Self-control (especially continence)
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The Greek noun egkrateia compounds en (in) with kratos (strength, power, mastery), giving the literal sense of holding power within oneself, or inner mastery. In Greco-Roman moral philosophy, egkrateia was a prized virtue — the ability of reason to govern the passions, to restrain appetite and impulse in the service of the truly rational good.
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Full entry for ἐγκράτεια (G1466) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Greek noun egkrateia compounds en (in) with kratos (strength, power, mastery), giving the literal sense of holding power within oneself, or inner mastery. In Greco-Roman moral philosophy, egkrateia was a prized virtue — the ability of reason to govern the passions, to restrain appetite and impulse in the service of the truly rational good.
The BSB source-word alignment has 4 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include self-control (3), [and] self-control (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Acts 24:25. Its strongest book concentrations include 2 Peter (2), Acts (1), Galatians (1).
The Greek noun egkrateia compounds en (in) with kratos (strength, power, mastery), giving the literal sense of holding power within oneself, or inner mastery. In Greco-Roman moral philosophy, egkrateia was a prized virtue — the ability of reason to govern the passions, to restrain appetite and impulse in the service of the truly rational good. Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics all treated it as a cardinal moral quality.
Paul appropriates the word but relocates it within a completely different framework: in Galatians 5:22-23, egkrateia appears as the final item in the Spirit's fruit — self-control is not a conquest of human reason over human passion but a gift of the Spirit. This placement changes everything about how egkrateia is understood. It is not the autonomous self mastering itself; it is the Spirit-governed self ordering its desires in light of the kingdom.
The Stoic egkrateia is an achievement of the trained will; the Pauline egkrateia is a fruit of the indwelling Spirit. This distinction is pastorally crucial: a congregation formed on Stoic egkrateia will produce either pride (in those who achieve it) or despair (in those who fail), because its ground is human capacity. A congregation formed on Spirit-fruit egkrateia will produce humility in the strong and hope in the weak, because its ground is divine gift.
Egkrateia appears three times in the NT: Galatians 5:23 (fruit of the Spirit), Acts 24:25 (Paul preaching to Felix on righteousness, self-control, and judgment), and 2 Peter 1:6 (virtue progression: add self-control to knowledge). The related adjective egkratēs (self-controlled) appears in Titus 1:8 as a bishop's qualification. The verb egkrateuomai (to exercise self-control) appears in 1 Corinthians 9:25 (athletes' self-discipline) and 1 Corinthians 7:9 (control of sexual desire in marriage).
Gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Egkrateia closes the fruit-of-the-Spirit list, paired with praotēs (gentleness). Its position at the end is significant: the list moves from relational virtues (love, joy, peace) to interpersonal virtues (patience, kindness, goodness) to virtues of personal character (faithfulness, gentleness, self-control). Paul's remarkable postscript — 'against such things there is no law' — is a final turn of the screw against the Galatians' law-return: law could never produce these; they arise only where the Spirit governs.
As Paul expounded on righteousness, self-control, and the coming judgment, Felix became frightened and said, “You may go for now. When I find the time, I will call for you.”
This is the only NT instance of egkrateia outside of epistolary moral instruction. Its pairing with righteousness (dikaiosynē) and judgment (krima) is striking: Paul is not preaching a self-improvement lecture to Felix but connecting self-control to the larger framework of moral accountability before God. Felix's fear suggests that egkrateia, properly understood within the eschatological framework, is a word that has consequences — not a personal improvement technique but a moral posture demanded by the reality of judgment.
And to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness;
The virtue-chain in 2 Peter 1:5-7 adds egkrateia to faith through love in a progressive sequence. The chain shows that egkrateia is not an isolated capacity but part of a whole character, growing out of knowledge (correct understanding) and leading toward perseverance (hupomone — the sustained faithfulness under pressure that Galatians also calls for). Self-control in this framework is not a static achievement but a growing quality within an ordered character-formation process.
Everyone who competes in the games trains with strict discipline. They do it for a crown that is perishable, but we do it for a crown that is imperishable.
