How many people fall the wrong side of this ‘if’! They never will come to Christ. They never will follow after him. They will all, to the end of life's journey, be ruled by pride and selfishness and their own will. ‘If anyone will come after me.’ One by one we come – if any individual. There is no such thing in the Bible as group salvation. You are not a Christian because you are born into a so-called Christian country, or you grow up in a so-called Christian family, or anything of that kind. It is a personal, individual matter.
If anyone wants to come to Christ, this is what you have to do. You have to deny yourself. In other words, you have to disown yourself. You have to refuse yourself. You come to the point where you say, what am I like? How would I describe myself? First of all, there is the trouble of my self-seeking, you say. I am all out for myself. I say, ‘Lord, I don't want to be a self-seeker anymore. I want to leave it behind. Oh Lord, I would renounce it if I could. Take away my self-seeking. Make me one who seeks after thee.’ Now that does not mean that we can terminate our self-seeking in our own strength, but we have got a desire that it should be terminated. When we come to Christ and repent of our sin, we don't say, ‘Lord, forgive me my sins’, and at the same time in the back of our minds we are saying, ‘Oh, God, I am going to carry on doing this selfish thing, and I am going to carry on enjoying that unrighteous thing.’ No, we say, ‘Lord, forgive me my sins and take away my self-seeking so that I seek only what God wants.’ That is denying self. But immediately there comes up inside me a desire to please myself; all my selfish ambitions come to the surface. Deny it; resist it; refuse it; disown it. Say, ‘Lord, transform me, change me, that I will no longer be a self-seeker, but a servant of the Saviour. That is what coming to Christ is about. That we disown our self-justification. We make no excuses. We dare not justify ourselves. We refuse all those self-defending thoughts that always come up when our sin is in the spotlight.
Then there is self-determination and self-adulation. You cannot go to Christ and say, ‘Lord, forgive me my sins’ and another part of you is saying, ‘I'm much better than he is.’ You've got to deny yourself. You've got to say, ‘Lord, anything I have is only just the same as other people have. It's all swings and roundabouts. Thou art the creator. Thou hast given us all gifts, and distributed them to all. What a foolish thing to be such a proud person, vaunting myself, wanting people to notice me. Lord, all I need is pardon and forgiveness. Just banish my pride and make me a humble servant of God.’ That is what it means to deny yourself, to deny self-adulation, self-justification, self-confidence. That is what the Lord Jesus Christ is talking about.
When he says, ‘Take up your cross’, he means that you have to accept the consequences of being a Christian. You have to accept the duties of being a Christian. They are not hard; they are wonderful duties, but you have to accept them. Think of the eighteenth century when there were orphans roaming the streets of London with nowhere to go. Let’s suppose that some well-to-do person says, ‘Look, come with me. I'm going to take you home. I'm going to give you a bed. I'm going to give you clothing. And I'm going to give you a new life and you can be my children.’ Yes, but there would be terms. They would be very easy terms. Those little ones must keep the rules. They must wear shoes in the house and not get the place all filthy dirty. These would be much easier than living out there on the streets. When Christ says that there is a cross to bear, it means there is a new way of life to adopt. There must be a willingness to obey Christ and to identify with him publicly. If you are not even prepared to do that, to take on the easy privileges and duties, there's a big question mark over whether you really understand anything about the Lordship of Christ. You can't become a Christian and carry on as you were before. The terms are that we must be willing to follow the Lord, to obey him, and to seek him and to learn of him.
Some people make the mistake of thinking that it is an easy matter to seek the Lord. They don't really have to give it much thought. It's just like going into the underground station and getting a ticket. No trouble at all. Well, you are very much mistaken if you think you can come with a mixture of mild interest and apathy, that you can find the Lord without having very much desire. You can't. Here's one aspect of finding the Lord which we will call the hard part: it isn't a five-minute wonder. You have got to mean business. When you strive, when you come to seek the Lord. You've got to be absolutely serious. You've got to think about it. Who he is? Who you are? The great gulf between you! Why it is that you don't know him? You have got to start seeking for the Lord, and for many people that may mean quite a search. You may be very attached to your sins and your ambitions and your selfish desires, and you are going to have a struggle, because coming to the Lord means giving them up and turning your back on the old life. You have to strive even to be forgiven. Now that may sound like a contradiction, because on the one hand the Bible tells us that it's easy to be forgiven. I don't have to pay the price for my sins. I don't have to make any atonement. I don't have to pay anything in order to be forgiven. I cannot pay anything; I have got nothing to pay. But nevertheless I have really got to want to be forgiven. I've got to desire it deeply. If only I could be forgiven by God all my sin. If only I could be washed clean, and stand before him and receive his love and his blessing. You have got to earnestly desire it.