The Gift of Self-Control

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]


1 Corinthians 9:24-27
This past week, I went for a checkup with my cardiologist. After the assistant had done her thing and the doc had looked over my files, he walked into the examination room and said, “Everything looks good.” Then, with a smile, he asked, “What’s with the weight?” I had gained six more pounds since our last visit, putting me about 27 pounds above my ideal weight. The culprit? I love bread.

So, I’m asking God to help me exercise self-control in order to more faithfully treat this body, which the Bible reminds me is not my own, but something that, with His death on the cross, Jesus bought back from sin, death, and the devil. And it’s this body that, if I endure in my faith in Jesus Christ, will rise again from the dead when Jesus returns on what the Bible calls “the Day of the Lord.” The Bible also teaches that every Christian’s body is: “a temple of the Holy Spirit.” To take care of this body, I need self-control.

We live in a world that, in many ways, discourages self-control.

Lady Gaga sings, “I was born that way,” encouraging people to commit whatever sins they think consistent with their inborn natures.

TV commercials and shopping channels prompt us to waste money on products—from mouthwash to financial planning services—for which often false promises are made.

Married men and women engage in what they think of as harmless trysts, while other people mouth smutty talk, giving no thought to how, as they do these things, they debase the gift of sexual intimacy God has given to them.

Pornography, it’s estimated, is a $10 to $15-billion industry, in which devotees are encouraged to idolize sex (or, as the Bible puts it, to worship the creation instead of the Creator) and end up viewing other people as objects to be used for their own pleasure, rather than as fellow human beings made in the image of God.

Obesity is becoming a pandemic: About one-third of all adults in the United States—33.8%--are obese.

All of these instances (and countless more) and the heartaches and the wedges they drive between God and us, between others and us, and between us and the people God made us to be, exemplify human sin and a death-dealing lack of self-control.

The Bible has a lot to say about self-control. And for good reason.

We’ll see why self-control is so important and how we can have it in a moment.

But let's first establish that God Himself wants us to exercise self-control in how we live.

Please look at Genesis 4:6. These are words spoken by God to Cain, one of Adam’s and Eve’s sons, after his offering of leftovers to God looked bad compared with his brother Abel’s grateful offering of the firstlings from his flocks: “So the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”

It was a lack of self-control that caused Cain to not give God first place his life, to resent his brother for Abel’s grateful faith in God, and to despair of the importance of his own life…in other words, to sin. God is telling Cain to exercise self-control, to master his sinful impulses.

Our second lesson for today was written to the church the apostle Paul founded in the Greek city of Corinth. The letter was written in about 54AD. Look at what Paul says in our short second lesson. His words are worth reading and hearing again:

Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.

Paul, of course, is using an analogy or a metaphor, both comparing and contrasting the life of a follower of Jesus Christ with the life of an athlete.

An athlete exercises self-discipline: She trains; he practices; they exercise and watch what foods they eat.

In Paul’s day, athletes who won their contests—a race or a wrestling match, for example—didn’t receive money, gold medals, commercial endorsements, or trips to Disney World. They received wreaths, made of laurel leaves, placed on their heads. Wreaths are perishable and they were dead shortly after given as awards.

Paul says that he and all Christians live our lives—we run—for a prize that is imperishable, one that will never wither or die. The prize is the gift of a relationship with God, here and eternity.

It’s a gift for which we don’t compete. All who believe and are baptized are already gold medal winners. We are saved by God’s charity (His grace) through our faith in Christ.

We cannot earn—or achieve—our way to a saving relationship with Christ. Jesus died on a cross, absorbing all the poison of our sin and selfishness, paying the debt to God we owe for our sin, then rising from the dead, so that all who repent for their sin and give their lives to Christ, are saved from sin, death, and futility as a free gift.

It is possible for us to kick away the life that Christ offers to us freely, though.

We kick Christ and life with God away when we lose our self-control and let the world, the devil, and our sinful selves call the shots in our lives.

But as anyone who has ever tried to take off a few pounds can testify, self-control, the mastery of self, the punishment of self in order to bring it into submission to the loving will of God, is not easy.

The good news is that we can have self-control.

Let me show you where the power for self-control can be found. Turn to Galatians 5, starting at verse 18, in the Bible.

There, Paul says that if we are led by the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus Christ to all who believe in Him, we aren’t condemned by the law. The power of sin to keep us from living with God has been destroyed.

