that worldly amusement, stop this, stop that, okay, just dedicate yourself to the things of God. Revival is here, pietism, moralism.

23:20 It's this kind of concept. Pietism from early Lutheran and Reform traditions had already pushed inward focused spirituality, self examination, renunciation of pride, and intense introspection. So we had already kind of seen this already taking place within the earlier forms of pietism that showed up in Lutheranism and Reform traditions. This is like look inward, kind of an inward focused spirituality, examine yourself, renounce your pride, renounce this a lot of introspection. Now, what was the key result? Denying self became a spiritual lifestyle or of self suspicion and relentless striving, often confused with sanctification. So basically, die to self, deny self. This is to become your life, and it becomes relentless striving every day, trying to die every day, trying to deny every day, trying to fall. I'm going to do it.

24:22 I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna try harder, I'm gonna try harder, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. And sometimes, you know, how do you accomplish that way? We could get into a greater discussion about that. But that's what this all turns into. This is what it all turns into, all right, So I think I think everyone kind of understands that period in time. It's like this kind of daily thing we're trying. It's about discipline, it's about just it's very it's not put it this way. There's no focus on that Christ did it for you. It's all about what you need to do. It's all how about your striving. I'm pulling this off. Now we jump to the nineteen hundreds. Now we have the Holiness Movement and what is known as Keswick theology. And I'm hoping I'm saying that correct. I'm hoping I'm saying that correct. K. E.

25:16 S Wick Keswick theology. That's how it looks. The reason I'm hesitanting because I think i've I think I realized one time that I was saying it incorrectly. So if I'm saying it incorrectly, I apologize Holiness Movement and Keswick theology. All right. These movements taught that the self life had to be completely crucified. You've got to crucify that self life. The believer needed a second blessing or deeper surrender, sometimes referred to his entire sanctification or the victorious life. You had to let go and let God. So it was the idea that, okay, you may be a Christian, you've come this far, but you need this second blessing. You need something to happen to get you. And it says over the hump so you can get there. You need this entire sect of sanctification, the second blessing, this complete surrender you need, and then if you get there, then you will truly experience what the Christian life is supposed to be, true victory, true surrender, and then the the in a sense, the battle will be over because you've completely died to yourself. This almost elevated dying to self into a mystical breakthrough experience. And if you notice how this works. In the eighteen hundreds, it was about discipline.

26:36 Do it, renounce this, renounce that daily struggle, do it, do it. And finally, after from the eighteen hundreds, by the time you get to the nineteen hundreds, I think someone looked around and going like, you know what, people keep failing, failing, failing. Nobody's pulling this off, nobody's pulling how do we do that? Well, we've got to have some answers. Oh, we got to have this second blessing. We got to have this break through. We something mystical, something spiritual has to happen, and once we experience it, boom, then all of that struggle and all that fighting and all that failing will just disappear because now we've reached it, which just makes sense after all of that time of telling everyone to struggle, you know what you saw from the eighteen hundreds to the nineteen hundreds failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, failure.

27:24 So someone's always got to come along, going well, if everyone keeps failing at this, we need a solution. And the solution is this holiness movement, Keswick theology, this kind of Hey, it's we gotta, we gotta, we need to. We gotta have something that can get us to completely crucify completely, and that's this second blessing, something that happens that we can we can finally get to. So it becomes a mystical breakthrough experience where true Christians were expected to be free from selfish desire. See if you can get this breakthrough, this mystical one, and hey, you finally you finally reached it. So in this case, the denying self becomes an emotional, almost crisis like experience of total surrender.

