Self-denial reveals our true self
by Fr. Ninos Oshaana

We have just celebrated the great feast of the Elevation of the Holy Cross. The gospel reading this Sunday will once again reflect the centrality of the message of the Cross and of self-denial in our spiritual struggle.

The uncreated Son of God denied himself and his heavenly glory, being willing to take on our created human nature and be born as a child; to live a life of poverty, to preach, teach and heal through his divine love, but be rejected and betrayed, imprisoned, judged, scourged, mocked, spat upon and crucified. By being willing to deny his true self as God in order to enter into and save our human nature, he not only gave us an example of self-denial to follow but also opened the way for us to regain our true self through Him...but only if we first deny our false self.

What is the false self? Through the love for pleasure and materialism; through failure to seek after the spiritual reality beyond our physical reality; through worshipping ourselves and the distorted ideas of our self-serving minds and completely ignoring God and His law; through the rejection of the reality of the soul and the after life; through the rejection of timeless truth and the natural order given by God in order to satisfy our carnal desires, we have nurtured our false self.  Therefore, self-denial is the crucifixion of this false self in order that we may reveal our true self.

What then is our true self? The answer is found in the very first pages of the Holy Bible.

"Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it.' So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. " (Genesis 1:27)

Being made in the image and likeness of God means that our original nature, our true self, was something far superior than the angels and the animals that God created. And therefore so was our purpose. In fact, the purpose of life for Adam and Eve was to attain Theosis, that is to grow in holiness and in the likeness of God; to become gods, i.e. divine. But through their disobedience, they lost the ability to attain this purpose and instead our glorious human nature devolved into a disfigured and fallen condition which made it impossible to reach our original destiny of Theosis.

For this reason, the Son of God was born into the world; to take on and restore our fallen human nature by joining it to his divine-human nature through his pure and sinless human body and soul. Therefore, all who believe in Christ are then joined to His divine-human nature in Holy Baptism. At that moment, our true self is born again or, more correctly, born from above (ἄνωθεν)  through union with Christ in the baptismal waters. From that point on, the image of God has been restored in us and we are made capable to attain His likeness again as well.

But we can only attain God's likeness if we truly struggle to be like him. Again, self-denial is the first required impulse, the first required action, that God himself showed us. It was self-denial that God asked of Adam by telling him to abstain from the forbidden tree. It was self-denial that God desired from us through the giving of the 10 Commandments to Moses, saying "Thou shalt not..." And finally, it was his own self-denial, even unto the cross and death through which we are saved. But as Orthodox Christians, we can only make Christ's self-denying sacrifice and salvation our own through living sacrificial lives of self-denial.

This happens primarily through our struggle to deny our self-serving and disordered passions of pride, greed, anger, gluttony, lust, envy, etc.  It is the ultimate art of self-mastery, without which there cannot be any true freedom. The false self is riddled with these passions which obscure us from seeing the image of God within us and others, rendering us unable to achieve God's likeness or Theosis as well.  However, when we struggle to deny these passions and control them, we open ourselves up to the grace of the Holy Spirit which grants us experiences of Christ's forgiveness, his love and presence and thereby we grow in love for Him and all creation.

Having struggled to achieve this state, St. Paul writes in the Epistle reading for this Sunday:

"I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" Galatians 2:20.

St. Maximus the Confessor points out how self-denial and repentance lead to this discovery of our true self in Christ with these words:

"Cleanse your mind from anger, remembrance of evil, and shameful thoughts, and then you will find out how Christ dwells in you."

So let us also struggle to purify ourselves through repentance, being aided by the Holy Spirit, our helper and comforter, that we receive through the Holy Sacraments, the greatest of these being the Holy Eucharist. Indeed, by receiving Christ's divine and life-giving Body and Blood, we are able to achieve what Adam lost, namely to become purified, illumined and divinized, because it is Christ's pure and holy blood that now runs through our own veins, transforming us into His likeness, if we cooperate with him and live a spiritual life that reflects the calling we have and the divine gift we have received.

As the image of God the Father, Jesus Christ is our true self. Being one with him and like him is the goal and purpose of life: Theosis.  We are called to fulfill our original and great destiny that God gave to Adam and Eve, that is, to become gods, a destiny that God has not revoked but has made possible through Christ. The first and last step on the road to this destiny will always be self-denial.

Click below to listen to the Sunday Sermon