Your Self-Control Does Not Rest on You
- Message Excerpt by
- Topic: Killing Sin
Audio Transcript
Self-control was a Stoic virtue before it was a Christian fruit. There is nothing distinctly Christian about self-control. Yet, this is what engages my mind so much at this moment. Yet, Paul lists it as a fruit of the Spirit — enkrateia, the last fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:23. So, for those who believe the gospel of Christ and are justified by faith alone, the Holy Spirit becomes the decisive cause of self-control. That’s what I take fruit to mean. The decisive cause is the Holy Spirit; it’s the Holy Spirit’s fruit in my life.
The Spirit produces self-control in the believer, so that the action of the self-controlling now is brought about by the Spirit. The self acts the miracle. The Spirit creates the miracle. We had a whole conference on this. Work out your salvation, for God is at work in you (Philippians 2:12–13) means control your sins, control your lusts, for the Spirit is controlling them through you. Isn’t that the paraphrase of Philippians 2:12–13 applied to the fruit of the Holy Spirit? Exert self-control, because the Spirit is awakening, creating self-control in you.
The blood of Christ, the blood of the new covenant, secures for us Christians the working of the Holy Spirit. That’s the meaning of the new covenant: “cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ezekiel 36:27). Christ died to make that happen. That’s the new covenant. This is the blood of the covenant. He works, and we act. His working appears in our acting. He creates the miracle, we act the miracle of self-control.
But the Holy Spirit doesn’t produce the same thing the Stoics did, even though enkrateia in Greek, or “self-control” in English, is the same word used by Stoics, then and now. The Holy Spirit doesn’t create that. We don’t hire God to produce the same things the world can produce. What good would that be? The Stoics did not depend on Christ and they did not live for the glory of Christ, but the Holy Spirit is given because Christ died to purchase him for us, and he is given to glorify the Son in us.
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