Theopedia

Self-denial

The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world.

— Titus 2:11-12

Definition

Self-denial is the Christian’s renunciation of self-will and self-love in favor of God’s will, grounded in the claim that believers are not their own but belong to God.1 It runs in two directions: toward other people, curbing the self-love that exalts one person above another; and, more especially, toward God, resigning one’s own plans for wealth, honor, and comfort to his disposal.2

Confessional Witness

No Reformed confession has a chapter titled “self-denial,” but the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith describes the same reorientation under sanctification: those united to Christ are “farther sanctified, really and personally… the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified.”3 That sanctification is “throughout the whole man” but incomplete in this life, producing “a continual and irreconcilable war; the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.”4 The confession’s chapter on repentance names the same posture toward God that Calvin calls self-denial: genuine repentance involves “self-abhorrency” and “a purpose and endeavour, by supplies of the Spirit, to walk before God unto all well-pleasing in all things.”5

Biblical Basis

Christ requires this of every disciple: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23; cf. Matt. 16:24; Mark 8:34). Paul writes: “denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world” (Titus 2:11-12), a text Calvin calls “a brief, indeed, but more distinct account” of the well-ordered life, reducing it to three branches, sobriety, righteousness, and godliness.6 The same demand for self-renunciation runs through Paul’s ethical instruction: believers are to present their bodies “a living sacrifice” and be transformed by “the renewing of your mind” rather than conformed to the world (Rom. 12:1-2); to “in lowliness of mind” count others “better than themselves” and look “not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others” (Phil. 2:3-4); and to live so that “I” no longer lives, “but Christ liveth in me” (Gal. 2:20). For Calvin, Paul’s description of love, which “seeketh not her own” (1 Cor. 13:4-5), states the standard by which self-denial toward one’s neighbor is measured.7

Doctrinal Significance

Calvin sets self-denial within a larger, named scheme for the Christian life: self-denial, bearing the cross, meditating on the future life, and rightly using the present life and its blessings.8

Toward one’s neighbor, Calvin locates the obstacle to self-denial in self-love and rivalry (φιλονεικία καὶ φιλαυτία), which lead each person to “exalt himself above his neighbour, confidently and proudly despising others.”2 The remedy is remembering that one’s gifts “are not our own, but His free gifts,” which forecloses boasting in them,2 and that those gifts are held in trust for the whole body, on the model of the body’s own members, “no member” of which “applies [its function] for its own private use.”9

Toward God, self-denial produces what Calvin calls “equanimity and tolerance”: believers are called to resign the pursuit of wealth, honor, and comfort entirely to God’s blessing rather than to “wiles and wicked arts,” and to accept “whatever lot he has provided” without either grasping in prosperity or murmuring in adversity.10

Calvin treats bearing the cross as self-denial’s own “branch”: the believer’s calling to hardship and affliction, modeled on Christ’s own life as “a kind of perpetual cross” (Heb. 5:8), which trains reliance on God rather than on one’s own strength.11 Affliction humbles the “stupid and empty confidence in the flesh” that prosperity breeds, teaching dependence on grace instead,12 and it forms patience and obedience on the model of Abraham’s testing (Gen. 22).13

Opposing Views

Calvin distinguishes Christian patience under the cross from the Stoic philosophers’ teaching that the wise man should be unmoved by grief or pain. He calls the Stoic ideal “absurd,” describing their hero as one who, “divested of humanity, was affected in the same way by adversity and prosperity, grief and joy; or rather, like a stone, was not affected by anything.” Such rigor, he argues, “exhibited a shadow of patience, which never did, and never can, exist among men,” and by aiming at “a too exact and rigid patience,” banished patience “altogether from human life.”14 He extends the criticism to Christians who adopt the same standard, judging it “vicious not only to groan and weep, but even to be sad and anxious.”14 Against both, he appeals to Christ’s own grief and tears (John 11:35; Luke 22:44) and his confession, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” (Matt. 26:38), arguing that Christian patience “is not to have your feelings altogether blunted, and to be absolutely insensible to pain.”14

