What Does Dying to Self Mean? The Seed Must Die
Two brothers once toured a gun factory and came home with a pair of fake gun stocks — just the wooden parts, no working anything. Naturally, they decided the funniest possible use for them was to hold up a logging truck. They popped up out of a culvert on the edge of their road, dropped to their knees, and pointed the fake guns at a fully loaded truck barreling down a steep grade. The driver, convinced he was looking at two kids with shotguns, jackknifed the whole rig. Logs skipping down the road. The boys ditched back under the culvert and ran the other way, certain they’d gotten away with the funniest thing in history.
They were the only house on the road. The driver just got out, walked up the driveway, and talked to their dad. Within minutes a voice rang out across the valley: “Darrin Joe, get home right now.”
That’s how Darrin Jones opened his Father’s Day message at New River Church — a confessional tour of the trouble he and his brother caused their poor dad (it got worse: there’s also a story involving a .45 caliber round, a vice, a hole punch, and three walls of his dad’s shop). The stories had the room laughing. And then Darrin turned the corner: he told them on purpose, because the verse he was about to teach pierces through our very last resistance — every wall we put up in front of Jesus.
In a message from the Who Can Understand? series called The Seed Must Die, Darrin took on what might be one of the hardest things Jesus says in the entire gospel: that following Him means hating even your own life — and that real, abundant life is found through a death.
What this sermon is about
The big idea is a paradox: death is the way to life. Jesus says it about Himself first — unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Then He says it about everyone who would follow Him. The abundant life Jesus promises is not a better version of you. It’s you dying, and Jesus coming alive in you.
If the phrase “dying to self” has always sounded grim, vague, or impossible to you, this message untangles it — with a machete story, two P-words, and a line about compost you won’t forget.
The hardest thing Jesus ever said
Three weeks earlier, Pastor Keith had taught Luke 14:26 — Jesus’s shocking statement that anyone who comes to Him and does not “hate” father and mother cannot be His disciple, meaning our love for Jesus is meant to be so deep that even our closest family loves look like hate by contrast. (Darrin, by the way, was supposed to preach that Sunday. A family emergency meant he called Keith at 4:00 on a Saturday and said, “I’m not coming” — and Keith simply said, “You’re right where you should be. I got it.”)
But there’s a bomb at the end of that verse that the first message didn’t have room for.
Luke 14:26 — “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
Even his own life. Darrin called this possibly the very hardest thing Jesus says throughout the entire gospel. Jesus is gaining momentum at this point in His ministry — people are flocking to Him — and He chooses that moment to say the cost runs all the way down. Not just your family attachments. Your last line of defense. Your own life.
What does that mean? How can we possibly understand it?
A grain of wheat — and a gate in Haiti
Jesus answers with a seed.
John 12:23-26 — “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also.”
The context is the week of the crucifixion — Jesus has just entered Jerusalem, and He’s telling a crowd that hasn’t put the pieces together yet that unless He dies, they can’t have the life He came to give. But then He widens it: if you follow Me, this pattern becomes yours too.
For Darrin, that passage is welded to a specific day in 1987. He was nineteen, doing famine relief in Haiti, living on a compound that warehoused food for starving children in nearby schools. One evening the gate was breached — about 150 people, most holding machetes, desperate to reach a storeroom of rice and beans. The team leaders looked at the teenager and said, “Darrin, shut the gate.” He sprinted, grabbed the fence with one hand and the gate with the other, and became the gate himself. A woman stepped up and shoved a machete to the skin under his chin. Moments later, as he locked the gate, someone else’s machete came rattling down the fence toward his fingers. He thought that day might be his last. (And then, he was quick to add, the team fed and cared for every person who had made it inside — getting food to the hungry was the entire reason they were there.)
That same night, the leaders of the compound sat the team down and read John 12:23-26 aloud. It was their life verse — the calling that had taken them to Haiti to live in obscurity, die to themselves, and bear fruit nobody would ever applaud. Darrin sat there, as close to death as he’d ever been, watching that verse walk around in human bodies. His world was rocked.
Because here’s the tension: John 10:10 — “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Jesus promises abundant life — but He offers a really strange doorway. The abundant life is found in our death.
“This abundant life that he offers us is not a better Darrin. No — it’s less of me and more of him.” — Darrin Jones
Position and process: the two P-words
So how does this actually work? Darrin boiled his whole outline down to two words: position and process.
Position is what happens the moment you place your faith in what Jesus did on the cross. Big chunks of the New Testament exist to explain this one staggering idea — that when Christ died, we were included in that death, and when He rose, His life became ours.
Romans 6:3-4 — “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
Not your old life upgraded. Not more of you. Newness of life — a whole new way of living. Your position before God changes permanently and immediately: God sees you the way He sees Jesus. Darrin was emphatic here — that position is unalterable. You can’t mess it back up. The Bible’s word for it is sanctified: set apart for a holy purpose.
