“Enjoyment through Self-Denial”

o you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. And everyone who competes for the prize exercises self-control in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.”

Back in the ‘70’s, when the physical fitness craze really began to take hold in this country, and health clubs and gyms were going up everywhere you looked, there was a popular slogan that summed up the philosophy of the whole movement. Do you remember what it was? “No Pain, No Gain.” In other words, if you want the benefits of a strong, healthy body you’ve got to put yourself through the agony and sweat of hard physical exercise. There’s just no way around it, to the great chagrin to those who are still looking for that magic pill to give them instant six-pack abs and a tight behind. No gain without the pain of a lot of self-discipline and self-denial.

In my senior year at high school I really got into cycling. And at the time I had this really horrible bike—literally a Montgomery Ward special. It only had ten gears. Imagine that; only ten! Even worse it was made of steel and must have weighed at least 30 pounds, which is extremely heavy compared to the frames of today’s bikes. Every weekend I’d get out on that bike and take about a thirty-mile ride through the Santiago Canyon in the Santa Ana Mountains of Orange County. I’d take the same ride every week, and at first I hated it; I absolutely hated it! It was sheer agony trying to push myself and that old tank-of-a-bike up the steep hills of the canyon road. I can remember my legs burning with lactic acid, and my heart pounding in my ears, and my lungs heaving and craving more oxygen. Sometimes I’d have to get off my bike and walk, because I was really out of shape—at first. But as the weeks went on and as I continued to push myself, and as my heart and lungs and my legs began to get stronger, I wasn’t having to get off the bike any more. And I actually began to be able to lift my head and take in the scenery and to enjoy the ride through the canyon. But I could never have gotten to that point of enjoyment without having first passed through the stages of the pain and agony of self-discipline.

In a similar vain, St. Paul, in the passage we read from I Corinthians, uses an athletic image—the image of runner who spends months in training, months and even years disciplining his body, making himself an ascetic through self-denial and abstinence—as a picture of the way we are to run the race called the Christian life. In the Christian life there is, in a very real sense, no gain without a great deal of pain and struggle and discipline, in terms of how we progress in holiness and sanctification.

But I’m going to give you my own slogan to sort of summarize what St. Paul is exhorting us to here in this passage. Okay? Here it is: “Enjoy Yourself through Self-Denial.”

Okay, at first, that might sound like a contradiction. Deny yourself to enjoy yourself? How could the goal of self-denial be self-enjoyment? Or it may sounds like some kind of sick masochism. And it would be, if the idea was that we should seek our enjoyment in the pain of self-denial and self-discipline itself. That’s not the idea at all. But the idea that the exercise of self-denial and self discipline could be a means to our own enjoyment, in fact our own extreme pleasure, is a concept that probably many of us have never conceived of before. I hadn’t thought of it in quite those terms until I read a quote from a sermon by C.S. Lewis called “The Weight of Glory.” Maybe some of you have read it. Lewis says there,

“The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.

“If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

We are far too easily pleased. That is why the Bible calls us to self-denial—not because it is a bad thing to seek our own pleasure, but because, left to our own devices, what pleases us falls far short of what God desires to give us.

So Paul challenges us to run the race, to train like good athletes, to put ourselves through the pain of self-denial, to not indulge every passing desire for bodily or worldly pleasure, to gain the mastery over our passions. But to what end? To the end that we might win the prize! There’s a prize at the finish line. We’re not to discipline and buffet ourselves and deny our worldly desires because God wants to deny us pleasure, or because God wants Christians to be sad and dour and deprived, but because God wants to give us a far greater pleasure than anything this world has to offer. Paul says, “Run the race in order to obtain the prize.” Don’t lose sight of what you’re running for. Don’t turn your eyes away to lesser prizes. Like a good athlete, focus your minds on the extreme pleasure you’ll have when you finally win the race so that you’re not tempted to quit and to save yourself the pain and struggle of the actual running.

