Bible verses about self-control

“Temperance” was never only about drink

Where the modern rendering says self-control in Galatians 5:23, the King James says temperance. The Greek is egkrateia (1466), and it occurs four times in three verses: Acts 24:25, Galatians 5:23, and twice in 2 Peter 1:6, because that passage is a ladder and each rung is named again as the next one starts. Three of those verses are in the list above, so you can count it: the King James says temperance all four times, and the modern rendering says self-control all four times. Thayer’s lexicon defines the word as “the virtue of one who masters his desires and passions, especially his sensual appetites”.

English has narrowed since. As late as 1828, Noah Webster’s American Dictionary defined temperance as “habitual moderation in regard to the indulgence of the natural appetites and passions”, with the examples “temperance in eating and drinking; temperance in the indulgence of joy or mirth” (Webster 1828), and nothing about giving anything up. The Cambridge Dictionary now gives a second meaning beside the old one: “the habit of not drinking alcohol because you believe it is dangerous or wrong” (Cambridge). That is the meaning in the phrase temperance movement, and it is not what the translators of 1611 meant.

You do not have to take a dictionary’s word for it. Titus 1 lists what a church leader should be, and it deals with drink a verse before it reaches temperance:

For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre;Titus 1:7 · King James Version

But a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate;Titus 1:8 · King James Version

Not given to wine is verse 7. Temperate is verse 8, and it is the adjective from the same family, egkrates (1468), which occurs only here. Ellicott’s commentary says the word is “not to be understood in the usual and more limited sense which has been already specified in ‘not given to wine’ of the preceding verse, but signifies the being temperate—moderate in all things” (commentaries). Verse 7 has also already dealt with temper, violence and money. Whatever temperate covers, it is not one of those on its own.

The verb from the same family occurs twice: once of an athlete in training, temperate in all things (1 Corinthians 9:25, in the list above), and once about the unmarried, where the King James has if they cannot contain (1 Corinthians 7:9). Food, drink, sex, temper: the word is about whatever pulls.

Two different words come out as “self-control”

2 Timothy 1:7, which is on our pages for fear and anxiety, says in the modern rendering that God gave us a spirit of power, love, and self-control. That is a different word: sophronismos (4995), which occurs only there, and which the King James renders a sound mind. It belongs to the family of sophron, sound-minded, the same family as soberly in Titus 2:12 (sophronos, 4996) and of sophronein, to think soberly, in Romans 12:3, which our verses about pride are built on.

The two families are not one idea, and Titus 1:8 shows it, because it has both in the same list. The interlinear puts sophrona third and egkrate last: the King James has sober and temperate, the modern rendering has sober minded and self-controlled. Where they sit side by side, both translations keep them apart. Where they sit in different books, the modern rendering calls them both self-control, and the toggles cannot show you that.

There is an older distinction behind the word in Galatians. Aristotle used enkrateia, the same word in another spelling, for a person who feels a pull against their better judgment and acts rightly anyway. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s summary: “Like the akratic, an enkratic person experiences a feeling that is contrary to reason; but unlike the akratic, he acts in accordance with reason.” Aristotle ranked it below virtue: “Such people are not virtuous, although they generally do what a virtuous person does” (SEP, Aristotle’s Ethics). Whether Paul had Aristotle’s distinction in mind, the text does not tell us. But in Aristotle’s vocabulary, at least, the word Galatians puts last in the fruit of the Spirit is the word for someone who still feels the pull. If you still feel it, you are not outside the word.

One more thing about Titus 2:11-12, in the list. The subject of the sentence is the grace of God, and what grace does is instructing us, the verb paideuo (3811), which Strong’s glosses “to train up a child” (interlinear). In that sentence, learning to live soberly is something done to you by a teacher, not something you are expected to have already.

