The Bible urges us to exercise control over our minds and bodies. We should be deliberate and intentional, and maintain control rather than being controlled and led astray by our passions and desires. What do you and I need to do to get control over that which we currently don’t control?

“The fruit of the Spirit is self-control.” We’ve arrived at the final fruit of the Spirit in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. It’s been a joy and privilege to walk through this list of important character traits in the Christian life with you. The most important bedrock principle in this entire series has been that each one of these attributes is a fruit of the Spirit. It is the Spirit who works in us each of these attributes, and he does so in increasing measure as part of his work of sanctification.

If, as a next step, you’re interested in working through a good book on the Spirit’s sanctifying work, may I recommend my wife Marny’s short but substantive study, Sanctification as Set Apart and Growing in Christ. As you read this book, you will develop a deeper appreciation for our holy God and the way in which he works holiness in us. That said, let’s now tackle the final fruit of the Spirit, which most English Bibles render as “self-control.”

An Interesting Observation

When I recently taught a life group lesson on this passage, I was in for a surprise: The word used for “self-control” in Galatians 5:23 is not the more common term for self-control in the New Testament, sōphrosynē, which Paul uses when writing to Timothy and Titus with reference to women (1 Tim. 2:9, 15; Titus 2:5) as well as older (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 2:2) and younger men (Titus 2:6; cf. 2 Tim. 1:7), but the rare word egkrateia, which occurs in the New Testament only four times.

Apart from Galatians 5:23, egkrateia occurs twice in the virtue list in 2 Peter 1:6 (“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love”; note the reference to the Spirit at 1:4) and in Acts 24:25, where Paul speaks to the Roman governor Felix about “righteousness, self-control, and the coming judgment.”

Exercising Self-Control

This observation raises a set of important interpretive questions: Why did Paul not use the more common word for “self-control” in Galatians 5:23 but instead employed the rare word egkrateia? And what is the difference in meaning between those two Greek words, both of which English translations render as “self-control”?

The verb form, “to exercise self-control” (egkrateō), is used in two important passages in 1 Corinthians. In 7:9, Paul writes about men, “But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” In 7:5, he says a couple should not refrain from sex so Satan won’t tempt them due to their lack of self-control.

And in 9:25, Paul writes, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? … Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. …

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