28:11 And if you haven't had it, your spiritual life was in question, like your your spiritual life is suspect until you get this breakthrough. So you got to get this breakthrough. You got it, and you could probably mix into this, you know, maybe the baptism of the Holy Spirit. See, especially once you get to the doctrine of subsequence, and and it becomes that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is subsequent to your salvation. You become saved, but now you have to pursue the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And you know you have the baptism of the Holy Spirit because you've spoken in tongues. Well, there's your spiritual breakthrough. And now that you've spoken in tongues, now you've been baptized with the Holy Spirit. Now now you can truly die to self. Now you have a greater holiness, a greater fervency for God, a greater love for God. You can It's almost like this is the secret. The bottom line is in the nineteen hundreds, because you've got the birth of the Charismatic movement and everything happening there holding some movement Keswick theology. You got all of this kind of there you can kind of see what this era is. Well, it's got to be now more than just trying. It's got to be more than struggling. It's got to be more than just failing. We've got to be able to tap into some kind of experience, some kind of power.

29:25 And once we get that that we're there. And that's language used throughout the Charismatic world, but it's even used in many non charismatic circles as well because it became so built into our mindset. Right, So now we get to the mid twentieth century evangelical application theology. So let's go back eighteen hundreds we have revivalism, Pietism, and moralism. Nineteen hundreds we have the holiness movement, Keswick theology. I probably could do a little bit more work in the early nineteen hundreds, but I'm trying to summarize these. Right, the mid twentieth century, we have evangelical application theology. By the nineteen fifties through the nineteen eighties, popular evangelicalism, Billy Graham campus crusade for Christ Navigator movements, they adopt a deny yourself as a daily lifestyle principle, and they link this to quiet time obedience simply saying no descent, and moral restraint. Devotional books and sermon series focused on daily crossbarring, victory over self and resisting culture. So they kind of then there's almost a shift back. They kind of move away from maybe the experiential breakthrough, and now it just becomes this is a daily back to your daily routine.

30:49 All right, you got to have your quiet time. You need to be reading your Bible. You need to be memorizing scripture. You need to be a part of a group. You need to be a part of a Bible study. You need to do this. You need to We're right back to the Look, guess what it was from the eighteen hundreds to now we're in the nineteen fifties to the nineteen eighties. Guess what nobody was referring to? Christ did this for you? No? No, no, no, no, Now it's all back to us, right, So I don't even know that. I mean the mid to twentieth the mid twentieth century, nineteen fifties to the nineteen eighties. I mean, come on, I mean, there's not really a lot here. It's just kind of your typical just keep doing it. You got to do this, you gotta do this. So this error began to confuse self denial, and so this is what they kind of, I guess in this period.

31:36 I think this will give us some idea maybe of the difference. If you look at it from the kind of from a bird's eye view, it doesn't really look that different to the eighteen hundreds. But there's a there's a slight difference here, right, So the error of the nineteen fifties to the nineteen eighties, they begin to confuse self denial with things like this, give up your television, stop listening to rock music, don't watch MTV, stop cussing, attend church on a regular basis, dressed modestly, say no to sexual temptation. So it kind of flattens the command of die to self deny self to something manageable, and it typically ignored what the law was actually saying. Okay, I know it says die, I know it says deny, but we're just gonna focus on well, hey, give up your television, don't do that. Just like these things that well, you could from a fleshly perspective probably accomplish to some level because with the right amount of self discipline, I mean, you can stop watching television. Probably with the right amount of self discipline, you could probably stop cussing. Right, with the right amount of self discipline, you can go to church Sunday, school, Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday. I mean, all that requires is discipl plan, schedule, or you gotta you just gotta do it. I mean, I know I pulled that off of all the other problems I have

33:06 in my Christian life. From the time I was saved till till forever, I go to church, Sunday, school, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday. I mean that was never a problem. Even if I worked all night, I still went got up and went to church. I mean it was just like, this is what you do, all right, modest dressed, modest dress. Obviously someone can pull that off. Now saying no to sexual temptation, now this is where the church once again has a very confused view of sexuality, very very They don't see it as a as an I mean, it's on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's an actual need, it's an actual desire. Like they they think it was just it's just disciplined. Well, it becomes much more complicated than that, but okay, But the bottom line is die deny just turns into here's these list of things you do in the list of things you don't. And it's much more manageable than truly dying to self. Because let's make it very clear, you can follow a list appear not to be.

