If there’s one virtue that’s missing more than any other these days, it has to be self-control. You don’t have to look too far to see examples of people losing self-control. Witness road rage incidents, customers fighting at the grocery store, and unhinged Twitter spats to see that people these days don’t possess any self-control. I’ll admit that I continually struggle with self-control when it comes to food and exercise. Who’s with me?
The thing is, self-control is something that God expects us to exhibit as His people. After all, it’s one of the fruits of the Spirit: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23, ESV).
Everybody can get behind those first eight fruits of the Spirit, but that ninth one gets us every time, even though it’s crucial to being able to live by the other fruits. The Apostle Paul reminds us in the next verse that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24, ESV).
What does it mean to have self-control? I recently read a devotion that included a description of a self-controlled life by the late Dr. R.C. Sproul, who said that “the person who has the quality of self-control behaves in a way that is appropriate to the situation and that is appropriate to the circumstances in which [he] finds [himself].”
It sounds really simple the way Dr. Sproul put it. So why do we struggle so much with self-control? On the most obvious level, it’s because we will always struggle with our sin nature until God completely perfects us. But I also think that all of us want our own way — which is what we have to avoid if we’re going to maintain self-control. After all, as Paul tells the Corinthian church, love “does not insist on its own way” (1 Corinthians 13:5a, ESV).
“Loving self-control does not insist on its own way,” the devotion reminds us. “Those who exhibit the fruit of self-control are teachable, willing to learn from other people, and not arrogantly pressing their views as the only legitimate solution when they are not. Such self-control is vital for maintaining peace in the body of Christ.”
Related: Sunday Thoughts: the Weight of Our Sin
So now that we’ve established that we all need self-control in our lives, what does it look like when we actually exhibit that fruit of the Spirit? For starters, we rely on God more than on ourselves. As Paul told Timothy, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7, ESV).
“We do not become a Christian on our own, and we cannot grow on our own,” Got Questions tells us. “Philippians 2:13 says that ‘it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.’ Every good thing we do is the fruit of the Spirit’s work in our lives.”
Self-control allows us to resist temptation. As we rely on the Holy Spirit to give us self-control, we experience the freedom for which Jesus set us free (Galatians 5:1) and we cease to be “enslaved to sin” (Romans 6:6, ESV). And self-control works in multiple areas of our lives — physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional — allowing us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30).
“Self-control naturally leads to perseverance (2 Peter 1:6) as we value the long-term good instead of the instant gratification of the world,” Got Questions continues. “Self-control is a gift that frees us. It frees us to enjoy the benefits of a healthy body. It frees us to rest in the security of good stewardship. It frees us from a guilty conscience. Self-control restricts the indulgence of our foolish desires, and we find the liberty to love and live as we were meant to.”
The next time we’re tempted to tell somebody off, get angry in traffic, or overdo it when it comes to food (or anything else), reach for that ever-elusive self-control. It’s like muscle memory: the more you use it, the easier it is to use. I’m going to ask God to help me exercise it more. What about you?
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