Then, beginning with verse 19, Paul describes “the works of the flesh”: the things we do when we rely on ourselves instead of on God. It’s not a happy list! Look at it:

“adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies [that’s advocating or actively living doctrine contrary to the teachings of Jesus and the Bible], envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like.”

Paul says that people who make a practice of these things “will not inherit the kingdom of God.” They push Jesus and salvation out of their lives.

But look at verses 22 and 23 to see what the Spirit produces in us when we daily and continuously give ourselves to Christ and ask for God’s guidance and help:

...love, joy, peace, longsuffering [that’s patience in the face of difficulties and opposition to us for our faith in and witness for Christ], kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…

In other words, as we consciously submit our every moment and our every decision to God’s evaluation, correction, and wisdom, we will be given the power to exercise self-control. We’ll experience the peace of God that passes all human understanding.

Every time we make decisions, we evidence either the self-control that comes from God or the lack of self-control that comes from sin.

Here’s a (far from perfect) eight-point checklist you might want to use when you’re confronting any decision in your life. These might help you to invite God's Holy Spirit into the process to give you Godly self-control:

• If the decision will take you down the easy path, you probably shouldn’t take it. Jesus says in Matthew 7:13-14, “…the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction…the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life...” 
• If what you're considering doing is what you want to do, you probably shouldn’t do it. Proverbs 14:12 and other Bible passages tell us: “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death.” The key is not to rely on your own thinking or common sense, but on the wisdom God freely gives to those who ask for it. 
• If your prospective decision appeals to your ego, watch out. 1 Corinthians 10:31 teaches: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” Ask yourself, “Will this decision glorify God?”
• If your feelings are leading you to a decision, you may want to avoid it. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God reveals that: “The heart is devious above all else…”  Unless we, in the words of Psalm 51, are praying regularly and submissively for “a clean heart…and…a new and right spirit within…,” it’s almost always wrong to base our decisions on what we feel. 
• If a trusted Christian friend warns you against a prospective decision, reconsider it. Proverbs 24:6 tells us that “in abundance of counselors, there is victory.” 
• If you haven’t sought the counsel of at least one Christian friend, you may be about to make a bad decision. Jesus told Nicodemus that a sinful world refused to come to Him, the light of the world; instead, they huddled in darkness because they didn’t want their evil to be exposed. If we're not willing to share the decision we're contemplating with at least one other follower of Jesus Christ, we need to ask ourselves what we're hiding and why.
• Is this decision designed to please others, not God. Paul says bluntly in Galatians 1:10: “If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” As followers of Jesus Christ, our decisions should not be driven by the opinions of others, even if the opinion in question is that of just one other person.
• Finally, never make a decision if you haven’t been regularly reading God’s Word and praying. Jesus says that wise people build their lives on Him alone. And the Psalm tells us that God’s Word is a light to our path and a lamp to our feet. When we make decisions without regularly reading God's Word and regularly talking things over with God, we are flailing in the dark.

Self-control is the fruit of a life lived in total surrender to the God Who has done everything needed for us to have a life with Him that never ends. As we submit our lives to Jesus Christ and invite Him to be the final authority over us, our lives are transformed.

In following Jesus, we may not always earn the world’s applause or make bigger pay checks, but we will be able to face our Lord at the ends of our lives and say with Paul: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."

And we will hear Jesus say, “Well done… Enter into the joy of your Master.” Amen

Life with God is free...

but to continue to run with God requires us to tap into the power for self-discipline that God gives through Christ.

Every sin of which I am aware which I have committed since turning back to Christ thirty-three years ago has been blowback from my failure in the area of self-discipline. I would get to taking God for granted and thoughtlessly cruise through my days thinking, not overtly, but at some level, "I'm a good person. I'm a Christian. I'm safe from temptation and sin," only to find myself doing and saying things that were sinful. I was too busy to pray. Too busy to read Scripture. Too busy to surrender my days, hours, and minutes to Christ. Too busy to care for my body by sleeping right, eating right, or exercising right.

Life with God is a free gift which all people can have by faith in Jesus Christ. Yet gratitude and a desire not to misuse and so, lose, that gift should compel us to a self-discipline that focuses on our life-giving God always.

Lutheran Old Testament scholar Ralph W. Klein, in comments on Proverbs 9:1-6, tomorrow's first lesson for many Christians in worship around the world, "The slogan 'God loves us unconditionally' is only half right. God loves us with the expectation and hope that love will transform us into believing and righteous people."

