As we tie up the Surety of Our Salvation series and the Habitual Holiness of Heart and Life theme, we start looking at how we should live to please God. This devotional reading looks at how we come after Jesus and deny ourselves.
Nuggets
- We get surety in our salvation when we genuinely ABCD.
- We get surety in our salvation when we strengthen our faith in Him.
- We get surety in our salvation when we accept His grace.
- We get surety in our salvation when we truly ask for forgiveness of our sins.
- We get surety in our salvation when we change to become as He is.
- We get surety in our salvation when we arrive in Heaven.
- We get surety in our salvation when we submit our lives to God by denying ourselves.
- The best act of faith we can give God is denying ourselves.
Even after we ask God to be our Lord and Jesus our Redeemer, we will still struggle with urges and cravings that do not reflect the way God wants us to live our lives. - Denying ourselves does not play a role in salvation.
When we don’t deny ourselves, we are actually deluding ourselves.
There are some things that every disciple can put into practice to combat the doubts Satan tries to slip in to undermine our salvation.
Let's Put It into Context
To read devotions in the Habitual Holiness of Heart and Life theme, click the button below.
Here is a running list of nuggets for the theme.
Devotions in the The Surity of Our Salvation study
Here is a running list of nuggets for the study.
The foundation of this study is Beveridge’s sermon The Believer’s Safety
Resource
Come after Me
“Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’” (Mt. 16: 24 ESV)
We get surety in our salvation when we genuinely ABCD.
What does come after me mean? God wants us to build a relationship with Him.
Plain and simple, it means we accept the gift of salvation.
God always knew that mankind was going to disobey Him. Before He even created us, He designed the Plan of Salvation to fix that.
No, it isn’t an easy concept to wrap our heads around. Paul gave us a pretty good framework to follow when he gave us the Roman Road.
Faith and Belief
We get surety in our salvation when we strengthen our faith in Him.
You see, our salvation is a three-parter. We have the initial salvation experience.
We seek salvation in God because we believe the essential doctrines. God initially forgives us of our sins and restores our relationship with Him. He makes us spiritual alive.
Glossary
Faith isn’t just knowledge about those doctrines. It’s about belief (Heb. 11: 6 CSB).
Glossary
Our faith starts with this knowledge, but it is more than that. We have to know the evidence presented and believe it to be true. But we know we have limited understanding.
When we don’t understand, we have to trust God (Prov. 3: 5-6 CSB). Trust is confidence that the promises of God are true.
Grace
We get surety in our salvation when we accept His grace.
To Paul, the foundation of salvation is grace (Eph. 2: 8-9 ESV). God didn’t have to extend grace to us.
Glossary
When Adam and Eve first disobeyed Him, He could have said, “I’m done here.” But He didn’t.
But we question if God really has this much grace. If He does, why would He give it to those who willfully disobey Him?
Satan tries to convince us that grace isn’t free — we have to earn it. Satan is wrong.
We have to accept God’s grace toward us. That is the only way we will find salvation.
Look at Scriptures. They show that God wants His grace to instill in us a confidence — in Him and in ourselves (Isa. 32: 17 NLT).
Forgiveness
We get surety in our salvation when we truly ask for forgiveness of our sins.
When we ABCDed, God forgave us of our sins and granted us salvation.
Glossary
We often question the extent of God’s forgiveness. We may think God has given us a conditional forgiveness. In other words, we think God has forgiven us – until we sin again, and He yanks His forgiveness away.
Conversely, we may think there is this one sin that God can’t or won’t forget – like murder or adultery. That isn’t true. God forgives all our sins.
One element is repentance. We have to be so sincere in our asking that we get to the turning away part. We have to “… from now on sin no more” (Jn. 8: 11 ESV).
We don’t get to keep our pet sin.
Yes, we are going to sin again – sometimes, keep committing the same sin. God will continue to forgive us when we ask.
Sin interferes with our ability to respond to those things spiritual. Satan tells us we don’t need God — that He isn’t omnipotent as He says. He says there is no reason for atonement and that Jesus doesn’t love us because we aren’t worthy.
What we do or don’t do with the do’s and don’ts is important after God has forgiven us and restored our relationship. The evidence of saving faith is the existence of good works in the lives of Jesus’ disciples (Col. 1: 10 ESV).
Sanctification
We get surety in our salvation when we change to become as He is.
Then comes the hard part. That salvation changes us, but we are still in this earthly body. We have a long way to go to learn about who God wants us to be and make those changes. That makes us a work in progress called being sanctified.
