One vital difference between Christian self-control and Stoic self-control is the bearing of desires. Stoic self-control has more to do with desiring to get rid of desires, with the idea that if you don’t get too high/happy or too low/sad/mad you won’t be upset. But having a controlling desire to quench desire is a distorted use of self-control, and actually it’s self-defeating.
Christian self-control is about pursuing and stimulating and promoting the right desires in the right proportions. More delight, not less, especially if you delight in the Lord, delight in His Word, and then delight in His delights.
We’re to live self-controlled in the present age (Titus 2:12). It might seem easier to be self-controlled if we didn’t want anything, just indifferent lollygagging. But as believers we are waiting for the “blessed hope” and “the glory of the great God and Savior.” Can you think about that and not get worked up? And we’re supposed to wait while being “zealous for good works.” Can we really sustain that sort of energy? Don’t you know how disappointing it is to want good and see how little there is of it? But it’s hopeless apathy that destroys, and hopeless apathy is disobedience.
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Proverbs 13:12), but hope secured makes the heart sing. In fact, “a desire fulfilled is a tree of life” (second half of the previous verse). As sure as Christ came, as sure He is coming again. As sure as He died and rose again, as sure He will reign and the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
So self-control at the Lord’s Table is full of increasing desire for and delight in our blessed hope.