Paul uses the verb egkrateuomai of the athlete's disciplined self-regulation. The point is not that self-control is purely athletic willpower but that Christians exercise it with a better motivation and a greater prize than the Isthmian games could offer. The comparison is calibrated: the athlete's egkrateia is real, but its object (a perishable wreath) is inferior to the believer's object (the imperishable crown). This grounds Christian egkrateia in eschatological motivation rather than moral philosophy.
Instead, he must be hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined.
Egkratēs (the adjective) appears here as a qualification for church eldership alongside hospitality, love of good, righteousness, holiness, and discipline. Its inclusion among distinctly relational and godly virtues (rather than being paired with wisdom or authority) shows that egkrateia in the NT is not an executive virtue but a character virtue — it governs the elder's relationship to his own impulses in service of others.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. Self-control as active mastery over one's desires and impulses, not mere restraint.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
4 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
self-mastery, self-control
Read verseself-mastery, self-control
Read verseself-mastery, self-control
Read verseself-mastery, self-control
Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 4 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 4 lexical occurrence verses.
ἐγκράτεια is built from this root:
Highlights ethical transformation demanded by the gospel. Acts 24:22-27
Egkrateia as Spirit-fruit is one of the most counter-cultural concepts in the Galatians vocabulary — not because self-control is itself countercultural (every culture values some version of it) but because the Pauline ground for self-control is. The world grounds self-control in human capacity: reason over passion, will over impulse, training over nature. Paul grounds it in the Spirit's work in the believer's life.
The difference is not trivial. If self-control is a capacity, it can be measured, ranked, and become a source of pride or despair. If self-control is a Spirit-fruit, it is something to receive and tend, to pray for and cultivate in dependence on God, and something whose presence or absence tells us about the condition of our Spirit-relationship rather than about the strength of our will.
The preacher's task with egkrateia is to rescue it from both moralism (you just need more willpower) and passivity (wait for the Spirit to do it for you). The NT holds both together: athletes train (1 Cor. 9:25), character is cultivated (2 Pet. 1:5-7), and the Spirit produces (Gal. 5:22-23). Spirit-fruit is not passive growth but responsive growth — the believer who walks by the Spirit (Gal.
5:16) Positions themselves to receive what the Spirit grows. Self-control is the practical face of that responsive dependence: choosing what to think, attend to, and reach for, guided by the Spirit rather than by the flesh's impulses.
Gal.5.23
Egkrateia from en (in) + kratos (strength, dominion) literally means 'holding strength within' or 'inner mastery.' The kratos root also appears in pantokratōr (Almighty — one who holds all power) and krataioomai (to be strengthened). In Aristotle, egkrateia describes the person whose reason successfully governs their passions — as opposed to the akratos (without self-control) person who knows what is good but cannot govern their desires accordingly.
Paul's use of the word would resonate immediately with Hellenistic readers who knew the philosophical tradition, but he reframes the ground from human reason to divine Spirit.
The OT does not use a direct equivalent to egkrateia as a named virtue, but the wisdom literature cultivates what it describes. Proverbs 16:32 holds that 'better a patient person than a warrior; one with self-control than one who takes a city' — an elevated estimation of inner mastery that places it above military conquest. The Psalter's 'do not sin in your anger' (Ps.
4:4) And Job's restrained response to catastrophe model the inner ordering that egkrateia names. The figure of Joseph in Genesis provides the OT's most sustained character study in egkrateia: resisting Potiphar's wife (Gen. 39), governing his emotions through years of slavery and imprisonment, and then restraining himself through repeated encounters with his brothers.
Daniel and his three companions in Daniel 1 display egkrateia in the food-refusal episode: they control their appetites as a form of covenant faithfulness. In the NT, Jesus's forty-day fast in the wilderness is the supreme model: he exercises total egkrateia over appetite and desire while under sustained Satanic temptation — and the Spirit leads him into that experience (Matt.
4:1). The one who teaches egkrateia as Spirit-fruit is himself its perfect embodiment.
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