34:13 You can appear to be denying and dying and The reality is you're very much alive, and you've seen this. Have you ever been a part of a very conservative, independent, fundamental Baptist church. Externally, everyone looks like they've died to self, under denying self, modest dress, pious language, don't watch maybe not have televisions. They all look so godly, And how many of those churches have church split? There's gossip, backbitding, a lack of love, judgmental. They're not dead to self. They've just covered their rotting fleshly sinful nature with as much pietism and self righteousness as they can. But it's still there. And many times the sins that are happening have to be kept secret. Nobody can be truly open and honest. So I guess in the fifties to eighties it's about reducing what the law actually says to truly die itself and just reduce it to hey, just follow this list of rules. Now, late twentieth century to the present we get a lot of psychological blending comes in and prosperity spin will use that word. Psychological blending and prosperity spin. A lot of this comes in today. You could see we have kind of almost two contradictory trends

35:45 happening in the church. One, you have this kind of prosperity victory theology. You're a new creature, you have power, You're more than conquerors. You're a new creature, the Oldest pass away. Everything has become new. You've got power, You've got the power of the Holy Spirit in you. You're more than a conqueror. It's really this victorious kind of preaching. Denying self becomes stop doubting yourself or silence negative thinking. You stop thinking incorrectly, stop confessing wrong things with your mouth. Just confess that you are a new creature, the oldest God. Everything is taken care of you. You have the power to do it. So the cross in a sense almost becomes a symbol of empower meant not a symbol of death.

36:36 About this all really kind of in the modern church. It becomes about your power. You get, you get, not about no, no, no. The cross is where Jesus died in my place and my and my faith. I am unified in that death. So I am dead in him positionally. No no, no, no, no no, it's all out. What Jesus did is there to give you power. Now you have power, have freedom. You now have the ability you can do it. So this is kind of this victorious theology, this prosperity thing. Confess positive things with your mouth, believe it, and it becomes this kind of weird mix. On the other side, we get this therapeutic Christianity. The focus is on self care, emotional well being and balance. Deny yourself is soft and as much as possible, and too well, don't let your emotions control you. The Cross almost becomes metaphorical, not a call to die, but a call to manage stress. This is kind of this therapeutic Christianity that you may hear and a lot of maybe not all, but in some megachurches that things get reduced down to this like and they say, we're just making it practical, We're trying to apply it to the daily stresses of people's lives. But the whole concept gets really destroyed. So what happens in this therapeutic Christianity is that once again the full weight of Jesus' words, the full weight of the law, is

38:07 completely destroyed. Now, so those are the from the eighteen hundreds to modern day revival. So eighteen hundreds revivalism, Pietism, moralism, the nineteen hundreds, holiness movement, Keswick theology, the mid twentieth century, evangelical application theology, and the late twentieth century we get this kind of psychological blending and prosperity spin. Now what has been consistent throughout across the centuries, most interpretations, and I think this is true throughout the centuries, most interpretations make the command to die, deny and stop following yourself achievable, as if we can actually do it through effort, through quiet time, through chuch, that we can do it. Now, some will say, well, God does it through you, But again, if God does it through me, then I should be dead to self and I should be perfect and there should be no more issues, so that all that breaks down already there. But the point is, throughout church history it's you can do it. You can do it. It's achievable.

39:21 It's treated as a process, which is weird, not as an actual death sentence. It says die to self, take up your cross, and die deny. It doesn't say start the process. It says to do it. We have to. We have to minimize it so that it can be somewhat achievable. And I think it confuses moral effort or discipleship goals. I think it kind of just turns this all into about morality trying to meet goals. I here's what happens. It completely ignores law and gospel. It completely ignores long gospel that's consistent throughout church history. Law and gospel gets abandoned right here. There's no long gospel understanding of any of this. Now, what the church should have done is they should have well looked at it from a law gospel perspective. So let me break it down. Law.

