Dying to Live
By Dermot Cottuli
That small little statement, “Dying to Live” holds the key to the kingdom and so much more. It goes hand in hand with another fundamental truth that we all hold to be true, that the greatest expression of a life is seen in how much we love God and those in our world.
Without a commitment to death we will find it extremely hard to love beyond what is easy.
- I’m tired of seeing so many Christians fall away and stop following hard after Jesus.
- I’m tired of hearing so many people blaming the church and it’s people for their lack of commitment to Christ.
- I’m tired of hearing excuses from people that place the blame for their lack of growth on the actions of others.
- I’m tired of seeing Christians act without love in the public arena.
- I’m tired of the description of success that so many seem to have bought into in the western church world.
- I’m tired of the church being powerless and irrelevant to our local communities.
But I’m also more excited about the future than I have ever been before.
Because I believe that God always provides a way forward if we don’t give up.
When it’s darkest, the light shines brightest.
The core message/truth of Dying to Live isn’t new or tricky or hard to understand. It’s been there in our Bibles all along but for some reason very few have fully embraced the truth that Jesus taught.
Personally as a pastor, I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of church leaders who have been given the job of teaching the full revelation of scripture and who’ve instead, far too often, simply taught what they thought would keep people happy and coming along to their services, and in the process ended up with weak anaemic churches that Jesus wouldn’t recognise as His bride.
Now that’s not everywhere and I’m purposefully being a little bit harsh to make a point so bear with me, I’ll be nicer by the end I promise.
This isn’t a message that you’ll find being highlighted in very many Pentecostal or evangelical churches across our city or our nation. Most of the messages that you’ll hear, especially early in the year, are all about how you can flourish and make the most of the gift of life you’ve received. Their focus is too often on the benefits of following Jesus and not on the price that you pay to truly follow him.
The evangelical world has sold us a bit of a porky; not on purpose, they’ve been in the most part very well intentioned, but it’s a half truth that’s caused far too many Christians to stray from the path of a disciple to the path of a spectator, someone who’s interested but not fully invested.
And this is the half truth we’ve been sold – your salvation is free of charge.
Or maybe I should put it this way – they’ve told us that following Jesus won’t cost us anything but if we believe hard enough we can have everything.
But hang on a minute, we know that’s not right, we know there’s a cost, Jesus said so himself.
So let’s get this straight – to be saved requires we follow Jesus which requires we pay a price, but our salvation is free so why do I need to do anything to walk in it? We’re saved by grace not by works so that nobody can say they saved themselves. Paul told us that.
Ephesians 2:8-10
God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
But Paul also told us we would be judged on the good that we did and only those who persist in doing good would be saved.
Romans 2:6-8
He will judge everyone according to what they have done. He will give eternal life to those who keep on doing good, seeking after the glory and honour and immortality that God offers. But he will pour out his anger and wrath on those who live for themselves, who refuse to obey the truth and instead live lives of wickedness. There will be trouble and calamity for everyone who keeps on doing what is evil—for the Jew first and also for the Gentile. But there will be glory and honour and peace from God for all who do good—for the Jew first and also for the Gentile. For God does not show favouritism.
Confused? You should be. It’s one of the reasons we need teachers within the church because their job is to take complex truths and make them simple. Jesus was an expert at doing that.
Here’s the truth as I see it.
Jesus died on a cruel Roman cross to pay the price that you owed for your sins, his death in place of yours. Because the price has been paid you can now receive forgiveness for your sins. They will no longer be held against you.
You couldn’t do that for yourself, Jesus had to. Why? Because every one of us has sinned, therefore everyone of us is already condemned to death. The only reason that Jesus could die in our place and overturn our death sentence hinged on the fact that he was innocent of any sin. He was the only sinless person to ever walk the earth.
2 Corinthians 5:21
”For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.“
Romans 3:23-25
For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.
Verse 27, 28
Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on obeying the law. It is based on faith. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law.
