The devil’s big lie—self will never die

“How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I … shall see no sorrow.” (Rev. 18:7).

The whole world has followed her example. “I will never see sorrow. I will celebrate over, laugh and giggle at the cleverness of, I will praise the great efforts and genius of, man, man, man. 666. But, my Creator can never make me fall and break. I will forever be vigilant to all failures; I will exemplify strength; I will make no mistakes. I will even join a secret society and make an oath that they can kill me if I ever fail. But I will never lose by self-esteem; I will never be sorry for sin; I will never give the Most High the satisfaction of seeing me bow before Him. Never! All of my greatness will be to serve me and to recognize my great determination to be moral and religious, renewed, intelligent, civil, charming, genteel, efficient and industrious, tolerant of everything, politically correct, etc.”

But, such a person is dead until he comes under the power of God’s greatest and perfect gift of love, the gift of His reconciled and restored Spirit. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Rom. 6:23).

Such a one needs a gift. He is working too hard to be socially acceptable. “Enflaming yourselves with idols under every green tree, slaying the children in the valleys under the clifts of the rocks...” (Isa. 57:5). All of their hard determination to prevent falling to the correction of God is a lot of work, and doesn’t pay well. All of its pay goes into bags with holes in them.

“Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of Mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.” (Isa. 50:11). “You think you can keep yourself puffed up and floating heavenward forever. You are working yourself to death. You need the sure mercies of David; you need rest in body, soul, and spirit. You must fall and die, and then you will have true sleep. But, your hellish master keeps commanding you, ‘Ye shall not surely die.’ (Gen. 3:4).”

“Your master from the bottomless pit blares, ‘Ignore the Fathers’ love appeals. Ignore the simplicity and happiness of children. Ignore all the funeral weeping. Ignore the suffering souls, the diseased animals, the babies sacrificed to the gods of today’s Babylon. That’s life! That’s just life. Get over it, and get on with life. Fill your hearts with the food I give you. “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods.” (Gen. 3:5).’”

But, if we die to self, to its self-exaltation, its self-righteousness, dying to everything that keeps the goodness of God from our thinking, then He will return to us. We will truly live.

“Whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it.” (Matt. 16:25).

 “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” (Matt. 16:24).

“Whosoever will save his life shall lose it.” (Matt. 16:25).

Death. A living death. Is that what the gospel is about? Is that the good news? The Christian life isn’t about living in misery. Yet, suffering is the lot of the Christian. “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” (Matt. 10:34-36). “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” (2Tim. 3:12).

The Lord’s witnesses often are “clothed in sackcloth” (Rev. 11:3). Nothing pleased Jesus more than to witness righteousness and to live righteousness. Righteousness is faith, and faith is love. And love is justice and mercy, never one without the other, truth and grace mingled down. But, often offering life to others causes death from those who don’t want to hear about life.

Mature life is death. Nevertheless they live, and life is better for them than for the worldly wise. The mature Christian lives by seeing truth go forth from his mouth and being answered from the minds of the hearer[s].

“I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.” (1Cor. 15:31).

“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20).

“For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps:

Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth:

Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously:

Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” (1Pet. 2:21-24).

“According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Phil. 1:20,21). The more Paul died to self, the more power he gained to obey the Law, and the more communion with Christ he had.

“But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.

Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,

And be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:

That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death;

If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.” (Phil. 3:7-11).

How can anyone be in the gospel work unless he first suffered the wrath of God in the soul? How can he die daily in service to the Lord if he never first experienced the long pining away until Jesus finally pulled him up out of his living grave? How can anyone live to die if he never first died to live?

We must know the strong rule of the Schoolmaster in order to quicken our faith and our conscience, and be brought to the redemption in Christ’s body of death and His Spirit of life.

“Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.

For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.

But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit [through the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus], and not in the oldness of the letter [through the flesh-based law of death].” (Rom. 7:6).

