“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”
-Galatians 5:22-23
Although “temperance” is not a word most of us use in our day-to-day speech, it is one with a very important and easily understood meaning. In short, it refers to the characteristic of refraining from extremes. A temperate climate, for example, is a climate that has temperatures between the cold extreme of the arctic and the hot extreme of the tropics. With reference to human conduct, temperance refers to an avoidance of worldly excesses, like gluttony or drunkenness, and also avoidance of a sharp temper or other extreme emotional reactions.
As we have tried to do for the other characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit, we will first try to consider the perfect example of Jesus. In all of Jesus’s ministry, He never acted in sinful excess or extreme. A striking example of this is found as He was being tried before His crucifixion in Matthew 26:63, “Jesus held his peace.” Even as He was faced with the mob-like trial, with men who were doubtless shouting insults, and with the disloyalty of His own disciples, Jesus did not respond with a hot temper or any other kind of excess. There is nothing in Jesus’s life that we can point to and say that He was too anything (too fast, too slow, too reactive, too unreactive, and so forth). Jesus is the example of Christian conduct in temperance.
James 1:19-20 instructs us “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” This teaching is a clear way to describe temperance. As the saying goes, “God gave us two ears but one mouth.” A wise man will be ready and willing to hear before he opens his mouth to speak. As humans with a fleshly nature, it is easy for us to forget the simple truth that we do not know everything about any situation. Especially in conflict or disagreement, we tend to assume the motivations, ideas, and perspectives of the other side. In fact, we are so confident in our ability that we will predict what we think they will say. Ultimately, we think, there is no need to listen to them any more – we already know what they think. With that assumption, we begin to speak, usually in anger, in an effort to develop our own side of the conflict. In truth, what we have done is practice the opposite of what scripture teaches; we were slow to hear, swift to speak, and very swift to wrath. Let us all take heed to our own conduct!
The passage we quoted ended with a warning: “The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” Many times, we deceive ourselves into believing that our wrath is aligned with God’s wrath. After all, the Bible does teach that God has righteous indignation against ungodliness (Romans 1:18-32, for example). However, there are three main differences: 1) God knows all things, so He knows the entire picture and therefore knows enough to make a righteous judgment, whereas we, as men, are not all knowing and frequently make faulty judgments due to lack of knowledge, 2) God is the Just Judge and therefore has absolute authority to exercise judgment, whereas we are created men and not given authority to execute our own wrath, and 3) God is perfectly righteous and can make judgments without hypocrisy, whereas we are sinful men and cannot even justify ourselves (Romans 2:1). Therefore, it is unfit for men to be swift to wrath, simply because it “worketh not the righteousness of God.”
I have focused on temperance as restraint from extremes in anger thus far, but the concept of temperance covers much more. As given in the definition, temperance is the restraint from sinful extremes. Unrighteous anger is only one of these! Others include gluttony, drunkenness, greed, adultery, pride, or any other fleshly lust that would cause us to be addicted to it. Eve failed to show temperance when she did not restrain herself from the fruit which “was good for food.” David failed to show temperance when he did not restrain himself from taking Bathsheba, another man’s wife. Noah failed to show temperance when he became drunk from drinking the wine of his vineyard. Nebuchadnezzar failed to show temperance when he basked in his own pride for the greatness of Babylon, which had been given by God. Let us learn the dangers of excess from these examples and abstain from that excess.
Even though he did not use the word “temperance,” Peter well described temperance in the change that should be exhibited in the life of the disciple of Christ: “For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.” May God bless us to abandon that “excess of riot” and live lives bearing spiritual fruit of temperance.