Fruit of the Spirit: Self Control 1 Peter 4:7-14

Dear friends in Christ,

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

St. Peter writes, “The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers.”

Each week since Easter, we have been discussing the fruit of the Holy Spirit that is at work in us. The reason for this is that the readings for the Easter season. The Gospel lesson for each week have focused on Jesus preparing to send to us the Holy Spirit. And Paul lists in Galatians 5 attributes that the Spirit works in us. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This is not an exhaustive list of course, but it gives us a good direction to talk about the fruit that the Holy Spirit is at work to produce in us.

So as I was preparing for sermons this Easter season, I looked at the readings for each week to see which of the fruit of the Spirit fit the Scripture lessons that are appointed for that day in the lectionary.

As we come to the last Sunday in Easter, we hit upon the last fruit that Paul lists in Galatians 5, self-control. St. Peter uses the word with a large amount of urgency. The end is upon us. Time to reign in our bodies. Practice self-control for the sake of your prayers.

Self-control is a fruit of the spirit that doesn’t get much airtime. It is certainly not a fruit of the Spirit that sounds flashy or important at a first glance. But self-control is the exercise of faith in Jesus.

What self-control is, is the ability to say “no” to our desires. This is why self-control is hard and doesn’t get much press time. Self-control is not a popular fruit of the Spirit. Who here wants to say no to the things we want in life? If you are going to the store, self-control is the ability to put down that bag of chips and say “nope. Don’t need it.” That is a fight that is lost often. Self-control tells our body, no. This means that self-control cuts against the grain. No one wants to do that.

But yet, I hope that talking about the fruit of the Spirit this Easter season has made you realize that all the fruit of the Holy Spirit cuts against the grain. The fruit of the Spirit is not natural for sinful humans to have. They are only a gift that Christians have received and which we are called to practice.

If you want to test to see if you have God’s Holy Spirit, look around and see if your life looks different than the life of those around you, especially if you have non-Christian friends, family, and neighbors. Where are you at Sunday morning? What is your prayer life? Do you talk like non-Christians talk and how do you act in comparison to them? The New Testament encourages Christians to test themselves to see if they are in the faith.

No doubt, if you examine yourself, you will find, like I do for myself, that there is a lot of room to grow. There is much to repent about and to receive God’s forgiveness won for you in Jesus Christ and to be renewed by the Holy Spirit in.

So a mark of a Christian, and a Christian is someone who believes in Jesus Christ and who has the Holy Spirit, this means that self-control is a habit. The word self-control is often used in the New Testament with respect to the control of our body. To reign in our body and our desires. The word self-control in the New Testament is especially used when it comes to sexual desires and our appetites of food and alcohol and our vices.

St. Peter makes it clear that a failure to practice self-control will block our ability to pray. And when prayers are blocked, the world around us goes to hell. We lose access to God, and the people around us suffer. And this is unthinkable since it is true that the end of all things are upon us. St. Peter does not want us to trip and fall when we are so close to the finish line. We need self-control to finish strong and to not give up the faith that is ours in Jesus Christ.

This means that one of the greatest tools that the devil has at his disposal is when we are able to gratify our desires. This country for example is equipped to serve as the devil’s playground. The recent inability to close stores down on God’s day, to have activities running nonstop in our lives, instant access to media and entertainment, these things are not environments where self-control can easily thrive. This country is not set up to allow Christians to live and thrive. So we must create communities and churches and Christian families that can create the space for self-control. This is not an easy task.

You live in a world that is hostile to the opportunities of the Holy Spirit for self-control. This can be hard to hear because we are so used to having our desires fulfilled. And, as a result, we have been trained by the devil to come to associate God’s blessing with the ability to have our desires satisfied. If we get what we want then it must be what God wants. That is how we have come to think and we see nothing wrong with that. And on the flip side, if we do not get what we want, then how dare that happen. Someone is going to get at least a mouthful and a piece of my mind.

Dear brothers and sisters in Jesus. Getting what we want has driven a lot of church outreach and evangelism. As a pastor, I often hear that the Church’s job is to give people what they want. And if we give people what we want, well then the church grows, the coffers fill, and everyone is happy. Or so we wrongly think. In fact, once I was told that my job as a pastor was just to do what that person wanted, which was to indulge their vices and lack of self-control.

