Ultimately, our controlling ourselves is about being controlled by Christ. When “the love of Christ controls us” ( 2 Corinthians 5:14 ), when we embrace the truth that he is our sovereign, and God has “left nothing outside his control” ( Hebrews 2:8 ), we can bask in the freedom that we need not muster our own strength to exercise self-control, but we can find strength in the strength of another . In the person of Jesus, “the grace of God has appeared . . . training us” — not just “to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions,” but “to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age” ( Titus 2:11–12 ). Christian self-control is not finally about bringing our bodily passions under our own control, but under the control of Christ by the power of his Spirit.
Because self-control is a gift, produced in and through us by God’s Spirit, Christians can and should be the people on the planet most hopeful about growing in self-control. We are, after all, brothers of the most self-controlled man in the history of the world.