Section 2 Self-Denial through Devotion to God:
Hence follows the other principle: that we are not to seek our own but the Lord’s will and act with a view to promote His glory. Great is our proficiency when, almost forgetting ourselves—certainly postponing our own reason—we faithfully make it our study to obey God and His commandments. For when Scripture enjoins us to lay aside private regard to ourselves, it not only divests our minds of an excessive longing for wealth, power, or human favor, but also eradicates all ambition and thirst for worldly glory and other more secret pests. The Christian ought, indeed, to be so trained and disposed as to consider that during his whole life he has to do with God. For this reason, as he will bring all things to the disposal and estimate of God, so he will religiously direct his whole mind to Him. For he who has learned to look to God in everything he does is at the same time diverted from all vain thoughts. This is that self-denial that Christ so strongly enforces on His disciples from the very outset (Mat 16:24), which, as soon as it takes hold of the mind, leaves no place either, first, for pride, show, and ostentation; or, secondly, for avarice, lust, luxury, effeminacy, or other vices which are engendered by self love (2Ti 3:2-5). On the contrary, wherever it does not reign, the foulest vices are indulged in without shame. Or if there is some appearance of virtue, it is vitiated by a depraved longing for applause. Show me if you can an individual who, unless he has renounced himself in obedience to the Lord’s command, is disposed to do good for its own sake. Those who have not so renounced themselves have followed virtue at least for the sake of praise. The philosophers who have contended most strongly that virtue is to be desired on her own account, were so inflated with arrogance as to make it apparent that they sought virtue for no other reason than as a ground for indulging in pride. So far, therefore, is God from being delighted with these hunters after popular applause with their swollen breasts that He declares they have received their reward in this world (Mat 6:2, 5, 16), and that harlots and publicans are nearer the kingdom of heaven than they (Mat 21:31). We have not yet sufficiently explained how great and numerous are the obstacles by which a man is impeded in the pursuit of rectitude, so long as he has not renounced himself. The old saying is true, “There is a world of iniquity treasured up in the human soul.” Nor can you find any other remedy for this than to deny yourself, renounce your own reason, and direct your whole mind to the pursuit of those things that the Lord requires of you and that you are to seek only because they are pleasing to Him.
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