40:19 Deny yourself shows you that you cannot save yourself. The gospel Christ denied himself for you. See, deny yourself shows you, Oh no, I'm in trouble. I'm never truly going to deny myself. I'm never truly good because my sinful nature is going to be there, and the sinful nature is all about the exaltation of the of the self. So you're never going to truly deny yourself. But the Gospel says, hey, I've got good news. The law says, deny yourself. Christ did he denied himself for you. The Law says, take up your cross means death to self centered righteousness. Die to self. Christ took the cross before you and for you. The law follow me is not a lifestyle upgrade. It's a call to die and rise with Him by faith.

41:05 You've already died and risen with Christ Galatians two twenty. The law, this command is not a method. It's a mirror showing your need for the gospel, the gospel. Jesus fulfilled the command and gave you his righteousness. That's a proper law gospel perspective. Now, I know Christians don't like that, right because you say, well, you're just looking at it as you can do it. Christ did it for you, so you can do whatever you want. Now, I'm you know what, Here's the reality is. You can get mad about that all day. You still do whatever you want, no matter how much you try to disguise it and pretend that you don't. So, since the eighteen hundreds, the Church has largely treated deny yourself as a formal a formula for spiritual growth. That's how's typically been treated. It overlooks the crushing legal demand that is found in those words, and it underpreached the finished work of Christ as our substitute.

42:07 So since the eighteen hundreds, this is what the Church has done. It's treated deny yourself as some formula for spiritual growth. Hey, here's what you need to do to grow spiritually. It really overlooked or downplayed what was actually being demanded by this verse. It's a legal demand. It's crushing and over and over. The Church has not preached the finished work of Christ as our substitute. He did this for you because the church doesn't have the law gospel approach. The command is not less radical than we think. It's even more radical than we can even begin to understand.

42:49 It was never meant to be your project. It was always meant to drive you to the one who already did it all. Now, if we go from the eighteen hundred to today, and if you look at all the things we covered, one thing was left out. One thing was completely left out, and that was lordship theology. Now, I think lordship theology is a significant movement in church history that has so even though people may not use the term, may not even know what it is, they've been influenced by it. So let's now add in lordship theology as its own separate era and see how this approaches the take up your cross, deny and follow. All right. Now, lordship theology as developed most prominently in the late twentieth century, especially through figures like John MacArthur and response to what they called easy believism or what they would call free grace theology. They put an enormous of emphasis on Jesus' command to deny self, take up your cross, and follow him.

44:03 But it does so in a way that elevates the command to our requirement for proving your salvation, rather than interpreting it through a law gospel category. Now, this is what I was confronted with the lordship way early in my Christian life. I've told the story a million times. Going to the Bible bookstore abling Texas, seeing this book the Gospel according to Jesus, hearing the people in the bookstore talk about how controversial it was, didn't really know what was going on, bought the book, and really, in my understanding, I just kind of like, well, this is Christianity. Like I didn't have any I didn't have a framework really to understand what was going on other than oh, this is Christianity. So then it was like, Okay, I got to do this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this or I'm not saved. So then I basically went on a war path, and I'm like, well, then nobody in this stinking churches say, because nobody does this, Nobody does this, nobody does this, nobody does this, nobody does this, nobody reads their Bible, nobody studies the Bible.

45:04 For crying out loud, we have this. Many people show up on Sunday morning. Nobody comes back on Sunday night. So all those stinking people aren't saved. And the youth group is a stinking joke, and the pastor's a stinking joke. It's all fun food fellowship. None of you people are saved. Nobody here loves God, nobody cares. You're all trash, you're all garbage. But look at me. I read more than anybody else. I don't miss a church service. I study more, I read more Christian books, I listen to Christian radio, I listen to sermons. Look at me. And so I fell into this and went all in right, But what was baffling to me is like many of the people would say, yeah, this lordship idea is right, but I'm like, well, if the lordship idea is right, you shouldn't be say it with such a smug look on your face, because you're trash. You don't read, you don't study, you barely show up to church when you're supposed to. You don't do this. You don't do this. You don't do this.

