GENTLENESS AND SELF-CONTROL

GALATIANS 5.22-23

Before we begin, in order to make sure we understand these last two fruits, it would be good for us to remind ourselves of the burden of Paul’s letter to the Galatian Christians. In this letter, Paul defends and explains the True Gospel of God. The True Good News. The News which, if people hear it and believe it, they will be saved. And The News which, if people do not hear and believe, they will remain lost in their sins. Some teachers would have the Galatians believe a false gospel that says your being right with God and your remaining right with God is up to you and whether or not you obey all of God’s commandments. But the True Gospel preached by Paul and the other Apostles, and received straight from our Lord Jesus Christ says There is salvation for you only through the Cross of Jesus Christ. You, a sinner, can only be justified (made right in the sight of God) through faith in Christ and His Cross. And you, a sinner, can only be sanctified (cleaned up morally) through faith in Christ and His cross! It’s simple! You cannot justify yourself and you cannot sanctify yourself! But God freely justifies you for the sake of His Holy Son Jesus Christ! And He gives you His Holy Spirit Who works within you to change you from being an ungodly sinner and rebel against His Law into the holy, obedient child of God He has saved you to become.

Therefore, with the basic message of the book of Galatians in mind, we have since late January dwelt on certain things while expounding on the fruit of the Spirit. Things such as the Law of God which condemns us because of our sins. Yes, the Law of God is good. It teaches us how to live right. But the Law is outside of us, and can only teach that we ought to obey. Due to our sinful tendencies, our response to the Law of God was always to sin more! And we were getting worse and worse. But! Praise the Lord! We’ve also seen such things as the truth of our verse, verse 22, which tells us that these good moral qualities are the results of the work of the Holy Spirit of God within us! So, where the Law taught us we ought to obey, Christ, through His Holy Spirit, enables us to obey! We emphasize also that, according to verse 24, because of our union with Jesus Christ, we have crucified the flesh, our sinful tendencies, and have put behind us all the lusts and passions of those sinful tendencies. And, also because we belong to Jesus Christ, we must become, and have become, and are continually becoming like our Lord Jesus Christ until someday we shall be made perfectly like him in all these moral areas.

And so, with the Gospel on our minds, let us look at the fruit called meekness, or gentleness.

GENTLENESS

What can we say about gentleness from the context of the whole letter? Well, judging by Gal. 5.12, it seems there was a bitter battle for the truth among the Galatian churches. There was this doctrinal controversy over the false gospel of justification by works of obedience to the Law. Assuredly, orthodoxy must prevail. Doctrine is important. Even life and death important. But during fights, even justifiable fights for the truth, the sides of the matter tend to become entrenched and to form “parties”. And the orthodox “party” must be sure to be kind, as well as firm. For this, humility is required! Gentleness.

Humility could be defined as “admitting you are wrong” or “being unassuming”. But what if you are right? Must you not be humble and gentle when you are right as well?

Barnabas and Paul had a disagreement over whether to take John Mark with them on their next preaching tour. Their “Strong contention” was so sharp that they split up! And they both had their reasons for having their opposing points of view. Well, you know the story, right? What can we learn from Paul about being gentle, if not from the matter of John Mark, at least from other places in which he writes about gentleness? Well, look at II Tim 2.25. When writing as to how a Christian teacher is to deal with people who are opposed to the truth, the Christian teacher is to be so gentle that he himself lays no stumbling block in the path of that person’s repentance. Even when, v 24, that person has wronged him. Then, another example is right back here in Galatians 6.1. Ah, so there we see that gentleness and humility are very close to each other!

So, what’s really happening with you and me in this department? We have anger strife and violence on the one side. Kindness, humility and gentleness on the other. How are you doing? What happens when you face frustrations at work? Can you handle stress? Or at home? Now there’s the real test, isn’t it? Home is where we may figure we can let off a bit of steam that has built up elsewhere, so, look out! Here comes! Get too close to me, irritate me, get on my nerves and I will let you have it! It has to do with the way you deal with people close to you. Maybe most of the time, closeness means comfort and affection. But closeness also means friction and heat, doesn’t it?

And, in Paul’s writings, gentleness is not only required at home, but in the way we deal with each other in the church. Can there be disagreements from time to time within the Sunday School dept? Couldn’t it be possible for the church leaders to have a sharp moment when different ones feel strongly about things, but in opposite directions? And then there are issues that sometimes divide us. Think of some issues before the church now. What will you do? How will you react?

Here is another way of putting this matter. Do people love to deal with you? Or are they repulsed at the thought of having to cross your path and talk to you because you are not very nice? Christians are not unfriendly, cross-tempered people. But rather, they are mild, courteous, friendly, bearing with others’ faults! Think about Jesus Christ; such was he. You and I are to be Christ-like. Now meditate on the way you’ve behaved toward other people. Measure yourself against Christ. Have I said enough?

You and I must humbly recognize our own faults when we are confronted with what we think are the faults of others. Even when we think we see serious doctrinal deficiencies in others. Even when we are disappointed or irritated by others. And, before we move on, just to satisfy an outstanding matter, without taking the time to fully analyze the thing, I’ll remind you that Paul and Barnabas and John Mark all became good friends and worked together very well a little later on!

