How Do You Actually Grow in Self-Control?
How Do You Actually Grow in Self-Control?
In short
Self-control grows by surrender first, not willpower. Romans 8 frees you from condemnation before it asks anything of you, and Romans 8:13 says the deeds of the body are put to death by the Spirit, not by grit. From there the pattern is three steps: capture the thought early by learning the runway that leads to it (2 Corinthians 10:5), cast it out (Titus 2:11-12), and replace it with something above (Colossians 3:2). Distraction is the main obstacle, and gates are the practical fix.
I bought a truck a while back and put a sticker on the back of it. Jesus saves. I loved it. I loved saying Jesus saves to everybody on the highway, right up until somebody cut me off. Then I wanted to cover the sticker.
I have been a weapon of unrighteousness on Highway 121 in the last couple of months, because there are some knuckleheads out there. I was not planning to tell you that.
Here is why it matters. Self-control is the fruit that gets read last and fastest. It sits at the end of the list, right before the breath, and it gets the least attention of any of them. It is also the one standing between what you believe and what you actually do.
Why is self-control not the same as willpower?
Because willpower has a ceiling and the flesh knows exactly where it is.
Let me set the frame before anything else. I am not suggesting you can try hard enough to stop sinning. You cannot try hard enough to be righteous or holy without the One who is holy living in you. Moral reserve is not strong enough to free anyone from the law of sin and death. If the first step is not surrender, nothing after it matters.
Which is why the passage to start with is not a command.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”
Romans 8:1-2
Sit in that before you do anything else. God is perfectly just, so sin had to be answered. He is perfectly merciful, so He did not want to destroy the people He made for His family. He satisfied both at once by paying it Himself.
Self-control is what becomes possible after that, not what earns it.
What is the difference between self-control and stoicism?
Stoicism reaches detachment through reason. A believer is changed through surrender. Those two roads look similar for about a mile and then they separate completely.
Stoicism is an old philosophy, older than Paul’s letters, that treats self-discipline, emotional resilience, and virtue as the path to a good life. Cultivate wisdom, courage, justice, and self-control, and happiness follows regardless of circumstances. Read that quickly and it sounds excellent.
Here is the problem. It makes you the god of your life instead of the One who authored it. It is deadening the nerves so you do not have to feel, then calling the numbness maturity.
Godly self-control is not gritting your teeth and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Romans 8:13 says if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. By the Spirit. The strength is borrowed, and it is borrowed on purpose.
And one more thing worth noticing. Control usually grows out of fear. If I can control my surroundings, I will not get hurt. Did you know the only control Scripture actually tells you to have is control of yourself? Not your spouse. Not your children. Not the person in the next chair. Self.
What is the three-step pattern?
Capture it, cast it out, replace it. Skip any one of the three and the whole thing fails.
Step one: capture it
“We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
2 Corinthians 10:5
Everybody quotes that verse. Almost nobody explains how. Here is how. Find the pattern that leads there. If you are prone to negativity, there is a sequence that walks you into it. If you are prone to fear, there is a chain of if this, then that. Lust, anger, strife, all of them have a runway. Learn to spot the runway, not just the crash.
Then take the thought somewhere. Not into a box. Captive to obedience. That person you are furious with is also made in the image of God and bought by the blood of Christ. Is God holding them condemned for cutting you off? No. Then why am I? It is genuinely hard to keep lusting after someone you are praying for.
Step two: cast it out
“The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.”
Titus 2:11-12
Romans 6:13 says do not present yourself to sin as an instrument of unrighteousness, but present yourself to God as an instrument of righteousness. That word instrument can be translated weapon. You are going to be one or the other.
Step three: replace it
“Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2).
Nature will not tolerate a vacuum, and neither will your mind. If you capture a thought, cast it out, and put nothing in the space, something is moving back in by lunch.
What gets in the way?
Distraction, mostly. If the enemy cannot make you sin, he will make you busy.
You know the pattern. You wake up meaning to spend time in the word. You sit down, pick up the Bible, and pick up the phone with it. Something buzzes. Thirty minutes later the time you had is gone and God is still sitting there waiting, because He is patient like that. Or you get up for a snack and end up in the garage changing the brakes.
The fix is not complicated, it is just unglamorous. If you read on your phone, buy a paper Bible. Find one room that becomes the place you go. Give the first minutes of the day to the thing you claim matters most.
And clear up one misquote while we are here, because it does real damage. God will never give you more than you can handle is not in the Bible. What Scripture says is this.
“No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”
1 Corinthians 10:13
That is about temptation, not hardship. And the way of escape is usually a door you have to actually walk through.
What do you do about it this week?
Five moves. Start with whichever one you least want to do.
-
1
Name your runway. Write down the last three times you lost it and work backward. What happened five minutes earlier? Ten? That sequence is the thing to watch, not the blowup.
-
2
Pray for the person you are lusting after or furious with. By name. It is remarkably difficult to keep doing either while you are asking God to bring them into His kingdom.
-
3
Put one gate in place. No, I am not watching that. No, I am not going there. No, I am not spending time around that influence. Gates are not legalism. Gates are load-bearing.
-
4
Replace, do not just remove. Whatever you cast out, decide in advance what goes in its place. Colossians 3:2 gives you the direction. Above, not below.
-
5
Do not sweep it under the rug. Taking a thought captive is not the same as ignoring it. Ignore it long enough and it erupts. Take it to the foot of the throne of grace and say the actual words: God, I am struggling with this, and I want to hand it over.
Self-control reveals who is really Lord of your life. Not because self-control saves you.
What you say no to shows what you have said yes to.
And if you are in a hard stretch right now, understand that the timing is not an accident. The pressure tends to arrive right before the seasons that matter most. Stephen looked up while stones were being thrown at his face and saw the glory of God. In the middle of far less than that, we can fix our eyes on the same place.
This is the kind of thing Oak Stone works through together. Read about our culture to see what that looks like on a normal week.
One question worth sitting with
What is the last thing you said no to, and what did that no tell you about who you are actually serving?
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the fruit of the Spirit self-control?
Self-control is the final fruit listed in Galatians 5:22-23. It is the capacity to say no to the works of the flesh, and Scripture presents it as produced by the Holy Spirit rather than achieved by discipline alone. Galatians 5:16 frames it as walking by the Spirit.
How do you take every thought captive?
2 Corinthians 10:5 gives the command but not the method. In practice it means recognizing the thought pattern that leads to a given sin, interrupting it early, and bringing the thought into obedience to Christ rather than simply suppressing it. Ignoring a thought is not capturing it.
What is the difference between self-control and stoicism?
Stoicism seeks detachment through reason and self-discipline, which places the person at the center. Biblical self-control comes through surrender to Christ and the work of the Spirit. The behaviors can look similar; the source and the outcome are not.
Does the Bible say God will not give you more than you can handle?
No. That phrase is not in Scripture. 1 Corinthians 10:13 says God will not let you be tempted beyond your ability and will provide a way of escape so you can endure it. The verse addresses temptation, not suffering or hardship.
Why is self-control listed last in Galatians 5?
Scripture does not say. What is observable is that readers tend to move fastest through the end of the list, giving self-control the least attention, even though it governs whether the other fruits show up in behavior.
What does Colossians 3:2 mean?
Set your minds on things above, not on things on the earth. In practice it is the replacement step. Removing a thought leaves a vacuum, and the verse names what should fill it.
Keep going
This post comes from an Oak Stone sermon.
Adam Clark works through more of this passage than there was room for here. Oak Stone Christian Church meets in Allen, Texas, and you do not need to have this figured out before you walk in. Nobody here does.