Here was a man who had spent two hundred hours in trying to help an alcoholic get control of himself. Then the alcoholic decided to get on his knees, surrender to Christ, and let Christ control him. He got up from his knees a free man. He never touched alcohol again. He found self-control through Christ-control.
I tried the Christian life as self-control. Every day I would start out with the thought and purpose that I would keep myself from sin that day. And every night I came back a failure. For how could an uncontrolled will control an uncontrolled self? A diseased will could not heal a diseased soul. Then Christ moved into the affections. I began to love Him. Then the lesser loves dropped away.
Professor Royce, in his philosophy of “Loyalty,” says, “There is only one way to be an ethical individual, and that is to choose your cause and then serve it.” This central loyalty to a cause puts other loyalties in their places as subordinate. Then life as a whole is coordinated, since the lesser loyalties are subordinated. To the Christian the “cause” is Christ and His Kingdom. We seek these first, and then all other things, including self-control, are added.
But not automatically. We have to cooperate. We have to throw our wills on the side of being disciplined. There are many who throw their wills on the other side – indiscipline, sometimes called freedom. A junior-high-school girl had on her belt this declaration of wants: “We want more holidays, less homework, more TV, and later hours for bedtime.” Her crowd wanted to be free to do as they liked, not to be free to do as they ought. The result is inward and outward chaos. People who try to be free through indiscipline are “free in the sense that a ship is free when it has lost both compass and rudder. “The undisciplined person may sit at a piano,” says Trueblood, “but he is not free to strike the notes he would like to strike. He is not free because he has not paid the necessary price for that particular freedom.” Freedom is the byproduct of a disciplined person. Then you are not merely “free from;” you are “free to.”
Heavenly father, help me to be the kind of person who is “free to” – free to do the very highest I am capable of doing.Amen.
– E. Stanley Jones
The Accidental Apologist 