Unshackled Moments ~ November 3 ~ Down With The Tyrant!

Selfishness - self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt.

So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn't think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us! God makes that possible. And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid. Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore, but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have God's help.

-Alcoholics Anonymous p.62

Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?

- Luke 9:23-25

And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

-Galatians 5:24

We must be rid of this selfishness or it kills us, and that seriously does not just apply to alcoholics despite the quote coming from the Big Book. Jesus said the same thing to them all, and just in case we forget that we are part of them all, the Holy Spirit inspired Luke to write that so that you and I could read it and be included in the audience of Jesus. The Greek says He said toward all. Whether you are an alcoholic or not, have ever struggled with drugs, gambling, sex, spending, overeating, what have you, or are simply one of the human beings whose only addiction is self, you are indeed part of the all toward whom Jesus addressed the comment, just as you are part of the whosoever that He came to die for in order to give life.

Matthew 10:38 relays Jesus saying that anyone who does not take up their cross and follow Him is not worthy. So in Luke He says toward all that to follow Him we have to take up our cross, and Matthew says if we don't do that, we are not worthy. And taking up the cross is to become the dead man walking. It is the ancient Roman's cruel version of the final walk to the death chamber. They didn't shackle the death row inmate and walk him to his execution between four guards. They made him carry his implement of destruction. Jesus is saying that He has already picked up His death and is walking it out, and that if we are to follow Him we must do the same or we are not worthy.

We can not serve two masters faithfully and fully. Jesus said this regarding money and God, but it is just as true when the two masters are God and self. I can not live for Him and live for myself at the same time unless myself is changed so that my desires, goals and will become what His desires, goals and will are for me. This is one of only two times that Jesus uses the idea of those who follow Him being unworthy. The other time He says those who turn back are unfit for the kingdom. Unfit, unworthy.

News flash, Dear Reader, you are unworthy and unfit to follow Him and serve and dwell in the Kingdom of God. So am I. How do I know? Well, have you ever decided to go ahead and live for yourself a little? Have you ever decided that even though you knew you shouldn't do something you really kinda wanted to or decided there wouldn't be any real harm in it so you did it anyway? Or have you ever known you should do something or needed to do something for someone, that was right, and or for God but were afraid to because it would or might put you in a bind, or didn't want to because it would make you uncomfortable or wouldn't be fun/enjoyable or maybe simply because it would cut into your free time/your me time so you didn't do it? Yeah, me too. And those would be examples of not denying self, not executing the flesh with its passions and desires, as Galatians puts it.

Have you ever done those things after becoming a Christian? Those would also be examples of committing to follow Jesus and serve God, putting hand to plow, and then looking or turning back. So yeah, you and I are unworthy and unfit and addicted to self, unwilling and unable to sacrifice our will and wants and passions and leave them there on the altar. We want to go in and lay them on the altar when it helps us or suits us and take them back off when it doesn't. We want to indulge ourselves more than sacrifice ourselves. And guess what? That means we aren't worthy and aren't fit and are human beings born under the power of the curse.

Some want to use these two statements about being unfit and unworthy to show that we can lose our salvation, that we can stop belonging to Christ. Ridiculous. Jesus was simply reminding us of a very important truth, one that we would do well to remind ourselves of regularly. We were unfit and unworthy before Jesus. Before Jesus came in the flesh and before He came into our individual lives. Oh yeah, and that didn't change. When Paul quoted Isaiah in Romans 3 saying that there is none righteous, no not one, he didn't go on to say that was us before. He said this is us, now, period, and we will never be justified or shown to be right by working the rules, the law, in our own goodness and effort. Jesus wasn't saying we could throw away our redemption. But what He was saying is that in order follow Him and serve the Kingdom of God we could not live for ourselves, we had to lay down our lives.

He was also making it clear that we are still just as unfit and unworthy in and of ourselves after deciding to follow Him as we were before, because He gave us a standard we could never live up to. Deny self. It's just as impossible on our own as His admonition to be perfect as our Heavenly Daddy is perfect. We don't ever become worthy and fit in ourselves. We become worthy and fit by denying self, setting self aside, putting self on the altar and receiving His worthiness and fitness and rightness in place of our own by grace.  We call it sacrificing self, but the truth is we may willingly surrender and lay our lives on the altar, but we can't bring the knife down. We can't be priest doing the sacrifice and the sacrifice at the same time. We can't kill ourselves while the body still has breath. We can not completely and totally quit living for our passions and desires and feelings of comfort, happiness and security.

Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have God's help.

We're not fit for the Kingdom, not fit to serve. We are not worthy of the calling of Christ to come and follow Him, and we are not worthy to be His disciples. But we are worthy and fit and clean by grace because of the work that He did on the cross and in our lives. Still, we must rely on that grace and use it to enable us to do what we can not do our own, mainly leave self where it belongs, on the altar to die and stay dead so that Christ in us can live and shine and replace our doomed life that could only result in death with life that is abundant enough to share, never ending and worth living. We can die to self, with His help, and be worthy and fit by His grace and have a life worth living by choosing to die.

But we will never be free of our addiction to self, or any other forms of addiction or bondage that have grown out of that first one, as long as we try to manage and control our lives in our own strength and power. As long as we try to be good and measure up we stand in the way of receiving the help that makes it possible for us to be good and measure up. There is no way to rid the self of the self in or by the power of self, just as we can not fix our broken hearts, minds, emotions and spirits with our broken hearts, minds, emotions and spirits. God must do the healing and we need His power to dethrone the tyrant that is ourself.



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