How to Get Rid of Self

Lloyd-Jones:

There is only one way to get rid of self, and that is that you should become so absorbed in someone or something else that you have no time to think about yourself. . . . And as you become absorbed in the love of God you will forget all about yourself. "The spirit of love!" [2 Tim. 1:7] It will deliver you from self-interest, self-concern, and from depression about self, because depression results from self and self-concern. It gets rid of self at all points. So talk to yourself about this eternal, amazing love of God—the God who ever looked upon us in spite of sin and planned the way of redemption and spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all.

What then? Go on to think of the love of the Son in its breadth, its length, its depth, its height; go on to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. Think of him who came from the courts of heaven and laid aside the insignia of his eternal glory and was born as a babe, worked as a carpenter and endured the contradiction of sinners against himself. Think of him into whose holy face men spat and on whose brow they pressed a crown of thorns and into whose hands and feet the nails were hammered. There he is on the cross. What is he doing there? There he died for us, that you and I might be forgiven and reconciled to God. Think of his love, and as you come to know something about it, you will forget yourself.  

And then, love to the brethren. Think of other people, their needs, their concerns. Shall I go on? . . . Think of other people, look at those people perishing in their sins. Forget yourself. Cultivate love for the lost and love for the brethren in the same way, and love for the greatest and noblest cause in the world, this blessed, glorious gospel. . . . If you are consumed by this spirit of love you will forget yourself.

—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression (Hannibal: Granted Ministries), 103.