Undisciplined living is blighting the church. Could you be part of the problem?
“One of these days I’m going to get it all together.”
“I wish I hadn’t lost my cool and said those things.”
“Sorry I’m late; I guess I’ve just never been very self-disciplined.”
How often have you heard—or made—statements like those? How many of us really have ourselves under control? Most people think they are in control, but are they really? Probably more are controlled by other people, by circumstances, by the mass media, by the distorted values of contemporary society.
Perhaps the best measure of who is in control is not our actions but our spontaneous reactions. How do you react when a driver tailgates you for miles, then passes and cuts sharply in front of you, nearly causing a collision? Do you honk the horn, shake your fist, and mutter (minced) oaths? If so, some stranger’s reckless, thoughtless driving has controlled you and determined your behavior. Do you respond in kind to surliness and harsh words? If so, you are more controlled by others than controlling. The Greek philosopher Epictetus said, “No person is free who is not master of himself.” And no person is master if he or she allows the actions of others to dictate reactions.
Ours is most assuredly an uncontrolled, undisciplined age—an age of self-indulgence. “If it feels good, do it,” and “If it works, do it again and again” are the prevailing mottoes. The seven deadly sins have become an accepted lifestyle. Many of the problems we face today—economic, environmental, political, moral—are largely attributable to the lack of self-discipline. Nor has the church escaped the blight of undisciplined living; perverted values, wasted time, dulled thinking, flabby bodies, and distorted emotions provide ample evidence.
We have heard and read much in recent years about the gifts of the Spirit, and rightly so. But without the spiritual grace of self-discipline the gifts will be unused, misused, or ineffective. We have heard perhaps somewhat less frequently about the fruits of the Spirit, but very little about the final fruit: self-control. Yet without self-control, love may become saccharine sentimentality or consuming, self-defeating ardor; joy may become heady euphoria that keeps us on the mountaintop building shrines; peace may become complacency, patience may become leniency; kindness may become blandness; goodness may become self-righteousness; faithfulness may become slavishness; and gentleness may become weakness.
The negative devaluation of such words as discipline is, for C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape, one of “the really solid triumphs of the last hundred years.” The apostle Paul admonished young Timothy, “Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness” (1 Tim. 4:7, NASB)
What Self-Discipline Is Not
Note that self-discipline is neither godliness itself nor the means to godliness. If discipline led to godliness, the most disciplined individual would be the holiest—and holiness would be a result of human works. The most exacting disciplinary regimen is powerless to make a saint of a sinner; it can only make a very regimented sinner. On the other hand, neither is lack of self-discipline necessarily sin, although it can become sin, for, “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins” (James 4:17, NIV).
Self-discipline is not mere asceticism, as shown by Paul’s warning against ascetic practices in relation to gnosticism (Col. 2:23). Further, self-discipline is neither immoderation nor constriction. Accordingly, the self-disciplined person will be serious but not somber, doctrinal but not doctrinaire, steady but not stodgy, upright but not uptight. According to an old Chinese proverb, “Excess paints a snake, and then adds legs.” We must not be undisciplined in our efforts to achieve self-discipline.
Finally, self-discipline is not legalism. Spiritually self-disciplined individuals are forbearing in a dual sense: they refrain from certain thoughts and deeds, holding themselves in check; and they control themselves under provocation, reacting to others in a loving, patiently restrained manner.
What Self-Discipline Is
Self-discipline is the crowning fruit of the Spirit, cultivated and nurtured by Spirit-filled believers. Genuine self-control is Spirit-control. There is no contradiction here. Just as we are commanded to “work out your own salvation” (Phil. 2:12), working out what God has worked in, so it is necessary to nurture the fruit of the Spirit. Seven words form a compact definition of self-discipline: “For to me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21).
