Spirit Powered Self-Control

8Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
-1 Peter 5:8-9

This verse highlights an important theological tension with regard to our propensity to sin. "Be self-controlled and alert" is an exhortation based on the understanding that destructive tendencies originate from within and without at the same time. To say "the devil made me do it" is an excuse based on a half truth. Yes, the devil is on the prowl and we must be alert and aware that he will use anything to destroy us. And yet at the same time we are responsible to control our own actions. Every destructive act originates within us.

Secondly, this verse reveals to us the harrowing depths of the power of sin. We can be devoured. We can be destroyed. Many of us are alive only by the skin of our teeth--by the rescuing hand of redemption. Never before have I been so keenly aware of my own vulnerability to the powers that would like to see me destroyed. It is sometimes frightening to feel how easy it would be to allow oneself to fall victim to circumstances of irreparable damage.

So we must stand firm in the faith. Nowhere does the perplexing theological tension between God's sovereignty and human freedom find such practical expression than in the necessity that we be self-controlled by the power of the Spirit.