Deny Yourself? That’s Not the Gospel I Signed Up For

Austin Huang:
What if real freedom comes from surrender, not control? Hey friends, I’m Austin Huang and this is Everyday Radical. Today, David Platt and I are confronting one of Jesus’s most counter-cultural commands to deny ourselves and follow him. We explore why the gospel calls us away from self-focus, how letting go actually leads to joy and what it means to live for something bigger than our own comfort. Let’s get started. Our culture is all about self-love, self-fulfillment, self-expression. But Jesus says, “Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.” That’s a radically different message, no pun intended.
So, how do we end up with a version of this Christianity that feels more like a TED Talk than the teachings of Christ? And what does it actually mean to deny yourself in a world that tells you to live your life?

David Platt:
Man, well, you said no pun intended, but I think it is radical. And that’s part of why I wrote that book years ago and people were like, one of the pushbacks was, “This isn’t radical. This is just normal for a follower of Jesus.” But the reality is if we’re… Okay, I get that. Yes. If we’re normally following Jesus, it’s going to look pretty radical, very radical in this world. It’s going to look very different from the world. That’s the whole point. We can’t follow Jesus and be conformed to the pattern of this world at the same time. We’re living with totally different priorities, starting with fundamentally denying ourselves. I just think about Galatians 2:20. I have been crucified with Christ.
I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. We have an exchanged life. It’s his life in us, which I do think, even as we think about denying ourselves, I want to be really careful to emphasize from the start. This is actually finding life. So, this is not a call to misery. It’s not a call. Yes, it’s a call to sacrifice in a worldly sense, but it’s a call to satisfaction in a what really matters forever since. I always think about the rich young ruler who Jesus goes to and he says, “Go sell all you have, give your possessions, then come follow me and you’ll have treasure in heaven.” He’s not calling him to a life of misery. He’s calling him to life in Jesus with me going to heaven to experience treasure forever.
That’s not sacrifice to let go of possessions for that. That’s just smart. So, anyway, all that to say, we do need to realize that is still a totally counterculture message in this world to die to ourselves daily, every day to say, “Not what I want what you want. Not my dreams, your dreams, not my priorities, your priorities, not my possessions. Nothing belongs to me. It all belongs to you. How can I steward it for your glory today?” Yeah, the world is not waking up thinking that way.

Austin Huang:
Mm-hmm. I don’t want to move so quickly past the story of the rich young ruler because if we go into the context of it, man, he has everything that this world offers him, but he’s still coming to see Jesus because he knows that there’s something missing. And then when Jesus touches on the one thing that he can’t let go, he walks away and never comes up. Man, you came to Jesus specifically asking for what he could give you. He told you what he could give you. He said, “You can actually follow me.” There’s not really, at least in my knowledge, there’s not many places where Jesus directly singled someone out and said, “Hey, follow me.” He would usually say, “Go in peace.” But he said, “Hey, you follow me?”
And this guy’s like, “Nah, I’m good.” He just gave you the answer. You’ve been looking for your entire life and you just walk away. How is that possible?

David Platt:
Well, obviously it’s possible, not just in him, it’s possible, we can all be tempted to do it. I mean, I think about the conversation I was having very recently. It was just like, okay, you have this silver platter feast sitting in front of you, but that’s the picture of the rich young man. He’s like, “Yeah, it’s such a sad.” And he says he walked away sad because he had great wealth. He wanted this stuff more than he wanted Jesus, loved his stuff more than he loved Jesus. And that’s where, oh, I just always think about C.S. Lewis’s quote, so good.
We’re half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy has been offered to us, like an ignorant child who goes on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. And then he says that phrase, “We are far too easily pleased.” So, the fact that we’re running after stuff in this world, pleasures in this world, the things of this world and not running after Jesus is not because our desires are too strong, it’s because our desires are too weak. It takes so little to satisfy us when we’ve been offered this infinite satisfaction.
So, yes, deny yourself so that you can experience life, joy, peace that transcends everything this world throws at you. Yeah. So, it’s Jesus love for us, but it’s the whole essence of the sinful nature. We think we know better than God what is best for our lives.

Austin Huang:
Mm-hmm. And I mean, the culture that we live in is so self-help oriented, which is not what the gospel teaches. Do you think that Christians today are being taught to follow Jesus, or are they being taught to get Jesus and feel better about yourself? Are we truly being discipled to live the life that he lived? I mean, if we are predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son, that’s a weighty task and it’s not something that we can do apart from him. And so, I just feel like there are a lot of Christians, maybe even listening to this podcast right now, who are combining the gospel and self-help culture. So, how do we remove ourselves from that combination?

