How to be a Self-Controlled Young Man | Titus 2:1-15

Dr. Grant Castleberry preaches "How to be a Self-Controlled Young Man" from Titus 2:1-15 at The Lord's Day Service at The King's Chapel, Sunday, June 21, 2026.


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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

I invite you to open your Bibles to Titus 2. And while you're turning there, let's go to the throne of grace in prayer. Heavenly Father, may this book live. May you do your sanctifying work in our hearts. And I pray, Lord, that you would speak through me now in the power of your Holy Spirit. In Christ's name. Amen. Our culture, with all of its postmodern accoutrements, has left young men behind. With its emphasis on feminism, young men, especially in Gen Z, are the forgotten people. But something interesting has happened with young men in our culture. Something that we haven't seen in our nation as long as any of us have been alive. And that is that young men have started coming to church. Statistically, more than young women. Isn't that remarkable? We've never seen this before. Young men are coming to church. And the reason why they're coming to church is because they're not finding the answers that they're looking for in postmodern culture. They're not finding it. What are they looking for? This is a phenomenon that is being studied by all sorts of secular sociologists, all sorts of people are asking this question. Why are the young men now coming to church? And they're looking for things like transcendence. They don't want the kind of emotional worship of yesteryear. They want transcendent worship, kind of like what we've just been doing. They want to take part in tradition. They don't want something new, they want something historic. That's why so many, unfortunately, are streaming into Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy because they think in those traditions they're going to find the answers that they're looking for. In reality, where they will find the answers is in biblical Christianity. Biblical Christianity. One of the things that young men are telling us is that they are looking for a means to find discipline. You hear that word over and over again. I want a way to structure my life. I want to be able to learn how to think. I want to be able to discipline my life the right way. Young men are searching for this like never before. Now it's fascinating. What does Paul say to the young men in verse 6 of Titus 2? He says, likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. That's it. He said all these things. If you look back up to the rest of the chapter, the verses that have come before it, he says, older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, and love, steadfastness, in verse 2. Older women, verse 3, likewise are to be reverent, not slanders or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good. He says they're to train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, submissive to their own husbands, so on and so forth. He says all these things to these different groups. And all he says to the young men is urge them to be self-controlled. It's an imperative. Notice that word, urge. Urge. Greek word is pericaleo. It means to come alongside and to call. It's an urgent admonition. Paul uses the same word in Romans 12.1 when he says, I appeal to you, brothers, therefore, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. That appeal, it's an urgent call. I call you to live a life that is a holy and pleasing sacrifice to God. Ephesians 4 1, Paul says, I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called. 1 Corinthians 4 16, Paul says, I urge you to be imitators of me. Do young men sometimes need an urgent admonition, an encouragement, a call to arms? Answer, yes, we do. I remember when I was in sixth grade, sixth grade, uh I went to a school in our community. It was actually at our church called Schofield Christian School. Had a very godly teacher. Her name was Mrs. Patterson. And unfortunately, uh the sixth grade boys and I did some pretty silly things in sixth grade. Imagine that. And we would we would all excuse ourselves from the class at the same time to go to the bathroom. I know this is gonna sound absolutely ridiculous, but this is this is sixth grade boys. We'd go to the bathroom, we would turn off the lights, and we would fight each other. And we would just, it would be pitch black in the bathroom, and we just start throwing haymakers. And so people were getting, it was like a a fight club in the dark. And and so we'd people get bloody notes, you know, stuff would be broken, and and we would, you know, come back to the to the class, and and obviously the my my teacher, she had boys, she wasn't uh oblivious to what was going on, and so this was going on, and and we were just having a good old time until she called my dad. And I'll never forget Preston. Uh I I remember this so vividly. I remember uh you know when you're confronted with something and and it's like your heart jumps into your throat, and and I remember uh sitting down on my bed in Dallas, and my father, Preston, confronting me about this, and he said, It's time for you to put aside childish things and for you to step into being a man, to think like a man, to begin acting like a man. And I remember that made it it was like God used that moment, and this is the power of fathers to speak in into the lives of their children. God used that moment as a line in the sand for me. And the next week I was hanging out with the same guys, but I wasn't doing the same things in my mind. I'm thinking, I need to be what Paul says here, self-controlled. I cannot do that any longer. Not gonna do those things anymore. It was a defining moment in my life. So never underestimate the value of those types of conversations with parents and the impact that they can make. And obviously, they must be done in love, they must be done in truth, but