One man takes a city, and another one is a city

Proverbs 16:32, which is also on our verses about anger, says that one who rules his spirit is better than he who takes a city. Proverbs 25:28 says that a man whose spirit is without restraint is like a city that is broken down and without walls. The two proverbs are nine chapters apart, and the interlinears show the same two nouns in both: ruach, spirit (7307), and ir, city (5892) (16:32, 25:28). In the first, the man who rules his spirit outranks the man who captures a city. In the second, the man who cannot rule his spirit is the city, with the wall breached. Nothing in the text says one proverb answers the other. The picture is the same one, turned round.

The word for restraint in 25:28 is ma’tsar (4623), which Brown-Driver-Briggs glosses “restraint, control”, from a root meaning to shut. It occurs once in the Hebrew Bible, in this verse, so there is no other passage to check it against. The King James has no rule over his own spirit, the modern rendering without restraint, and both are reasonable readings of a word we only have once.

The boxer’s word Paul uses on himself

1 Corinthians 9:25-27 starts with runners and moves to boxing: I fight like that, not beating the air. Then comes I beat my body in the modern rendering and I keep under my body in the King James. The verb is hupopiazo (5299), which Strong’s glosses “to hit under the eye”. Vincent’s Word Studies calls the King James “A feeble translation, and missing the metaphor. The word means to strike under the eye; to give one a black eye” (commentaries).

It occurs twice in the New Testament, and the other place is a joke. In Luke 18 a widow keeps coming back to a judge who does not care about justice, until he gives in:

Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.Luke 18:5 · King James Version

Weary me is the same verb. The Cambridge Bible says it is literally “should blacken me under the eyes” and calls it a colloquialism. The Expositor’s Greek Testament gives both readings, “weary me to death” or “give me black eyes; of course meant in a humorous sense”, and prefers the first as closer to the point of the parable (commentaries). Luke says what that point is before the story starts: that they must always pray and not give up (18:1). The only other time the New Testament uses Paul’s word for mastering himself, it is about somebody who would not stop asking.

Read the boxing as a picture. Ellicott: “the language all throughout this passage is figurative, and the statement here refers, not to the infliction of actual pain on the body, but to the subduing of the appetites and passions which are located in it.” Jamieson-Fausset-Brown: “It is not ascetic fasts or macerations of the body which are here recommended”. If you are hurting yourself, or thinking about it, call or text 988 in the US at any hour (988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline). Nothing in this passage asks that of you.

Whose slogan is “all things are lawful”?

1 Corinthians 6:12 is in the list above, and the two translations punctuate it differently. The modern rendering puts All things are lawful for me in quotation marks, twice, as somebody else’s saying that Paul answers. The King James has no quotation marks. The quotation marks are the translators’ decision, and so is the next verse:

“Foods for the belly, and the belly for foods,” but God will bring to nothing both it and them. But the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.1 Corinthians 6:13 · World English Bible

Commentators have read it both ways. The Cambridge Bible says the words “appear to have become a watchword with some among the Corinthian Christians”. Ellicott thinks it “was probably a statement which the Apostle had himself made” and that some were misusing it (commentaries). Barnes says of the line about food that it “has every appearance of being an adage or proverb” (on 6:13). The chapter goes on from food to sex, and that is where Paul’s answer is aimed.

Either way, the answer depends on wordplay that English loses. Lawful is exestin (1832) and brought under the power is exousiazo (1850), and Ellicott calls them “cognate words”: “There is a verbal contrast in the Greek here which can scarcely be rendered fully in English.” The Pulpit Commentary’s attempt at it is “All things are in my power, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” Paul does not argue that the thing is forbidden. He says it does not get to run him. Ellicott again: “There is such a thing as becoming the very slave of liberty itself.” That is a sentence about a phone as much as anything else.

“What I hate, that I do”

Romans 7:15 opens with a phrase the two translations render differently. The modern rendering has I don’t understand what I am doing; the King James has that which I do I allow not. The Greek verb is ginosko, to know (interlinear). Ellicott takes it plainly: “that which I perform I know not. I act blindly”. Barnes takes the King James’s allow in its old sense, “I do not approve; I do not wish it”, and notes that the Greek says “I know not” but that “know” is sometimes used for approving (commentaries). Nothing in the Greek is disputed; this is a translation choice, and both choices are on the page.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown and the Benson Commentary both set beside this verse a line from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, written in AD 8, in which Medea argues with herself: video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor, “I see the better and approve it; I follow the worse” (book 7, lines 20-21, Latin text). Whatever else Romans 7 is, the experience in it was not new.