David Platt:
Man, I think we are all prone to that. I mean, I see that in my own life. I think about a conversation I was having just a couple days ago with a couple walking through some financial challenges, which will get into, I think, how do we fight against the self-help blending. But I mean, they’re realizing, “Okay, what do we want more Jesus or a fix to this financial challenge we’re in?” And I’m just encouraging them to press into Jesus. They’re doing all kinds of things that they need to do on the financial challenge level, but to trust in Jesus, to press in to Jesus. And if he doesn’t… I mean, you mentioned conform to the image of his son. This is the whole point of Romans 8:28.
God’s working all these things together for our good. So, I do think God graciously uses suffering and challenges in our lives to wean us off this world and to help us reevaluate. Do I want comfort or Jesus more? Do I want money or Jesus more? Do I want success or Jesus more? And because suffering is taking away good things. Many good things that are gifts from God, but if we’re not careful, can become substitutes for God that we want more than God. Even when you think about idolatry, we usually idolize good things. That’s what makes them idols. We look to them because we want them or desire them.
Whether it’s money or this person or that relationship or this achievement or whatever it might be, we start to seek after those things. And to talk about the blending, we can be like, “Okay, I get God and all these good things. I want them both.” But when those good things aren’t there in the same way, is God enough for us? This is God graciously weaning us off lesser things that we might find our satisfaction in him ultimately. Yeah, it goes against our flesh. It’s against our selfish desires. And it’s just playing hard, but good in the hands of a God who is leading us to himself.

Austin Huang:
Mm-hmm. I mean, this just came to mind, but I think it’s in the same vein of idolization in some way. I mean, there are probably going to be a lot of young adults who are single, trying to get married, and potentially idolizing marriage as a thing. And I’ve just seen in the circles I’ve been around and some of my friends, and even I in the past, have been subject to this, but idolizing the relationship to the point where it’s like, if the other person doesn’t even follow Jesus and you’re strong in your faith and you’re coming in, you’re like, “Well, I can change them. I can fix it. I can do this.” No, dude. Because guess what happens?
If they come to know Christ because of this relationship that you have as a single, now coming into a dating relationship, what happens when you guys break up? Do they have a holistic view of who God is or do they blend God with you? And is it a savior that it’s like, man, Jesus is my only savior? No, but did you accidentally overstep in a way where because you were idolizing this relationship, now they see God and you together. And so, when you fall away, when something happens, when something goes wrong, they blame God because of you. I feel like somebody listening to this podcast probably needs to hear an encouragement of that, like this is not. They’re not meant to be.

David Platt:
You know what comes to my mind as I’m listening to you talk about that is, and this is a question for all of us, is Jesus a means to an end for us or is he the end? So, even for the person who’s like, “Yeah, I’ll follow Jesus if it helps me get closer to you, Jesus a means to end or I’ll follow Jesus if it fill in the blank, instead of Jesus being the end.” And so, how do we check ourselves in that? Well, I think we look at our lives. Is Jesus Psalm 27, the one thing we’re running after is seeking his face? We’re spending time with him, we’re seeking him. I mean, I’ve talked about this before in my own life as a pastor. So, I’m not immune to this.
This was me as a pastor for a long season where Jesus was a means to an end. I would study the Bible to preach sermons and the church I pastored at that time was growing, but I wasn’t studying the Bible just to know God. I would turn on a public prayer just like that. I could do that, but I wasn’t praying just to know God, to be with God. And so, Jesus, God was a means to an end. How sick is that? I was using God to achieve these ends that I wanted instead of him being the end. So, I think it’s good for each of us to ask, how am I tempted to use Jesus as a means to an end instead of seeking Jesus as the end?
And then, so just while we’re thinking about penetrating questions along these lines, what am I tempted to want more than Jesus? This relationship, this achievement, money, whatever it might be, what am I tempted to want more than Jesus, people to like me, people to think this or that about me or this or that about me? And I think when we ask that question, we start to see what we need to die to that you mentioned with a rich young man, the one thing Jesus pointed his finger to that he was not willing to let go of that had a hold on his heart. So, what are those things in our lives?
And I would even add to ask that question in community, to have brothers and sisters in Christ around us who can help us see things that we’re holding onto that we might not be able to see ourselves. That’s a good conversation to have with other brothers and sisters in Christ. “What do you see in me that I’m tempted to hold onto instead of Jesus or want or desire more than Jesus?”