they make a great difference. Now, let's look at this word self-controlled. I want to ask three questions this morning. Three qu and these are the questions that I'm asking. These are the questions that I was asking this week as I looked at this. First, what does it mean to be self-controlled? Second, why is this the only thing Paul says to young men? You have all these other qualities that the others are instructed to be. Why is this the only quality that is given to young men? And then the third question, what is the secret to self-control? So, what is self-control? Now, as I was looking at this, there's two Greek words that have a slightly different meaning that are translated often in your Bible to be the same thing: self-control. The first one, suffranio, it means a self-control of the mind. It means that you control what you're thinking about. And if you start to think about something that you shouldn't, there's a correction that takes place in the mind. Paul wasn't the first to talk about this. Plato made a great deal about this. So Plato used this word to talk about how the upstanding citizen needed to control their mind. Now, I think Paul takes this word and he understands this word to be the ground floor of sanctification, the basic of what it means to be a Christian. A Christian is someone who begins to control what they're thinking about. The reason why I say that is because he mentions it three times. If you look up in verse two, he talks about the older men being self-controlled. He talks about training the young women, verse five, to be self-controlled. And now he's talking to the young men about being self-controlled. By the way, if you look over in chapter 1, verse 8, he tells the elders, an elder must be a man who is self-controlled. If you look at Titus 2, verse 13, he says, the grace of God trains us to renounce on godliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age. What Paul is saying is that the baseline marker of a Christian is that you begin to control what you are thinking about. That's what he is saying. But to think with suffranio, self-control. It's translated in the ESV, sober judgment, but it's the same word. Each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. Peter uses this same word in 1 Peter 4 7. The end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be self-controlled. Self-controlled in your thinking and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. He says, in light of the fact that Jesus is coming back, Jesus is coming back, he says, in light of that reality, be self-controlled in your thinking. I know my kids joke because I say this so many times. The Christian life is first waged in the mind. What you think about. It really is. The mind is the conduit to the heart. So what you think about affects what you love. And what you love dictates what you do. So the beginning of what you do begins in what you're thinking. For that reason, Paul says, Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is anything excellent, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. He says in 2 Corinthians 10 5, we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God. And listen, take every thought captive to obey Christ. Don't you love that? I take every thought captive, everything that enters my mind, I take it captive in order that I might obey Christ. When you get up in the morning, you immediately start thinking about things, don't you? You immediately start thinking about problems that you might have. You immediately start thinking about things that you desire to do, things that you want, issues, number of things are going through your head. And what Paul says is, I take every thought captive. Some ideas, what do you need to do with them? You need to put them in the mental garbage can. Go away. I'm throwing you away. How do you do that? It's kind of like a glass. How do you get rid of air in a glass? You fill it with water. You get rid of what you're not supposed to be thinking about by Philippians 4, 8. Think about whatever's true, noble, just, pure, love. You begin to meditate on what Christ has told us to think about, namely Himself. Question. Can the unbeliever do this? Sopranio, to exercise self-control in the mind. Listen to what the Bible says about the unbelieving mind. This is the mind of the unbeliever, the non-Christian. Paul says in 1 Timothy 6.5 that the unbelieving mind is depraved. He says in 2 Corinthians 3.14 that minds of unbelievers are hardened. Hardened to what? Hardened to gospel truth. He says in Ephesians 4.18 that men are darkened in their understanding. If you're experiencing darkness, that means you don't understand something. You don't have the light to understand it. Paul says in Romans 1.21, people became futile in their thinking, and in their foolish hearts they were darkened. And he says, because we suppress the truth and unrighteousness. In 2 Corinthians 4 4, he says, Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from coming to a knowledge of the truth. So the unbelieving mind, here's the point I'm making. The unbelieving mind has no ability whatsoever to exercise this type of self-control. No ability whatsoever. Because we're talking about setting our minds on the things of God. That's what we're talking about. That type of self-control. Now I mentioned that there is another word that's translated as self-control. It's in Kratia or in Cryomai, and it speaks to a self-control of the affections. So the first one speaks to a self-control and what you're thinking about. The second word speaks to a self-control of what you love, what you go after. And Aristotle said that these two together form the core of all ethics. In many ways, you see this, though in a spiritual heightened way, in the New Testament, that we are also to have not just self-control in our thinking, but self-control in the affections. So, for example, Paul says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. He's talking about the self-control of the affections. It's the ability, and you know what I'm talking about. It's when you're tempted with something, and your sinful flesh wants to do that thing. