Christian self-control
The Spiritual Fruit of Self-control (By Hamish Taylor)
In this article we are going to look at the fruit of self-control, which is one of the 9 fruit of the Holy Spirit that Paul lists in Galatians 5:22-23. It is last on the list, and if we are honest, sometimes we can be less than enthusiastic about it. We start with fruit number one: Love, yes, love is good, bring more love please; Joy, we typically want to have joy; Peace, yes, we need more peace, and so on… By the time we get to number 9, Self-control… we may be thinking, “I’ve got lots of fruit now thanks, my fruit bowl is full. But if I really must have some, just cut me off a slice please.”
Hopefully by the end of this paper, we will look at self-control not as something we are obliged to grind out but as a positive attribute, because it is in fact a source of goodness and well-being. Plus, it’s a source of freedom despite the devil trying to convince us of the opposite.
First, a disclaimer. I am not writing this because I have perfect self-control. Anyone who knows me well will be able to point out where I fall short and could give you a few interesting anecdotes as evidence. Unfortunately, we all fall short somewhere. We all have vulnerable points where we don’t always control ourselves like we should. At the minor end of the scale of problems there are those niggling, small self-control problems in your life that require more discipline to tidy up. On the major end of the scale a lack of self-control can cause someone to make a big ugly mess in their lives and cause pain for everyone around them. Many of us know someone in that situation, or maybe you have been there yourself, or maybe that’s you right now. Don’t give up. There is hope in Jesus as we are going to see.
In Galatians 5:16-25, Paul is exhorting the Galatians to live by the Spirit. This is in contrast against trying to achieve righteousness by their own efforts under the law. The law serves to make us aware of the sinfulness of our sin, as Paul says in Romans 7:13. But the law does not give us the inner power to defeat the sinful desires that live in our mortal bodies. Instead, if you walk by the Spirit you are given the means to defeat the sinful desires that naturally well up from within you.
In Galatians 5:16 we are given the broad imperative; “but I say walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” What are the desires of the flesh that we naturally gravitate toward? Paul gives us a list of examples in verses 19 and 20, “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, orgies and things like these.” Our natural desires lead us toward things like these. But if we have repented of our former life of sin and the Spirit of God now lives in us, there is a whole different and opposite set of fruit that will be produced in our lives. These are familiar verses, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; against such things there is no law.” We are going to take a special look now at number 9, which is self-control.
What is self-control? As the Music Machine tells us, self-control is just controlling yourself. A dictionary definition of self-control is “the ability to exercise restraint or control over ones feelings, emotions, and reactions etc.” The Greek word that Paul used is enkrateia. This is derived from the stem word krateo, which refers to having mastery over something, to have a firm grip on something. What Paul is talking about in verse 23 is enkrateia, which is the same concept but turned inward. That is, having mastery over yourself and whatever is going on inside you, having a tight grip on yourself and a tight grip on your emotions and reactions. The particular emphasis of this, as it is used in scripture, is the mastery of desires and passions within you. For example, having self-control regarding sex, having control over what you say to other people or about other people. Having control regarding what you eat or drink, controlling how you spend your time or money, and having control of your expressions of anger. It is about being the master of these desires in you by having a firm grip on how those things are expressed in your life.
Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit. The Spirit of God gives self-control and He will grow self-control in us if we submit to His work in us. We become more like God when we co-operate with the Spirit in producing this fruit.
God has complete self-control. There is never a single moment when God does not have perfect self-control. Even when he displays his anger and judgment, he is in complete control of what he is doing. We also see the self-control of God displayed through the life of Jesus, God the Son, who had complete control of himself. As we develop greater self-control we are growing in this godly quality.
For the Galatians, this was in complete contrast to the Greek and Roman gods that were in the culture around them. Those demonic false gods did not have self-control and in the stories about them there were examples of everything listed in verses 19-21. The worship of those pagan gods also involved doing some of these things. In the 21st century we like to think we are more sophisticated than the ancient Greeks and Romans, but the idols we make for ourselves are no better. This will always be the way because idols always come from the same source, that is, corrupted desires, corrupted imagination, rebellion against the Creator, and demonic influence. These things are against the self-control God has and God gives.
