Self-Control: Love’s Limit

By Andrew DeCort

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No more shall the law say...an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, to him who counts no man his enemy, but all his neighbors, and therefore cannot even put forth his hand to revenge.
(St. Irenaeus, c. 125-202 AD)

The story of David presents a striking contradiction in character. In this biblical poet and king, we witness both exemplary self-control and extreme cruelty.

David was born into obscurity and grew up as a rural shepherd. But he became a rising star in his society when he defeated the giant Goliath. The people celebrated his heroism, and many wondered if he would become Israel’s next king. 

Unsurprisingly, the sitting king, Saul, wasn’t pleased. He felt threatened by this attractive, inspiring rival to his power. Soon enough, Saul tried to kill David with his own spear. When David escaped, Saul gathered 3,000 soldiers to hunt him down. 

The story unfolds with irony. David catches wind that Saul is on his trail and hides with his men in the back of a cave. Saul then uses the same cave to relieve himself. In the isolated darkness, we expect David to silently slit Saul’s throat. This is precisely what his friends urge him to do. In fact, they insist it is God’s prophetic plan: “This is the day the Lord spoke of when he said to you, ‘I will give your enemy into your hands for you to deal with as you wish’” (1 Samuel 24:3). 

But David wishes otherwise. He quietly approaches Saul and cuts, not his throat, but a bit of his cloak. When Saul exits the cave, David calls out to him and holds up the fabric as proof of his character. David could have killed his would-be killer and justified it as self-defense. Doing so may have even catapulted him into the kingship. Nevertheless, David saved the life of his murderous enemy. In doing so, he performed one of the exemplary acts of self-control in the Bible. David restrained his desire for retribution in the heat of conflict and confessed to Saul, “My hand will not touch you” (1 Samuel 24:13).  

Contrast this with another episode in David’s life. This time David is in battle against his regional rivals, the Moabites. David wins the fight and takes many soldiers captive. But unlike the spared Saul, he forces them to line up and lie down on the ground. He then measures them off with a length of chord. Every two lengths of captives he kills. Every third he saves to pay him tribute. It was a randomized lottery of death with humans seemingly slaughtered for sport (2 Samuel 8:2).    

In both cases, David was in conflict with “enemies” who wanted to kill him. So, why did he exercise profound self-control in one case and inflict pitiless cruelty in the other? 

The answer is clear enough. David believed that Saul, for all his volatility and violence, had an “anointing” or special relationship with God. To touch Saul was to touch God. His life was sacred. And so, David rejected his men’s counsel to see killing Saul as God’s prophetic plan and refused to harm him (1 Samuel 24:5-7). By contrast, the Moabites were simply “enemies.” He didn’t perceive them as bearing special value, much less divine anointing. They could be killed without remorse. 

The difference between life and death, self-control and cruel killing, was David’s differing conviction about these people’s value. 

Many centuries later, another Saul, who also hunted for his enemies, met Jesus unexpectedly. After Jesus confronted his violence, the renamed Paul went on to call self-control a fruit of God’s Spirit. He did so in a context of simmering conflict. Volatile temptations to hate, rage, and divide into factions were swirling in the community. Paul warned his readers that they were in danger of “being destroyed by each other” (Galatians 5:15, 20).  

Paul’s intervention is so familiar that we may overlook its subversive significance. He doesn’t specify an individual or group of people who have special value in God’s eyes and thus are worthy of restraint in conflict. Paul universalizes our moral vision of people so that every person now bears this special value that defies violation. He writes, “the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’... Let us do good to all people” (Galatians 5:14; 6:10). Through love’s lens, there are no discardable people. Each person is a “neighbor,” a bearer of God-given worth to be loved, even in conflict — even when labeling them an “enemy” for elimination is what culture expects. According to Paul, this is the heart of everything God wants to teach us. 

It makes sense, then, that Paul begins his list of the Spirit’s fruit with love and ends with self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). In another letter, Paul wrote, “Love does no harm to a neighbor” (Romans 13:10). This is love’s sacred limit, what love refuses to do: harm others. The truth is, love may not prevent conflict between us. But true love perceives the precious worth of the other and activates the self-control to resist harming them. It says with David, “I will not raise my hand against you.” 

As simple as it sounds, so much rides on how we see people. As David’s story illustrates, it can decide whether we allow the Spirit to empower courageous self-control in mortal conflict or use our religion to justify killing, even with cruelty. 

Two thousand years after Jesus healed Paul’s vision, who may we still struggle to see as our neighbors? We might assume that we are long beyond this double vision. Still, the difference in response among many American Christians to the suffering of Israelis and Palestinians today is just one example that suggests our vision still needs healing. Do we see one as an anointed neighbor worthy of disciplined self-control and the other as an “enemy” or “collateral damage” that is acceptable to devastate?  

The fruit of the Spirit is love’s resistance to the harm of any neighbor. May this fruit flourish in us, even through hardened soil.

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