When Paul looked at his calling, he saw a race. “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize?” he asked. “Run in such a way that you may obtain it” (1 Corinthians 9:24).
Paul was running the same race all of us must run—a race against ourselves. A race against our flaws, our shortcomings, our bad habits, our sins. This was the same Paul who wrote, “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. … I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good” (Romans 7:15, 21).
For most of us, that’s a pretty relatable sentiment. We want to do good, we want to do the right thing, we want to have the fruit of the Spirit visible in our actions, but when it comes right down to it …
We fail. A lot. We look in the mirror and find that “evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good.” Paul looked deep into that mirror and concluded, “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find” (verse 18).
But Paul wasn’t without hope. His flesh—his human nature—didn’t have the answer, but the fruit of the Spirit doesn’t grow out of human nature. It grows out of God’s nature. In fact, when Paul described the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians, he started by contrasting it with the “works of the flesh” (Galatians 5:19-21)—including some of the worst things that human nature can produce.
The fruit of the Spirit, which is grown by God’s Spirit, directly opposes those works of the flesh. It’s a fruit designed to change us from the inside out—if we’ll let it.
Without self-control, though, those changes can only be temporary. Without self-control, we’ll only show godly love … sometimes. We’ll only express kindness when it’s convenient. We’ll only be at peace when it’s easy.
And that’s not enough.
If the fruit of the Spirit were an orange, then self-control would be the rind—the protective layer holding everything together. Without self-control, our attempt to grow in the fruit of the Spirit would be exposed, vulnerable and easily ruined.
When Paul looked at his calling and saw a race, he also saw the key to winning that race: “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:25-27, ESV).
Raw talent wasn’t enough to win the competitions Paul was writing about. Any athlete with a hope of winning would need to master consistency—employing the right technique at the right time, over and over and over again. They needed to maintain that level of consistency even when they were exhausted or hungry or in pain, or else another athlete with more self-control would snatch their victory from them.
Paul knew his own weak points. He knew himself well enough to know where his flesh was likely to give him trouble, so he focused on mastering himself instead of letting his human nature call the shots.
In the ancient world, Stoic philosophers saw self-control or self-mastery as an entirely internal affair. A person had to master himself through sheer force of will—every impulse, every desire had to be managed and controlled through willpower and nothing else.
That’s an admirable approach to life, but in practice, it rarely works. Trying to master our human nature with our human nature only works until we find ourselves up against a temptation we struggle to resist. We can’t always count on ourselves to have that kind of strength—because when it really matters, we’ll find ourselves coming up short, just like Paul did.
The alternative is God—because God is strong enough. “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed” (James 1:13-14).
And that right there is the crux and the irony of self-control: we are powerless to truly master ourselves until we are first willing to be mastered by God. Until we can admit that our own human willpower isn’t enough—until we can hand the reins over to God and allow His Spirit to start making changes in our lives—we’ll never develop true self-control.
That’s the first step. It’s where we have to start—by looking to God for the strength to control ourselves. And as we submit ourselves to Him, we’ll discover the truth of what Paul told Timothy: “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7, ESV).
It won’t happen overnight. Like the rest of the fruit of the Spirit, growing in self-control is a gradual process. As we come to a better understanding of what love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness look like in action, we can ask God for the self-control to put those traits into practice—especially in the moments when our human nature encourages us to make an exception.
The good news here is that this is all built around a positive feedback loop. When we focus on growing in one facet of the fruit of the Spirit, it makes the others easier to grow in too. More love makes it easier to develop more kindness. More peace makes it easier to develop more longsuffering. More faith makes it easier to develop more joy—and so on.
Paul knew that too. As we’ve made our way through the nine aspects of the fruit of the Spirit, you’ve probably noticed that Bible verses often reference these aspects in clusters instead of on their own. Paul told the Colossians, “As the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering. … But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts” (Colossians 3:12, 14-15).
He urged the Ephesians to walk “with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2). He told Timothy to “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness” (1 Timothy 6:11). He described God’s servants as living “by purity, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Spirit, by sincere love” (2 Corinthians 6:6).
These traits are all deeply interwoven, each one building off the other in powerful ways—and self-control is the essential ingredient that allows them to keep building.
Like all of us, Paul struggled with consistently doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason. He called himself a “wretched man” trapped in a “body of death” (Romans 7:24)—but he wasn’t content to stay that way. He was running a race where self-control was a key to victory, and he spent his life honing that ability.
The very last epistle we have from Paul is a farewell letter to Timothy, his young protégé. According to extrabiblical tradition, Paul died from a beheading under the reign of Roman Emperor Nero. But however it happened, he knew as he wrote to Timothy that he was not long for this world. He wrote:
“For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Timothy 4:6-8).
There are two important truths to glean from this passage. First, that Paul was able to develop self-control to the point where he could confidently claim to have finished the race, and second, that we can do the same thing.
At the end of his race, Paul knew—not felt, not thought, not hoped, but knew—that he would be receiving his crown. Being a Christian isn’t always easy, but it is possible. Paul did it, and so can we. At the end of your life, you, too, ought to be able to look back at the fruit you’ve grown through the Holy Spirit and know—not feel, not think, not hope, but know—that you finished your race.
We’re left, though, with one big, important question:
What kind of life does the fruit of the Spirit grow best in?
We’ve spent this Journey exploring the fruit of the Spirit, but tomorrow, we’ll end by taking a closer look at the environment that fruit needs if it’s going to reach its fullest potential.
