sociopath: noun 1. a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense or moral responsibility or social conscience. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” -Galatians 5:22-23 I hope that you are starting to notice a pattern emerging from this series. I talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit an awful lot, and there is a good reason for that. A few months ago I wrote a post about love, the most important fruit we have, but today I want to focus on the key to being able to use the gifts of the Spirit at all times, even when we don’t feel like it. Today we are going to talk about self-control. The Makings of a Selfish Sociopath If selfish ambitions have been the prison in my life, self-control has been the key that opened the door for my release. What does that mean? Well, if you look at the works of the flesh (found in Galatians 5:19-21), you will notice that self ambition is on the list. Self ambition, which means that you care more about yourself and your desires than others, will cause us to fail at every single one of the fruits of the spirit. But why? Well in our flesh, we are selfish. That means that we are capable of doing whatever it takes to get whatever we want. It means that I am capable of becoming a sociopath. That is in direct contrast with loving, being peaceful, being kind, being gentle, and so on and so forth — you get the idea. Apart from the Holy Spirit, every single one of us is capable of murder, molestation, rape, and adultery, just to name a few. This may shock you. If you believe that you are above committing any of these sins, you are being deceived. According to the Bible, our hearts are deceitfully wicked, and the works of the flesh are evident. Look at these two verses with me: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” -Jeremiah 17:9 “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” -Galatians 5:19-21 Let me go on the record to state that I know that I personally am capable of doing all of those things on that list. I am capable of murder, lewdness, adultery, idolatry, outbursts of wrath, and the list goes on. I will say it in plain language. I know that I am capable of harming another person, planning a murder, and doing perverted things (lewdness). You may be tempted to say something like, “Don’t say that Kristin, I know you! That isn’t true at all.” But it is. It is true for all of us, according to God’s Word, if we give into our flesh and our heart’s deceitful desires. We think that there are levels to our sin, and we say that certain things are worse than others. But God only makes two distinctions when it comes to sin; blaspheming the Holy Spirit in Matthew 12:31 (denying and deciding permanently that God doesn’t exist), and stumbling a child in Luke 17:2. On this scale of mild sin to severe sin, we deceive ourselves into thinking that even though we may lie and envy, that we would never commit murder or heresy. But that isn’t biblical, and that kind of thinking gets us into serious trouble. That is the exact place that Satan wants us to be, caught off guard by our own sin. How Can I Stop This The only way to be set free from the punishment we deserve for our sin is believe entirely that Jesus Christ took the punishment for all of my sins, and cleansed me on the cross. But is there a way that we can stop sinning? The answer is unfortunately, no. However, believers do go through a process called sanctification,