“And He died for all, that those who live should live no longer to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again.” 2 Corinthians 5:15
One of the main reasons that Christ died on the cross was to give us a new base of operation in our spirit, that we would no longer live to ourselves. Thus, the practical issue of the cross in our lives is that we no longer live to ourselves but to Him. This means we have a new center, a new point of reference, a new base from which we operate, a new source from which we draw our resources. In Galatians 2:20 our new base of operation is described: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” Our base of operation is no longer our self. The cross has freed us from ever again having to take the self as the source from which we live. Now we can deal with everything from the Lord, in the Lord, and with the Lord.
We have to worship the Lord for coming to us by His mighty hand in our environment, through the members of the Body, and through the supply from the Word — all of which are to deal with our self to effect a transfer of source. This transfer to a new base of operation means that we no longer operate out of the self. When the self is denied, we are a person enjoying the Lord as our source. This denying of self is not the practice of asceticism; rather, it issues from our enjoyment of Christ as the Spirit in our spirit. By the Spirit we are putting to death all the practices of the body (Rom. 8:13). In this way we are operating out of a new base. However, the less we allow the Lord to deal with our self, the more we will crowd Christ out, not allowing Him to be our source and center from which we handle everything. If the self is not denied, we are just little “gods,” doing our own thing and operating our own lives. Our base of operation and understanding is just the self. Thus, we can see that the goal of dealing with the self is to effect a subjective transfer of source, giving us a new base of operation.