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Has anybody experienced this? Paul describes it in Romans 7.18. He says, I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is my flesh, your sinful flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. By the way, I think he's talking about his unconverted self here. He says, I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. In Craudia, this type of self-control, the self-control of the affections, is the capacity to win that battle. Isn't that amazing? It's the capacity to tell yourself, no, I am going to be obedient to Christ. I am going to obey the law. That's the type of self-control he's talking about. And by the way, isn't that what we want for the young men? I mean, think about how countercultural this is, that young men would have this type of self-control. And that leads to the second question. Why is this self-control the only virtue that is mentioned? And I think the answer, if you look at young men, it's fairly obvious. It's because young men have the propensity to be the exact opposite. Young men by nature are brash, lustful, impulsive, prideful. They tend to make decisions on the fly. They follow the lusts of their hearts. And so self-control, this virtue, is the exact opposite of what young men are in their flesh. So it is at this very point, this point, that young men tend to be weak, that Christianity can make them strong. Proverbs, Solomon says, this is Proverbs 25, 28. A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. It's a remarkable picture. A man without self-control is like a city that's broken into in a city without walls. In the ancient world, remember the town, the city of Jericho? What protected the city of Jericho? The walls. They're big walls. That protects the city. So in the ancient world, every city you would build walls around it. And then the business, the main place people would gather was the gate, the gate of the city. You remember Samson went to one of the Philistine cities and put the gate on his back and carried it away. I mean, it's just remarkable. The walls protect the city. And Solomon says, if you lack self-control, you're a city without walls. What does that mean? Everything that you build in that city will be attacked and come to ruin. That's the danger, young men. If you do not develop self-control, do you want to build in your life? Absolutely. I want to go build, I want to go do things, I want to create things. If you lack self control, whatever you build will amount to ruins. Y'all know that guy? Shack attack. Hard not to love, right? I saw an interview with Shaq. And he was talking about how uh he had all this success, all this uh great things going for him. Uh he had a had a wonderful family, beautiful wife, and built a 72,000 square foot house. I mean, that's just silly, right? 72,000 square foot house. Well, he committed adultery, she left him, left him with the kids, and he said, I woke up one day alone in a 72,000 square foot house. Everything. If you like self-control, it's torn down. David with Bathsheba. Things are going great. Things are going swimmingly. He's leading according to God's law, God's truth. One afternoon on a rooftop, he fails to exercise self-control. And you can trace the decline of David's kingdom where he finds himself fleeing from the city and Absalom taking control. You can trace all of it back to that failure to exercise self-control. So, young men, the danger is if you fail to do this, this one thing, whatever you accomplish in life, will come to ruin. I have books on my shelves from great preachers who had wonderful ministries, and then they failed to exercise self-control. And I look at those books as a cautionary tale of what happens and what can happen with one bad decision. There's a uh a young man in the Bible, remarkable young man, named Joseph. You remember Joseph? Multicolored coat. Brothers are envious, throw him in a pit. He's sold to a man named Potiphar in Egypt as a slave. He honors God, stewarding everything that Potiphar owns, and he, this is what godly men do. They rise. He exercises wisdom, he rises in Potiphar's house, he's put over everything. And one day, while Potiphar is gone, his wife approaches him approaches him. She says, Sleep with me. And he says, No, and she keeps doing this, she keeps doing this over and over again. And it's remarkable because Joseph is probably 18, 19, 20 years old. And here, a wealthy woman, probably a beautiful woman, is throwing herself at him. What would most young men do in that situation? What what do most young men do with that type of temptation? You cave. You give in. What does Joseph do? He flees. He runs away. And you know what is an his explanation for this is? He says, This is a quote from Joseph. How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? You see, he was fighting that battle in the mind. How can I commit this sin and sin against Almighty God? Absolutely remarkable. So, young men, if you can do this, you will be like Joseph. You will be like Jesus. You will be the counterculture where pornography is rampant, where there's so many distractions with social media, where so many bad ideas are being thrown around in our culture. If you are able to exercise self-control in the mind, you will be the counterculture. In a word, you will be like Christ. Exercising self-control. Now finally, what is the secret to self-control? How do you do this? Now I gave y'all some steps two weeks ago about how to begin to cultivate self-control in your life. And if you think back, one, we talked about praying, seeking the power of God to master your sin and to do what's right. I know of no one that can exercise self-control without prayer. We talked about living a