The Fruitful Life: Self-Control

By Heidi Goehmann

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22–23

Galatians 5:22–23 is the stuff of memory verses and social media memes. We love to focus on the things God’s Spirit brings into our lives. We want to wrap our hands around warm mugs of love, joy, peace, goodness, and the list goes on. Yet, in the entire list, the least likely to be given some social media attention—or any kind of real attention for that matter—is self-control.

Self-control is the least fashionable fruit of the Spirit.

For example, if you do a search on Instagram of the various characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit, you’ll find 1.8 billion posts with #love, 29.7 million posts with #joy, 6.7 million posts with #patience, 1.9 million posts with #kindness, and less than 580,000 posts with #selfcontrol. Sure, half a million posts is a lot, but compared to nearly two billion posts about love—self-control is clearly the least popular topic when it comes to the fruit of the Spirit.

While faith and spirituality certainly aren’t about what’s fashionable or popular, it is worth taking a deeper look at our social media feeds, our conversations, and our inclinations—because the fruit of the Spirit is an outward expression of the Spirit’s life-giving work inside of us. Our lives as we portray them on social media are just one small portion of this outward expression. How we live at home, at work, and in our communities are yet more expressions of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives.

Where do you see the presence of self-control around you? If you look at our culture, you will be hard pressed to see it. And when you read more of Paul’s words in Galatians 5, I think you’ll see why.

“For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.” (vv. 14–15)

“Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.” (vv. 19–21)

“Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.” (v. 26)

Notice how many of the things listed in these verses have to do with words and how many have to do with sexuality—two things the culture around us will always struggle with.

In American culture—and many cultures around the world—the idea that we should moderate our words and our sexual desires might be two of the least popular ideas by which to live. Because more often than not, our natural, sinful selves want to say what they want to say and find pleasure, enjoyment, and affection how and when we want it.

Because of this, exercising self-control is difficult, and few of us want to talk about it because it brings to light all those things we don’t want to recognize in ourselves, much less talk about—including the shame of sexuality without boundaries, the hurt of slander, the weight of obesity, and the broken relationships suffering because of our own sinful actions.

If we look closer at how self-control looks in our everyday lives, self-control means holding our tongues when we want to gossip or “vent.” Too often, words that would be better left unshared and unsaid escape our lips. Self-control means taking care of our bodies, which might mean eating more green things and going for that walk when we’d rather not. Self-control means minding our own business yet loving our neighbors well—a complicated balance if ever there was one. Self-control means no longer dismissing inappropriate behavior with casual “boys will be boys” comments or quietly disposing of the evidence of our indiscretions in the name of “choice” and being okay with the reality that millions of pre-born babies are the cost of that choice. Self-control means no longer making racist jokes in hopes of a laugh or making assumptive and disparaging statements to build ourselves up. It means no more ignoring those we consider “less than” or the “least of” while pursuing our own goals with little regard for others.

On our own, we can’t make self-control look pretty.

But here is the beauty of self-control:

When we come face-to-face with the challenges of self-control—when we are faced with our lack of self-control—then we make room for God to work through us.

In our weakness, He is strong.

In Galatians 5:23—“against such things there is no law”—Paul says there is no law against self-control, meaning there are no limitations on the Holy Spirit’s ability to work in us and through us. We will always come up short when we try on our own to hold our tongues or escape our envy, our greed, and all our wantonness. We want to justify ourselves and perhaps even pat ourselves on the back with our lists of fruitful characteristics we see in our own lives, but the list is meant to point us to the true Fruit: Christ Jesus.

Only in Christ can we find rest for our weary attempts at control. Only in Christ can we look at our lack of control and find more Spirit-control than we had the day before and the day before that and the day before that.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness … and self-control. In Christ, these things come to bear in our lives, and we bring them into our culture—because culture will never bring them to us. In Christ, we talk about them, we look at them honestly, and we walk in them, according to Paul in Galatians 5:16.

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” (v. 16)

May you walk in the Spirit today, converse in the Spirit today, and bear the Spirit in your relationships today—in love, in peace, in patience, in goodness … and in self-control.