Whose experience Paul is describing has been argued over for centuries. The Benson Commentary holds that it is a man before conversion, and that commentators who take it as Paul’s own state at the time of writing “must be under a great mistake”. Barnes and the Cambridge Bible read verses 14-25 as a believer; Cambridge appeals to “those saints who, like St Augustine, have been specially schooled in spiritual conflict”. Jamieson-Fausset-Brown takes a third line, “the sinful principle of the renewed man” (commentaries on 7:14). We are not going to settle it. What every reading leaves standing is how the chapter ends:

What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! So then with the mind, I myself serve God’s law, but with the flesh, sin’s law.Romans 7:24-25 · World English Bible

The thanks comes before anything is fixed, and the last sentence of the chapter still has both halves in it: the mind serving one law, the flesh another. The chapter does not end with the struggle over.

Two people who said “not yet”

Acts 24:25 is the first time egkrateia appears in the New Testament, and it makes a Roman governor afraid. Felix and his wife Drusilla sent for Paul, who was in his custody, and Paul talked about righteousness, self-control, and the judgement to come. Felix answered, when it is convenient for me, I will summon you. The next two verses say what happened instead:

Meanwhile, he also hoped that money would be given to him by Paul, that he might release him. Therefore also he sent for him more often and talked with him. But when two years were fulfilled, Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus, and desiring to gain favour with the Jews, Felix left Paul in bonds.Acts 24:26-27 · World English Bible

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown reads temperance in 24:25 as aimed “with reference to his immoral life”, and MacLaren notes that Felix “had tempted from her husband, Drusilla”. Ellicott: “Nothing that we know of him gives us any ground for thinking that the ‘convenient season’ ever came.” (commentaries)

The other one is Augustine, and he wrote it down himself. In book 8 of the Confessions he remembers praying as a young man, “Grant me chastity and continency, but not yet. For I was afraid lest You should hear me soon”. The Latin is da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo (Latin text), and continentia is the Latin Thayer’s lexicon gives for egkrateia: Augustine was asking for the virtue in Galatians 5:23, and asking for it later. A few pages on, in the little garden of the house where he was lodging, he is weeping and saying “How long, how long? Tomorrow, and tomorrow? Why not now?”, hears a child’s voice chanting “Take up and read”, opens the book of Paul’s letters he had put down, and reads Romans 13:13-14, which is in the list above. “No further would I read, nor did I need” (Confessions, book 8). Felix is the not yet that stayed. Augustine is the one that ended, and it ended on a verse that tells you to make no provision for the flesh, which is a practical instruction as much as anything: do not stock the cupboard.

What these verses do not say

• “The flesh is weak” was first said about falling asleep. Matthew 26:41 was said in Gethsemane, to disciples who could not watch with him for one hour, and it happened again: He came again and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy (26:43). The line everyone quotes about giving in was first said about tiredness, and what comes with it is an instruction to watch and pray. Our verses about sleep are next door.
• 1 Corinthians 10:13 is about temptation, not about suffering. It is the verse behind “God won’t give you more than you can handle”, which is not in the Bible, and our post on what to say to someone who is grieving explains why that sentence should not be said at a funeral. Here, on the subject it is actually about, the promise is a way out, not an absence of pressure.
• They do not say that an addiction is a willpower problem. If what you cannot stop is drinking or drugs, it may be a health condition, and it can be treated as one. The National Institute on Drug Abuse calls substance use disorders “chronic, treatable disorders that affect a person’s brain and behaviors, but from which people can recover”, and SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357), gives referrals to treatment in the US (NIDA). Asking for that help is not the opposite of self-control.
• They do not promise the pull goes away. Romans 7 ends with it still there, and the word in Galatians, in Aristotle’s sense of it, is for people who still feel it. The gentleness and kindness in the same list are on our verses about kindness, and the patience on verses about patience.