Self-Control and the Power of Christ

It’s not a flashy concept or an especially attractive idea. It doesn’t turn heads or grab headlines. It can be as seemingly small as saying no to another Oreo, French fry, or milkshake—or another half hour on Netflix or Facebook—or it can feel as significant as living out a resounding yes to sobriety and sexual purity.

Alongside love and godliness, self-control serves as a major summary term for Christian conduct (2 Timothy 1:7; 2 Peter 1:6). It is the climactic “fruit of the Spirit” in the apostle’s famous list (Galatians 5:22–23) and one of the first things that must be characteristic of leaders in the church (1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:8).

The idea of controlling one’s own self presumes at least two things: 1) the presence of something within us that needs to be bridled and 2) the possibility of drawing on some source of power to restrain it. For the born-again, our hearts are new, but the poison of indwelling sin still courses through our veins.

Biblically, self-control, or lack thereof, goes to the deepest part of us: the heart. It begins with control of our emotions, and then includes our minds as well (1 Timothy 3:2). Self-control is bodily and external, too. The apostle disciplines his body to “keep it under control” (1 Corinthians 9:25-27). It can mean not being “slaves to much wine” (Titus 2:3-5). And in particular, the language of self-control often has sexual overtones. Paul instructs Christians to “abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5).

True self-control is a gift from above, produced in and through us by the Holy Spirit. But we also need to note that self-control is not a gift we receive passively, but actively. We are not the source, but we are intimately involved. We open the gift and live it.

You may be able to trick yourself into some semblance of true self-control. You may be able to drum up the willpower to just say no. But you alone get the glory for that—which will not prove satisfying enough for the Christian.

We want Jesus to get glory. We want to control ourselves in the power He supplies. We learn to say no, but we don’t just say no. We admit the inadequacy, and emptiness, of doing it on our own. We pray for Jesus’ help, secure accountability, and craft specific strategies. We trust God’s promises to supply the power for every good work (2 Corinthians 9:8; Philippians 4:19) and then act in faith that He will do it in and through us (Philippians 2:12-13). And then we thank Him for every Spirit-supplied strain and success and step forward in self-control.

Ultimately, it is about being controlled by Christ. When “the love of Christ controls us” (2 Corinthians 5:14), when we embrace the truth that He is our sovereign, and God has “left nothing outside His control” (Hebrews 2:8), we can bask in the freedom that we need not muster our own strength to exercise self-control, but we can find strength in the strength of another. In the person of Jesus, “the grace of God has appeared … training us”—not just “to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions,” but “to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age” (Titus 2:11-12). Christian self-control is not finally about bringing our bodily passions under our own control, but under the control of Christ by the power of His Spirit.

Because self-control is a gift, produced in and through us by God’s Spirit, Christians can and should be the people on the planet most hopeful about growing in self-control. In Jesus, we have a source for true self-control far beyond our feeble selves.

—David Mathis, from www.desiringgod.org, condensed