Genuine self-discipline necessarily involves the whole person, all of our faculties: spirit, mind, heart, body, will. Because they fail to recognize this crucial point, most “self-help” programs do not produce genuinely self-disciplined persons—only certain limited curbs and temporary controls. One can be physically disciplined enough to win at Wimbledon but be so undisciplined emotionally that he cannot control childish temper tantrums and embarrassing social gaffes.
Where and how, then, does one begin in one’s desire to become more self-disciplined? For the unbeliever, the place to begin is with repentance, receiving Christ as Savior and being made spiritually alive. For the believer, the only logical and scriptural place to begin is with the Holy Spirit filling us and working through our spirits.
The Believer’S Daily Dozen
To have a disciplined spirit, the believer needs his or her “daily dozen.” First, we need daily prayer (Ps. 86:11). Self-discipline is both a cause and effect of prayer. Without it, we do not really pray, a truth suggested by Peter: “Be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray” (1 Peter 4;7, NIV). (Moffatt renders the verse: “Steady then; keep cool and pray!”) But how can we get cool and stay that way in such a frantic world as this? Would you believe through prayer? “We can really pray only when we are self-controlled, but we become self-controlled through prayer?” Right. It is one of those gracious (as opposed to vicious) circles.
Along with daily prayer must come daily disciplined praise (Ps. 72:15), daily keeping of our commitments (Ps. 61:8), daily Bible study (Acts 17:11), daily self-denial (Luke 9:23), daily death to self (1 Cor. 15:31), daily renewal (2 Cor. 4:16), daily fellowship with believers (Acts 2:46), daily encouragement (Heb. 3:13), daily sharing of our faith (Acts 17:17), daily giving (Acts 6:1), and daily vigilance (Prov. 8:34). In a real sense, genuine self-discipline is not only a fruit of the Spirit, but also a fruit of the spirit.
Divine Thought Control
Also crucial is a self-disciplined mind. In his booklet Your Mind Matters, John R. W. Stott notes that “self-control is primarily mind-control.” Do we achieve a disciplined mind by thinking disciplined thoughts, or do we think disciplined thoughts because we have a disciplined mind?
The late A. W. Tozer, in his book That Incredible Christian, said: “To be heavenly minded we must think heavenly thoughts.… God must have all our thoughts if we would experience sanctification of our minds.” Does this mean that if we have “heavenly thoughts” (and what precisely are they?) long enough (how long? 5 years? 50?), we one day acquire a “heavenly” mind (and just what is that?)? Undoubtedly there is some truth in what Tozer says, for Paul enumerates what we should think about: whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy (Phil. 4:8). But disciplined (or “heavenly”) thoughts simply cannot be produced by an undisciplined (or “unheavenly”) mind. Did not Jesus himself make this principle clear in his statement that “a bad tree cannot bear good fruit” (Matt. 7:18)?
Solomon indicated that our thoughts reveal what kind of mind we have. “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7). What do you think about in your unguarded moments—when you are riding along in the car or before you fall off to sleep at night? The answer will underscore the fact that we all need to cultivate well-disciplined minds.
Note that I said cultivate, not acquire, a self-disciplined mind. Every believer has the mind of Christ, Paul says (1 Cor. 2:16), yet is exhorted to “let this mind [mindset or attitude—a different word from the one used in 1 Corinthians 2] be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5). Paul told Timothy that “God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power and of love and of a [self-controlled mind]” (2 Tim. 1:7). The Greek word translated “sound mind” in the King James Version is sophronismos, sometimes rendered “self-control.” The same word appears in the account of the Gadarene demoniac, who was not only uncontrolled but also uncontrollable, for Satan, the author of chaos, was in control. But when Jesus, the epitome of perfect control, had performed his miracle, the man was seen to be sitting, dressed, and “in his right mind” (sophronouta)—perfectly controlled.
Whaling
I.
The experienced ones, thank God, had left me on the ship
With a few other novices, while in their tiny boats
They sought for whales. I stood on deck
Sensing that I should try at least to spear
Whatever whale came close enough to be controlled.