We know from experience that the works of the flesh, of the world, and of the devil will try to convince you that having self-control is a bad thing. They will try to tell you that self-control will result in you being unhappy, inhibited, and unable to properly express yourself as an individual. But if you don’t have self-control in regard to the works of the flesh, (such as sexual immorality, impurity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, or drunkenness) and give uncontrolled expression to those kinds of things in your life, is your long term prospective really going to put you in an emotionally better place? No, I don’t think so. But if we have self-control, pursue growing the fruits of the Spirit, (which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control) are those things long-term prospective going put you in an emotionally better place than the behaviours in the other list? Yes, I believe so.
So if the world, the flesh, and the devil come to you and tell you to cast off restraint in regard to your desires, because it will make you happy and self-fulfilled, don’t do it because you are being lied to. If you are an unbeliever, those things in Galatians 5:19-21 are there to enslave you and keep you on the path to hell. If you are believer, those things are a potential source of great harm that can ruin your testimony of Jesus, your growth, and your effectiveness as a believer.
Self-control should be seen as a positive and constructive force in the life of a believer. Paul saw it as a necessary part of achieving eternal reward: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1Cor. 9:24-27). Self-control is greater than being the means of not doing something, beyond that it is a means of freeing us from things holding us back and a means of doing constructive things instead.
We are at war. In Galatians 5:17 Paul says “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” When we become followers of Jesus, he gives us the Holy Spirit to comfort us, to guide us, and to act as a guarantee of future salvation. The work on the Spirit in us gives the will to obey and to please God. But we all know that the sinful aspects of our former self come back at us on a daily basis and we inevitably do things that are sinful and contradictory to the work of God’s Spirit. The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. Paul was not writing these things because he was perfect and wanted to give us a lecture. He is writing this as a fallible human who understands the struggles. He is openly acknowledging how it really is.
This is the theme of Romans chapter 7, where he says “I do not do what I want, I do the very thing I hate”, and, “I do not do good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep doing”. He cries out in frustration, “who will deliver me from this body of death?” His answer to that of course is “thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” God’s grace energizes us to wrestle with this during the time we are in these mortal bodies and will one soon replace what is corrupt in us with what is immortal, and we won’t need to fight anymore. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. This struggle does not last forever and will one day be fully resolved. But for the moment, as we journey through our time in this world following Jesus, we do need to have self control. So the question we have is, how do I have self-control? We are going to look it 7 points from scripture to help us.
1) If we want to develop the fruit of the Spirit we must walk by the Spirit
Galatians 5:16 reads, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of flesh”, and verse 25 says, “ If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” The first obvious thing about gaining self-control through walking by the Spirit is that you have to have the Spirit. Paul says in Romans 8:8-9, “those who are in the flesh can not please God. You however are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.” When we come to Jesus in repentance, we turn away from our life of doing the will of the flesh to commit to following the will of God, and at that point we are given the Spirit of God to dwell in us. One of the things the Spirit does is help us. Jesus says in John 14:15-17, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.” Jesus says if we love him, we will keep his commandments, but he doesn’t then leave us to fight it out with nothing but our human willpower. We are given the Holy Spirit, who will never leave us, and he helps us with that.
If someone is reading this who is enslaved to something and can’t control themselves in regard to that thing, this is the first question to ask: have I repented of my sin, turned in faith to Jesus and received God’s Spirit? If we are going to have self-control and obey the commandments of God this is the starting point. I am sure many of us who are believers have had something in their lives that we didn’t have self-control over. But when we came to Jesus in repentance and were given the Spirit, suddenly we were given control over that thing.
While it is less common to see physical miracles in this present age, most believers can testify to something spiritually, something behaviorally miraculous happening within us when we were given the Holy Spirit at salvation. In terms of self-control we were given some degree of control over sin, and also a desire to control ourselves that we didn’t have previously. I want to note here, that a “Christianity” without repentance (Acts 3:19), a spiritual new birth (John 3:3-8) without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:9) is an empty religion without the power of God. Outward form, such as rituals or membership, without inner regeneration is not a path to developing the Spirit empowered fruit of self-control. Nor is asceticism or severe self-discipline without repentance, new birth and God’s indwelling Spirit, really go to change who we are in Christ.
But at the point of salvation, we were not made perfect. We still live in this world and live in these old mortal bodies. We now have the Spirit, and now we must also consciously walk in the Spirit. This is a verb, this is something we must actively do. Step by step, as we journey through our lives, day by day, choosing to acknowledge the presence of God’s Spirit and grow in understanding of what he wants you to do, practicing submission to what he wants you to do, walking day by day in the Spirit.