We need God’s Holy Spirit. We need again to hear the voice of our Savior who calls us out of this world and therefore into a world where we need self-control. The mark of the Holy Spirit is the ability to be told no. And a blessing is when the Holy Spirit uses someone else to tell us no. This takes a variety of forms. When a parent tells their child that they don’t need more candy, instead of giving in when they have a tantrum over it, the parents ride out the storm. Practicing self-control is to tell the body “no” when it wants to sleep in on Sunday and you instead tell your lazy rear end to get to church where God will have his way with you. That is self-control.

Self-control is absolutely necessary in order to survive as a Christian in this world. We must be about the habit of telling ourselves no. And when someone tells us no to the things that we think we want, we need to realize that this is the voice of Jesus Christ speaking to us to turn away from self and to turn to him and to see him as the giver of better desires and good desires and eternal desires.

God is at work, when our flesh does not get what it wants. Our flesh is hostile to God. It rebels against him. But God has not left us in this. He has sent his Son who was crucified in the flesh but now lives in the Spirit. And Jesus gives this gift to those whom he has chosen and called, which is you. If you are sitting here today, it is because God has chosen you. If you are baptized this means that God has called you and the Bible tells us again and again that those who are baptized have received the Holy Spirit.

So what we need to pray for is for the Holy Spirit to continue to give to us self-control. Self-control is how we tell our body no, and which leaves us open to love God and to love our neighbor. Self-control denies ourselves and opens us up to loving our neighbor.

This is probably not something you are experiencing out in the world. We live in a world that promotes self-gratification. In fact, if someone wants to do something, it is a great evil in the eyes of many people, even people who bear the name of Christian, it is a great evil to many people to be told “no” when they want something.

We connect our desires to happiness. We think indulging ourselves when we want something is good. We have a hard time telling ourselves no. We see this with sex which is the greatest idol in our culture. Heaven, forbid we tell people how God made marriage and how lustful desires are to be denied and self-control exercised. Self-control is a great evil to many.

But for those in Christ, self-control is our greatest tool to curb our sinful flesh and to be open to God. So when it comes to our flesh, we know God’s ideal for sexuality. A man and woman committed in marriage. Everything outside of this must be stopped and curbed in order that marriage would thrive, be honored, and that righteousness in our land increased which serves us all. In this regard, we must learn to reign in our bodies and practice the fruit of self-control.

Paul often uses the word self-control that was connected to athletes in the ancient world. An athlete is someone who trains their body to be able to compete. They would not engorge excess food or drink. They needed self-control to compete for 1st place.

Likewise for a Christian, we compete together for the prize of eternal life, which God has destined us for as those who belong to Jesus. Food is a blessing to God, but how often to we satisfy our stomachs with excess rather than turning to God in faith? I read a recent report that said that in 2024 Wisconsin has 10 of the 20 most drunk cities in America. This is not something to be proud of. That is sad and it shows a lack of reeling in our bodes. How can self-control be exercised when we make habits of indulging excess sex, food and drink nonstop?

We must recover things like fasting, where we make the habit of telling our body no. We need to create churches where support is found in one another. Self-control is not about willpower at the end of the day. It is about practicing the gift of the Spirit. If we fall down, we get back up. If we find ourselves in excess, we must learn to share and give. If we find ourselves alone in this task, we must seek others that we can turn to and rely on. You need the church, and we need to create a community where we can practice the gifts that God gives to us in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

If we commit ourselves to that task, we will make a better world. We will also live faithful lives that point to Jesus. For the sake of our children and our grandchildren we must begin this work now. It may cut against the grain at first. But with practice, steadfastness, and with the focus on the finish line that is ours in Jesus, we will find that this is a better way to live. A life that is God pleasing and a life that confesses to the world this:

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.

Now God grant you his Holy Spirit, that you may be engaged in bearing fruit, fruit that will last when Jesus Christ comes again in the glory of his Father to reward those who have been steadfast. Amen.