Holocaust survivor, Victor Frankl, later wrote that he learned a valuable lesson, while in a Nazi prison camp, about human freedom. He wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
Though tough circumstances often conspire to cause bad attitudes, Frankl is right. In the end, our attitude is a choice. Today’s episode is the fourth in our April series, Building the Mental Toughness of Jesus with the study of the last two fruit of the Spirit, meekness and self-control. Both attitudes call us to live ABOVE our circumstances. And the great news is that the Holy Spirit has been given to all Christians to empower us to do just that!
MEEKNESS
One of my favorite movie scenes is from an old one, The Black Stallion—the scene of The Black running with elegance, grace, and power on a picturesque beach. It was the magnificence of the almost majestic strength of a stallion under control. That is a picture of the eighth fruit of the Spirit, translated, meekness or gentleness. The Greek word is PRAUTES, which describes a horse that is no longer wild but has been trained to respond to the control of the rider. PRAUTES describes a powerful, spirited animal, that has learned to answer to the reins—to accept control. It is a wonderful picture, but hard word to translate into English. Meekness is probably the best we can do, with three important caveats about what this word does NOT mean. This is especially true because Jesus described himself as meek.
- Meekness is NOT weakness. Perhaps because meek rhymes with “weak,” many people associate meekness with being spineless, weak-kneed, ineffective, basically being a wimp. But Jesus calls himself meek, and you cannot see Jesus cleansing the temple, whip in his hand, fire in his eyes, turning over tables, the money changers stumbling all over themselves to escape Jesus’ fury, and think that meekness is spinelessness! It is not.
- Meekness is NOT timidity. Jesus was not mild-mannered. One author writes, We have had enough of the emaciated Christ. the pale, anemic, namby-pamby Jesus, the “gentle Jesus meek and mild.” Perhaps we have had too much of it. Let us see the Christ of the gospels, striding up and down the dusty miles of Palestine, sun-tanned, bronzed, fearless. Clean the canvas, Get back to the original. Not this religious weakling of our imagination. Not this affected emotionalist of our pretty pictures. But the Christ commanding in His manner, challenging in His message, conquering in His manhood, compelling in His mission—the revolutionary Jesus.
- Meekness is NOT fearing confrontation. Jesus was not like the co-dependent wife of the drunk who just takes his physical abuse refusing to confront her husband with his problem—or the man who refuses to stand up to his boss. Jesus said, No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord (John 10:18). Jesus not only rode into Jerusalem his final time, knowing that he would be crucified there, but before that, he went back to his hometown of Nazareth a second time even though the first time the elders had tried to execute him by throwing him off a cliff! These are not the actions of one who fears confronation!
What is meekness? Let’s return to the magnificent, powerful, spirited animal, that has learned to answer to the reins—to accept control. The restless, wild, carless nature of the horse has been brought into submission. The horse has learned to accept control. It no longer resists or fights its rider, but quietly submits. Meekness is placing our power under the King’s control. It is making all of our power, and strength, and passion, and energy responsive to the touch of the Master to whom we have given the reins of our lives. Meekness is not being passive; it is ruling and shaping our lives, FOR Christ.
There is a second word picture that describes meekness. Paul points us to Jesus’ example who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant. Jesus laid aside his rights as God to take on the form of a human who has no rights a slave. The word Paul used was DOULOS. The word is profoundly important for understanding meekness. A DOULOS was owned by his master. Meekness is seeing myself and all that is mine as belonging to God. We were bought with a price. The price is the shed blood of Christ. Meekness is renouncing self-interest and entrusting all of my rights to God, because he owns me. One of the best pictures of meekness comes from a custom in Israel given by God through Moses. If a slave loved his master and wanted to voluntarily serve him for the rest of his days, the master was to bring the slave to a doorpost where the master was to pierce the slave’s ear with an awl.
To follow Christ is to let him pierce your ear. You belong to him as his doulos while trusting him to take care of your needs and wants. Meekness is giving all I am and own to God; so, he has the right to control them—my body, mind, heart-affections, sexual appetite, reputation, earning power, investments, time, gender role, home, possessions, vocation, energy. It is then receiving them back again to be his stewards of them. From Jonathan Edwards’ diary—this was his perspective!
I claim no right to myself—no right to this understanding, this will, these affections that are in me. Neither do I have any right to these hands these feet, these ears, these eyes. I have given myself clear away and not retained anything of my own. I’ve spoken to God this morning and told him I have given myself wholly to him…Henceforth I am not to act in any respect as my own.
Tremendous inner freedom—the freedom of meekness—results from seeing ourselves as belonging to our Lord because He takes good care of WHAT BELONGS TO HIM. It is his job to provide for me, which brings tremendous freedom from financial worries. It is his job to provide the friends I need, so, I don’t need to worry about being accepted. It is his job to protect my reputation, so I don’t need to become defensive when others criticize me or lash back at those who criticize me. Marin Lloyd Jones in his classic work, The Sermon on the Mount defines meekness as “leaving everything in the hands of God.”