Salvation starts internally, but then it moves externally. If we don’t confess, we don’t have the faith; if we don’t have the faith, we don’t have the salvation.
We have to work out our salvation. Getting us to change to be more like God isn’t flipping a switch.
We aren’t doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. We are doing it because it brings us closer to being what God wants us to be.
That is where discernment comes in. We have to evaluate the situation and recognize right from wrong.
We show God that we love Him by enduring. We obey His laws and commandments. Perseverance is all about calmly enduring going from milk babies to steak adults.
Working out our salvation will not be an easy undertaking. The only way we are going to succeed is through diligence.
We are on our way to being made holy, sanctified, and righteous when we realize how much we need God. Our most important need from Him is for gift of salvation.
We do have to build our characters in the ways God wants. That is a decision we need to make at conversion and grow into along the walk. Salvation has to make a difference in our lives.
Our desires are still within us after conversion. Dealing with them is working out our salvation.
God’s Word was designed by God to be a teaching book. No, its purpose is not to tell us how the earth was created. Its purpose is to introduce us to the Creator and His plan to restore our relationship with Him. It tells us of His grace and love.
We get so caught up in God’s laws and commandments. We — and worldview people — get the mistaken notion that we have to 100% perfect in doing all the do’s and not doing any of the don’ts.
Problem is, we can’t do that. If we were able to follow God’s law, we wouldn’t need a Savior. We can’t, so we do. That lowers the priority of obedience. No, it doesn’t take it off the table, but we don’t need law obedience for salvation.
All we do should have one purpose — working out our salvation so that we become mature disciples. We are going to need to discipline ourselves so that we don’t give up.
Perfection
We get surety in our salvation when we arrive in Heaven.
The last part of the three-part salvation is we won’t “arrive” at where God wants us to be until we get to heaven either after we die or when we are called home. We will be changed into a spiritual body then (I Cor. 15: 52).
Only then will we reach perfection. Until then, Satan is going to keep chipping at our assurance of our salvation.
We can’t let Satan convince us anything contrary to what God has told us.
Denying Ourselves
“Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’” (Mt. 16: 24 ESV)
We get surety in our salvation when we submit our lives to God by denying ourselves.
What It Means
The best act of faith we can give God is denying ourselves.
Denying ourselves is not giving into our sinful natures. It doesn’t mean we are giving up something we really want because we are making some supreme sacrifice. When we come after Jesus, we give up our appetites, passions, and desires that are contrary to God’s Will.
In other words, we deny ourselves by disassociating ourselves from our sinful and selfish nature. No, that is no mean feat.
Yes, God is the One Who sanctifies us. We can’t change ourselves.
But we must choose to be obedient to God by renouncing anything that does not fit into God’s Will. Doing that it’s called denying ourselves.
We must give up our old selves and become new creations. The focus isn’t on what we are starting. The focus is on what we are giving up — our old sin.
Glossary
The focus shouldn’t be on what we give up. We give up sinful ways that are dangerous to our spiritual and physical health.
Instead, we should focus on the fact that we voluntarily give them up because we love, worship, and humbly submit to God. We give up sinful things to gain eternal blessings.
We especially have to give up things that would lead us astray. This isn’t a one-day deal. This is a persevering-until-the-end deal.
Unfortunately, we may be called to give up friends. If those friends would take us down a bad path, we need to find other friends.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
How do we do it, then? “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Phil. 4: 13 ESV).
Our denial of ourselves is rooted in our love for Christ. It has to be the product of our salvation.
Jesus willingly gave up His Deity to become like mankind to save us from the penalty of our sins (Phil. 2: 5-8 ESV). For His time here on earth, He gave up being eternal, infinite, and self-existent. He gave up His all-knowing wisdom.
That is self-denial to the max!
Denying ourselves is another way of saying that we are true to God. The focus is off us and on Him. Paul called that being crucified with the flesh (Gal. 5: 24 ESV).
To deny ourselves means we have to have the mind of Christ. Basically, that plays out that we have His thoughts, feelings, and will — we have His attitude.
To read a devotion in the Committing Our Ways to God series, click the button below.
Jesus’ mind controlled His body, and God controlled His mind.
We have to make the conscious decision to deny ourselves — submit to God. That decision can’t be forced on us in any way.
When we don’t make a conscious decision one way or the other — we just ignore God — we are still making a decision against Him.
In essence, we are ignoring — and denying — the fact that we are God’s creation. He has control over us whether we like it or not.
We also have to ask ourselves if we are coming after God for the right reason. Are we truly going to submit our lives and Will to Him? Or are we just after fire insurance?
