Schaeffer: dying to self

[Apology:  I messed up the paragraph formatting on this one and can't see how to put it right!]

Schaeffer makes the point, from Luke 9:22ff, that the pattern of Jesus' life was:  rejected-slain-raised;  but not just for Him:

The order - rejected, slain, raised -is also the order of the Christian life of true spirituality;  there is no other...

...if we forget the relationship of this order to us as Christians, then we will have a sterile orthodoxy, and we have no true Christian life.  Christian life will wither and die;  spirituality in any true Biblical sense, will come to an end...

...so I must ask, very gently:  how much thought does the necessity of death by choice provoke...how much prayer do we make for our children and those we love that they may indeed be willing to walk, by the grace of God, through the steps of rejection and being slain? ...  We must not think that we can rush on to the last step without the reality of being rejected and slain, not just at that point in our lives when we become Christians but as a continuing situation in our lives.

[Badger:  I wonder how much truth to this is indicated by my own instinctive hope that we can get through this bit and onto the the more positive, really spiritual stuff? And by how I was struck at his list of verses concerning our need to die to self? He clearly states there are huge positives next to such verses, but:]

We must walk through the first half ("knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him") before we can get on to the second half (" that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin"). I think I perceive that most Christians even read the first half of those verses faster, in order to get to the second, "happy" part of the verses, but this is a mistake. We love to skip along, but one does not get on the other side of the door without going through it, and we do not get to the second joyous part of these verses without passing through the first part.

I am to face the cross of Christ in every part of my life and with the whole man. The cross of Christ is to be a reality to me not only once for all at my conversion, but all through my life as a Christian. True spirituality does not stop at the negative, but without the negative - in comprehension and practice - we are not ready to go.

True Spirituality, pp 22, 23, 25, 26.