In the apostle Paul’s letter to Titus, we find long lists of character traits and expectations for church leaders, older men, older women, and younger women—qualities like “sound in faith,” “reverent in behavior,” “pure,” “kind,” and “not slanderers.” But when Paul gets to young men? Just one command.
Encourage them to be self-controlled in everything. (Titus 2:6–7)
No list. No elaboration. That one’ll do.
Why this emphasis? Perhaps it’s because self-control is a foundational virtue, especially for young men. This trait rises to the top. Without self-control, you won’t get far in the Christian life.
Priority of Self-Control
This isn’t just a theme in Titus. Paul, when speaking before Governor Felix, sums up the gospel as involving “righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come” (Acts 24:25). Self-control makes it into a gospel presentation! It’s also a fruit of the Spirit, coming at the end of Paul’s list in Galatians 5 but no less essential than the love that starts that list.
Hungarian linguist Zoltán Dörnyei draws a connection between self-control and love. Love is tied to self-control, he says, because self-control is like a spiritual muscle, a foundational virtue that underpins other virtuous behaviors. You can’t become a loving person without self-control, because caring for someone else will always cost you something. True love is hard work because it requires you to push against the inertia of laziness, of just going with the flow. Love requires you to structure your life around willing the good of another. You will not become a person who makes the costly, selfless decisions required by love unless you can master and overcome the selfish impulses most likely to hold you back.
Self-Control Is Under Siege
Why, then, do we hear so little about this virtue? And why do so many young men today seem deficient in it?
Paul wrote to Titus on the island of Crete, where the cultural reputation was one of laziness and gluttony. Not a great combination! Passive when it comes to what’s good for you, passionate when it comes to what’s harmful.
Even today, we live in a culture that treats self-indulgence as a given and self-control as optional. Our economy thrives on our inability to resist certain urges. Social media algorithms are designed to exploit your impulses—to keep you scrolling, swiping, raging, or lusting. Platforms profit from our outrage. Apps monetize our addictions. The world isn’t neutral. It’s actively working against self-control.
If the young men in Paul’s time needed encouragement toward self-control, how much more is this the case today. We need brothers calling each other to something higher. We need people in our lives who will challenge us to master our appetites, manage our emotions, and steward our time.
Without this encouragement, it’s all too easy for the energy and intensity of youth to be hijacked—poured out into pursuits that have no eternal value. Into this vacuum steps a new generation of secular Stoics—self-help gurus who preach self-control in service of the self. A generation of young men are more impressed by Andrew Tate showing off on social media his commitment to lifting weights on Christmas Day, all alone, than by George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, the richest man in the world because of the selfless investments he’s made in all the people around him over a lifetime.
The neo-Stoics recast discipline as just another tool to optimize your life, crush your goals, and elevate your brand. It’s willpower without love. Mastery without mission. And it’s still all about you, you, you.
Not Stoicism but Sanctification
The Christian vision of self-control is something altogether different.
The gospel takes the ancient virtue of self-control and transposes it into a new key. It’s not first and foremost about you. It’s about God. It’s self-control in service of love. Love depends on self-control, yes, but love also deepens self-control. Love turns self-control upward and outward, toward God and toward others. It’s not about independence of self but dependence on God. It’s not about self-mastery; it’s about Spirit-mastery. It’s not about controlling yourself for your own sake; it’s about being controlled by Christ for the sake of others. It’s yielding to the One who loves you with an everlasting love and who wants now to love others through you.
Self-Control in Service of Love
Young men who lack self-control are like a flood—powerful, yes, but uncontrolled, destructive, overwhelming. But young men who learn self-control become like a river—power harnessed and directed, life-giving and fruitful.
In the quest for self-control, we’ll need models. People whose lives are shaped by restraint and grace. Men and women who show what it means to live wisely, love sacrificially, and stand firm in a culture of compromise. You won’t learn self-control from a manual. You learn it by watching someone who’s walked the road ahead of you. And you become that kind of person by the slow, steady work of the Spirit.
To be clear, the life we present to the world isn’t one of perfection or sinlessness, where we always display all the fruit of the Spirit. On the contrary, Paul assumed self-control must be encouraged and exemplified because he knew how easy it would be for us to fail in this area. No, the life we present to the world is the sinless perfection of Jesus Christ—his righteousness counted as ours so we can be justified, and now our righteousness slowly but surely resembling his, as we’re sanctified.
Self-control in service of love. The only way to develop this spiritual muscle is to trust the unfailing love of God our Father, to stand secure in the perfect righteousness of God the Son, and to harness the promised power of God the Spirit. Then, together with God’s people, we press forward in faith, pouring ourselves out for others.
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