“Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.”
Luke 17:33 (ESV)
To be a disciple of Christ, the Bible makes it clear we must completely abandon our flesh and live relentlessly for God. This is one of the simplest, yet unfulfilled duties Christianity requires, and for obvious reasons.
To most, it doesn’t sound appealing to “lose one’s life.” It is intimidating and somewhat frightening. The thought of not being oneself is not one that attracts people. Many think they are taking a step into the unknown. Not to mention that at the core, us humans are quite proud and think highly of ourselves. Therefore, we would never want to change everything about ourselves. However, your sinful self is not yourself.
We will never experience our true selves until you murder your flesh. Let me put it this way: surrendering to God brings out the true colors of every individual. When we lose our lives, our true self is revealed. If we hold onto our flesh and its desires, we will never discover our genuine selves, our potentials, and the plans God has for us.
The truth is, Jesus was not tortured on the cross so that we could live for ourselves. Jesus did not take the burden of every individual’s sin for all of eternity so that we could love our own flesh. Christ’s hope for us and God’s divine desire for every one of us is that we would kill, hate and be utterly disgusted with our own flesh and all of its evil desires. Jesus’ teachings never once represent a command of half-heartedness. We cannot hold on to certain areas of our flesh, including even the slightest hints of lust, pride, dishonesty, and gossip. Paul tells us in Romans that if we live according to our flesh, we will die, but if we live according to our Spirit, we will live. One of the most radical forms of love we can have for God is to hate our flesh to the point in which we cannot stand knowing that we will sin again. We should hate knowing our sinful nature will show itself again tomorrow to the extent that it drives us to want to be in glory with God so that we will not go against Him.
There is nothing good apart from God, and our flesh is light years apart from God’s total holiness. Our flesh will produce nothing good. Nothing. The day we start living in accordance to God’s perfect will for us is the day we recognize our flesh is utterly disgusting and that the only way we will ever do good for the kingdom is when we kill every aspect our flesh and let the Spirit infiltrate us from head to toe.
Keep this in mind - our killing of the flesh should not be produced by wanting to love God. Instead, because we love God, we should have an insatiable desire to rid ourselves of our flesh. We can't work ourselves into love, but we can work because we love.
With all of this being said, we will fail. If you haven’t recognized that yet, our sin will win at times. But what makes the difference is that we devote ourselves to God and live in the fact that we get to be holy and that He is making us perfect every day. It’s a concept called grace and sanctification, but that’s another topic for another day. Recognize that our flesh is revolting, killing our flesh is the only way to know our true selves, our earthly desires will never produce permissible fruits in God’s kingdom, and we will fail, but God will catch us for the rebound.