The two views also differ in what grounds the endurance itself. The philosophers, Calvin writes, “pretend a necessity which cannot be resisted”: submission because resistance is futile. Christian patience instead rests on “the justice of God and his care of our safety”: what he sends is deserved and ordered for the believer’s good, so that “impatience is rebellion against the justice of God,” not merely wasted effort.15

Related Doctrines

References

  1. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 3, chap. 7, sec. 1, 7: “We are not our own; therefore, neither is our own reason or will to rule our acts and counsels… We are God’s; let us, therefore, live and die to him (Rom. 14:8).” ↩

  2. Calvin, Institutes, book 3, chap. 7, sec. 4, 9: “Self-denial has respect partly to men and partly (more especially) to God… every one thinks he has a good reason for exalting himself and despising all others in comparison… the endowments which God has bestowed upon us are not our own, but His free gifts.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. A Confession of Faith (London, 1677), chap. 13, sec. 1: “The dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified, and they more and more quickened and strengthened in all saving graces, to the practice of all true holiness.” ↩

  4. A Confession of Faith (London, 1677), chap. 13, sec. 2: “This sanctification is throughout the whole man, yet imperfect in this life; there abideth still some remnants of corruption in every part, whence ariseth a continual and irreconcilable war; the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.” ↩

  5. A Confession of Faith (London, 1677), chap. 15, sec. 3: “This saving repentance is an evangelical grace, whereby a person… doth, by faith in Christ, humble himself for it with godly sorrow, detestation of it, and self-abhorrency, praying for pardon and strength of grace, with a purpose and endeavour, by supplies of the Spirit, to walk before God unto all well-pleasing in all things.” ↩

  6. Calvin, Institutes, book 3, chap. 7, sec. 3, 8-9: “Paul gives a brief, indeed, but more distinct account of each of the parts of a well-ordered life… denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly… he reduces all the actions of our lives to three branches, sobriety, righteousness, and godliness” (Titus 2:11-14). ↩

  7. Calvin, Institutes, book 3, chap. 7, sec. 5, 11: “How can you exhibit those works of charity which Paul describes unless you renounce yourself, and become wholly devoted to others?” ↩

  8. Carol Man Fen Chen, A Historical, Biblical, and Theological Interpretation of Covenants: Unconditionality and Conditionality in Relation to Justification and Sanctification (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), 68-69: “He described the characteristics of the Christian life as: the denial of self; bearing the cross; meditation of the future life; and the right use of the present life and its helps.” ↩

  9. Calvin, Institutes, book 3, chap. 7, sec. 5, 10-11: “Scripture proceeds still farther when it likens these endowments to the different members of the body (1 Cor. 12:12). No member has its function for itself, or applies it for its own private use, but transfers it to its fellow-members.” ↩

  10. Calvin, Institutes, book 3, chap. 7, sec. 8, 13-14: “The principal part of self-denial, that which as we have said has reference to God… it will be sufficient to view it as forming us to equanimity and endurance.” ↩

  11. Calvin, Institutes, book 3, chap. 8, sec. 1, 16: “Those whom the Lord has chosen and honoured with his intercourse must prepare for a hard, laborious, troubled life… Though he was a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered (Heb. 5:8).” ↩

  12. Calvin, Institutes, book 3, chap. 8, sec. 2, 17: “Hence we indulge a stupid and empty confidence in the flesh, and then trusting to it wax proud against the Lord himself; as if our own faculties were sufficient without his grace.” ↩

  13. Calvin, Institutes, book 3, chap. 8, sec. 4, 18-19: “Another end which the Lord has in afflicting his people is to try their patience, and train them to obedience… Hence the expressions that God tempted Abraham (Gen. 21:1, 12).” ↩

  14. Calvin, Institutes, book 3, chap. 8, sec. 9, 21-22: “You see that to bear the cross patiently is not to have your feelings altogether blunted, and to be absolutely insensible to pain, according to the absurd description which the Stoics of old gave of their hero… like a stone, was not affected by anything.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  15. Calvin, Institutes, book 3, chap. 8, sec. 11, 23: “We no longer hear the frigid cant, Yield, because it is necessary; but a living and energetic precept, Obey, because it is unlawful to resist; bear patiently, because impatience is rebellion against the justice of God.” ↩