Bible Verses About Self-Denial

For although I am a free man, not bound to do anyone’s bidding, I have made myself a slave to all in order to win as many people as possible.

But I do it all because of the rewards promised by the Good News, so that I may share in them along with the others who come to trust.

Now every athlete in training submits himself to strict discipline, and he does it just to win a laurel wreath that will soon wither away. But we do it to win a crown that will last forever.

Accordingly, I don’t run aimlessly but straight for the finish line; I don’t shadow-box but try to make every punch count.

I treat my body hard and make it my slave so that, after proclaiming the Good News to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

“Everything is permitted,” you say? Maybe, but not everything is helpful. “Everything is permitted?” Maybe, but not everything is edifying.

No one should be looking out for his own interests, but for those of his fellow.

Just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not looking out for my own interests but for those of the many, so that they may be saved;

not proud, rude or selfish, not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs.

We try not to put obstacles in anyone’s path, so that no one can find fault with the work we do.

On the contrary, we try to commend ourselves in every way as workers for God by continually enduring troubles, hardships, calamities,

beatings, imprisonments, riots, overwork, lack of sleep and food.

When the Messiah was executed on the stake as a criminal, I was too; so that my proud ego no longer lives. But the Messiah lives in me, and the life I now live in my body I live by the same trusting faithfulness that the Son of God had, who loved me and gave himself up for me.

What I am saying is this: run your lives by the Spirit. Then you will not do what your old nature wants.

For the old nature wants what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit wants what is contrary to the old nature. These oppose each other, so that you find yourselves unable to carry out your good intentions.

Moreover, those who belong to the Messiah Yeshua have put their old nature to death on the stake, along with its passions and desires.

But as for me, Heaven forbid that I should boast about anything except the execution-stake of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah! Through him, as far as I am concerned, the world has been put to death on the stake; and through him, as far as the world is concerned, I have been put to death on the stake.

then, so far as your former way of life is concerned, you must strip off your old nature, because your old nature is thoroughly rotted by its deceptive desires;

look out for each other’s interests and not just for your own.

Though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God something to be possessed by force.

On the contrary, he emptied himself, in that he took the form of a slave by becoming like human beings are. And when he appeared as a human being,

he humbled himself still more by becoming obedient even to death — death on a stake as a criminal!

But the things that used to be advantages for me, I have, because of the Messiah, come to consider a disadvantage.

Not only that, but I consider everything a disadvantage in comparison with the supreme value of knowing the Messiah Yeshua as my Lord. It was because of him that I gave up everything and regard it all as garbage, in order to gain the Messiah

and be found in union with him, not having any righteousness of my own based on legalism, but having that righteousness which comes through the Messiah’s faithfulness, the righteousness from God based on trust.