Self-Control and the City Without Walls

A man without self-control
is like a city broken into and left without walls.

Proverbs 25:28, ESV

Once I read an article online about abandoned malls. The photos that illustrated these old, broken down malls made me feel sad and slightly disconcerted. I wondered if something like this could happen in my city. How does a once living, thriving, community meeting place turn into an empty building with vines growing over the windows and tiny weeds putting down roots in the cracks in the fountain tile? Did the mall begin to look dilapidated before people stopping coming, or did it happen the other way around? The above verse from Proverbs reminds of one of these malls, broken down and left without support. What does Proverbs 25:28 teach us about people, self-control, and cities without walls?

Proverbs 25:28 begins by telling us that this proverb is about people, creatures with eternal souls created in God’s image to love and serve him. All people fall short of the glory of God and need Jesus’ redemption in order to be right with God. The Bible often uses the word “man” to mean both men and women, which is true in this case. The lesson this proverb instructs us in applies to both men and women.

Self-control is listed as a fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23, along with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and gentleness. When we show self-control, or self-discipline, we say yes to the things God calls us to do and no to the things that go directly against his will. We grow in self-discipline through the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts as he makes us more like Christ.

What happened in Bible times when a city had no walls? People could come and go as they pleased, without guards or a city gate. Nobody kept watch and nobody determined who could or could not enter. A city without walls probably didn’t have wise judges meeting where the city gate would have been to help solve conflict or determine legal matters among citizens, which means that nobody was carefully and skillfully safeguarding the conduct of the people. A city without walls would be a chaotic, selfish, scary place to live, and would eventually end up in ruin and decay.

If we lack self-control, we are like a city broken into and left without walls. We might feel okay for a little while, we may even feel good, but eventually we’ll become ruinous and desolate, focused on ourselves and our own pleasure instead of God and his goodness. We’ll continue to let our guard down as our self-discipline crumbles under the pressure of our own desires. When the walls of self-discipline are completely gone, our ability to discern God’s will and obey his commands will fade away too, like brilliant stars disappear in the fierce light of morning. 1 Thessalonians 5:19 reminds us, “Do not quench the Spirit.”

A lack of self-discipline can produce many unpleasant things in our hearts, such as selfishness, pride, anxiety, and depression. I like what Elisabeth Elliot says about order and disorder in the life of a Christian: “Either there is an order or there is not, and if there is one which is violated disorder is the result–disorder on the deepest level of the personality.” [1] A lack of self-control will lead us to focus on on ourselves and what we want instead of on God and what he wants. We begain seek to gain comfort in what is worldly instead of what is heavenly at the expense of loving others. We might begin to believe that we know better than God. “If God doesn’t give me what I want, I”ll get it myself!” Humility recognizes that God knows what is best and gives us what we need when we need it. We can feel anxious and depressed in the chaos a lack of self-control produces as shame and fear for saying “yes” when we should have said “no” (or vice verse) overwhelms us.

How do we keep ourselves from becoming like the city broken into and left without walls? We practice self-discipline for the sake of the gospel. We spend time studying God’s Word, which is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteous” (2 Timothy 3:16). We know our calling in this life, to serve God and glorify him where he places us and in the roles he gives us, and we follow this calling dutifully and joyfully. We don’t compare ourselves to others, but we work out our own faith with fear and trembling, remembering that the church body needs all the different parts of the body to function well. Like judges in the city gates, we use the wisdom we find in God’s Word to govern our lives. We serve our God of order in an orderly way, living full lives instead of busy lives, putting up walls to safeguard our relationship with the Lord above everything else.

Most importantly, we recognize that we are people, made in God’s image and loved by him, desperately in need of a Savior. When we feel like our walls of self-discipline are toppling over, we can look to Jesus because only he is mighty to save. Only he can turn our broken down, empty hearts into living cities filled with the joy of his Spirit.

[1] Elliot, E. (1976) Let Me Be a Woman. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.