Is self-denial the gist of Christianity?
Or: how to become a perpetual offering of love, feat. John Calvin, etc.
The 16th-century theologian John Calvin once summarized the whole of the Christian life in one hyphenated compound word:
Self-denial.
This claim came in his reflections on the biblical passage Romans 12:1, where Paul the Apostle writes:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
In some circles, Calvin has an unfortunate legacy as a harsh theologian, hyper-preoccupied with personal piety, pride, and the other p-word. I think this caricature is off base, having read a good deal of Calvin myself, but I understand where it comes from—and his distillation of the entire Christian life as self-denial may lend to Calvin's stern reputation.
Still, he didn’t exactly invent the idea. Jesus himself was clear enough: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matthew 16:14). Or as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
The Christian life means dying to myself because my self does not naturally desire that which is good, true, or beautiful—much less God and his Kingdom. My “self” was born with a proclivity for me. Christians call this sin. Augustine is credited with coining the Latin phrase homo incurvatus in se, "humanity curved in on itself." Calvin writes: "Our very nature inclines us toward self-love."
The only path to the Kingdom of God, then, is the path of self-denial, of death to self. If I am to learn to pray “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done,” I must also learn to deny my self-interested will, my inward curve; I must let Jesus define "the good life." And because sin will always remain in us—albeit less and less over time, God willing—the whole of the Christian life will resemble death, a denial of the old, sinful self.
Crucifixion precedes resurrection, for Christ and all his followers.
We should not confuse this self-denial with asceticism, however. Asceticism is the severe abstention from all forms of bodily pleasure or indulgence. Rather, as Calvin doubtless understood, what we must deny is the selfish self, our propensities for lust, greed and gluttony, our obsession with “me.”
Christ affirmed the inherent goodness of the material world through his incarnation, his miracles (healings, providing food, etc.), and his bodily resurrection. The trouble comes when humans worship creation rather than its Creator (Rom 1:25). The problem is not the material world or the body, per se, but homo incurvatus in se.
Even so, one cannot help but notice that Calvin's picture of the Christian life is negative rather than positive, a summary “no” rather than a “yes,” denial over affirmation.
I’ve often wondered how one might capture the essence of the Christian life in affirmative terms, without losing the essence of Calvin's insights or overlooking Christ's radical call to discipleship. I suspect there are many ways of phrasing it, but here is one formulation.
The Sum of the Christian Life: Self-Giving
Without ignoring what we have learned from Calvin about the depth of indwelling sin, what if we envisioned the Christian life as spending ourselves? In other words, what if we saw our principal calling as followers of Christ as a matter of blessing, investing, and pouring out to others what God has given to us? After all, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights" (James 1:17).
To understand my life as self-spending forces me to remember that I have been given an eternal share in "the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:7). It encourages a posture of gratitude, and then a life of joyful giving.
"What do you have that you did not receive?" Paul asks. Answer: nothing.
In Death by Living, N.D. Wilson argues that, for Christians, “life is meant to be spent”—not constructed, hoarded, safeguarded, or protected. He enjoins:
Lay your life down. Your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. Your reservoir of breaths is draining away. You have hands, blister them while you can. You have bones, make them strain—they can carry nothing in the grave. You have lungs, let them spill with laughter.
To be sure, a life of self-spending entails self-denial as a matter of course. But here self-denial gets subsumed under the grander, affirmative vision of gratitude and generosity in giving our lives away for the sake of others, for the Kingdom of God.
Because we are naturally selfish, we must practice self-denial, yes. But because God's love has been poured into our hearts (Romans 5:5), and because Christ Jesus, the wealthy King, became poor so that we, poor peasants, might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9), and because the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20), well… we must also practice self-spending. We get to practice self-spending.
The most fundamental reality for any Christian is not sin but grace. God's grace created life in the beginning and re-creates life in Christ, overcoming sin and death. To summarize the Christian life as self-spending is simply an effort to acknowledge this reality—to recognize the affirmation at its center, the affirmation that, before we could say or do anything about it, God had given us far more than we could ever imagine. I am not often one to cross swords with such a luminary as John Calvin, but I think there is something to be gained from this effort.
Wilson again:
If you were suddenly given more than you could count, and you couldn’t keep any of it for yourself, what would you do? That is, after all, our current situation. Grabbing will always fail. Giving will always succeed. Bestow. Our children, our friends, our neighbors will all be better off if we work to accumulate for their sakes. If God has given you a widow’s mite, let it go. Set it on the altar. If God has given you a greater banquet than you can possibly eat, let it go. Set it on the altar. Collect a ragtag crew and seat them. Don’t leave food uneaten, strength unspent, wine undrunk.
Surely this is part of what Paul meant when he commanded Christians to become "living sacrifices.” Before God and neighbor, our lives are to be perpetual offerings of love. And surely Calvin, too, understood this when he wrote, "The proper use, then, of all the good gifts we have received is the free and generous sharing of those gifts with others."
If you spend your life for others—if you understand that it is indeed better to give than to receive—you will no doubt learn self-denial. You may even realize it along the way.
Jesus: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.” (Luke 9:24)
Bibliography
John Calvin, A Little Book on the Christian Life. Translated and edited by Aaron Clay Denlinger and Burk Parsons. Sanford, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2017.
N.D. Wilson, Death By Living: Life is Meant to be Spent. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 2013.