life according to the word. Psalm 119 says, How can a young man keep his way pure? Answer by living according to your word. The word of God is a light to your feet, a lamp unto your path. There is no self-controlled life outside of the word of God. Correct? We talked about putting off the deeds of the flesh. Romans 8 13, Paul says, put to death the deeds of the flesh, and you will live. You have to put to death the deeds of the flesh and you have to put on Christ. Just like we talked about that glass of water. It's not just saying I won't do this. It's saying I will do this. I will love my neighbor as myself. I will love my enemy. I will pursue purity. I will think God's thoughts after him. I will read my Bible. It's putting on the virtues of Christ. It's walking with friends in the church. This is the importance of our fellowship. It's walking in accountability with one another. You know, it's amazing how your capacity to exercise self-control in a certain area is expanded when you share that challenge with someone else and they begin to hold you accountable. So these are all steps that we've talked about. But what's the secret to self-control? Let me give you two things. First, and this is do not pass go, and I've completely given this one away already in this message. You must be born again. You must be born again. Exercising self-control is a gospel imperative. What I mean by that is if you try to do this without first coming to Christ, repenting of your sin, surrendering your life to him, you will never be able to exercise self-control. Ever. You don't exercise self-control to come to Christ. You come to Christ, and he enables you to exercise self-control. And we can't get that backwards. So many forms of Christianity get this wrong. And they just said a Christian is someone who exercises self-control. Therefore, you exercise self-control if you want to be a Christian. Wrong. First, you have to confess your sin. You have to repent. Have we all failed to exercise self-control? All of us have. We are all sinners before holy God. No one is born exercising self-control. We're born as people that exercise our selfish ambition. We naturally pursue our own fleshly sinful desires. So there has to be a moment where you come to the cross of Christ and you ask for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus, I have failed to exercise self-control, but you did and you died on my behalf. And until that happens, if you just in your own power, in your own strength, you say, I can manage my problems. I can put more good on the balance sheet than the bad. If you live there, you will never win. I promise you. You can do behavioral modification, you can do those things, but you will not have self-control worked in the heart. David prayed, Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. We need that. And by the way, in the Christian life, this is a constant. We all fail in many ways. So we're coming back, we're confessing our sin. We're asking for gospel strength to be self-controlled. This the self-control is worked, as we said, by the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is self-control. And He works that in our lives to a greater degree. So I say, first, this is the secret to self-control because it is the non-negotiable. Do not pass go unless you are born again, that you've come to Christ and you've trusted Him as your Lord and Savior. And then He transforms your life. Second secret, I want you to turn over to 1 Corinthians 9. The passage that you read earlier. And I was so helped by this, especially in my early twenties, reading John Piper's book, Desiring God. Maybe you've heard of that book. Here's the secret. This is how the Holy Spirit helps you be self-controlled. You fight for self-control with greater joy. Look at verse twenty four. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. That's the in Kratya, that's the self-control of the affections he's talking about. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. So Paul writing to the Corinthians takes this picture. It's an amazing picture. And there they had these what you what we would call Olympic Games. They were called the Isthmian Games, and they had racing and they had boxing and all sorts of events like that. Now, in order to compete in the Isthmian Games, you had to renounce all sexual activity, you had to renounce alcohol, you had to live according to a strict food diet, and you had to train for at least 10 months. And in order to compete, you would have to take a vow that you did this. And so Paul's, everybody knows this in Corinth. Everybody knows this. This is part of their culture. And so Paul says, look at those athletes. And the word he uses for athlete is agonismi, where we get our word agony. An athlete is somebody who agonizes in the games. He says, look at those athletes, look at what they do. They exercise self-control in order to obtain a prize. And then he says, What is the prize? It's a perishable wreath. Literally, they would take an olive branch or they would take a pine branch, something like that, and they would either put a head wreath there around the winner's head, a crown. He says, they do it for something like that that is perishable. But we as believers, we exercise self-control in order to win an imperishable reward, an imperishable crown. Now, when Paul's talking about the context of 1 Corinthians, if you read the rest of the book, chapters 5 and 6, he is dealing with sexual sin. He's dealing with sexual sin. He says in 1 Corinthians 6 19, he says, Do you not know that those who practice key word sexual immorality will not inherit the kingdom of God? And he goes on and lists other sins. And then he says, But such were some of you. So he's talking about, I think specifically, sexual immorality. And if you practice sexual immorality, Paul says, you will not inherit the kingdom of God. So when he talks about being disqualified, I think this is serious. He's