The Cancer of Self and The Chemo of Christ
"And he said to ALL, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. Luke 9:23
It has taken 18 years of walking with God, my parents' divorce, the near death of my wife & temporary homelessness to drill into my head this simple fact: I am my own worst enemy. It is not my mother's fault or my father's fault that I am what I am. It is not because of any external circumstance or decision others have made or anything else that has made me what I am, but me. I am the product of a broken world, the son of two broken people, living on borrowed time in an age of despair and hopelessness. And yet in spite of this, I am still responsible for the decisions that I make and the people that I hurt along the way because it is my brokenness not theirs which shapes the way I think and live and must be redeemed. If I am to ever to move forward in this life or grow in the grace that God has provided me I must learn to see this and face the repercussions of it in faith that God alone will redeem what I cannot do and work through what I cannot change.
Still, I cannot treat the Grace of God as a cheap or common thing just because I need it. I cannot assume the cross of Christ is an excuse to live for myself or put off sanctification because I can. I must reckon with my own sinfulness and brokenness if I am to grow up. I must reckon with my own selfishness and pride if I am to be a man. It must not be allowed to thrive in any capacity if I am to live in freedom. It must not be excused or ignored just because I am forgiven. I cannot blame another person for its reality. I cannot hide behind the fig leaf of my own making because it scares me to know what I am. I cannot hide my soul from the human race forever because I crave comfort. I cannot wallow in sin because it is easy. After all that is what is killing me.
Now what is sin but anything that is contrary to the original design of our Good Creator for His creation? What is sinfulness but the unfolding manifestation of death as it works its way in our hearts and minds to bring us closer to the grave, to prepare us for the untimely inevitable demise of our physical bodies? What is selfishness but the unhealthy preoccupation with our own vanity and self worth? And what can any of us possibly do about it? Is this not the great dilemma of the human race? is this not the drama of our time? Has it not been the demise of many a great nation? Is it not the cancer of our age? So it is not surprising to me then that the Great Physician Himself standing on the soil of His now cursed creation looked upon the human race in its un-reparable brokenness and answered the question: "If you would come after Me, you MUST deny yourself."
How else could a person infected with the disease of self ever hope to lay down their own life of their own volition for another human being unless they had first denied the greedy selfish impulses of their own corrupt heart? How else could they truly be free from the slave master of their own covetous heart unless they had first learned to not heed it? And this is the problem I am faced with right now in the great state of Washington sitting alone in my truck before work. How can I ever hope to walk in freedom or reflect the Son of Liberty if I refuse to stop living for myself? How can I ever hope to love my wife or my children, my co workers or my neighbors the way they need to be loved if I only think of myself? How can I ever hope to truly be free of myself when I love myself so much more than anything else? And here in lies the problem I am faced with this morning.
I love myself more than I love anything else in this world. I love me more than I love my peers more than I love my wife my children or my God. And that's the uncomfortable truth I must reckon with if I believe the gospel. If I say that I believe in the God of the Bible, the Father who willingly gave up His Son, the Son who joyfully laid down His life for the brethren or the Spirit that freely works in those who believe in His name then I must submit my whole life to the teaching of His word and be willing to be conformed in every area of my life to the One who loved me and gave Himself for me, the One who is called Love. But what does that even mean? Where do I even begin?
In our transition from California to Washington my wife and I got much more than we bargained for. We had to live in a hotel, rely on the kindness of those we barely know and confront deep rooted hurts we were both unprepared to deal with which her cancer both exposed and created. One of the most uncomfortable truths I personally had to deal with is the way I medicate myself with various escapes, for example entertainment and movies. A movie for me is an escape, pure and simple. It is like having a great novel explained to you in pictures. I delight in the detail the artistry and the entertainment of it. I won't lie. I think I first started using movies in this way to escape the brokenness of my parents' turbulent marriage when I was a child. But be that as it may I have carried that pattern into every relationship including our marriage. Now a movie is not destructive in itself (another topic for another time). It can be used in constructive ways to be sure. But for me I chose to use it in a destructive way and it had a very destructive effect on our marriage to say the least.
