The Fruit of Self-Control

Galatians 5:22–23 NKJV

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.

We come to the last on Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit—self-control. This word throws us back sharply to that horrible list of “the works of the flesh” that comes immediately before the fruit of the Spirit.

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. (Gal 5:19-21)

Many of the behaviors that Paul lists show human nature out of control and at its sinful, excessive worst. That kind of uncontrolled life lets people give in to self-indulgence, sexual gratification, pride, gluttony, and so on. Self-control is the opposite of those kinds of sinful behaviors.

That fact is probably the reason why self-control is the one and only fruit of the Spirit for which we don’t have a matching quality of God. For God does not need to exercise self-control over any sinful tendency within himself. God does not have to hold in check any evil desires. “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all,” as John said (1 Jn 1:5). God is not tempted in any way by evil. So in that sense (self-control over evil desires), this is not a quality of God.

There is a similar list to Paul’s fruit of the Spirit in the opening verses of 2 Peter. There, self-control is among the qualities that we should seek to add to our faith, in response to God’s divine power and promises, as we grow to maturity and effectiveness in our relationship with Christ.

2 Peter 1:5–9 NKJV

5 But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, 6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, 7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. 8 For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

We do indeed have powerful drives and passions that need to be kept under control. But since some of our passions are part of our fallen, sinful nature, how can they be controlled? We do not have the ability in ourselves to do so successfully in our own strength.

Sin has a power of its own operating against our best intentions, and it very quickly gets out of control and carries us along with it. Paul knew only too well about the power of sin and the flesh, and he knew that the only power sufficient to keep it under control is the Holy Spirit.

Part of the work of the Holy Spirit within us is the way he enables us to keep the sinful desires and impulses that still lurk within us under control. Self-control does involve effort of the will, but it is an effort inspired and empowered by the Spirit of God as his will bears fruit in our will.

Probably the main thing (but certainly not the only thing) that Paul has in mind as regards what we need to control is our sexual desires. Certainly, his list of “the works of the flesh” begins with sexual immorality, and in several other places Paul includes that among his lists of sinful behavior that Christians should put aside altogether (e.g., 1 Cor 5:9-11; Eph 5:3-7; Col 3:5-10).

If we could have asked Paul for examples from the Scriptures, I think he might have mentioned Joseph. Joseph had been put in charge of all the affairs of his master, Potiphar, in Egypt. He rose to prominence and success, though still technically a slave. He had reached the point where many men in his position felt free to take sexual liberties as their due reward. And that temptation came his way, not with a slave-girl, but with Potiphar’s wife.

Now Joseph was well-built and handsome, and after a while his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, “Come to bed with me!”

But he refused. “With me in charge,” he told her, “my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even to be with her.

One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. She caught him by his cloak and said, “Come to bed with me!” But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house. (Gen 39:6-12)

In that little story we can see not only Joseph’s self-control, but also the powerful reasons he gives for it. The first is that he was not willing to break the trust of his master (he could also stand as an example of faithfulness for that reason). But even more, he was not willing to sin against God. Now the author of Genesis has told us several times that God was with Joseph in all the ups and downs of his life. So we might even suggest that the fruit of the Spirit is being modeled by Joseph at this point, for his self-control was not just a matter of his own strength, but his awareness of God in his life.

As a counterexample we might think of the much longer, and much sadder, story of David. His lack of self-control after seeing Bathsheba bathing led him not only into adultery but also into a deepening morass of deception and planned murder. And even though he repented and experienced God’s forgiveness, his loss of personal self-control meant that he also lost moral control over his own family—especially two of his sons, Amnon and Absalom—who amplified their father’s sexual sins to their own eventual destruction (the whole sorry tale fills 2 Sam 11–17).

Temptation to sexual activity and relations outside the good context God provided for sex (within marriage) remains very strong and is a powerful enemy for any of us at any age. We need to recognize what a dangerous enemy it is, whether in actual practice, or in the world of our thoughts and imagination, through pornography and other sources. Of course sexual temptation targets both men and women, but there seems little doubt that it is particularly potent in men (and as a man, I’m allowed to say that, for I know it to be true).

The stupendous scale of human suffering caused by uncontrolled male lust and sexual anarchy is beyond imagination. Uncountable numbers of women and little girls and boys all over the world suffer at the hands of rapists, pimps, sex-traffickers, pedophiles, abusers, violent husbands, and plain, ordinary adulterers. Such things were present in Paul’s day also, though perhaps not on the scale we have come to witness in the modern world. So Paul is taking a strongly countercultural stance when he tells Christians that they must have nothing to do with such practices, ever. And the only way to do that is through the Spirit-empowered exercise of self-control.