Dying to Self

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Your old way of thinking can never save you from your old way of thinking.

Ephesians 4:22  That you put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

To “put off” means to lay aside, away from oneself.  When I get home from a wedding reception, I take off my tie and I lay it aside.  It’s no longer me.  It’s no longer what I need.  I no longer wear that tie.  The same Greek word is used in:

Colossians 3:9  Lie not one to another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds;

Also, (translated “lay aside“)

Hebrews 12:1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

According to Ephesians 6, the enemy we wrestle with is not flesh and blood…..that includes our own flesh and blood, our own minds.  The enemy we grapple with, as in a close intimate encounter, is with spirits and with their workings.  Regarding our old, sinful nature, we are encouraged in the previous 3 verses to simply lay it aside, not wrestle with it.  This is what is meant by “dying to sin” or “dying to self.”

Matthew 16:24  For whosoever will save his life will lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

The word “life” is psuche, from which we get the word psyche.  It refers to the identity of our old man nature, the habits of thought and feeling that direct and control our conduct in this world.  It refers to the sinful nature which sees itself as the divine center of life, and which cannot save itself, but rather from which we are all in need of saving.

To “lose” means to lose utterly.  You may think that this is a one-time happening in a moment of time, but that is not the case.  Utterly losing your old psyche life is an ongoing process, as is finding, or discovering your new spirit life  in Christ.

If you hold tightly on to your old way of thinking and you continue to trust in your old way of allowing strong feelings to dictate your decisions and behavior…..you will thus give up any chance of discovering and benefitting from the new way of triumphing in life which God has provided by means of Christ……for the two ways are as different as light and darkness, as earth and sky, as truth and lies, as life and death.  They cannot both be in operation at the same time in your life.  Either you will love the truth and hate the evil, or you will cling to the old and be pestered by the promises of the new (which will simply be a reminder of what you don’t have and can’t do).

The old way of thinking can never save you from the old way of thinking.  Neither can you “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.”  All your decisions and behavior based on your passions can never save you from all your passions.  Without the loving, generous offering of the gift of this “new man,” we would be forever trapped in a death spiral of hopeless darkness and spiritual ineptitude and failure.

Ephesians 4:24  And that you put on the new man, which by the supply of God is created in righteousness and holiness of truth.

To “put on” means to clothe yourself with, or to enter completely into.  When you put on a shirt, is the shirt being put onto you?  Or are you entering into the shirt?  Either way, you end up clothed with something new.  And so it is with this “new man.”

But first, the old man must be put off, laid or cast aside.  This old man with his thinking and his doing is to be walked away from as our way of coping with life.  This is what it means to lose our life, in order that we might gain it.

Philippians 3:7-9  But what things were gain to me, those I reckoned as loss for Christ.  Yea, doubtless, and I reckon all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge (epignosis – intimate, thorough experiential knowing) of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things (of the old man), and do count them dung, that I may gain Christ,

This is Paul saying that he died to self, in order that he might have more of Christ within, in order that he might live unto God.  He gave up, or laid aside, his old way of thinking and feeling and dying, in order to get more of God’s way of thinking and feeling and living.  He lost his life that he might gain it.

To sum up our study, we all have an old man which deals with life (thinking, deciding, acting, reacting, planning, prioritizing, etc.) in a way which guarantees failure.  We are not to struggle with that old man, that old way of dealing with life, but are simply to be in the process of learning to lay it aside, to throw it away, so that we can be learning to live and walk in the new man, which is in the ongoing process of being enlarged within us by the continual revelation of the Christ within.

I Corinthians 2:14-16  But the natural man (old man) receives not the things of the spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know (gnosko – experientially know) them, because they are spiritually discerned.  But he that is spiritual discerns all things, yet he himself is discerned (as being a spiritual being) by no man, (for (as is spoken of in the Old Testament) “who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?”)   ….. But we have the mind of Christ!

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Vanity of the Mind
Get Over Yourself
Starve the Evil