Self denial

(Mar 8.34) “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

What Jesus calls for here is thus a radical abandonment of one’s own identity and self-determination, and a call to join the march to the place of execution follows appropriately from this. Such ‘self-denial’ is on a different level altogether from giving up chocolates for Lent. It is not the denial of something to the self, but the denial of the self itself. –R.T. France,