Developing Self-Control

Galatians 5:22-23, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

Introduction

If you were to ask the average person on the street to name some characteristics of what a faithful Christian would look like, I suspect that the word “self-control” is not one that would come up. At the same time, if you were to describe what self-control looks like in real life, they would recognize those behaviours as that which they would expect to see.

Self-control is our final fruit of the Spirit that we are look at. If you remember back to our first sermon in this series, I said that Paul does not do anything by accident. Placement is done on purpose. Love was placed first for a reason, could self-control be left last not to minimize but to highlight its importance? I believe so.

The fruit of the Spirit that Paul describes correspond with virtues that were discussed within the Greco-Roman world. Self-control was one of those virtues. For the Romans, self-control was mostly understood in terms of control of appetite for food and sex. For example, while married Roman men could have sex outside their marriage, being too promiscuous would be looked down on, not as a betrayal of their wife, but as a loss of self-control. For meals, they should be designed to impress people with how exotic they were, but at the same time, having too much food was in conflict with self-control.

The Bible shares the Roman concern for self-control when it comes to sex and food, but does not divorce it from other virtues. We seek self-control, not so we can boast of being a virtuous person, but because this is honouring to God, to other people, and to our bodies. 

Let us take a look at what the Bible says about self-control and how this fits with the other fruit of the Spirit.

Athletes and Self-Control

We live in a culture that has high esteem for athletes. Today, some of the highest paid people are athletes. We are a long way off from the times when NHL players would work second jobs to make ends meet. Think about the best of the best athletes. How do they get to that point? Most likely they have to make decisions about practising, working out, and diet. Do they have other options of things they could do with their time and energy? Of course. But they make these decisions to achieve the goals they have.

The ancient world understood this as well. The Olympics has been around longer than the church. The first Olympics was in 776 BC. For context, that is the same century that the Old Testament books of Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah were written. So Paul would have been very familiar with athletes. He knew how hard they had to work to be successful and he understood the role of self-control. We have been talking about self-control and it is time for us to define it. Basically self-control is the ability to not give into the impulse of the moment and to stay on the track that deep down we want to be on. So an athlete could sleep all day, eat bad food, and skip practices. Most likely they have days that they want to. Self-control means that they do not have to give into that momentary urge. 

Paul compares this to his experience as a follower of Jesus. If we are truly serious about following Jesus, we need self-control. It would be wonderful if the moment we believed in Jesus that we would permanently lose any impulses that would lead us astray. You may think you actually do not have these impulses, we will get into that. The truth is that we all struggle with not giving into temptations.

Paul, while fully believing in the work of the Holy Spirit, also understood the need of athletic-like self-discipline. We need to determine to go for the goal and not let anything get in the way. In the kingdom of God, there are no amateur Christians, there are only professional Christians who play in the big leagues.

Churches and Self-Control

What does self-control look like for churches today? I already said that the Roman focus was on sex and food. Paul would have agreed with that, although from his letters, he likely saw it as have a much wider scope. Here is the framework. Self-control is saying no to what would take us off track so that we can say yes to what is most important.

The question we need to ask concerns the kinds of things that we need to control. Churches have tended to focus on outward behaviours. Think of the temptations to smoke or drink. Baptists have an interesting history of rejecting dancing. There were times that churches took a strong stand against going to see movies. I attended a church that put the focus on controlling the kind of music people listened to. 

There is a need for self-control for outward behaviours and self-control is something is that is personally beneficial in many ways. However, we have to be careful when we attempt to impose self-control on things not discussed in Scripture on others. In fact, you cannot impose self-control, all you can do is try to control. My position is that we point people toward Jesus and hopefully people will do what is needed to grow closer to Jesus.

But returning to self-control, I have found the most challenging and rewarding areas to be about what happens on the inside. What happens when you overhear a juicy piece of gossip? What will you do with it? What happens when someone you are jealous of stumbles in such a way to make you look good? What do you do with that? How do we respond to the temptation to see the worst in other people or even in ourself? Once for Lent, I decided I would give up complaining. I have never had to exercise so much self-control in my life. The worst was that I wanted to complain about how hard it was to not complain! 

You might wonder what the point is of exercising this kind of self-control. Part of what I was taught was that you exercise self-control to avoid sin which could put your salvation in jeopardy. I believe self-control is important for avoiding sin, although I also believe that our adoption into God’s family is not as fragile as some people think. But self-control, as described by Paul in both his athletic illustration and for the fruit of the Spirit, is not out of fearof punishment but out of a desire to be the most Christ-like Christian we can possibly be. An athlete disciplines themselves not because they are afraid their coach will kill them but because they want to be the best athlete they can. It should be the same with our experience as Christians.

Conclusion

I always try to consider the “so what?” question at the end of my messages. I am not interested in just lecturing on the Bible. It is important for all of us to think about what we are supposed to take away from this. Obviously self-control is important but where do we need to put our effort? You may find that none of the the activities that the church has traditionally spoken out against are the temptations that you face. It is good for us to look in on the inside and consider where our real areas of struggle are. I definitely know the inner attitudes that I need to deal with are. I try to use self-control with my inner dialogue. When I do this, I find that my relationships with God and others are better and so is my mental health. But I can easily let my inner dialogue go the way it wants. It really needs self-control.

This may not seem very spiritual and that you could get similar advice in a self-help book. For Paul, self-control is not the path for inner fulfillment but is the fruit of the Spirit. Self-control, along with all of the other things that we have been looking at are what the Holy Spirit wants to grow in our life. But we need to cooperate. We are not computers that simply receive a software upgrade. We are orchards of the fruit of the Spirit. That fruit needs to be cultivated and the trees need to be cared for in order to see the greatest possible harvest. The Holy Spirit is at work within us. Let us work with the Spirit to see this change take place as we become more and more like Jesus.