You see in trying to escape from the increasing pressures of my life I unintentionally distanced myself from my wife and kids. The harder life became the more frequently I sought to escape. And Netflix became my drug of choice. When I wasn't looking for a movie to watch (generally a 30 min activity) I was watching movies back to back (often late into the night). But here is my point. In order to deny your self you must be confronted with yourself. You must be willing to see yourself for who you really are. What you really do. How you really live, the standard of how you really love, listen to and interact with others. In a word you must be confronted with reality. And the only way to do that is to live in community. And this is counter intuitive to our culture. For how can we ever hope to be real with ourselves if we only ever distance ourselves from each other and avoid community?
Now the problem as I see it is twofold. First we love ourselves more than anything else. And second we live in a culture obsessed with the love of self. Not only is it obsessed with the love of self but it has built for itself a comfortable little niche where it can appear to be thoughtful of others and interact with others while preserving the narcissistic delight of focusing on numero uno.
Enter social media. Now social media is not evil in itself. It can be a wonderful tool to connect with long lost friends peers and even relatives. But that's not how the majority of us use it. Is it? We post endless selfies of unnecessary moments, catalog the life of our children in public to project a particular persona. We lust after and compete with the accomplishments and possessions of others. We substitute real fellowship with digital post it notes that are more often than not misunderstood by those we send them to. We debate like professors without degrees, ridicule like philosophers who haven't studied. We stand on electronic soap boxes and condemn the latest political social or economic ills with the gusto of a prophet. We do everything (most the time) except connect with the ones we love in a way that is tangible and beneficial and uncomfortable and necessary (the way it's supposed to be). And that my friend is a real problem. Because it is counterintuitive to the gospel, counterintuitive to real friendship or real life for that matter. And it is in my own estimation the number one reason we do not deny ourselves.
There are just too many ways in this day and age to love ourselves, promote ourselves, dwell on ourselves or dissect ourselves, in a word glorify ourselves. Why bother doing anything else? But that is why the words of Christ strike at me this morning, break my heart and bring me into the dust. I am guilty of all of this and so much more. I have played the harlot. I love my self too much to let me go or any other activity which feeds my ego. And that is a problem. No. It is a cancer, a disease of the soul. And I wonder, can I endure the spiritual chemo? Because the only way anything is ever going to change in my life is if I choose to endure it.
But what is the spiritual chemo for such a devastating disease as this cancer? What hope do I have to deny myself in a culture obsessed with itself? I know the answer. And You wouldn't believe me if I told you because it has been so misrepresented, so abused by the masses and neglected by the ones who were charged to preserve it. And it is right in front of our faces. You see the only cure on the planet for the tyrannical disease of self, the only hope we have to deny ourselves is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I don't mean the watered down version either. I mean the person and works of Jesus Christ in human history as they have been applied and are continually applied to us daily by the Holy Spirit according to the word of God.
Without that sacred work of Jesus Christ on our behalf there is no gospel. There is no church. Without the sacrifice of Jesus Christ there is no deliverance from sin and self. And the church that fails to see this, understand and walk in it will not reflect the One who redeemed them, even though they identify with Him. The church that professes to represent Christ but fails to reflect Him in their every day life will only ever appear to the world as a light bulb that does not glow: in other words a walking contradiction. And that is exactly why our culture is the way it is today. Too many of us who profess to know the living God reflect too little of the reality of His Spirit. Too many of us who spend their time evangelizing on street corners, teaching bible studies, leading worship or traveling to other countries to proclaim the gospel reflect too little of its saving work in our own lives. In the most mundane professions of employment, at the local coffee shop or in traffic where it is most apparent to the watching world, we reflect too little of the sacrificial loving character of our God. He is a stranger to them because He is a stranger to us. What the world sees instead is only a self serving & hypocritical people who refuse to be transparent who know very little of honesty and humility.