45:54 You should be con questioning your own salvation. But they never used it to question their salvation. They always use it to question everyone else's salvation. And I was always baffled by that. How can people in lordship only question everyone else's salvation? But for some weird reason, they all think that they do it. So I would take the lordship test, well, if you truly, if you truly are saved, you will love God above everything else. You will not love the world. You will do this. And all I could do is try to find the things on the test that I knew that I was achieving, doubled down on those, triple down, do them even more, and make sure the whole world knew that I was doing these things.

46:35 And then I could but guess what, even all that the facade would would would crack time and time again because I was I was well, I was a sinner and I was a teenager. Doesn't matter if I was a teenager, if I was adult. The facade still cracks and fades and falls apart. And I began I kept struggling. Well, I keep sinning, I keep sinning. I got so concerned about it that I went to the pastor and asked, possibly am I and possessed? Because I keep sinning? Right, Well, it may not be demon possession, it's it could be demonic oppression. That was the answer. Now the answer is this stupid theology is insane. That's what the problem is, because it's a complete destruction of law gospel understanding. Now, when I finally go to the Lutheran Church, I get a little bit of reprieve. I start learning about the law gospel distinction, but it still didn't really register in my mind what was going on here. I still didn't have the philological knowledge to put it all together. So then I leave the Lutheran Church, go to independent fundamental Baptist, and then I tripled down on the lordship theology. I tripled down on it until well, it was Catholic University where they were like, this lordship salvation is basically Catholicism.

47:48 How do you not see that you should just become a Catholic? And I'm like, wait a minute, wh whoa whoa, whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoah woah. No, no, no, no, no, I'm lordship. I'm not Catholic. No, Like, it's Catholicism, Okay, you just change it's the wording, but it's works base and I'm like, no, it's not. Yes, it is okay. And then finally I was like, man, I've been such an idiot. All right, So so let's walk through how Lordship Salvation interprets these texts. Right, Let's go through number one, Lordship theology handles how the lordship theology handles deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me. Basically, it would go like this, saving faith includes submission to Christ as Lord.

48:28 If you're truly saved, you will live a life of self denial, cross bearing, and obedience to Christ. If you're truly saved, you will do it. No, this is what's such trash is And I get so mad about it because, oh, the game is so rigged the way it works, right, because if you look at the way the demographics of most churches. Right, we've talked about this. The demographic of most churches are people who are married, have kids, have a job, have a home, They fit, they get so if you take Maslow's hierarchy of needs, they got most of their needs met. But they got most of their needs met. So you get so a lot of times what people are doing when they're young, they may leave the church, right because I know they're I know this is hard to believe, but they have needs and they have desires, and Christianity says they can't have these needs or desires met. So you kind of move way, you pull back from the church. You get those needs and desires met. Well, then he lo and behold you get married.

49:29 Oh now good. You've got physical intimacy, you've got mental intimacy. You've got all your needs. You've got your kids. You've got you're you're raising them, or you have a job, or you're going to school and you're trying to do this, and you're trying to do that. So you've got purpose, you've got meaning, you've got responsibilities, you've got intimacy. You may have friends and family because you're a young couple. You've got everything. But now you can sit there and say, I'm dying to self and denying something because most of your needs are We're met. What are you dying and denying too? Not going to Starbucks twice in a week? Like what are you doing? You got everything? But and then they sit there so smug and pious and look down at everyone, Oh, how dare you do that? How dare you do that? And it's like, don't you remember before your needs were being met what you were doing?

50:21 Also a holy and godly liar. So the church is sometimes made up of these younger couples are very older people. Those needs and desires are radically different now they're in their fifties or sixties, seventies, eighties, Like, it's radically changed. It's such a game the way this is played. So on one hand, hey, if you're really saved, then you're gonna die deny. Well okay, well how can I pull this off? Well, this is the way you pull it off. You look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You try to ensure all of those needs are being met, and then you can say I'm dying and denying. Yeah, you're dying and denying to what all your needs being met? It's such, it's the game is rigged right. So this is the basic claim in lordship. Saving faith includes submission to Christ's lord.