When we are walking in the Spirit, we are going somewhere. But where are we going on this daily journey? Where is the Spirit leading us? He is leading us increasingly to be like Jesus in this world (Rom 8:29). He is leading us to have less sinful fruit and more of His fruit. He is leading us ultimately to the consummation of our inheritance in the kingdom of God where we will be given resurrected bodies like Jesus, and then we will have complete self-control like He has (Phil 3:20-21, 1 John 3:2). In contrast, if we constantly choose not to have self-control we are not walking in the Spirit. We are at that point walking in the opposite direction. We are behaving like people who are not inheriting the kingdom. We behave like people who are not living by the Spirit and producing his fruit. So it is right that we walk by the Spirit day by day, building the things of the Spirit into our lives.
As we walk in the Spirit, we are also consciously killing off the sinful things in our lives. Paul says in this in Galatians 5:24-25, “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit let us also walk by the Spirit.” Before we were first given salvation, we turned away from the flesh with its passions and desires; we repented. That was the beginning event of our lives with Jesus, and it was also a commitment to an on-going way of life where we constantly choose to reject sin. We see the same thing in Romans 8:13-14, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by a Spirit of God are the sons of God.” Our sins have been put to death on the cross with Jesus, and now part of being led by Spirit is not allowing those things to come back to us and cause us to stumble as we are walking. Walking by the Spirit has two parts to it: doing the things we need to do, and, not doing the things we should not be doing. To deliberately do what pleases God and not do the sin that works against us we need Spirit empowered self-control.
2) Scripture helps us to walk in the Spirit and grow in self-control
In John 17:17 Jesus prayed to God the Father about his disciples, saying “Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth.” Sanctification is where we are in the process of being increasingly set apart from sin and the things of the world, and being increasingly conformed to and devoted to the things of God. God sanctifies us in The Truth. If we are going to have sanctification, and if we are going to have self control as a necessary part of our sanctification, then we must know the truth and be living in the truth. Living in the truth entails correctly believing the most fundamentally important things about reality: we must know who God is, we must have the truth about who we are, we must have the truth about our behavior, and we must have the truth about what sin is and does. The more we accept the full and honest truth about all those things, and the more we are prepared to act on those truths, the more likely we are to develop self-control in our lives. What is the source of this truth? God Himself is Truth (1 John 5:6, John 14:6), furthermore, what He speaks is The Truth (Your word is truth). His written Word in scripture is His truth written for us, which will sanctify us if we are living in it.
Self-control is an inseparable part of the sanctification process. Knowing what God says in His Word helps us with the self-control component of sanctification, among many other things. When we have a good knowledge of scripture, and we are in it every day and remember what it says, helpful things from it come back to us when we need to exercise self-control.
Scripture has both general and specific exhortations about self-control. An example of general exhortation is Proverbs 25:28, which says, “A man without self-control is like a city broken into and without walls.” The intention of that verse is for us to compare it’s two examples: a) A man without self-control, and b) a city that has had its defenses breached and destroyed. Both the man without self-control and the city without walls are open to attack and subjugation by their enemies. The city without walls is open to a physical army that goes to war against it and wants to control it. Whereas the man without self-control is open to attack by the enemies of his soul who want to control him. So that’s a general exhortation that we are to chew over and meditate on, remembering it for when we need it. Titus 2:11-12 is another general exhortation from the New Testament, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.”
We also have in scripture specific exhortations about particular areas of our lives where we need to have self-control. Some examples: 1 Corinthians 6:18, “Flee from sexual immorality.” That’s a blunt reminder about having sexual purity, and of course self-control is a big part of that. Another example is Proverbs 23:20-21, “Be not among drunkards or among glutinous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags.” There are two similar exhortations in those verses, which are talking about controlling our eating and drinking of alcohol.
One more from James 3:2, “For we all stumble in many ways, and if anyone does not stumble in what he says he is a perfect man able to bridle his whole body.” Who never stumbles in what they say? We all need to have control over what comes out of our mouths. There are a wide variety of helpful things we should say, and there are a wide variety of evil things we should not say. The Bible addresses those things, the evil things being things like gossip, slander, division, lying, obscenity, outbursts of anger etc. Those things can be difficult to control and they come out of our mouths quite easily. But with God’s help we can grow in our control of those things.