And that is a tragedy, which brings me to the crux of this little treatise. That is, in order to truly deal with the cancer of our own self centeredness, to deny our self in the way it has been prescribed, we must first make someone other than our self the preoccupation of our heart and mind. If denying our self becomes the preoccupation of our mind we are still only thinking of ourselves. If we spend our time serving other people in order to be selfless we have still missed the mark because we are still only serving our own interests albeit in a more deceptive way. We are still only serving our self. And in this way we are like the disciple Peter. In order to deny ourself in the way that Jesus implies, we must first fix our eyes on our Maker and receive again from HIM the good works that He has done on our behalf. We must receive the reality afresh that we can do nothing apart from Him to sanctify ourselves. We can do nothing to make up for what's been done on our behalf. We cannot make up for the cross. We cannot become selfless on our own. We must receive and be washed by the selflessness of God in Christ and be convicted and set free from the demands of our flesh to be and to do in our own strength.
Only when we have received the gospel of Jesus Christ again and all that He has done for us in it in practice can we genuinely respond to Him with loving gratitude for His amazing grace and rest in its perfection. That gratitude we feel for his goodness toward us always translates into kindness toward others when it is sincere. And it is for that reason that the apostle Paul typically began his letters with the indicative (what God has done) before he moved into the imperative (what we should do). He knew the indicative would always confront his reader with their own inadequacy and bring them back to the saving knowledge of the excellency of Christ in which he personally rested. But the grace of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ is foreign to our broken sinful sensibilities. Without the intervention of the Holy Spirit I submit to you we would only resist Him at will. In fact we do. That is why so many today reject the cross of Christ. the death of self is poison to the mind of the flesh. And it is for that reason that I liken it to chemo therapy.
You see anyone who's ever gone through cancer (my precious wife for example) knows that chemo therapy is the absolute worst experience. It is foreign to the human body, this pure and unadulterated poison which is injected into the human body by force which is why the most common reaction to it is to throw up. A person must take mind altering drugs in order to trick the mind into not rejecting it so vehemently. And I submit to you that the same is true of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the human heart. That is why so many reject it out of the gate. The cross of Christ is poison to the flesh. it is death to the death in all of us. That is why it works so hard to reject it, to alter it if necessary even ignore it, change the nature or purpose of it anything but ever accept it. Once a person has accepted the radical poison of the gospel it can only do one thing: burn away the death inside of all of us that is killing us and restore us to our originally intended spiritual health as the redeemed of God.
And this brings me back to our family and the inevitable conclusion. I did not know two years ago that the cancer inside my wife's body would serve to bring me into confrontation with my own inner sickness. I had no idea that the cancer in her would reveal the cancer in me, that her recovery would initiate a much needed chemo therapy in my soul. I did not know how devastating my selfishness was to my family or my friends until I was backed into a corner with nowhere to go. I had no idea how desperately I needed the Gospel until I came face to face with my own internal nakedness. I had no idea how deeply God loves me until I was confronted with my own inability to love. I had no idea how broken I am until I was called upon to lay down my life and found I couldn't. I had no idea how valuable that truth was until I started discussing it with others.
So here I am convinced there is no one who cannot profit from this truth because we are all alike sold under sin from birth, addicted to our self even as believers, so easily enslaved to the tyranny of our own corrupted hearts as human beings. Believer or not we all need to hear this truth because it is vital to our soul. That is why the call to deny our selves rings true even today. Because the human race is nothing else if not consistent. We were in need of Christ then. We are in need of Him now. It is for this reason that He was given, for this reason He laid down His own life. The question is will we heed the voice of His wisdom? Will we answer the call to accept His freedom? Will we embrace the life He has provided for us in Christ or live like slaves without chains? What is the point of identifying with the Son of God if we refuse to rely upon His work or reflect His love?
How can the world be expected to believe in a Savior they see no evidence of in those who are called by His name? How can they be expected to accept the reality of a love His people do not reflect? How long before we heed the call to "come out and be separate" from a culture obsessed with itself? How long before we walk in the liberty the Son of God spilled His blood to secure for His people?
Food for thought.
Food for thought.
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