Process is the day-to-day part, and it’s where it gets honest. Because you and I sit there going: wait a minute — I don’t feel dead. I’m still short with my wife. I’m still rude to my kids. I still respond ungraciously while I’m driving (“trying to say that as nicely as possible,” Darrin admitted, “not to out myself too much”). The Apostle Paul was wide open about the same struggle. Our position is cemented for eternity, but we’ve entered a process of sanctification — learning, in real time, to live out of Jesus’s resources instead of our own. Self-effort equals failure (Romans 6:20-23); the Spirit of God molding His image in us produces fruit that leads to life.
“It’s not me better than I used to be. It’s me dead, dying, and Jesus alive in me.” — Darrin Jones
Darrin told the room about a friend who is brand new to faith. Describing a hard family situation, she said: “The old me would have done this, but the new me took a different course.” He nearly cheered. That’s Ephesians 4:22-24 happening out loud — putting off the old self, being renewed in the spirit of your mind, putting on the new self created after the likeness of God.
“Compost is the whole gospel”
Then came the line of the morning, and it arrived from the least likely place: a doctor’s office.
Darrin was at an appointment right before he was originally scheduled to preach this message, making small talk with the woman doing his intake. She asked what was going on in his week. He took a breath and said it: “I’m preparing to preach on the topic of coming and dying.” Instead of a blank stare, she lit up — she’d spent the previous year as a missionary in Honduras, working alongside a regenerative farmer. Darrin, who makes his own compost, was suddenly in two of his passion areas at once. And then she dropped the line he promised her would make it into the sermon:
“Compost is the whole gospel.”
“Compost is the whole gospel — because we are called to enter into a relationship with Jesus in which we decompose. We decay. And as we decompose and decay, he produces something wonderful and beautiful in us.” — Darrin Jones
Is it easy? Absolutely not. Darrin called it pitched warfare — the flesh and the Spirit opposed to each other, exactly as Galatians 5:16-26 lays out: the works of the flesh on one side, and on the other the fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh. The seed goes into the ground.
He even took a playful swing at the old WWJD bracelets. The question was never really “What would Jesus do?” but “How did Jesus do what He did?” — and the answer is that Jesus kept in step with the Spirit of God while He walked this earth. That’s the same invitation for us, and it grows through abiding: unhurried time with Jesus, in His word, day after day.
The summary verse for the whole message is Galatians 2:20 — “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
And because it was Father’s Day, Darrin landed the plane right at the dads: the best gift we can give our families is not a better you.
“The best gift we can give our families is you and I decomposing. And in that compost, the life of Jesus starts to take over in every way.” — Darrin Jones
What this means for your week in Franklin
If you take this sermon seriously, four things change about this week.
- Stop trying to build a better you. Self-improvement is not the gospel, and self-effort equals failure. The goal was never an upgraded version of you — it’s less of you and more of Jesus. Let that take the pressure off.
- Rest in your position. If you’ve placed your faith in Christ, your standing before God is settled and unalterable — He sees you the way He sees Jesus. A bad Tuesday doesn’t move it. Start there, not from shame.
- Engage the process honestly. Notice this week where the “old me” still drives — the short temper, the ungracious commute — and instead of white-knuckling it, surrender that specific spot to the Spirit. That’s sanctification in real time.
- Make time to abide. The question isn’t “What would Jesus do?” but “How did Jesus do it?” He kept in step with the Spirit. That happens in unhurried time with Him — His word open, your hurry set down.
Watch the full message
The full sermon — “The Seed Must Die” from the Who Can Understand? series — is in the video above. We post a new message every Sunday from New River Church in Franklin, TN. Browse our message library for more from the Who Can Understand? series and other recent teaching.
Coming Sunday at New River Church in Franklin, TN
If this message resonated and you’d like to experience worship and community in person, we’d love to have you with us. New River Church meets Sundays at 9:00 AM and 10:45 AM at 1153 Lewisburg Pike in Franklin, TN 37064 — just minutes from downtown Franklin and easy to reach from across Williamson County, Brentwood, and Spring Hill.
You don’t need to dress up. You don’t need a good voice. You don’t need to know much about church or the Bible to come. We’re a community of ordinary people walking through ordinary life, trying to do it together with Jesus at the center. Whether you’ve been a Christian for forty years or you’ve never set foot in a church, you are welcome here.
If you’re new to the area or new to faith, our First Time Guest page walks through everything you need to know before your first visit: parking, what to expect on Sunday morning, what your kids will experience in River Kids, and how to find us when you arrive.
If you’re looking for deeper community beyond Sunday morning, our Community Groups meet across Franklin and the surrounding area throughout the week. Groups are where Sunday morning faith becomes Tuesday afternoon real life.
Whatever you’re carrying right now, you don’t have to carry it alone. There’s a place for you at New River Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Come as you are.
Watch more sermons: newriverfranklin.com/messages Plan your visit: newriverfranklin.com/firsttimeguest Find a group: newriverfranklin.com/groups
📍 New River Church | 1153 Lewisburg Pike, Franklin, TN 37064 | Sundays 9:00 AM & 10:45 AM