We’ve already been condemned, so fire insurance isn’t going to do us any good if we don’t submit.
What It Means for the Long Haul
Even after we ask God to be our Lord and Jesus our Redeemer, we will still struggle with urges and cravings that do not reflect the way God wants us to live our lives. We are our own worst enemy!
No, renouncing the world is not easy. Being a disciple is counterculture to it.
How do we reconcile denying ourselves with loving ourselves? To me, denying ourselves is giving up all things contrary to God. Loving ourselves is embracing ourselves because our character is like God’s.
One thing we tend to forget is this love is sacrificial. Giving up is an integral part of it. This giving up can only be self-sacrificial.
What It Doesn’t Mean
Denying ourselves does not play a role in salvation.
Oh, Satan wants us to think it does. But no. We don’t have to clean up our acts before we approach God to accept His gift of salvation.
We come as we are.
Self-denial has nothing to do with our guilt. Nor can we think denying self is that for which God is looking.
Salvation is only about what God planned and Jesus accomplished.
It doesn’t mean we put ourselves into bondage under God. Jesus freed us from the bondage of sin (Jn. 8: 36 ESV).
No, we aren’t giving up our personality and reasoning. God isn’t a dictator Who wants us to be robots.
It doesn’t mean we give up our personal interests.
It means we make the motivation a godly one. We are to deny ourselves the sinful things that take our focus off God and puts it on our own righteousness, abilities, and wisdom.
We aren’t to give up everything because we think we can never live up to what God is wanting from us. Yes, God is wanting perfection — when we get to Heaven. He is wanting maturity now.
It doesn’t mean we do something just because it is disagreeable — or don’t do something because it is agreeable. It is about submitting to God and doing His Will.
When We Don’t Deny Ourselves
When we don’t deny ourselves, we are actually deluding ourselves. We are looking at God wrong, so we are looking at ourselves wrong.
Too many times, we let ourselves get in the way of our relationship with God. We want our own desires. We want credit for the things we accomplish.
Thomas gave us a list of the words we connect with self. Harris then added to it.
- Self-indulgence
- Self-dependence
- Self-seeking
- Self-sufficiency
- Self-will
- Self-righteous
Resource
But look at the title of Thomas’ sermon. It doesn’t say we keep self out of the initial confession. It says we keep self in the work we do for Christ.
Have we known church members who are doing lots of “good” things for their glory? It looks like the work is being done to promote God’s kingdom — but it is a control issue or a pat-on-the-back issue.
It is extremely bad when we don’t think we are going to get what we want — what we think we need — out of our relationship with God. We are not only not denying ourselves, but we are also denying God.
- We are doing the work that we want to do, not what God is calling us to do.
- We rely on our own abilities and skills instead of acknowledging they are from God.
- We want recognition and are envious at those who are accomplishing more than we are.
When we don’t deny self, it is usually because we are moment centered. We need to be future centered.
I know. That goes against the instant gratification that is so prevalent in society today.
Our goal is being sanctified right now. We have to focus on the changes God is making in our lives so that we can serve Him.
Can we deny ourselves without submitting to God? Well, yes, we can, but it won’t assure us of our salvation.
Discernment plays a big role in denying ourselves. We have to know what God is calling us to deny and what He is calling us to embrace.
We are called to deny everything that breaks God’s laws and commandments and revealed truth about Himself. We also are to give up everything that tempts us to serve two masters or outs stumbling blocks in front of others.
I know. Sometimes, it is hard to renounce things as our master, especially when that means they won’t be eliminated completely from our lives and nature.
Denying ourselves is more of a turning over to God rather than an elimination process. The soul must begin controlling the body.
How Do We Apply This?
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
- Put our faith in God even though we cannot see Him or always understand His ways.
- Believe that God is Who He says He is.
- Accept God’s grace and understand that there is nothing we can do to earn salvation.
- Believe God has really forgiven us when we ask.
- Truly repent when we have sinned and turn from those sins.
- Navigate the Sanctification Road through God’s guidance.
- Love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind.
- Discern what is right and wrong.
- Exercise self-control, patience, and perseverance.
- Understand we won’t be perfected until we reach Heaven.
- Humbly submit to God.
- Depend on God for all things, big and small.
- Voluntarily submit to God.
- Truly become new creations.
- Endure to the end.
Resource
Father God. Thank You for offering us the gift of salvation. We commit to totally submit to You. Sanctify us so that we can become mature disciples here. Amen.
What do you think?
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