It’s a phrase many people associate with Christianity: “Deny yourself.”
For some, it’s a killjoy. Like Christianity is about suppressing your personality, avoiding pleasure, and becoming miserable for God.
Others treat it like a minor inconvenience:
“I denied myself dessert.”
“I denied myself a shopping trip.”
But when Jesus said it, He meant something far deeper.
In Matthew 16:24, Jesus says: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
This is not casual language… nor a suggestion to avoid the ‘extra’.
It’s not self-help… nor a way to earn blessings from the Lord.
What We Get Wrong
When we hear “deny yourself,” we often assume:
- Christianity is anti-joy
- Being miserable is godly
- Following Jesus means losing myself completely
Or we reduce it to small acts of discipline while leaving our actual lives untouched.
But Jesus wasn’t talking about giving up coffee for a month.
He was talking about surrendering lordship.
What the Verse Actually Means
Matthew 16:24 comes right after Jesus tells His disciples that He is going to suffer and die.
Peter immediately rebukes Him. Why?
Because Peter wanted a Messiah without a cross.
And Jesus responds by saying: If you want to follow me… you must be willing to follow me there, too.
To “deny yourself” doesn’t mean hating yourself.
It means refusing to make yourself ultimate.
It means saying:
- My feelings are not king
- My desires are not ultimate truth
- My life does not belong only to me
And “take up your cross” wasn’t an inspirational metaphor in the first century.
The cross was an instrument of death.
Jesus is saying: Following Him means dying to the version of life where you sit on the throne.
The Better Truth
Jesus is not calling you to lose your humanity.
He’s calling you to release your idols… namely yourself.
Because the self is a terrible god.
Left to ourselves, we chase comfort over holiness, preference over obedience, and control over surrender.
But Jesus says the way to life is paradoxical: “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
That’s the scandal of Christianity. The path to life first looks like death.
Not because God is cruel… but because the old self cannot produce the life your soul was made for.
So yes, following Jesus will cost you something.
Comfort. Pride. Control. Approval.
But what you gain is infinitely greater.
Because when you stop building your life around yourself… you finally become who you were created to be.
Denying yourself isn’t about becoming less human… It’s about finally becoming free.
