What does the Bible say about temperance?

The word “temperance” in 2 Peter 1:6 means a great deal more than what is usually understood by that term. It is customary to apply the word “temperance” to a habit of moderation in reference to eating and drinking. No doubt it fully involves this, but it involves much more. Indeed, the Greek word used by the inspired apostle may be rendered “self-control.” It gives the idea of one who has self habitually well reined in.

This is a rare and admirable grace, diffusing its hallowed influence over one's entire course, character and conduct. It not only bears directly upon one or two or twenty selfish habits, but upon self in all the length and breadth of that comprehensive and most odious term. Many a one who would look with proud disdain upon a glutton or a drunkard, may himself fail every hour in exhibiting the grace of self-control. True it is that gluttony and drunkenness should be ranked with the very vilest and most demoralizing forms of selfishness. They must be regarded as among the most bitter clusters that grow on that widespread tree. But self is a tree and not a mere branch of a tree or a cluster on a branch, and we should not only judge self when it works, but control it that it may not work.

"And to knowledge temperance." Not the mere external restraint, but the cultivation of the inward history of the soul day by day, governing ourselves, keeping ourselves in. order: and depend upon it if we cannot keep ourselves in order, we cannot keep any one else. Temperance is that quiet gravity of spirit, that is equable in every circumstance, like Christ, never upset by any trial, or anything that provokes.

"And to temperance patience." Temperance will keep me from saying or doing a thing that will wound you, and patience will keep me from being upset by anything that you may do that is likely to wound me. Temperance is active, patience is passive! If you have not knowledge, you will not know how to meet the mind of God. If you have not temperance you will be sure to do something that will hurt some one else, and if you have not patience you will be upset by what some one else may be doing to you.

"And to patience godliness" — God-likeness. Walking through this scene, and possessing the divine nature, see that you illustrate it, exemplify it! Show me a man's company, and I will show you what sort of a man he is. If you are keeping company with God you will be a godly person, for we all resemble the thing we are occupied with. It comes out in a thousand details of our everyday life.

Finally we come to self-control. This is translated "temperance" in the English Bible, but it really means to have mastery, and the one over which we are to have mastery, is ourselves. I fear that this is a very rare, but very precious fruit. How few there are who truly have mastery over their own bodies, and their own minds and thoughts. Paul could say of himself: "I keep under my body, and lead it away a slave." 1 Cor. 9:27. That is true self-control. Paul had mastery over himself. Let us remember that this is a fruit of the Spirit, and only God's Spirit can give this self-control.

Then we have, on the other side, "the fruit of the Spirit is love." He begins with love — that which is of God, and flows directly from God, and which is the knowledge of God's character more than any other thing. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith." Such are the first and weightiest effects produced by God's love. Then he gets down to what would more particularly deal with one another: "meekness, temperance," because these suppose the bridle put upon the evil nature — the self-control which the Holy Ghost works in the soul for the Lord's sake, as evidently being set in this world to be an epistle of Christ, so that we should not give a false character to Him whose name we bear. But all these are the fruits of the Spirit; and he adds, "against such there is no law." When did law ever produce these? So the law will never condemn those who walk in these things; as he says to the Roman saints, Romans 13, speaking of governors and rulers, "Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same; for he is the minister of God to thee for good." So here, "against such there is no law." If you are producing these fruits of the Spirit, there is no condemnation against them.

Then we are bidden to add temperance. Generally speaking temperance in our minds is connected with abstaining from spirituous liquors. But temperance here has a wider significance. It means self- restraint. “Every man that strives for the mastery is temperate in ALL things”. Not in one, but in all things. We are apt to go to extremes. We need to recognize the flesh in us, to curb our tempers, our egotism, our love of gain, to be a law to ourselves is divinely right.

Finally, "faithfulness, gentleness, self control." These three are personal to ourselves. Do you have faith? "Have it to yourself before God" (Rom.14:22). We must neither act on the faith of another, nor press another to act on our faith, though we may give him the Word of God to encourage him to act on his own faith. Gentleness (or meekness) is that quality that simply submits to personal humiliation, if need be, without demanding our personal "rights" as we see them. Self-control is a great inner conquest, as Proverbs 16:32 reminds us: "He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city." In contrast, "Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls" (Prov.25:28). "Against such there is no law." They are the spontaneous fruit of the Spirit, operating unquenched and ungrieved in our lives. Law neither produces or prohibits them.

Further, he was to be "temperate," an expression much narrowed and so far misapplied in our day. Self-control not in one respect but in all is its real meaning. It is the quality of having every way and expression of feeling, or inclination, checked in the Christian by his sense of God's presence, grace, and fear.

Temperance is needed in our knowledge. In Galatians 5:23, this word is rendered "self-control" in the New Translation. The possession of knowledge apart from self-control may lead, as with the Corinthian saints, to our being puffed up with a sense of self-importance. We are warned in 1 Corinthians 8:2, that if a man uses knowledge to exalt himself, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. How important then to judge ourselves, so that with our knowledge there may be temperate thoughts of self; not thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, "but to think soberly" (Rom. 12:3).

We are not going to preach a crusade against stimulants or narcotics. The wrong is not in the things themselves but in our inordinate and sinful use of them. It not infrequently happens that persons who fall under the horrible dominion of drink seek to lay the blame on their medical adviser; but surely no proper medical man would ever advise his patient to indulge in the use of stimulants. He may prescribe the use of "a little wine, for the stomach's sake and frequent infirmities," and he has the very highest authority for so doing; but why should this lead any one to become a drunkard? Each one is responsible to walk in the fear of God in reference to both eating and drinking. If a doctor prescribes a little nourishing food for his patient, is he to be blamed if that patient becomes a glutton? Surely not; the evil is not in the doctor's prescription, or in the stimulant, or in the nourishment, but in the wretched lust of the heart.

Here, we are persuaded, lies the root of the evil; and the remedy is found in that precious grace of God which while it brings salvation to all men, teaches those who are saved "to live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world." And be it remembered that "to live soberly" means a great deal more than temperance in eating and drinking; it means this most surely, but it takes in also the whole range of inward self-government — the government of the thoughts, the government of the temper, the government of the tongue. The grace that saves us not only tells us how to live, but teaches how to do it, and if we follow its teachings we shall be well content with God's provision for the stranger.

Abstinence from wine in connection with their service in the inner court well accords with what we have just considered. It "plainly covers all fleshly stimulus, which prevents clear discernment of what is or is not according to the mind and nature of God. For us also who are called to walk in the light of God's presence continually, this is not a casual, but a constant rule. The impulse of nature needs the restraint of Christ's yoke; even where, as the apostle says, things are lawful to us, we must still not be brought under the power of any (1 Cor. 6:12). And how easily do they acquire power!" It means the avoidance of all worldly, carnal methods, the love of the things of the world, in all that constitutes our place in worship and service as a holy and royal priesthood called to show forth the excellencies of Him who has brought us out of darkness into His marvelous light. We are to be controlled by that sober judgment which is formed in the Sanctuary. The psalmist might envy the ease, prosperity and power of the wicked when not in the current of God's thoughts, but when he went into the Sanctuary then understood he their end (Ps. 73). It is to such sobriety that the apostle exhorts — a sobriety of a spiritually sound mind, fleshly desires and passions held in restraint, the habits of life well regulated with discretion and moderation. Compare 1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:8; Titus 2:4, 6, 12; Rom. 12:3; 1 Peter 4:7; 2 Cor. 5:13, sober, soberly, or sober-minded; Titus 2:2, temperate; ver. 5, discreet.