The term “meekness” can be mistaken for fear and weakness. However, the Bible reveals the true meaning of this fruit of the Holy Spirit. Today, R.C. Sproul encourages us to grow in meekness and self-control. Get R.C. Sproul’s book Growing in Holiness, plus lifetime digital access to his teaching series Developing Christian Character and the digital study guide, for your donation of any amount: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/3764/developing-christian-character Meet Today’s Teacher: R.C. Sproul (1939–2017) was known for his ability to winsomely and clearly communicate deep, practical truths from God’s Word. He was founder of Ligonier Ministries, first minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel, first president of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine. Meet the Host: Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of ministry engagement for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, host of the Ask Ligonier podcast, and a graduate of Presbyterian Theological College in Melbourne, Australia. Nathan joined Ligonier in 2012 and lives in Central Florida with his wife and four children. Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
I don't know what it is about the English language that tends to give us problems about understanding the meaning of meekness. When we look at the Scriptures, we see meekness elevated as a virtue and as a word that is used to describe some of the most powerful and strong characters in Scripture.
For most people, meekness means weakness. But those in Scripture who model meekness for us are anything but weak. Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and this week we've been considering the fruit of the Spirit and what it means to develop Christian character. This week's messages are from a 12-part study with R.C.
Sproul, and you can have lifetime digital access to all 12 plus the study guide when you show your support of Renewing Your Mind with a year-end donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. To further express our gratitude for your support, we'll also send you Dr. Sproul's book, Growing in Holiness. Tomorrow is the final day for this resource offer, so respond while there's still time.
So what is meekness then, biblically speaking? Here's Dr. Sproul.
I don't know what it is about the English language that tends to give us problems about understanding the meaning of meekness or gentleness. So often the popular conception of meekness is that of the insipid type personality that is characteristically shy, reticent, timid, and fearful.
I don't know where that idea ever came from, but when we look at the Scriptures, we see meekness elevated as a virtue and as a word that is used to describe some of the most powerful and strong characters in Scripture. For example, we are told that Moses was a meek man. And when you think of Moses, you certainly don't think of a weakling.
But he has the image of one who exhibited extraordinary gifts of leadership and extraordinary power and strength. And not only do we find it with Moses, but we also find it with Jesus. Remember when Jesus said, take my yoke upon you, learn of me, for I am what? I am meek and lowly in heart. We see Jesus again putting his benediction on this virtue.
It's in the context of the Sermon on the Mount when he said, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Well, we've seen that there is a discrepancy in English translations of this concept, and some translators prefer another word perhaps to get away from the distorted image that meekness has, and that is the concept of gentleness.
And that's really what we're talking about with respect to meekness. Now, gentleness or meekness in biblical categories do not exclude the possibility of strength. In fact, in a very real sense, they presuppose strength. We see that meekness is a characteristic of God himself. The God who is omnipotent, the God whose strength is transcendent, tempers that strength by gentleness or by tenderness.
Often we have seminars here on marriage, on male-female relationships, and on several occasions we've sort of taken ad hoc polls of both men and women asking the different genders to list what are the characteristics or qualities that they conceive that make up the essence of femininity, or of masculinity. Those are very, very elusive terms.
It's very difficult to define what it means to be masculine, very difficult to define what it means to be feminine. And so we'll separate the men and the women and we'll ask the men to give a definition of masculinity and then ask the women to give a definition of masculinity and do the same thing in reverse about femininity. And sometimes there are some surprises in there.
And then when we hone it in, we'll ask the men, what are the most desirable qualities of women that they look for in their ideal of femininity? And then we say to the women, what is your ideal of masculinity? What do you want to find in a man? And it's amazing, no matter how many different groups we have, certain qualities always emerge out of these discussions.
And I can boil it down to its simplest essence. The number one preference of the women that we've interviewed is, in finding a man who exhibits what they consider virtuous characteristics of masculinity, is a combination of two qualities, strength and gentleness. And one woman put it this way, I want my man to be tough and tender.
It's not quite the macho image that is so often portrayed in our culture. And I think it's also true of men. Men do not like hard women as a rule. That doesn't mean that a woman has to be a pansy. But we also see in these polls that men respect strong women who are also tender.