Controlled? Once caught on my harpoon, I realized,
That whale might overwhelm not only me
But all I stood upon. For it could start
A Nantucket sleighride, slashing through the waves
Yanking the heaving ship by its taut rope
My guts wrenched by the roughness of the ride
As I gasped breathless in the tearing wind.
Or it could smash the whole ship with its fluke.
Or it could sound straight downward to the floor
And drag me ship and all to sure destruction.
I asked my comrades: Where’s the knife to cut the harpoon rope
In case I hit a whale too strong for me?
But no one knew of such a knife, or how to use it.
II.
Jittery, high, I jounced upon the deck.
The sea around me boiled with whales.
Waves, towering, churned with whales.
But I cast no harpoon. Instead, perforce,
I grasped the rigging of the shrinking ship
That bucked beneath my feet.
The sea rocked hard at me, the ship, and all the mighty whales.
III.
On the salt air within I heard a Whirlwind Voice:
Can you draw out Leviathan with a hook?
I answered, No.
I must rely on You.
The deeps are Yours.
—Virginia Ramey Mollenkott
Divine thought control is a provision discussed by the apostle Paul: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4–5, NIV). Certainly this passage refers to the false arguments of people we encounter, but also to our thoughts. It is necessary for us to “let God remake [us] so that [our] whole attitude of mind is changed,” as Phillips paraphrases Romans 12:2, letting positive alternatives take the place of negative thoughts.
If I were walking across the university campus, for instance, and saw a pretty female student, the natural impulse might be to indulge a lustful thought. But the peace of God that stands on guard duty at our hearts and minds (Phil. 4:7) turns the evil thought aside. If it is merely repressed, it will return again and again, seeking admittance.
A positive alternative to repression might go something like this: “Lord. I thank you for feminine beauty and for my normal response to it. Thank you for the lovely wife you gave me. She is really something: a great lover, superb cook, wonderful mother to our children. Bless her right now and give her a good day. And help me to be a good, faithful husband and father.” Then I could pick up some flowers on the way home to let her know how much I appreciate her. What was potentially an ugly, undisciplined thought has been transformed by God’s grace into a disciplined occasion of beauty.
Disciplining Our Emotions
For a while, we might be able to keep our undisciplined thoughts to ourselves and even to cloak our undisciplined spiritual life, but lack of self-discipline seems to show up nowhere so glaringly as in our emotions. Perhaps this is because of the primacy of the emotions in our makeup and because emotions are responses to relationships. We experience negative emotions and lose control of the more positive ones because, as Jeremiah says, “The heart is the most deceitful of all things, desperately sick” (17:9, NEB) But God has made provision to “stablish our hearts unblameable in holiness before God” (1 Thess. 3:13). How? Through the most powerful of all emotions: love. Note the preceding verse of the chapter: “The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another and toward all men.”
The logical and scriptural place to begin the disciplining of our emotions is with love, for love is such a powerful emotion that it will “cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:20). Note how it works. Because God first loved us, we love him (1 John 4:19). If we truly love God, we will love other people (1 John 4:7–8). And to the degree that our love matures, it will dispel fear (1 John 4:18), as well as depression, jealousy, anger, hatred. It is precisely the love of Christ, Paul says, that exercises a disciplining, constraining influence upon us (2 Cor. 5:14).
Love, along with the leading of the indwelling Spirit, enables the self-disciplined heart to choose which of the following responses to emotional stimuli is most suitable:
Perhaps the easiest and most natural response is simply to acquiesce to the stimulus and express unrestrained emotion. Doing otherwise, the currently popular rationale goes, is to harm the psyche, squelch spontaneity, and give us nasty “hang-ups.” But “letting it all hang out” is one thing; expressing an emotion suitably is quite another.