This is the part that’s free – we’re made right with God and our sins are forgiven. This part doesn’t cost us anything because it’s completely out of our hands. We couldn’t do it for ourselves, Jesus had to do it for us. If we were to die at that point, like the thief on the cross who died alongside Jesus, we would enter eternity with him no questions asked. However if we don’t die immediately after our profession of faith in him, we’re then faced with the challenge of walking out the faith that we’ve expressed in our day to day actions and interactions with others, which is where so many people come unstuck.
They have a hodge podge of half truths and wishful thinking directing their path and over time many of them silently wonder if they’ve been sold a lemon because the joy, peace, and certainty that everyone keeps telling them about; and their expectation is that they’ll receive all of that for free; seems so intangible as to be almost non-existent and they can end up convincing themselves that they made it all up, if they try hard enough.
What’s really tragic is when people simply ignore the discrepancies in their experience and the questions they have, and get on with their lives, having relegated their faith to a convenient room in the back of their minds that just gets dragged out in times of emergency and need.
Why do we end up there? Because there’s a crucial part of the puzzle that we don’t get and it’s this.
The same price Jesus paid for us, is what he now asks of us. Jesus died for us and he asks us to die for him.
That’s what being a disciple of Jesus is all about. Following his example and obeying everything he commanded us.
And if you don’t understand that, you run the risk of losing the salvation that Jesus gave up his life for you to have. Because to follow Jesus and continue to do good works, which are the fruit of love, requires you to die to yourself over and over again.
It’s only those who follow Jesus who receive the benefits of following Jesus.
As I said, I want you to stay with me because we will get to some good stuff, but if you don’t understand how this all fits together none of it will last and you run the risk of when you’re finally standing in front of Jesus, hearing these words, “Away from me, I never knew you.” instead of “Well done good and faithful servant.” Because only those who do the will of the Father will hear that second phrase.
This is serious.
So what did Jesus have to say about Dying to Live?
He was extremely clear, quite blunt in fact.
Matthew 10:37-39
“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.
Luke adds a slightly different take on it in his version.
Luke 9:23-25
Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?
Why did he say that? Because you are more valuable to him than all the resources, power and prestige that reside on our planet. But likewise, he needs to be more valuable to you than all the resource, power and prestige that is possible for you to gain throughout your life if you’re to truly follow him and be a disciple of his.
Matthew 7:13, 14
“You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.
What is the gateway to life? The gateway to life is your belief in Jesus and the road that you travel on, is the road of self denial.
Hang on, am I saying that to live you have to die continually? No I’m not saying that, I’m just repeating what Jesus said.
If you want to experience a life in all its fullness, the life Jesus said he’d come to give to us, you need to stop chasing after life in all its fullness and travel the road that Jesus is pointing us to, not the road that the world wants you to follow for your life.
It might seem paradoxical but on the other side of self denial is freedom and abundant life.
If you choose to follow the way of Jesus, denying yourself and taking up your cross every single day, you will be unstoppable, just as Jesus was.
- When people don’t appreciate you and treat you with indifference, it won’t stop you living for Jesus, because you’re dead to self and living to love.
- When things don’t turn out the way you were expecting them to, it won’t stop you living for Jesus, because you’re dead to self and living to love.
- When the wonderful ministry that was prophesied over you seems to take forever to come to pass, it won’t stop you living for Jesus, because you’re dead to self and living to love.
- When you pray for healing and you remain sick, it won’t stop you living for Jesus, because you’re dead to self and living to love.
- When you give up your time, talent and treasure to love the least of these and they ignore you and disappoint you over and over again, it won’t stop you living for Jesus, because you’re dead to self and living to love.
- When you buy an old building and start to work toward making it a gift for your community and run into one obstacle after another, it won’t stop you living for Jesus, because you’re dead to self and living to love.
- When your past rears its ugly head and tells you you’re not worthy, you’re a failure, God will never use you, it won’t stop you living for Jesus, because you’re dead to self and living to love.
When things get tough and the road seems hard, when nothing is working out the way you expected and those you were depending on disappear, it won’t stop you living for Jesus, because you’re dead to self and living to love.
And when you live to love God and others you remain under the covering of Jesus’ love for you with all of the benefits that come to those who walk with Him on his road to the cross.
John 15:9-12
“I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow! This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.
