Proverbs 16:32. Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city. (NIV)
There have been lots of great warriors throughout history. Maybe you learned about Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great. These warriors controlled huge empires by force, but in the end they couldn’t control their own life.
They didn’t have self-control.
To have self-control is to have control over your emotions, your feelings, and also your choices. An infant has no self-control. They can’t control their feelings or reactions, nor do they make many choices on their own? But the mature, growing person should be gaining more and more self-control.
Such self-control is biblical manhood (and personhood for that matter). Many men think that masculinity comes from having a warrior spirit, or from being able to take a city (metaphorically or literally I suppose). But how many Christian men understand that true masculinity is found in being slow to anger and in exercising self-control over self-expression? Your family is benefited much more by a patient, forgiving man than by a man that can defend the household from an attacker. The church is much better off with a pastor that can control their own affections and desires than they are with a man who can preach with fervor against the Enemy while succumbing to the Enemy’s schemes. A nation is far better served by a political candidate that rules their own spirit and is open to other’s ideas than they are a candidate that has no patience for compromise and no self-control when it comes to their personal words and deeds.
Both of these character traits exalted in this proverb, patience and self-control, are listed as fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5. These are literally character traits of God and Christ himself. God is patient, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. No one is more in control of his spirit than God, for God’s spirit is the Holy Spirit, God.
What does this mean for us who are in Christ? It means that Christ in us has placed these two very important character traits into our hearts and souls already. If you have the Holy Spirit, then you have patience and self-control. The question is simply will we let them out, or will we suppress them by our fleshly desires?
How did Jesus exercise patience and self-control while on earth? By faith. Simple faith. Jesus never said or did anything of his own volition; he only ever said and did what the Father told him to do and say. Could Jesus not trust himself? He was just as much God as the Father, wasn’t he? Of course he was. But Jesus chose, by faith, to submit his life to the Father as an example to us of what being human means – trusting the Lord with all our heart, fearing God, allowing his power to live through us.
Jesus was a warrior, but in a whole different way. He won his victory through defeat. Jesus took down the gates of Hell, but only by allowing himself to go through Hell. Jesus understood what so many of us fail to understand, that you can only win in God’s kingdom through losing. You can only conquer through being defeated. You can only rise to life through the death of the cross.
You: Are you patient? Slow to anger? Do you exercise self-control or self-expression?
You in Christ: Why is victory always through defeat with Christ? Do you understand this truth?
Christ in you: You have patience and self-control in you? How can you let them out today?
Pray: Father, you know that patience and self-control are hard for me. Help me to submit to you and all that you would want me to feel, do, and say. Show me the way to live. Amen.
To Live is Christ 