“What is self-denial? Wherein are we to deny ourselves? And whence does the necessity of this arise? I answer, The will of God is the supreme, unalterable rule for every intelligent creature: equally binding every angel in heaven, and every man upon earth. Nor can it be otherwise: this is the natural, necessary result of the relation between creatures and their Creator. But if the will of God be our one rule of action in every thing, great and small, it follows, by undeniable consequence, that we are not to do our own will in any thing. Here, therefore, we see at once the nature, with the ground and reason of self-denial. We see the nature of self-denial: it is the denying or refusing to follow our own will, from the conviction, that the will of God is the only rule of action to us. And we see the reason thereof, because we are creatures; because ‘it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.’
“This reason for self-denial must hold, even with regard to the angels of God in heaven; and with regard to man, innocent and holy, as he came out of the hand of his Creator. But a farther reason for it arises from the condition wherein all men are since the fall. We are all now ‘shapen in iniquity, and in sin did our mother conceive us.’ Our nature is altogether corrupt, in every power and faculty. And our will, depraved equally with the rest, is wholly bent to indulge our natural corruption. On the other hand, it is the will of God, that we resist and counteract that corruption, not at some times, or in some things only, but at all times, and in all things. Here, therefore, is a farther ground for constant and universal self-denial.
“To illustrate this a little farther. The will of God is a path leading straight to God. The will of man, which once ran parallel with it, is now another path, not only different from it, but in our present state, directly contrary to it. It leads from God: if, therefore, we walk in the one, we must necessarily quit the other. We cannot walk in both. Indeed a man ‘of faint heart and feeble hands may go in both ways,’ one after the other. But he cannot walk in two ways at the same time: he cannot, at one and the same time, follow his own will, and follow the will of God: he must choose the one or the other; denying God's will to follow his own, or denying himself to follow the will of God.
“Now, it is undoubtedly pleasing for the time, to follow our own will, by indulging, in any instance, that offers, the corruption of our nature. But, by following it in any thing, we so far strengthen the perverseness of our will; and by indulging it, we continually increase the corruption of our nature. So, by the food which is agreeable to the palate, we often increase a bodily disease.19It gratifies the taste, but inflames the disorder. It brings pleasure; but it also brings death.
“On the whole, then, to deny ourselves, is to deny our own will, where it does not fall in with the will of God, and that, however pleasing it may be. It is to deny ourselves any pleasure which does not spring from, and lead to God: that is, in effect, to refuse going out of our way, though into a pleasant, flowery path; to refuse what we know to be deadly poison, though agreeable to the taste.
“And every one that would follow Christ, that would be his real disciple, must not only ‘deny himself, but take up his cross’ also. A cross is any thing contrary to our will, any thing displeasing to our nature. So that taking up our cross goes a little farther than denying ourselves; it rises a little higher, and is a more difficult task to flesh and blood; it being more easy to forego pleasure than endure pain.
“Now in ‘running the race which is set before us,’ according to the will of God, there is often a cross lying in the way; that is, something which is not only not joyous, but grievous, something which is contrary to our will, which is displeasing to our nature. What, then, is to be done? The choice is plain; either we must ‘take up our cross,’ or we must turn aside from the way of God, ‘from the holy commandment delivered to us;’ if we do not stop altogether, or turn back to everlasting perdition.
“In order to the healing of that corruption, that evil disease, which every man brings with him into the world, it is often needful to pluck out, as it were, a right eye, to cut off a right hand; so painful is either the thing itself, which must be done, or the only means of doing it: the parting, suppose, with a foolish desire, with an inordinate affection: or a separation from the object of it, without which it can never be extinguished. In the former kind, the tearing away of such a desire or affection, when it is deeply rooted in the soul, is often like the piercing of a sword, yea, like ‘the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, the joints and marrow.’ The Lord then ‘sits upon the soul, as a refiner's fire,’ to burn up all the dross thereof. And this is a cross indeed; it is essentially painful: it must be so in the very nature of the thing. The soul cannot be thus torn asunder, it cannot pass through the fire without pain.”—Mr. Wesley's Sermon on Self-denial.