Dying to live is the very essence of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It encapsulates all his teachings around love and doing good to others. It was the hallmark of his life and ministry and if it was good enough for our Master heaven forbid that we pursue something different.
The challenge is not to move on from this truth until it becomes yours.
We live in a fast paced society and everyone is jumping from one thing to the next looking for our next hit, so to take time out to sit with Jesus and his truth is almost counterintuitive to the way most people live their lives these days. We feel we’re not being productive enough and we’ll miss out if we don’t get up and do something. But the truth is some things take time to grow and mature and can’t be rushed, and an understanding of what it means to die in order to live is one of those things.
Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandella, Russell and Jenny Barton, Martin Luther King Jnr, Josh and Belinda Groves, the Apostle Paul, Jackie Pullinger, are all incredible people who learned to sacrifice their own comfort, what would be considered best for them, for the greater good of others, and our world recognises them as being extraordinary.
Have you ever wondered why there aren’t more Mother Theresa like people in our churches? It’s because to have that type of impact means that the person has truly embraced their own death so that others can live. And that’s a rare occurrence – “the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult and only a few ever find it”.
But what if we as a group of disciples, followers of Jesus, were to take his words seriously and sit with them until our lives exemplified the type of life that he said leads to true life? How many Mother Theresas, Nelson Mandellas, Russell and Jenny Bartons, Martin Luther King Jnrs, Josh and Belinda Groves, Apostle Paul’s, and Jackie Pullinger’s would come out from our church?
You only need one of those type of people to change an entire generation.
What would a church with that type of heart do for it’s own local community?
How would those individuals impact their places of employment, their schools, their families, their childhood friends?
Whilst this type of life is incredibly hard to live, because let’s face it, you’ll be fighting against yourself every step of the way; if you can begin walking down this road, you’ll become unstoppable just like Jesus was.
Discouragement, past trauma, failure, the sin of others, public opinion, the opposition of family and friends, won’t be able to stop you because none of those things have power over you once you’re dead. And when you truly die to self you can fully embrace living a life of love because the greatest hinderance to love is selfishness. Freedom is on the other side of death but the question is, are you willing to pay the price, the same price that Jesus paid?
Now I don’t want you to think you have to change everything after what you’ve just read. I don’t want you to run off half cocked and get yourself into trouble. Our destination is on the other side of the grave, we’re on a path toward that place and it’s a journey. Jesus said the path is difficult. Keep that in mind.
What I want you to do is commit to sitting with the words of Jesus over this year and the phrase I started my message with, Dying to live, and ask the Holy Spirit to show you what He wants you to do if you’re to live the way Jesus has called you to live.
You don’t go out into the Tasmanian wilderness without proper preparation. Too many Christian’s start to climb the mountain in shorts and a T-shirt. It’s too late to pack cold weather gear when the blizzard hits.
Preparation is so important. I’ll be banging this drum all year to keep you on task and to help you sit at the feet of Jesus until these words become so embedded in your heart that everything you do in your world flows out from them.
We want to move from having moments of surrender to living surrendered lives and that takes revelation and contemplation. It can’t be rushed, it will be a journey that you’ll be on for the rest of your life.
As Paul said as he approached the end of his life
Philippians 3:10-11
I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!
This is Paul, right at the end of his life, writing his last letter to the church and he’s saying he wants to suffer with Jesus and share in his death.
If you don’t realise that you’re involved in a life and death struggle you’ll continue to make compromises to the god of self till you arrive at the point where your very soul will be the price you ultimately pay.
We live in a Good Friday world carrying an Easter Sunday message.
Jesus died for you and now he’s asking you to die for him so that the world can be reached and his love for all humanity can be seen.
Are you willing to sit with this truth at his feet long enough for it to transform your heart? If so, get ready to live your very best life.
It’s okay if you disagree with what I’ve written above but if it helps you think more clearly about your practice then that’s a good thing. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, even if you feel you’re disrespecting a sacred cow. We all see dimly as through a dark glass but we have this confidence that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth. So let’s not stumble over the stones in the road but instead press on to take hold of all that Jesus has for us.