So I think when we're talking about the fruit of the spirit of gentleness, we're talking about a dimension of personality that doesn't deny strength, but complements strength. In fact, there's a certain sense in which gentleness, as I said, presupposes strength, but it is the manifestation of strength that is under control. I think there's a reason why self-control
follows closely on the heels of gentleness because there's a certain sense in which self-control is required for a strong person to manifest gentleness. Now, I want to talk for a minute about the relationship between strength and gentleness. We think, for example, of people who occupy positions of power and authority.
In government, in business, in education, in the church, there are those who are elevated to positions of authority and power. And I think it's very important, incidentally, for us to understand the difference between power and authority, because there is a difference.
Authority has to do with legally constituted or righteously established positions of rule or of leadership or the right to govern. And that right to govern is not limited or restricted to government as such, but the teacher has authority in the classroom. She has the right to govern the classroom. Parents in the home have authority, the right to impose obligations upon the children.
That's constituted by God himself. And so the right to rule is what we're talking about, to impose obligation. That's what we're talking about with authority. Now, a person can be in a position of authority and nobody pays any attention to that person. You can be in a position where formally you have authority, but really you are powerless.
And conversely, there are people who possess power without authority. An illustration of this that I think every minister will understand is in the local church. An elder on the board of the session or a vestryman or any type of officer of the church has authority. But in every church there are people who possess power without authority. The biggest donor in the church may not be on the board.
He may not have a vote in the executive leadership of the office. but his money gives him what we call clout. And we as Christians have to be very, very careful about that sort of thing, because we know the age-old axiom that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That's not exactly true, is it? Because the only example of absolute power that we have in the universe is God.
And it has not corrupted him. But on a human level, there is the tendency to see that the influence and augmenting of power influencing corruption. I wonder why that is. Because the more power a person has, the less external restraints are upon him.
If you notice that those people who stand out in history for their unbelievable wickedness tend to be people who had very little external restraints upon them. You think of Pharaoh as the symbol of wickedness in the Old Testament. His wickedness was given free reign because of the sheer power of his office and the magnitude of his position in the world.
Adolf Hitler is seen as a person of great wickedness, and we see also that he had almost plenipotentiary power over the German nation at a particular point. And so power corrupts, and we have to be careful of that. Now, here is the practical principle.
The more power that you have or the more authority that you have, the more it is necessary to combine with that power and with that authority grace and gentleness. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of power. In fact, the spirit is called the dunamis of God in the New Testament, which is carried over into the English language with the word what? Dynamite.
His power is awesome, but the spirit does not intimidate. And the method of intimidation, the tactics of intimidation, do not represent the fruit of the Holy Spirit. We may have authority. We may be in positions of power. But the more power and authority we have, the more we need to couple those things with grace and humility and meekness.
Do you know certain people who are in positions of power who somehow carry it off with dignity? We make a distinction even in politics between the politician and the statesman. What's the difference in your mind? The statesman has the same amount of power and the same amount of authority. But what? He's gracious. He is kind. He's gentle with the exercise of his authority and of his power.
Those people have learned a secret that there's a certain sense in which the more power you have, the easier it is to be gracious. If you're secure in your authority, if you're secure in your position, you don't have to be constantly proving it to yourself and to everybody else how much power you have.
There's a sense in which a person who really possesses authority and power can afford to be gracious. It is the insecure person that is the bully. It is the insecure person that uses the tactics of intimidation. And intimidation is a poor substitute for respect, where we use force and fear to get people to acquiesce to our will.
Isn't it interesting that when Jesus, who again possessed in his divine nature absolute power, the first thing he said to people when he would meet them is what? Don't be afraid. Fear not. He didn't use his power as a stick, as a bully. That wasn't his style. And what we're talking about really is a style of life. In our culture, we find the bully as one of the most unpleasant personality types.
And yet, we also see in our culture numerous examples of large, powerful men who somehow have a very quiet and gentle spirit. It's almost as if the big man has been forced to learn from a very early age how to handle his bigness. Now, we have to do that because we as Christians possess power.
We may not be 6'5", we may not be physical strength, but we do possess within us the power of God, and that requires the fruit to temper the strength, lest we become intimidated. Now, there's two other things I want to say about meekness before I move on to temperance, and that's this. that the opposite of gentleness is abrasiveness.
The fruit of the Spirit does not produce an abrasive personality. An abrasive personality is one that is pugnacious, it is combative, it is contentious, it is argumentative. The gentle person, the meek person, is not rough-hewn. That's what we mean by abrasive. Abrasive like sandpaper, always rubbing people the wrong way by sharp edges rather than smooth and flowing dimensions to the personality.
