CHAPTER LXX – 8. Deny self—or you will deny Christ
contemptible, as well as princes and preachers may in their more honourable works. Nay, all your labours are honoured and sanctified by this; for all is holy that is heartily devoted to God, upon his invitation. And thus all things are pure to the pure. For it is God's interest in your works, that is the holiness and excellency of them.
Were servants and labouring people more holy and self-denying, they might have more true comfort in their daily labour, than the best of the unsanctified can have from their prayers or other worship of God. Not that worship may be therefore neglected; but that a Christian must do nothing at all but for God; and then he may be sure of God's acceptance.
CHAPTER LXX
Deny Self, or you will deny Christ 8. MOREOVER, the selfish will never suffer as Christians, but deny
Christ in a day of trial; when the self-denying will go through all; and be saved. Nothing doth so thoroughly try whether self or God be best beloved, as suffering for his cause. In this it is that Christ useth to try men's self-denial; and it is a principal use of persecution. When you hear of coming before rulers and judges, and being hated of all men for Christ's name sake, then self riseth up to plead for its interest, and never maketh more ado than when it seeth the flames. The flesh cannot reason, but it can strive against reason, and draw it to its side.
No reason seemeth sufficient to it, to persuade it to choose a suffering state. If you persuade a carnal man to let go his estate, to be poor and dispised in the world, and to give up life itself, if it be called for, and all this for the hope of an invisible felicity, you lose your labour (till God set in), and all such reasoning seems to him most
unreasonable. And what a dreadful case such souls are in, my text and many another passage in Scripture may convince you. If you cannot drink of his cup, and be baptized with his baptism, you cannot be advanced with him to glory. Through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God. The pleasing of the flesh is the high way to misery by displeasing God; and the voluntary submission to the sufferings of the flesh for the cause of Christ, is the high way to felicity; 2 Tim. 2:11, 12. "It is a faithful saying; for if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him; if we suffer, we shall also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us;" Rom. 8:17. "Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution;" 2 Tim.
3:12. The day of trial is a kind of judgment-day to the selfish, unsanctified man; for it discovereth his hypocrisy, and sheweth him to be but dross, and separateth him from the suffering servants of Christ.
But self-denial maketh suffering light, and will make you wish that you had any thing worth the resigning unto Christ, and any thing by the denial whereof you might serve him. For him you would suffer the loss of all things, and account them dross and dung that you may win him; Phil. 3:8. He will count us "worthy of the kingdom for which we suffer;" 2 Thess. 1:5. As the "Captain of our salvation was made perfect by suffering, (Heb. 2:10.) so also must his members, by "filling up the measure," and being "made partakers of his sufferings," and "knowing the fellowship of them;" 2 Cor. 1:5–7. Phil.
3:10. And the "God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after we have suffered awhile, will make us perfect, stablish, strengthen and settle us;" 1 Pet. 5:10.