As I've explained many times here, Christians are never sinless this side of the grave. But when we fail to place all our faculties at God's disposal every day, we too easily veer off on paths far from God. Sin takes hold of our lives. The warning God gave to Cain, after Cain had murdered his brother Abel, holds true for us:

"...sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it." [Genesis 4:7]

That's why Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 are so important:

Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. ²⁵Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. ²⁶So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; ²⁷but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified. [1 Corinthians 9:24-27]

See today's piece from Our Daily Bread dealing with this passage, here.

A Look at This Sunday's Bible Lessons (February 15, 2009)

[This coming Sunday's Bible lessons for Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, where I serve as pastor, will be the same as the lessons in many churches around the world. Hopefully, these notes will help folks prepare for worship.]

The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

The Bible Lessons:
2 Kings 5:1-14
Psalm 30
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45

Comments:
Here are a few thoughts on the lesson from 2 Kings which I shared on January 20, with a group of pastors with whom my son (who starts seminary this summer) and I meet each month:

1. It’s unfortunate that this pericope stops where it does. The next few verses beyond present an argument for the universality for Israel’s God and Elisha’s problematic acquiescence to Naaman’s intention to worship the Syrian version of Baal alongside his king back home. But this is a rich text even without following the incident through v.19.

2. Aram, of course, is Syria. Speculation is that this incident occurred in about 850BC, during the reigns of Ben-hadad in Aram and Jehoram in Israel.

3. There’s no evidence of Hansen’s Disease in Israel or nearby countries in these ancient days and only a few incidents of it in Jesus’ time. The term of leprosy was applied to many different skin diseases. (Hansen’s Disease can be treated, but not cured by conventional methods.)

4. Vv.1 and 2 present several interesting juxtapositions. First, there’s the irony of Naaman himself: He’s a mighty general, but he’s afflicted with a skin disease which, if unchecked, will eventually make him a pariah unfit for society. Second, there’s the stark contrast between this powerful general on the one hand and the little foreign slave girl in his household. As Paul says, “When I am weak, then I am strong.”

5. Another stunning thing in v.1 is the revelation that the God of Israel had given Naaman his victories over Israel. This both hints at the universality of God’s reign and the judgment of God against His people in history.

6. It’s intriguing that this foreign slave girl, so insignificant she isn’t even named, shows concern for the man who enslaved her. (v.3)

7. It’s equally intriguing that Naaman is so desperate for a cure that he takes the advice of the slave girl seriously. It’s not the last time in this incident when Naaman will take the advice of his social inferiors (v.13).

8. Naaman gathers gifts to take to Israel (v.5). His is typical religious behavior, religion being humanity’s attempt to placate or please gods. He’s going to get a lesson not only about the presence of God in his prophet, as Elisha has it (v.8), but also that God’s gifts are free.

9. The reaction of the king of Israel (vv.6-7) is understandable. Aram had often attacked Israel, making it a vassal kingdom. It was perfectly logical to think that Aram was creating a pretext for yet another attack. The king knows that he can’t bring about the healing of Naaman.

10. V.9 is sort of a powerplay. Think of the scene in The Right Stuff when Vice President Lyndon Johnson goes to the house of astronaut John Glenn in order to offer comfort to his wife during a crisis point in the flight of Friendship 7. Annie Glenn refused to see Johnson and the Vice President of the United States is portrayed as having a first class temper tantrum in his limo. Like Naaman, the great man wasn’t treated with the deference to which he thought he was entitled.

11. Of course, with his expectations of personal deference and of a religious transaction, Naaman is highly offended by Elisha’s instructions in v.10. Referencing another movie: Think of Ranch Wilder in the 1994 remake of Angels in the Outfield. “You can’t fire me. I have a contract!” Ranch bellows, “I’m Ranch Wilder!” “You can’t expect me to do something so insignificant as dunking myself seven times in the muddy Jordan!” Naaman says (v.12). Like many people offended by grace and the idea of God working in small ways and places, Naaman would rather head back to Syria without being healed than experience the humiliation of so small an act (v.13). This really could have resulted in war.

12. Good semitic argument, which Jesus often used, ran this way: If this small thing, then how much more this big thing? This was, for example, Jesus’ argument about God’s willingness to answer prayer: If you, who are evil, respond compassionately to the requests of your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give you the Holy Spirit when you pray?

Naaman’s servants turn this arument form on its head…and make absolute sense in the process (v.13). “If Elisha had asked you to do some great thing, you wouldn’t refuse. Then, why refuse this little thing?”

Naaman had to get small, deny self, to experience God’s charity. As long as he held that as a BMOC, he needed to be in charge of things, he was too big to be helped.