SELF-CONTROL

Again, what light is shed on this fruit of the Spirit by the context of the book? In 5.13, he writes, “Use not your liberty as an occasion to indulge in the flesh.” As there was a legalist party, there was also a libertine party! In 5.19, he lists some sins of the flesh related to perversion of the right use of sexuality. This word “self-control” is a word that was especially used in view of sexual immorality. Of course we can be overindulgent in many other areas, too. And we ought to be convicted of our need for self-control in all of them. But, as sexual sin was a huge problem among the peoples of the Roman world, so also it is a huge problem in the world today.

Let’s look some more at this word. It was used to mean to have power over yourself. Power to abstain from things you strongly desire. This is the context of self-control as the word was normally used by the people of Paul’s time.

Notice that this one item in the fruit of the Spirit would seem to be the strongest word to stand against the sexual immorality listed in verses 19-20.

Now, in Greek philosophy, it was taught by some that when you feel strong desires (passions), you must struggle to suppress them. People tend to overindulge in food, in alcoholic drink, and to pervert sex. In fact, our word for self control shows up in Acts 24.25. It seems that Felix marriage began as an adulterous relationship. And he trembles when the Apostle preaches to him that he is to be held accountable for giving in to his passions.

Now, in those days as also even now, some would advocate asceticism: complete renunciation of possessions, sex, food, drink and even social connections, as the only sure way to overcome these wild and unlawful desires. But the problem is that even if we run away from society and if we renounce the world, we would be taking our sinful heart and our overactive imagination with us when we flee.

Well, if we really get to know what the sins are that we are commanded not to do, and we feel within our own selves a tendency to indulge in them, we would come to the conclusion that we are powerless to rid ourselves of this evil within. It certainly is an ethical, moral matter, but where is the power to live and to think right going to come from? Well, for us Christian believers, we know where the power must come from. This power and this enabling must come from the Holy Spirit!

So, what, then, is it that, if Paul were here to be questioned, he might specify as ways in which we ought to take heed to this need for self-control?

Well, there is pornography. Your eyes are bombarded by advertisements which, if you’re honest, really qualify as pornography. Then, there is the way the young girl was dressed at the market yesterday. Why were you so affected by it, in just the way you were affected? I mean, you might reason this way. “Well, I figure that it’s ok to appreciate the beauty of the human body, right? But I wonder why is it that I so often quickly feel that I’ve crossed the line into lustful looking? There is what you look at on television. There is the magazine shop. The world wide web must have been spun by some perverted spider, eh? Then there are dirty-minded guys all around me telling jokes with double meaning. It’s a conspiracy. The world and the Devil are always conspiring with the tendency to be perverted that I must admit is still in me. You see, it isn’t just in outward acts or even words that I find myself to be sinful. It’s in my wild, uncontrolled thought life. And I want to know how to conquer these sinful thoughts. To get rid of them. To be in control, even in control of my thoughts. The problem isn’t Bill Clinton; it’s you and me.

Now, if you sisters feel that this is a list of men’s sins, and that you are not affected in this area, I would point you to v 19, adultery, fornication, lasciviousness, not to mention wrath strife, hatred, envy and drunkenness are sins which women commit as well as men. If women commit these sins, then women need self-control too.

So, if I find myself guilty in these things, this lack of self-control, failure in these moral categories. . .

how in the world am I supposed to keep myself clean, unspotted? Should I go to a monastery in some cave in Malaysia?

1. Well, first of all, with the teaching of Paul, and of the whole Bible, take time to remember that we are under obligation to obey God’s commands. And His commands cover our wild thoughts. We are commanded to have the mind of Christ. And Christ never committed a sexual sin in His life. He never had a lustful thought. He never indulged in degrading jests. He was pure and sinless.

2. Second, think about your union with Christ. “And those belonging to Christ have crucified the flesh with the passions and lusts. (Sexual passions, when used negatively) There were these lusts. But since we have been joined to Christ by faith, we are crucified with Christ. What Paul calls the Flesh here, he calls the old man elsewhere. In either case, he means our old sinful tendencies. Therefore, to crucify the flesh or the old man is to view our sinful tendencies as crucified. My old sinful tendencies are each one nailed to the cross. And if they are nailed to His cross, they cannot rule my mind!

3. Christ came to redeem us. To bring us out of sin and into a clean and holy life. Don’t ever forget it.

4. See I Thess 4.3-8. We once used to be powerless to do anything but to give in to the temptations that came. But now, we have all the power we need to obey the will of God because His Holy Spirit is mightily at work in us. The NEB on v 25: if the Spirit is the source of our life, then let the Spirit direct our course (and Ro 8.14)

5. The results of the Spirit’s work in us will be our being rehabituated. And then we will also be of help to others. We who were so weak in morals are becoming ‘we that are strong’ so that we can help others (6.1).

So keep yourself pure. Keep covenant with your wife. Be Christlike. Then, relationships with girls you’re not married to will be pure, like she’s your godly sister.

But remember. This fruit of self-control is never firmly at your disposal, as though you need never check on your supply of it. It must be continually, constantly, daily received as a gift from the Holy Spirit.

However, all these fruits do already exist in you in good measure, even when you complain of the lack of them. We all possess them. Perhaps some of us more, some less. Perhaps some fruits more, some fruits less. Perhaps we feel morally stronger on one day than on another, or at one time of day than another time of day. Yet, He Who gave His Son to die to save us, He Who sent the Holy Spirit of adoption into our hearts crying abba Father, He Whose plan it is to bring us into perfect conformity to His dearly beloved risen Son Jesus Christ, will never leave us powerless to obey. He has given us everything that pertains to life and godliness. Grasp this, believe this, call upon Him for holiness in your life, and then simply obey all His holy will.