Drilling down further to one application of an attitude of meekness—it is recognizing that part of belonging to God is humbly receiving his correction. The Psalmist points out that the meek trust God because God leads the meek in what is right and teaches the meek his way (Ps 25:9). James refers to this teachable attitude when he writes, Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with MEEKNESS the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. This week, I bumped into a great example of this teachable humility demonstrated in the character of a public figure, Rosaria Butterfield. She is a former LGBTQ activist, lesbian, and professor of English and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University, who came to Christ in 1999. Two weeks ago on the Reformation 21 website, she opened our eyes to the meekness of her character when she publicly changed her view of how Christians should respond to a trans person’s request to submit to her chosen pronouns.
“In 1999, Christ called me to repentance and belief, and I became a despised defector of the LGBTQ+ movement. But I have failed many times during these past decades…My use of transgendered pronouns was not just a mistake; it was sin. Public sin requires public repentance, not “course correction.” I have publicly sinned on the issue of transgender pronouns, which I have carelessly used in books and articles. Why did I do this? I have a bunch of lame and backside-covering excuses. Here are a few. It was a carry-over from my gay activist days. I wanted to meet everyone where they were and do nothing to provoke insult.”
Using transgender pronouns, Butterfield now believes, was not only a misguided attempt at hospitality but a sin, a violation against the ninth commandment which forbids bearing false witness. She continues,
“Psychologist Mark Yarhouse and author Preston Sprinkle believe using transgender pronouns is respectful of someone’s chosen identity; it’s kind and courteous and necessary for continuing a relationship with a transgender person. I once sinfully said all these things, too. But this position makes no Christian sense. Does any real Christian believe crafting a relationship on falsehood will give the gospel a better hearing? And is that how people are converted? By meeting God on sin’s terms and hearing nice things about themselves? Laura Perry Smalts offers a different perspective. In her past, she lived as a “transgendered man” and called herself “Jake.” Laura pumped testosterone and engaged in mutilating “gender-affirming” surgeries. And God saved, redeemed, and transformed her into a beautiful trophy of his grace. She has recounted in countless interviews and her book (Transgender to Transformed) the opposite approach to Sprinkle and Yarhouse and the old Rosaria. When the Lord enlivened her heart and mind with the gospel, Laura returned to the church of her youth and her conservative Christian parents. Her church and parents had refused to use her preferred pronouns throughout all the years she lived in the false identity of transgenderism. Why did she return to them? Their refusal to lie compelled her trust.”
“The blood of Christ does not create an ‘ally’ with the sin it crushes on the cross, for that stands in opposition to gospel hope. The world, the flesh, and the devil are not Christ’s friends. Christians need to learn how to love their enemies, not pretend their enemies are their friends… Christians who use the moral lens of LGBTQ+ personhood are not merely a “soft presence” in the enemy camp. Their malleability makes them pudding in the enemy’s hand. They make false converts to a counterfeit gospel that bends the knee to the fictional identity of LGBTQ+.”
Rosaria Butterfield demonstrated the meekness of submitting to correction, acknowledging her sin, and confessing it to as wide an audience as her sin had impacted. I also can’t help but notice that she is part of a church that believes in accountability to one another. Such openness to correction is meekness.
SELF-CONTROL
God warns us, A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls (Prov 25:28). In ancient times, a city’s walls were its primary defense, which is one of the reasons Nehemiah was so committed to rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. Jerry Bridges in The Practice of Godliness, writes, “Self-control is the believer’s wall of defense against the sinful desires that wage war against his soul. The person without self-control is easy prey to the invader. He yields himself to the first assault of his ungoverned passions offering no resistance.” Self-control is so basic to being Christ-followers that Paul specifically calls those in all four demographic categories to self-control, older men (Titus 2:2), older women (Titus 2:5), younger men (Titus 2:6) and younger women (Titus 2:5).
Self-control is governing one’s desires. It includes not overindulging some of our appetites but restraining them. But self-control involves more than control of our bodily appetites and desires; we must also exercise self-control over our thoughts, emotions, and speech. We must exercise self-control because, as Peter tells us, we are at war with our sinful desires. “Self-control” is saying “no” to sinful desires, “so that I can say, “yes” to God. It is one of the most distinctive marks of a follower of Christ, who said, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me (Luke 9:23). It is saying “no” to the wrong way to fulfill human desires and then redirecting those desires into righteous channels.
SIX INSIGHTS FOR WINNING THE SELF-CONTROL BATTLE
1. The battle is NOT won by enjoying bodily pleasures LESS. Our heavenly father, like all fathers, loves to give good gifts to his children. Paul urges Timothy to tell the wealthy to put their trust not in riches but in a god who richly provides us with everything to enjoy (I Time 6:17). Yes, there is a place to curb overindulgence, but that does not mean enjoying the righteous pleasures God gives us LESS.