13. Seven dunks in the Jordan and Naaman’s whole body was as soft as a baby’s bottom (v.14). He was rendered “clean” because leprosy was regarded as a dirty thing.

Here are some verse-by-verse comments, which I wrote three years ago, on the lesson from Mark:

v. 40: This is the first overt expression of faith in Christ that we find in Mark's Gospel. At most, faith is implied in Mark 1:30 and of course, in the silent witness of the Capernaum crowds who came to seek healing (Mark 1:32-33). Although it should be said that in both cases, there is reason to wonder whether what's being expressed is faith. At this point in the Gospel, the crowds are not responding to Jesus as a matter of trust in Him as the Messiah Who will suffer and die for them and call them to die to self in order to rise to new life with God. Not even Jesus' first four disciples--Andrew, Simon, James, and John--appear to have an understanding of Jesus that would qualify for the Biblical term of faith (pistis in the Greek of the New Testament, a word that means trust. Rather, the incipient faith we see here demonstrated is rooted in the belief that Jesus is a miracle worker who will give them what they want.

But the leper's belief in Jesus is different from what we've heretofore encountered in Mark's account. There's a note of "Your will be done" in his words. "If you choose," he tells Jesus. This is submission. In that word, if, the leper also recognizes that Jesus is sovereign, that Jesus doesn't have to heal unless He chooses to do so, and that it's possible that a sovereign God may allow suffering to happen in the lives of believers. Tough stuff, but very mature. (God grant me such maturity of faith!) This is the sort of real and unflinching faith I often observe in people who have suffered.

Leprosy was regarded as more than merely a biological ailment. The leper was "unclean," unfit for participation in social or religious life. This is why the Old Testament book of Leviticus had clear guidelines on how one who had suffered from leprosy could have the restoration of their cleanness, and their restoration to religious and community life, certified. The certification was done not by a physician, but by a priest at the Temple in Jerusalem.

It's a measure of Jesus' perceived compassion that the leper feels that he can approach Jesus. In those days, people were so paranoid about being near a person with leprosy, for fear of physical and spiritual contamination, that they would throw stones at lepers to keep them at bay. We no doubt see a contemporary version of this in the attitudes of some toward those infected with the AIDS virus.

v. 41: The most jarring words in this verse are: "Jesus...touched him..." This was a scandalous no-no.

Jesus did choose to heal the leper, underscoring what I mentioned earlier, that healing is always at the discretion of a sovereign God.

v. 42: "Immediately" again. Mark's frequent use of this term emphasizes several things: (1) the immediacy of God's presence in Christ; (2) the capacity and desire of Jesus to work with urgency in our lives; (3) the rapidity with which Jesus moved from meteoric superstar to rejected Messiah.

v. 44: Once again here, we see an example of what's known as Mark's "messianic secret." Until Jesus has gone through cross and resurrection, the crowds are inclined to see Him as nothing more than a kewpie doll, a miracle-maker bound to do their bidding and provide them with pleasure. But Jesus has not come into our lives to give us lives of ease. He has come to be the road to our everlasting transformation.

This is what will happen in the lives of those who turn from sin (repent) and trust in Jesus and the good news about Him (Mark 1:15). As Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran martyr killed by the Nazis in the waning days of World War Two, pointed out, new life and forgiveness are gifts we cannot earn for all with faith in Jesus Christ.

These things come to us as grace, the Bible's word for the charity God grants to undeserving people like you and me. They're gifts and they are free. ("For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast," Paul writes in Ephesians 2:8-9).

But, as Bonhoeffer goes on to point out, if we accept these gifts, doing so will cost us our lives, the lives we're accustomed to living. We cannot take up Christ without laying down our self-absorption and self-protection. There is a difference, Bonhoeffer shows, between "cheap grace"--anything goes-ism without personal transformation--and "costly grace," embracing Christ's gifts by laying down our whole lives in surrender.

Until we understand the difference between cheap and costly grace, to speak about Jesus as the Messiah is meaningless babble.

And so, Jesus doesn't want the healed leper to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah yet.

But there's a second reason that Jesus tells the leper not to tell anybody about how he had been cleansed. He wants the man to go through the certification process alluded to earlier and which is detailed in Leviticus 18 and 19. Remember: Jesus didn't come to abolish God's laws, but to be their pure and complete fulfiller. He expected the cleansed leper to abide by those laws.

v. 45: But the cleansed leper couldn't keep his mouth shut. Jesus' fame spread even more.

I may have more to share on the lessons later in the week.