And also we must say that meekness is the opposite of arrogance. Again, the Holy Spirit is not a spirit of arrogance. But the Holy Spirit is a spirit of confidence. And those two qualities are often confused in our culture because there's a certain sense in which there is a very thin line between confidence and arrogance. We may say this, the confident person has a peaceful attitude.
He is convinced that he can do the job. He's secure. in his responsibilities. That is a very lofty virtue. Again, the Holy Spirit, when it's shed and brought in our hearts, is trying to give to us a spirit of confidence. We are told, in quietness and confidence shall be your strength. Ever thought of that passage? In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.
So we are not to intimidate, but we are also not to be intimidated. We are to be able to walk through life with a certain spirit of quiet confidence within us, knowing from whence our strength comes. Arrogance, on the other hand, is a false representation of confidence. A person who is truly secure is not an arrogant person.
Arrogance is a manifestation of false confidence where we pretend that we are in control of things and we give ourselves to overkill and again to tactics of intimidation. Finally, gentleness is is the manifestation of tenderness. We've said that already in one sense. But there's a passage in Scripture that's one of my favorite verses in the Old Testament.
I'm thinking back to the prophet Isaiah, whom God uses to speak to the nation. And you remember the text, Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith the Lord. Then what comes? Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry unto her that her warfare is ended. For she has been recompensed for her iniquities and so on. Again, do you see the interconnection between the fruits of the Spirit?
Patience, kindness, goodness, peace, tenderness. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. The war is over. It's because we possess peace. It's because we possess love that we can afford to speak with tenderness. Even as Jesus spoke tenderly to the woman caught in adultery, and to the woman at the well. Kindness, gentleness go hand in hand.
Well, of course, to be meek, to temper our strengths with tenderness requires the last of the fruits that are mentioned, namely temperance or self-control. We are told that the Holy Spirit is not the author of confusion. He's not the author of chaos. But rather, he is the author of order and harmony and self-control. We say, well, it's a jungle out there.
And that's an interesting metaphor, isn't it, to the Christian in light of the fact that the paradigm for life, the paradigm for the creation, is a garden. Man was created and put in a garden, and yet he describes his present situation as like life in a jungle. Now, what's the difference between a garden and a jungle? Both are places where things grow.
Both are places where there's vegetation that is visible. But if you see a garden in your mind and you see a jungle in your mind, what's the difference? Wild animals? And in the garden, if there are gardens, they are tame animals. They are domestic animals. They are animals that are under control. They're animals that exercise restraint.
They're not just running around growling and devouring people willy-nilly. The biggest difference between a jungle and a garden is the difference between controlled and orderly growth versus wild and chaotic growth. All a jungle is is a garden gone wild. They're not rows of plants, but rather weeds and undergrowth just goes wild. It is a place of disorder, of disharmony.
And that comes when there is no control or restraint. And so it is characteristic of the growing Christians. that that person develops an ability to bridle the wild and the chaotic impulses that would lead us into destruction. This is what is so frightening about the cultural ethic that says, get all you can get while you can get it.
This satisfying the impulse of the moment without restraint, without discipline, without temperance. People go on binges sexually with drugs, with food, with all kinds of things like that. And what the temperate person does is that he lives within restraints. He keeps his life under control. One last illustration from golf.
In Golf Magazine, they have a one-page section, every issue, by celebrities who play golf, and they say, what is the best tip I've ever had? And Telly Savalas will tell about how somebody taught him how to putt, and Bob Hope will give another one. If I could say the most important thing I've ever learned about golf, the key that I have to think of all the time when I play golf is this.
Keep the violence out of the swing. When the golf swing goes out of control, disaster finds you immediately. Can't help that illustration because that's where I see it all the time. We have to exercise restraint on the impulse to violence and to wildness that is characteristic of the fallen man, but not of the Holy Ghost.
May God help each of us demonstrate such restraint. And that's why we're featuring this series on Renewing Your Mind, because we all need God's grace and enablement to produce the fruit of the Spirit. And a series like this is both confronting and practical. The same is true for Dr. Sproul's book, Growing in Holiness. The subtitle is Understanding God's Role and Yours.
We'll send you this practical book from R.C. Sproul when you request a copy at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343. All we ask is for a year-end donation of any amount to help fuel the reach of Renewing Your Mind in 2025 and beyond.
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