2. Self-control is less about NEVER FALLING than it is about GETTING UP QUICKLY after we have given in to temptation. Most of us don’t have in our personality an iron will to always make ourselves practice like a concert pianist or work out like an Olympic athlete. Jesus does not expect us to be someone we aren’t. Jesus was perfect, but WE are not. Christ-like character is our characteristic attitude. It is USUALLY exercising love, joy, peace. It is consistency not perfection. Sometimes our “disciplines” crash because we are sinners. Other times our disciplines crash because of LIFE. A disciplined quiet time doesn’t mean you never miss—that would be selfish because other’s needs interrupt our best intentions and schedules. Self-disciplined eating does not mean that you don’t’ get off your diet occasionally—but that you get back to disciplined eating quickly. One of the reasons I challenge men to set aside an hour to review their mission with their Commander-in-Chief weekly is that this habit provides a built-in part of your life schedule to refocus and get back on track. That is self-control.
3. Long-term discipline grows out of long-term love for Jesus. Author Bryan Chapel observes, “spiritual change is more a consequence of what our hearts love than of what our hands do” (Holiness by Grace). In my life, some repentance does come from getting my hand slapped by God. But the deepest repentance comes the more I realize how wonderful God is, how good he is, how forgiving he is, how much he loves ME. That is when the intensity of my desire to want to please him grows. Henry Cloud and John Townsend in their book, How People Grow write, “When we finally understand that God isn’t mad at us anymore, we become free to concentrate on love and growth instead of trying to appease Him.”
4. Training ourselves to INSTANTLY obey the promptings of God’s Spirit makes self-control EASIER than SLOW obedience. A great definition of self-control is instantly obeying the initial promptings of the Holy Spirit. Thomas a Kempis in his classic, The Imitation of Christ, observes an important principle for defeating temptation, “We must be watchful, especially in the beginning of the temptation; for the enemy is then more easily overcome, if he is not allowed to enter the door of our hearts but is resisted outside the gate at the first knock.” This is one of the foundational principles for defeating lust—training ourselves to instantly bounce our eyes away from lust-engendering objects. Instant obedience is always easier than allowing the pull of temptation to continue.
5. Staying spiritually sharp through iron sharpening iron is a profound principle for winning the self-control battle. A few years ago, I was in between having some strong brotherhood connections in my life. As I later went back to analyze the cost during those months, one of the first observations I made was that I became undisciplined—eating, exercise, getting up in the morning ahead of the kids, controlling my temper, tongue, and eyes. With the wall around my city down, I was exposing not only myself, but my family to the risk of Satan taking me down. Pat Morley makes a sobering observation about how some men fall, morally,
“Some men have spectacular failures, where in a moment of passion, they burst into flames, crash, and burn. But the more common way men get into trouble evolves from hundreds of tiny decisions—decisions which go undetected—that slowly, like water tapping on a rock, wear down a man’s character. We get caught in a web of cutting corners and compromise, self-deceit and wrong thinking, which goes unchallenged by anyone in our lives” (The Man in the Mirror.)
6. Lax discipline of our children will handicap them for life, because they have not learned self-control. Because of the fall, every child comes into the universe thinking that the world revolves around him or her. It is a parent’s responsibility to teach them otherwise. Cloud and Townsend, in Boundaries With Kids, explain,
If a child knows that the world requires her to take responsibility for her own life, then she can learn to live up to those requirements and get along well in life. But if she grows up in a relationship with parents where she is confused about her own boundaries (what she is responsible for), and about others boundaries (what they are responsible for), she does not develop the SELF-CONTROL that will enable her to steer through life successfully. She will grow up with confused boundaries that lead to the opposite: trying to control others and being out of control herself. In fact, an accurate description of children is that they are little people who are out of control themselves and attempting to control everyone around them. They do not want to take control of themselves to adapt to the requirements of Mom and Dad; they want Mom and Dad to change the requirements!”
Lax discipline robs our children of the chance to learn to control their impulses—to make themselves do what they don’t feel like doing—a quality of character that is vital to succeed in life. A child without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. It is dangerous.
May we and our children choose to live ABOVE OUR CIRCUMSTANCES, showing to the world the mental toughness of Jesus—meekness, and self-control.
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT for All those Near Schenectady/Albany, NEW YORK
I will be one of the two keynote speakers at the Iron Sharpens Iron Conference May 20, 2023. The conference is from 8:30-3:00 PM. It includes two main addresses, lunch, and your choice of 2 out of 16 seminars on topics relevant to men. Here is the link.
For Further Prayerful Thought.
- In what ways is the 8th fruit of the Spirit, translated meekness or gentleness, like a horse racing across the beach under the control of a rider who loves him?
- What have you learned about giving up your rights to God?
- What two insights about developing self-control stood out to you?
- How does a parent’s approach to disciplining a child help a child stop being out of control themselves and attempting to control everyone around them?