For what is the prize that we’re running for? What is ultimately the prize? Is it not the eternal pleasure of knowing God and dwelling in his presence? Paul says in the passage that the prize that we’re running for, the prize that we are striving for, is an imperishable crown, and I understand that to mean the crown of life, the gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ. In a minute I’m going to explain why our striving after eternal life is not to be conceived of as working for our salvation. But at this point I just want us to consider what the prize of eternal life really is. What is eternal life? Jesus said, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” That’s eternal life; that’s the crown: to know God and His Son Jesus Christ—“to know” in that Hebrew sense of having intimate relation and fellowship with another. That’s the ultimate prize, because it is that knowledge and fellowship with God that is our chief joy and pleasure.

What again to does the Westminster Shorter Catechism say is the chief end of man? “To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” I think we remember the first half of that statement but we tend to forget the second half. Part of our chief end as human beings, part of the very goal of our lives, is to enjoy God forever. Think of the words of the Psalms here:

“In thy presence is the fullness of joy, and at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” (Ps. 16:17)

“O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.” (Ps. 34:8)

“Delight thou in the Lord, and he shall give thee thy heart’s desire.” (Ps. 37:4)

“Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of thee.” (Ps. 73:25)

In all the exhortations to self-denial and self-discipline in the Bible there is this appeal to desire, to personal enjoyment. For what God is exhorting us to is to find in Him the fulfillment of our greatest longings. That’s the key. The enjoyment of God is the ultimate prize we’re to run towards in this race called the Christian life.

In the book of Philippians, St. Paul writes that he considered everything he had—all his earthly pleasures, all his human achievements, all his worldly success—he considered them all dung in comparison to the surpassing excellency of knowing Jesus Christ. That’s why the Scripture calls us to the exercise of self-denial: that we may train ourselves to desire God above all things, even the very best of his gifts.

It’s not we should not have pleasure in God’s good gifts, but ultimately the Scripture calls us to desire the Giver over His gifts. We’re exhorted to practice times of fasting and abstinence, not because food and sex are bad, but because we need to cultivate a hunger for God above our hunger for these things. We’re exhorted to practice times of retreat and solitude in prayer, not because the company of friends and family are unspiritual, but because even these good gifts must be put in their proper place as second to fellowship with God.

You see, we understand the concept of “no pain, no gain” as it relates to the exercising of our bodies. Even if we don’t practice it, at least we understand it. But I wonder, how many of us really understand this concept as it relates to the exercise and care of our souls? Paul said to Timothy, “Bodily exercise profits a little, but exercising unto godliness is profitable for all things having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.”

Here again Paul is talking about the goal of spiritual exercise and discipline as being the promise of the life that is to come, the promise of eternal life. That is not to say that our spiritual exercise and discipline are the means by which we earn eternal life. For there is no amount of exercise we could do to earn eternal life. It is to say that spiritual exercise and discipline are the ways we exercise and build up our faith. It is by faith that we will receive the gift of eternal life. But for faith to receive the gift it must be a living faith; it must be a persevering faith; it must be a faith that doesn’t quit when times get tough; it must be a faith that doesn’t get choked out by the cares and riches and pleasures of the world; it must be a faith that doesn’t turn away from faith in Christ to faith in self.

You see, this is why the Scriptures are constantly exhorting us to strive to persevere in faith. This is a major theme in the book of Hebrews.

Heb. 3:12, 14 - “Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you and evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God… For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.”

Heb. 4:9, 11 - “There remains a rest for the people of God… Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience [as the Israelites in the wilderness].

Heb. 12:1,2 - “Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.”

We’re back to the image of running the race. Let us run the race, says St. Paul, that we might win the prize. Let us run the race in such a way that we persevere all the way to the finish line. Let us not be distracted with lesser prizes. Ultimate joy awaits us at the finish line. If an Olympic athlete disciplines himself and puts himself through all the rigors of years of hard physical training to the point of suffering broken bones and broke tendons, and continues to deny all the impulses to give up and to indulge himself in all the pleasures he’s given up, just so he can get a little piece of metal to hang around his neck, just so he can get his fifteen minutes of fame up on a podium in front of a crowd of people that won’t remember him in a year, how much more should we discipline ourselves and deny ourselves every pleasure that would compete against our desire to enjoy our eternal reward—the eternal pleasure of knowing God and dwelling in His presence.

You see, in the end, the practice of self-denial is for the purpose of training ourselves to indulge our greatest desires. Don’t desire less than God wants to give you, for He desires to give you Himself.

So enjoy yourself through self-denial. +