Fruit Of The Spirit ... Self Control

March 9, 2016

This week concludes our study on the Fruit of the Spirit. Next week we will go back to our march through the Bible !  We left off at 2 Samuel, so we will start there. Also, we will start a new blog for each book or study we do as we go through the Bible. Since there are 66 books in the bible and any studies we may do along the way, I expect we will have around 70 different blogs for you to study and read. Self Control is mentioned only 4 times in the bible and one of those times is when it list it as one of the fruits. So today we will look at the three other verses in the bible and see what God says about self control.

" And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. "      1 Corinthians       9:25

Here self control (temperate) is being explained by comparing sports training to spiritual training. Olympians train their whole life to get a gold medal, Christians should be training themselves their whole life for the spiritual gold medal !  By doing anything your whole life, takes a lot of self discipline. The imperishable crown spoken of here is eternal life with Jesus and to hear those words," well done my good and faithful servant. "

" Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; "        1 Peter         1:13

When men went into battle they would "gird up their loins " by pulling their robes up through between their legs and tying it into their belts. This would allow them to move quickly without falling. Here Peter uses this term to tell us to tie up any loose thoughts we may have and to show self control in our thinking. The last verse we looked at talked about the body and here we see that self control is also required by our minds.

" .. to knowledge self control, to self control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. "              2 Peter       1:6

Peter is showing here how the fruit interact with each other and where it can lead to. If you envision a set of stairs and each one is a fruit of the spirit, you can easily see how they all interact to get to the top. The interesting part here is that the top is NOT Godliness, but Love. In fact the top two are love ! The Hebrew word for brotherly kindness is also love. The bible uses the word love for both of the Hebrew words.

I hope you have enjoyed this study of the Fruit of the Spirit. If you would like to know more about use we are at www.prayerboxministry.org.