51:16 If you're truly saved, you'll live a life of self denial, cross bearing, and obedience to Christ. The interpretive framework goes something like this. Jesus words in Matthew sixteen twenty four, which I now referred to fifty times, Luke nine twenty three, Mark eight thirty four are not seen primarily as law that exposes sins, but as conditions of true saving faith. And this view, denying self equals turning from sin and selfish ambition, taking up your cross, embracing suffering, dying to self, will, following Christ as continual obedience. All of this is evidence of salvation. All of this is evidence of salvation. And I know how the game is played. See see when I was a teenager, I struggled with a lot of this because certain needs and desires were not being met.

52:06 So I was not always handling myself in such a godly way. But then once you get married, that the early stages of marriage, a younger couple needs and desires of being met, so wonderful and great. Now now you can double down. Now you can talk about how godly you are. Now you can really go all in with the lordship until something may change dramatically in your life, and then all of a sudden, there's those same needs and desires. Because the needs and desires never go away, they're built into us. Go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and so then and that way, you're still gonna be sinning. Of course, we're always sinning, but you're gonna be sinning in much more socially acceptable ways. And you won't necessarily perceive that as you're not truly dying to yourself, you won't be as bothered by As long as you can avoid the big scandalous sins, you can get most of your needs met within the confines of Christianity, and then you get you can get friendship. You can you can pursue this, you can pursue that. It's oh man, the whole thing is so messed up. Uh. This kind of a paraphrase of MacArthur. You cannot, you cannot receive Christ as savior and reject him as lord. True believers obey, true faith follows. A true Christian dies to self, lives to Christ, not perfectly, say, there's always they catch, but directionally and demonstratably, So you're not gonna do it perfectly. Well, then if I'm not doing it perfectly, then how do I like? It's how do that prove my salvivation? My

53:37 and perfect not following Christ, not dying to self, not denying self can somehow be proof of salvation? Well, if I this just becomes so like, if I'm not doing it perfectly, that means I'm in sin. And if I break one point of the law, I'm guilty of all. So how do I measure this? But it's the little game that is played. What they mean is, well, you're not gonna do it perfectly, but you will avoid all big sins because if you commit one of the big sins, then we're you know, we'll have a stoning at midnight or a crucifixion or a burning at the stake. But you can commit one hundred small sins. And just so that we know, if we'd even take MacArthur, if you just take Macarthurs as an individual, die to self, deny self, follow Christ, that is proof of salvation. MacArthur has how many homes? One? Two, three? He has three homes all worth considerable amounts of money? Is that dying to self?

54:39 Is that denying self that seems like you're getting all those needs? Want? You want nice things? You want luxury, you want this. You want to have a house next to a world class golf course. You want to be able to Oh, you get to do all this stuff. But it's such See it takes die and deny, and all it means is just stay away from certain sins. That's all it really means. Now, what does this result end? Practically well, these verses become a salvation criteria. Have you denied yourself enough? Have you? Because if you haven't, you're probably not saved. Have you died to yourself sufficiently? Are you sure? Because if you haven't, you're probably not saved.

55:25 Are you following Christ every single day? Sincerely, sincerely and sacrificially? If not, you're probably not saved. Instead of pointing you to what Christ did, these verses become tests to determine if you're truly saved. So what happens It blends justification and sanctification, the call to ongoing sanctification. Growth in grace gets read back into justification. What saves you? The result you're saved by grace through faith plus proof, And guess what if you have to have the proof to prove that you're saved, meaning you have to do it in order to be saved, because if you don't do it, you're not saved. So you can't say it's just proof of salvation. You have to do in order to be saved. And then they'll play some weird games saying well, no, no, no, no, Christ is the one who does it through me. Well, if Christ does it through me, then I'm going to do it perfectly. But you already said I'm not going to do it perfectly. So which is it? It's a it's a never ending circle of contradiction. It's convoluted, it's fraudulent, it's fake, and it's a game that's played and it works good for people and the rights and the right conditions in life where you have all most of your needs being met. Again, go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

