Yet Christ made self-denial a condition of personal allegiance to himself. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves…” (NRSV, Luke 9:23).  Since self-denial is specifically required by Our Lord of all would-be disciples, we should have very cogent reasons for ignoring it – and in fact no such reasons exist or can exist.

For self-denial is something much wider and deeper than the foregoing of luxuries, which is only one aspect of it.  Its whole essence is to resist our lower instincts and say No to our lower self, and its purpose is to deepen our relationship with God by making us more devoted to him, more worthy of him, and more useful to him.

Our lower self, containing as it does a disposition to sin – that is, a readiness to rebel against God – is the cause of that conflict within ourselves which makes us such inconsistent creatures.  As St Paul says, “My own actions bewilder me; what I do is not what I wish to do, but something which I hate….it is not the good my will prefers, but the evil my will disapproves, that I find myself doing” (Romans 7:15,19). (1) And St Paul was only echoing what a pagan Roman poet had put less strongly, “I see the better course of action and I approve it, but I follow the worse”. (2)