So scripture helps us with our self-control. As Paul told Timothy, “All scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” The Bible is able to give us teaching, reproof, correction and training in self-control and equip us to do good.
3) Pray
Another thing we should do as we are walking in the Spirit and growing the fruit of self-control is talk to God about this. Tell him what is happening in regard to your self-control. He wants to hear you. Usually self-control issues are on-going and repeating issues, and it’s good to give the Lord a running commentary on how you are doing in those areas. Which is good. He loves you, he is interested, and he is patient and forgiving. You are His child and He wants you to grow in those areas of your life. When we are praying to God about these things, we are praying to One who understands what it is like to live on this earth with its challenges. Hebrews 2:18 says, “For because He Himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” Although Jesus didn’t give in to temptation and he never sinned, He did suffer during his time here, and part of that suffering came through temptation being put in front of Him. When Jesus lived here, he was fully human, therefore He is aware of what we are talking about when we tell him about the pressures that this world brings.
If we have difficulty with self-control, we can ask for God’ help in problem situations and in building self-control within us. We read in 1 John 5:14, “And this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.” There is no question that having self-control and growing this fruit in your life is His will, so we can be confident that the Lord hears us when we tell Him that we need His help. This is not to say that His answer will always be to give complete and immediate self-control. Sometimes His will for us is for us to walk through a long and painful process of improvement. But this is a guarantee that even if you are struggling, He does hear and understand, and there is a plan.
4) Confession
As we are walking in the Spirit and growing self-control, we need to confess when we don’t have self-control. We confess to ourselves, and to God, and to other people. Admitting our struggles and failures is part of the process.
We should confess to ourselves the accurate truth about what we are doing. We need to agree with God about how He sees our behaviour. We know the heart is deceitful above all things (Jer. 17:9), and that we make excuses for our behavior. We try to come up with plausible sounding reasons for not having control over something. We have to confess to ourselves exactly what it is that we are doing and exactly what God says about that.
We confess to God our failures in self-control, as David said in Psalm 32:5, “I acknowledged my sin to you, and did not cover my iniquity, I said ‘I will confess any transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” So we agree with God about our sin, we then repent, and He forgives us, allowing us a fresh start, hopefully having learnt something.
And should also confess our failings in self-control to other people. James 5:16 reads, “Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” You may be living in a cycle of struggle, guilt, and failure all alone, or you can tell a brother or sister in Jesus about what’s happening. They can listen to you, encourage you, pray with you, and check to see how you are doing. We weren’t made to deal with these things on our own.
5) Train your conscience
We need to listen to our conscience because it is a tool of the Holy Spirit for guiding us as we walk in the Spirit. But more than that, we should train our conscience to conform to the things of God. Every human being, either passively or actively, trains their conscience to react a particular way. Your conscience is shaped and trained through things you decide to do, through what you decide not to do, through your worldview, through your beliefs, and through your everyday thought life. These things shape what our conscience speaks to us. If we know what God wants for us, and we are listening to that in our everyday life, choosing to do what He wants, it has the positive effect of shaping our conscience to function as God wants.
If we read God’s Word and apply it to our lives, choosing to listen to the Holy Spirit speaking through it, acting accordingly, our conscience will be exercised and strengthened in doing the right things, which then helps us with self-control. If we refuse to submit to what God is saying to us through his Word and by his Spirit, making excuses for ourselves, we develop a habit of ignoring our conscience. Then, over time, our conscience becomes suppressed and malfunctions, which does not help our self-control. That scenario is more likely to reinforce a lack of self-control.
6) Sometimes in life you have to run away
Sometimes in battle you need to make a strategic withdrawal. If there is a situation where you know you’re going to have a problem controlling yourself, avoid going there. Or, if you are already there, you may need to escape. In Genesis 39, Joseph had to physically run from Potipher’s wife. The thing you may need to get away from could be a person, or a location, or a social situation, or a place on the internet. Sometimes running away isn’t an available option but sometimes it is a good option.
7) Who is influencing you?