Our spirit responds to Christ’s lively Spirit. He is the “quickening Spirit” (1Cor. 15:45), but not before we are wrapped around the axles of the cherubim of a holy God. “ As for the wheels, it was cried unto them in my hearing, O wheel.” (Eze. 10:13). We need to have our souls cleared of the intoxication of sin. This can happen only through the constant presence of the holy God weighing against our filthy conscience, grinding on it as long as we are humble and compliant. When we remain “willing and obedient” (Isa. 1:19) during the whole lesson of surrender, after we have pined away for weeks, months, or years, when at long last we do surrender to the immutability and eternal nature of the Law, then we are ready to be saved by the grace of Christ.

“And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.

If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me;

And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity:

Then will I remember my covenant.” (Lev. 26:39-42).

This is what we see happening on an individual  basis to Paul.

“Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.

For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.

And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.

For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.

Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.” (Rom. 7:8-12).

Often what we call the Lord’s badness is really goodness. His precious promise, “I create evil” (Isa. 45:7), is what brings us to repentance (see Jeremiah 31:1-19,28-33), the great boon to life and health. His badness was goodness, all the time. We need to redefine His thoughts that are higher than our thoughts, as heaven is high above the earth. And that redefinition happens while we wrestle with the almighty SPIRIT of the Schoolmaster.

We need to be deceived by the holy God. “Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! Surely Thou hast greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, Ye shall have peace; whereas the sword reacheth unto the soul.” (Jer. 4:10). We don’t like it, so we call it being deceived, when in reality we are being undeceived. We are deceived in that we had the strange idea that Jesus could be cool and casual with us and our “little” sins. We were presenting to God a moral outer covering that we thought in a large part acceptable to Him. But, He smashed that into powder and made us drink it.

“Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.” (Rom. 7:13). Now our undeceived souls can appreciate the staggering, sky-high goodness of God. All of His terrible badness was towering goodness the whole time!  And all of our towering goodness terrible badness! Now we can be offered the Spirit of life in Christ without presuming upon God. He creates evil catastrophes mixed with mercy in order to help us see our evil. Finally we see our evil, and we fall at the Schoolmaster’s feet, shamed, guillty, and wallowing in wishes for eternal destruction. Then He immediately lets His Son enter to save us, lest our new, trembling faith fail and we end in the grave.

“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the Law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” (Rom. 7:4-13,24,25).

We died! Finally self died! We are dead to sin. Satan was speaking falsehood the whole time of our wrestling and humbling process. We could be saved, regardless of Satan’s scheming. But that salvation seemed so unlikely as the deceiver kept up his barrage of doubt in his typical mode of surround-sound. Nevertheless, our great Schoolmaster carefully extracted us from the bonds of the adversary. Now, after all the trauma we are alive and happy. We are ready to obey the leading of our Saviour, the Schoolmaster’s representative Master Teacher. We hear new Master’s wonderful words of life, “Arise, and be not afraid.” (Matt. 17:7).

“What is justification by faith? It is the work of God in laying the glory of man in the dust, and doing for man that which it is not in his power to do for himself.” Testimonies to Ministers, p. 456.

We wipe the blood, sweat, and tears from our faces, and follow Him into the Schoolmaster’s throne room. We, humbled in the dust and victorious, through the Schoolmaster and His Master Teacher, join our mighty Master on His throne, as He also overcame and joined His greater, almighty Father on His Most High throne. We survived our baptism into conviction. Now we are dead to sin and alive to righteousness.

“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?

God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?

Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection:

Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” (Rom. 6:1-6).

We are delivered from a life of rebellion, in which we thought we were happy, but found it leading to disease and eternal death. And now we live free from all the chaos of the rebellious world, and have a peace that we never thought possible. We never want to go back into the horrors of the world, but desire others to come out, and have the peace and safety that we have.

We want to lead them beside the same still waters that our Master has led us. We desire others to drink of the same clear water, to lay down in the same green pastures, and eat of the same heavenly manna.

No one can take us out of His hands, except us. And, while that has happened to others and can happen to us, it is hardly conceivable that we should leave our eternal Friend and everlasting Father. But, we press close to Jesus, just in case we are tempted to leave, as Eve was. 

Very scary thought.