Welcome back and thanks for listening! Today we discuss the final fruit of the spirit, self-control. While it is easy to perceive self-control as akin to toddlers learning not to hit one another, as a fruit of the spirit, self-control is about our being transformed into new creation by the work of the spirit.
Paul captures this idea of spirit directed transformation leading to self-control in 2 Corinthians 5:16-19:
“So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.”
As we become more mature in our faith, we are better able to discern and to choose to live according to the spirit instead of the flesh. Instead of the spirit-directed life feeling like an external limiter of our actions like traffic laws or a scolding parent, it becomes part of our identity and we are able to recognize the ways of sin and the flesh and choose the spirit-directed way instead.
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