Ask yourself about the people who have the greatest influence in your life. Are they encouraging you to have self-control, or not to exercise self-control? What are the people you hang out with influencing you to do? Whose voices are you listening to? In Psalm 119:63, the Psalmist says, “I am a companion of all who fear You, of those who keep your precepts.” The opposite is found in 1 Corinthians 15:33, “Do not be deceived ‘Bad company ruins good morals.’” Do not be deceived about this. If there are influential people in your life who are constantly trying to lead you to do the wrong thing, you are eventually going to do what they are doing. Take a look at who you spend time with, who is having input into what you’re thinking, and what those people want you to become.
8) Resistance, persistence and endurance
Developing self-control is a long-term, life-long pursuit. While we live in this world there will always be potential for us to fall into sin or unfruitful living, so building and maintaining self-control is not something we can stop doing. On this side of heaven we never arrive at a place where we are beyond having a self-control failure. We must develop a long-term pattern of resisting those things that damage the Spirit’s work of self-control within us.
James advises us to “Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). We first submit ourselves to God and then we resist the devil. Submitting to God enables us to resist the devil and presents him with a situation that he doesn’t want to be in. Peter gives similar instruction, “Be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Pet. 5:8-9). We are told to be watchful and alert for the devil. He is sometimes bold and open in his attacks, and sometimes he lays hidden surprise traps for us (1 Tim. 3:7). We resist him in faith, and in the knowledge of the fellowship of suffering those things which are common with other believers.
Likewise, we also resist the impulses that come to us through our sinful nature, “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Rom. 13:14). We are to “put on,” and to continue putting on the Lord Jesus in order to resist the flesh, rather than hoping in our own ability. We are to live in a continual process of resisting what the world is trying to force us to be, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:1-2). We resist the constant pressure from the world that tries to conform us to it’s pattern, and instead, we present ourselves wholly to God.
We grow in self-control as we pursue this spiritual fruit over the course of our lives, enduring the struggles and attacks that confront us. “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:24-27). If we are to gain the rewards God has for us, we will achieve that through determined, self-disciplined training.
9) Masters and slaves
Everyone has something in their life that has mastery over them. In Romans chapter 6, Paul divides these into two categories; being a slave to sin or being a slave to Christ. These are the two categories of master that matter most because the consequences of obedience to either of these extend beyond this life. This is something no one can opt out of. We are all slaves of one or the other. “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to life?” (Rom. 6 16).
We who have been saved by the grace of God, (and not by our own works), have been given a new life where the enslaving power of sin has been overcome in Jesus, “We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” (Rom. 6:6). In our former lives, before Jesus made us a new creation (1 Cor. 5:17), freeing ourselves from slavery to sin was not an option. But now that we have been freed by Jesus, we have been given the power and responsibility to reject that pattern of slavery and not return there again, “Let not sin reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions” (Rom. 6:12). A life pattern of self-control is an important component for having obedience to the Lord rather than obeying the enslaving force of sin. We have been set free from slavery to sin and have been given the ability to obey the new Master who loves us. Self-control helps us to continue to live in that new freedom.
10) Self-control and maturity as believers
The final thing we are going to look at is that self-control is a necessary part of our maturity as believers. We read this and 2 Peter 1:3-11. There is a list of attributes there, that Peter tells us are vital for us to add to our faith and keep developing: virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection and love. If we have these things in our lives and are in the business of increasing them, we will be effective and fruitful in the knowledge of Jesus. If these things are part of our lives, they will help us to confirm to ourselves that we have been called and are elect, and these qualities will keep us from falling. Self-control is embedded in the middle of all that. Living according to this maturing process, with self-control as an essential element, helps us to do the things that are good and to reject the things that are bad. Self-control is an indispensable part of being a mature and fruitful servant of Jesus Christ.
The opposite is also true. Why are there so many Christians that are immature, spiritually stunted, weak, short sighted, ineffective and unfruitful, unsure, and falling over? It is because they are not doing what the Holy Spirit through the apostle Peter is telling them to do. They are not developing knowledge, godliness, steadfastness, love, or self-control. So, self-control is part of our development, and a lack of self-control interferes with our development, having a serious and crippling effect on us.
Summary
All the spiritual fruit that God gives us by His Spirit are important and help to build us up and glorify Him. Self-control is part of our development as disciples of Jesus, and the Lord wants to grow this within us. It is an important part of enabling us to live like He wants us to, and will keep us from doing things that we will regret. May God bless us as we grow in self-control.