saying, I'm exercising self-control that I might run the race, that I might finish the race. And 2 Timothy 4, what's the race? I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Finishing the race is keeping the faith. Like not being disqualified means that I didn't renounce my faith along the way. Have y'all known those people? Yeah, I'm a Christian, baptized, and then 15 years later there's a moral issue. They said, you know, I don't believe in God anymore. I don't believe that the scriptures are inerrant. I've seen it. Paul says the Christian life is lived, running this race, exercising self-control. That word he uses for discipline. Look at verse 27. He says, I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I might be disqualified. That word discipline means I give myself a black eye. Oof. Our Marine instructors used to say to us, this was so nice. They would say, Marine, take a knee and punch yourself in the face. Is this fun? I give myself a black eye in order that I might not be. I mean, is this stoicism that we're talking about? What's Paul saying? And if you miss this, you're good, you're not going to be able to exercise self-control. He says, I do all this for the reward. Well, what's the reward? That he might see Christ face to face. How do I know that? Philippians 3 8. I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I've suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ. He says in Philippians 1 23, My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. So the reward is making it to the end, going to be with the Lord when he dies, that he's saved, and then he beholds Christ face to face. And he says, in order to get there, I exercise self-control, I discipline my body. And you know what our problem is with this? Is we fail to see Christ as that valuable. When we choose to sin, you know what we're saying to God, to Christ? I find that sin more pleasurable than Christ. That's what we're saying. And so my fight, listen, I'm in this fight too. I'm here. My fight is to see Christ as infinitely more glorious and more valuable than anything in this world. I mean, you hear Paul's language? I count everything else as rubbish, as refuse, as garbage compared to Christ. My role as a pastor is to help you get there. Because unless you get there, you're going to keep falling into the same old sins. You're going to do the same sins, whether they be gossip, fear of man, lust, pornography, whatever it is, you're going to keep going back to the same sin like a dog returns to its vomit until you see Christ as infinitely more glorious in the pleasure that that sin gives you. It's true. Paul fought against the sin by holding forth the reward. Now, one more place I want you to see this. I want you to turn over to the Gospel of John to John 15. Verse 10. Jesus is talking about abiding in him. When you abide with Christ, you have fellowship with him. That's a good thing. There's joy when you have fellowship with Christ. Look at verse 10. He says, If you keep my commandments. Ooh, that sounds restrictive. Notice what he says. You will then abide in my love. In other words, you'll have this fellowship with me. So he doesn't just say, keep my commandments. He says, if you keep my commandments, you will walk in this fellowship with me, just as I've kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. Look at verse 11. These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. Wow. So when I sin, I'm cutting off the fellowship and communion that I have with God, and then I'm not walking in the joy of my Father. And so therefore, in that moment, Moment when you're tempted to sin, if I remember and I'm thinking, I want that joy of communion. Now I have the ammo to defeat that sin and to exercise self-control. If you keep my commandments, Jesus says, you will abide in my love. I discipline my body so that I will make it all the way and see Christ, because he is better than everything else that you will encounter in this life. So, young men, that's the secret to being self-controlled. You must be born again, and then you must see Christ as infinitely more valuable than everything in this world. Let me close with a quote. So I read this probably when I was 20 years old in Desiring God, and it's Piper quoting Lewis. And have any of you been to Pasadena? I know Kenny has. Kenny and I love to go to Pasadena. To Vroman's bookstore. Kenny, you probably didn't know this. But Piper picked up C.S. Lewis's weight of glory at Vromans Bookstore. I say that to Kenny because Kenny loves Vromans bookstore. Piper picked up weight of glory and read this, what I'm about to read to you, at Vomans. Okay? The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ. And nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains, listen, an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward in the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, we are far too easily pleased. What Lewis is saying is that your desire for Christ to have that joy is what carries you through the challenging moments. So he's saying, don't pretend like it's a bad thing. That's what you fight with. That's what the Holy Spirit uses to galvanize your soul so that you will exercise self-control as you do it for the greater joy. For the joy that was set before him, Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame. Praise be to God. Lord, we want to exercise self-control in all things, in our minds and in our affections. Lord, may we see that fellowship with you, that knowing Christ, that being with Christ in the end is far more valuable than anything that sin offers in this world. Lord, may we set our minds on things above, not on earthly things. May we think about what is true, noble, so on and so forth. Lord, may none of us fall into serious, heinous sin, scandalous sin. May we exercise self-control for the joy of knowing and worshiping Christ. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.