Is the core of the Christian life self-sacrifice?
Dying to your own desires and serving and living for God and others?
No and Yes.

The very center of Christianity is Christ. He is the center and everything encompassing it. He is the core. In Him is all the supremacy. The world was made by Him. For Him. Through Him. Jesus, the Son of God, calls us to Himself. He is the mirror of God's Glory, representing the Father God exactly. The very image of God. He holds the universe together by the power of His word. He became incarnated. The Word made flesh. God becoming human. Fully human and fully God. He endured the cross for the joy set before Him. If we say we are Christians, we should walk as Jesus did. He is our model.

He calls us to Himself. It is His voice that we are practicing to hear. The voice that speaks the words that sustains the universe. He calls us to life...abundant. He gives us joy and sets it before us and it is for this that we endure the cross, the suffering of everyday life that we face.


I will write more on that question. Right now I would say self-sacrifice is not the core of Christianity. If it were, the monks of old who secluded themselves from society and beat themselves in order to be holy were the purest Christians for the denied from their self many pleasures. No, it has to be something more.