The opposite alternative is not to respond at all, to disregard the stimulus as the armored knight in Albrecht Dürer’s Knight, Death, and the Devil looks steadfastly forward, ignoring the distractions of evil all about him. Or one may repress or suppress emotions—the former being a mere forcing of the emotion into the subconscious, the latter involving conscious dismissal from the heart and mind.
Another possible response is to assess the stimulus carefully and address oneself and God about it. Such assessing can lead to harnessing of an emotion, transforming a potentially negative emotion into a positive one.
Many of our emotional battles are virtually lost before they begin because we have established predispositions to react in an undisciplined fashion. We do not lose emotional control in a moment; the predisposition has been forming, germinating for some time. The emotionally self-disciplined person continuously clothes himself or herself with the Lord Jesus Christ and does not make provision for the flesh (Rom. 13:14).
Physical Self-Discipline
Like the lack of emotional self-discipline, the lack of physical self-discipline—by gluttony, lust, and sloth—leads to obvious results: unconditioned bodies. “I discipline my body and make it serve me,” Paul said, “so that, while heralding to others, I may not myself be disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:27, Berkeley). The initial step in achieving physical self-discipline is to realize that the body is important for at least four major reasons: (1) God fashioned it masterfully and values it (Ps. 139:14–15); (2) Jesus assumed a body (Phil. 2:7–8); (3) the Holy Spirit indwells and sustains the bodies of believers (Rom. 8:9, 11, 26); and (4) the body is the seat of the soul and spirit.
Paul admonishes us to “glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:20). What does it mean to glorify God in your body? The Greek word for “glorify” is the source of our word “doxology.” Very simply, my body, your body, should be a Gloria Patri, a walking doxology!
Have you ever thought about the fact that physical self-discipline will play a significant role in determining the effectiveness of our service for Christ and our future rewards? Paul said, “We have all to appear without disguise before the tribunal of Christ, each to be requited for what he has done with his body, well or ill” (2 Cor. 5:10, Moffatt). Therefore, Paul says that “every one of you should learn to control his body, keeping it pure and treating it with respect, and never allowing it to fall victim to lust” (1 Thess. 4:4–5, Phillips). “The Lord wants to fill our bodies with himself” (1 Cor. 6:13, LB). DO we care enough to let him?
Self-Discipline Modeled
Jesus Christ is both the model and the means of self-discipline. His perfect self-discipline is shown nowhere more clearly than in his incarnation (Phil. 2:5–8). He willingly set aside his rights, his prerogatives; he was not concerned with his “image,” making himself “of no reputation”; he showed submission in taking upon himself the form of a slave (service always demands great self-discipline); he condescended to be made “a little lower than the angels”; and not only did he choose to die, but he chose the most ignoble and ignominious form of death, that of a common criminal.
Jesus showed exemplary physical self-discipline throughout his life on earth, but especially in his victory over the three-fold temptation, each involving solicitation to some form of physical indulgence: (1) indulge your physical needs and desires; (2) flout the physical and presume on God’s protection; (3) spare yourself physical suffering and pain.
Because Jesus was “tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin” (Heb. 4:15, NIV), we may assume that he manifested all forms of human emotion, without losing control. For example, in the two cleansings of the temple, he illustrated how to be angry without sinning, as Paul admonishes us to do in Ephesians 4:26.
Someone may be thinking, “Yes, but he is God, and since God is the essence of order, how could Jesus not be perfectly self-disciplined? But we’re mortals with an evil nature that causes us to fail.” It is true that as mortals we fail when we operate in the flesh, but we have available to us the same source of victory Jesus did. As God he was not able to be undisciplined, but as man he was able not to be undisciplined. And by following his example, energized by the same Spirit and appropriating the same divine grace, we too are able not to be undisciplined.
Peter tells us that “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21). The word translated “example” here is hypogrammos, a line of script a schoolchild copies in imitation. Jesus is the Word; the indwelling Spirit is our teacher guiding us over the script. Why not begin, with God’s help, your program for cultivating self-discipline?