56:37 So what does this ultimately do? So these verses basically become a salvation criteria. It blends justification and sanctification, and it creates insecurity. You're told you're justified by faith alone, but then evaluated on how well you deny yourself, carry your cross, and submit submit to Christ's lordship. The outcome typically is nothing more than fear based obedience, driven by the need to assure yourself your faith is real enough, and it becomes about you. You you, you, what you do, not what Christ has done. Now, why does this fall apart theologically? What fails to let the law be the law? These commands are total deny yourself, take up your cross, follow me. They're not partially, they're not directionally. They are to be understood completely. To say true Christians do this at least sincerely is to lower the standard and turn the law into law light. And we don't want law light. Right, people were boycotting bud light. We need to be boycotting law light. The law does not demand sincerity. The law does not demand direction. The law does not demand just partial obedience. The law demands absolute perfection. If you are guilty of one point, you're guilty of aw be holy as He is holy. It demands absolute perfection. So you can't.

58:04 You can't do this and then minimize the law. Well, then it completely misses the gospel. These commands are not steps to salvation. They're the diagnosis of our inability to save ourselves. They should drive drive. This is what the when you read these verses, this is what you should drive you to say. I've not denied myself. I still follow myself. I cling to Christ because only he denied himself perfectly for me. See, if you truly were gonna present the gospel, you're like, hey, guys, guys, the law says you have to die. The law says you have to you can't do it. You've got to surrender completely to Christ and it because He did the denying and the dying and the following for you. That's what good Friday is all about. It was done for you on your behalf. Another problem that confuses fruit with root. Obedience is the fruit of salvation, not the root. Lordship theology turns the inspection into salvation. Basically, like you know you're you're you're seveilling someone. It's like salvation, saveliance surveillance in some way, shape or form. Now, I will say obedience is the fruit of salvation. I even call that into question.

59:20 I even call that. I would say obedience is the desire. The desire for obedience may flow from salvation, but I don't know how you measure that obedience is the fruit of salvation. I'm not even sure. I like, I think I said that incorrectly, because I would. I mean, I know, we want to say obedience is the fruit of salvation, and some people say, well, then we're just inspecting fruit to see if you're saved. But that once again you fall right back into the same See, it's hard to stop using the language obedience. I'm going to say obedience is not the fruit of salvation. I'm not. I'm going to reject that because because then how do you measure it? How do you measure it? If the Bible says be holy as God is holy, I've never obeyed that one time in my life, not one time. Well, if obedience is the fruit of salvation, I can't even obey that.

1:00:09 Love God with all my heart, mind, body, and soul. I've never done that one time. If obedience is the fruit of salvation, shouldn't have done that at least once or twice. Love my neighbor as myself. I have never done that. Do all things without grumbling and complaining, Love my enemy, turn the other cheek, resist not evil. I could go on and on and on. No backbiting, no gossip, no anger, no wrath, no bitterness, no complaining, no anxiety, no worry. Like I'm finished, guys, Okay, then I got. Then there is no oh no, If obedience is the fruit of salvation, there would be. We always have to find some tanks. We have to find some little thing that we can say we're doing. Come on. No, obedience may be the desire. The desire for obedience may flow from salvation because because I've changed my mind about sin and God, and now I believe God, and I believe what the Bible says, so I desire to want to follow him. But how to perform it is beyond me. So, lordship salvation, you must deny yourself to prove you're truly saved a law gospel framework. You cannot deny yourself as the law demands. But Christ did, lordship theology, take up your cross to show your faith is real law gospel.

