What does it mean to be temperate?
To be temperate means to maintain a balanced, middle-of-the-road approach in all things, avoiding extremes to the right or left. It is not overdoing or underdoing, but keeping steady moderation, as illustrated in discipline, business, and the Christian life. This balance is essential.
Les teaches that being temperate means you maintain a balance—you don’t go clear off to the right or clear off to the left, but you maintain a middle balance. He applies this to disciplining children: over-discipline or under-discipline both produce rebels, so you need the middle-of-the-road temperate idea of discipline. In business, a man covered up with inventory or a man with bare shelves won’t stay in business long; you have to maintain that temperate balance. Likewise in running the Christian life, you don’t go off the deep end to the right or left, but maintain balance, being temperate in all things. This connects to verse 25, where everyone striving for the mastery is temperate in all things, striving to be first or the winner.
And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.