A Closer Look: Dying to Self

Dying to Self, Dying Daily, Taking Up the Cross, and the Flesh | HFD Ministries Closer Look

Four phrases have exhausted more believers than perhaps any others in the Christian life. Dying to self. Dying daily. Crucifying the flesh. Taking up your cross. Heard through the wrong lens, they sound like God asking you to erase yourself on a continuous loop — a spiritual life measured by how effectively you can disappear.

But the New Testament does not tell that story. Paul speaks about the old self in the past tense. The old man was crucified with Christ. Not as a metaphor for your effort. As a declaration of what already happened.

This resource works through all four phrases in their actual context — Galatians 2, Romans 6, First Corinthians 15, Colossians 3, and more — asking what Jesus actually meant when He told His disciples to take up their cross, what Paul was really describing when he said he died daily, and what the flesh actually is according to Scripture. It addresses the exhaustion produced by performance-based readings and replaces them with what the finished work actually says.

The governing reality of this teaching: you are not trying to become a new creation. You already are one. The invitation is not to keep killing the old self. It is to learn to live like someone whose old self already died.

Part of the HFD Ministries Closer Look series | holyfiredisciples.com