Fruit of the Spirit @ Work – Self-Control

With all the work crises, tough decisions, failures of others to deliver, and of course my own shortcomings, I sometimes lose self-control. This is only natural. Isn’t it?

Self-control is the last (but not least) of the fruit of the Spirit. It is one that I find rather ironic. Why should we need to Holy Spirit to control ourselves? In fact isn’t that a bit of a contradiction in terms? Yes and no. The nature of my sin is that without help I don’t have complete control. The more I try to exert control over myself, the less I seem to be able to. Paul talks about this struggle extensively in Romans 7: for example verse 17 “what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” He says it isn’t that I don’t want to be able to control my tendency to sin, but just that sin takes control unless something is done about it. “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” (Romans 7:18-20).

In a way, self-control (or the lack of it) summarizes our success in our failure in exhibiting all of the fruit of the Spirit. When I blow up at an employee because a deadline hasn’t been met and I have to face the music, I am also failing to exhibit gentleness, kindness, love, and a host of other fruit. This is because the Spirit is no longer controlling my life and so His fruit is no longer in evidence. When panic sets in because all the circumstances working against become overwhelming, even though others don’t necessarily see my panic, the fruit of the Spirit (e.g. joy and peace) will again not be evident.

So in the context of the fruit of the Spirit, self-control really means Spirit-control. Paul’s antidote to the struggles of Romans 7 is in Romans 8. “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.” (Romans 8:9) He states quite clearly that in reality we are under the control of the Holy Spirit, not sin, if the Spirit is in us. Scripture all over the place (e.g. much of John’s gospel) assures us that our salvation results in the gift of the Spirit so we should be free from the power of sin. But we also know the reality that this is a work in progress and, like the rest of the fruit of the Spirit, we will experience and exhibit it to the degree we grow in everyday knowledge of God and in surrender to the Spirit.

Self-control isn’t something we do, but something the Spirit gives us. It is a paradox – the more we try to take control of ourselves, the less we’re able to. The more we allow the Spirit to take control, the more self-controlled we’ll be. Perhaps this is part of what Jesus meant when he said “Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Luke 17:33).