Austin Huang:
And I think part of the self-denial that we’re talking about is just simply priorities. What are you prioritizing in your life? God convicted me of this the other day. I was just like, I had never sat down to write out a list of what are actually like, what’s the order of my priorities? And then I sat down and I did it. And just simply following the Lord and doing that, I’m like, “Now I see why I’ve been struggling with this and that and the other thing and wrestling with this.” And I’m like, “Because I had my priorities all out of whack.” I was thinking, “Oh, well, this should be up here.” When it’s reality, it’s down. It’s way down here and it doesn’t need to speak into my identity.
It doesn’t need to change how I view my life. It doesn’t have to give me the things, the satisfaction that I think it should because if God is number one, then I need to be looking at him and continuing to seek his face to gain what I am so desperately needing. What that rich young man so desperately needed was just him. Like you said, he’s at the end. He’s not a means to the end. He’s not something that you can add on and seize in your food and it’s a little bit better. He’s the meal.

David Platt:
Yeah, that’s so good. And even that exercise you went through, I think it’d be really good. And again, we probably need some help from others who see our lives, but to start in our own lives, and just ask the question, if somebody was looking at my life, what would they think my priorities are? What would they say my priorities are? What would they say is important to me? What do I get most excited about or what do I get most angry over? Where are my affections? Where do I spend most of my time? And so, yeah, just to think through, and not that even as I ask that.
Yeah, somebody might think, “Well, I spend 50 hours a week working.” Well, yes. Okay, that’s good. But that’s where to examine what’s important to you in work. Why are you working? Who are you working for? Some of those kind of questions that get to the heart of even how do we work wholeheartedly in a Colossians 3:23, 24 way, because we are serving the Lord Christ and we’re passionate about him.

Austin Huang:
Yeah. I think some people might be listening to this and just like, “Man, you’re saying a whole lot that I have to self-deny myself so much. Can I live with anything? Can I enjoy life? Can I still do this?” So, what’s one practical tip that someone right now listening to this can implement a life of self-denial in a way that’s not just woe is me. I’m just this dude who’s just denying myself all the time. How can we do it in a way that actually produces life within us?

David Platt:
Oh, man. This is what I love about… that’s one of the many ways John Piper’s influenced me and many others, like him talking about Christian hedonism. This is actually pursuit of your joy. There’s a sense in which this is selfish and this leads to your good. Even go back to the rich young, man, like following Jesus, treasure in heaven, like infinite joy on a platter and he’s invited to experience it. So, to see that, that’s what Jesus is calling us to, like a life of infinite joy that supersedes suffering in this world of all the wisdom you need, peace that passes all understanding that’ll guard your heart and mind no matter what you face in this world, hope, no matter what circumstances you walk through and how they might be despairing, you have hope that conquers that despair.
These are the things that we’re called to. So, oh, to put it in perspective, yes, of course I need to let go of this or that false hope, this or that source of joy for a moment that’s not going to last beyond that. Happy Psalm one. Happy is the person. Blessed is the person who meditates on my word day and night. They will be like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding its fruit and season. And all that they do, they will prosper. True prosperity, not like worldly prosperity, but true prosperity. This is what Jesus is inviting us into through self-denial.
So, when you put it in those terms, so okay, I would say just on a very practical level, then start your day alone with the Lord and say, “I’m dying to myself today. Not my ways, not my will, but your ways. Your will be done in my life. Help me to live according to your ways and your will because I trust that’s going to lead to abundant life for me today.” So, I want to take hold of the platter sitting in front of me and the feast sits on it today, but it’s going to start with me dying to myself.
So, you direct me, you lead me, you guide me wherever you want me to go, whatever you want me to do, whatever you want me to say, however you want me to use the resources, the time, the money you’ve given to me today, here I am. Just lay it down on a daily basis and trust that what God wants to answer that prayer in your life and he will and he’ll lead you. He promises to lead you to the life he came to give you, John 10.

Austin Huang:
Yeah. Amen. I mean, I think that’s the ending prayer for this episode is I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. That’s it.

David Platt:
Yes. And the life I now live, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I can trust him with my life. This is my life. Died to myself. I have new life in Jesus. He loves me so much. He gave himself for me and he’s with me today to give me life.

Austin Huang:
Amen. Thanks so much for joining us today on Everyday Radical. We pray that this conversation stirred your heart and strengthened your faith. There’s so much more ahead, so go back and catch any episodes you might have missed and subscribe so you don’t miss what’s ahead. Let’s keep making Jesus known everywhere until next time.