There is a sentence in Galatians that, if it is true, changes everything. "I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me."
The Apostle Paul does not say he is trying to be crucified or learning to be or hoping to be one day. He says it has happened. Past tense. Final. And the life he now lives is no longer his own.
Most of what passes for Christianity in our age has not reckoned with this sentence. We have built a faith that adds Jesus to the autonomous self rather than putting that self to death. We sing of the cross while the old self sits comfortably on the throne of our lives. We have, in the words of Bonhoeffer, exchanged costly grace for cheap.
The Death to Self is the second volume of The Covenant Series. It is a sustained pastoral and theological meditation on what it means to be crucified with Christ and what life looks like on the other side of that death. Drawing from Genesis 15, Romans 6, Galatians 2:20, and the covenant-cutting tradition of Scripture, Bishop Osei Tweneboah Koduah argues that covenant identity and the death of the autonomous self are inseparable. Where the self has not died, the covenant has not been entered. Where a covenant has been entered, the self has died.
This is not a book about self-improvement. It is a book about death and the resurrection that follows it. It is written for the believer who senses that something deeper is being asked of them than what they have so far given.
Includes a Reader's Study Guide for personal reflection and small-group use.
