So what exactly is Jesus calling us to deny? The best way I can frame it is to say this: we’re to deny our self, not ourselves. The self in Jesus’s call isn’t our inner essence or personality type or Enneagram number. Under our rubric of the world, the flesh, and the devil, the self is akin to our flesh, the axis point of the three enemies’ assault on our souls. It’s where the devil’s deceptive ideas on one side and a sinful society’s normalized behaviors on the other meet and direct their attack against the fulcrum point of our disordered desires.