1:01:21 Christ took up the cross for you, and your old self died with him Galatians two twenty. Lordship theology, Following Christ equals ongoing evidence of justification. Following Christ is sanctification. But you're justified even when you stumble, and even when you don't follow Christ because He followed for you, Lordship. If you aren't doing these things, your salvation is in doubt, Law, Gospel. These things crush you. So you fall on the sufficiency of Christ's obedience, have no proof on whether you're saved or not saved. So here is how lordship theology deals with this. It moralizes and weaponizes the passage, is using it to sort true from false converts. It doesn't deny grace, but it makes grace something you must verify by your behavior, especially through dying to self and obedience. It turns the call to die into a performance metric rather than a pointer to the cross, and trying to preserve the seriousness of discipleship, lordship theology burdens the believer with a softened version of the law disguised as evidence of salvation, rather than preaching Christ as a one who fulfilled it all on your behalf. Now there we go. We've gone from the eighteen hundreds all the way to modern times, and we also took a little side detour to say, lordship, salvation and all of Christianity throughout from the eighteen hundreds on have all failed to even handle this. Even remotely.

1:02:53 In the law Gospel context, it's all about doing it, doing it. You can do it, you can do it. You can do it, you can do it, you can do it. They believe it's achievable, believe it's accomplishable, that it's am it can be accomplished. But to make that claim, they have to water it down, that it becomes something less than truly dying, truly deny, and truly following. It just becomes something less. Now, I'll stop there. What's frustrating is, even right here broadcasting, hear that sound in the background.

1:03:33 My neighbor's mowing their yard. You know what I feel right now while I'm talking about all of this, I feel irritated. I feel frustrated because I'm trying to broadcast and that's messing up my broadcast. So I'm gonna go back and listen to this and I'm gonna hear that sound in the background, and I'm gonna be bothered, and I'm gonna be irritated, and I'm gonna want this to be deleted. Why Because I'm not dead to self and I'm not denying self. Because I have a desire, I have a need for things to be perfect. For things to work a certain way, and when they don't, I get frustrated and I get irritated. So I'm going to be frustrated and irritated after sixty four minutes of broadcasting the things did not go whose way my way, because I want it to be a right way. I want it to be a certain way, because I want people to tell me that it was good. I want people to tell me it was great. I want people to tell me it was wonderful. And then when that's over and I get done with that, that guess what the rest of the day is going to be. I'm going to be frustrated that I don't have this or I don't this, and because I got needs, and I got once and I got desires, and sometimes life doesn't work in a way that you get any of them fulfilled.

1:04:33 So I'll be frustrated and irritated, which proves that I'm not denying self and I'm not dead to sell, which will just constantly remind me over and over and over why I need Christ. But people have needs and desires, and the way the game is played in Christianity, the more you can get your needs and desires met, the more ways you can get a met. The more ways you can have your needs and desis, the easier your Christian life becomes. You really don't have to deny and die to anything because you can have everything. You just got to have it in the approved way and then you can get this and get this, and get this, and get this and get this. And if your life finds yourself without getting those things met, then you have to die, and you have to deny, and the other people can pretend to be all godly well you have to live in shame, sin, and frustration. The game is rigged in so many ways. Now, am I saying everyone should just do whatever they want? I'm not saying that.

1:05:33 I'm just saying I think sometimes the people who get most of their needs met it's real easy to pretend you're dying to self and denying self. Let's start pulling some of your your wants and your needs from you. What do you do when you don't get this? Pick whatever it is, because I guarantee you you see it in your life right Because even though you've got everything, you just certain little things go wrong. What shows up your selfishness, your frustration, your irritation, your worry, It can show up. Now. Just imagine if you've got most things, how easily it shows up. Now, take someone who's missing a large portion of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Oh, but you're gonna look down on them. The church does not have a good grasp on this, and it hasn't. It doesn't understand the basic needs and desires, and its answer is just ridiculous. Jesus completely satisfies. What if Jesus completely satisfies them, why do you seem to need to have them?

1:06:45 I don't know your physical needs met? You have emotional intimacy, physical intimacy. Why do you seem to get all of these things? If Jesus is enough, you shouldn't need any of that. If you're truly eyeing to self and denying yourself, why do you need this and want this? And you shouldn't want to need anything. Your life should just to be dedicated. Silk, stop playing like we we are all about this. Now someone's calling my daughter, So I'm gonna go because now everything is irritating me because I am not dead to self. But you know what today is about. Christ died for me, and that's my only hope. God bless