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.  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.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27

The Corinthians knew all about runners competing in athletic competitions.  The Olympic Games, relatively new in history in that they had come into being only close to 800 years earlier, were a cultural phenomenon in the Roman Empire.  Even closer to home, the Isthmian Games, ranked just below the Olympics in cultural importance, took place every two years just ten miles outside of Corinth.  Since Paul himself had likely been in Corinth in A.D. 50-52 (Acts 18:1ff), he had probably witnessed the Isthmian Games personally in the spring of A.D. 51.  Perhaps he had in mind a race he had seen there when he asked the Corinthians his rhetorical question about how many athletes compete in a race, but there is only one who wins the prize in the end (9:24a).

His point?  “So run that you may obtain it” (9:24b).  Live your Christian lives in such a way that when all is said and done, you will hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:41).

Doing so will require the same self-control required of any athlete who has successfully trained himself to excel in his chosen sport (9:25a).  That’s what the task of living like Jesus requires: the “self-control” which Paul calls the fruit or evidence that one truly does “walk by the Spirit” and Peter demands that we steadfastly add to our growing knowledge of God’s Word so as to “be all the more diligent to confirm (our) calling and election” and obtain the “entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1:5-11).

Christians, God wants us to discipline ourselves to run the race of Christianity successfully and receive the crown of life (Rev. 2:10; 2 Tim. 4:8; 1 Pet. 5:4).  This is what Paul had in mind as he writes of the “imperishable” – i.e., eternal – crown which is far superior than the “perishable wreath” of soon-to-decay leaves awarded to the winners of the Isthmian and Olympic Games of Paul’s day (9:25b).

Paul understood the need for discipline and self-control in order to remain faithful to Jesus.  As he put it, “I discipline my body and keep it under control” (9:27a).  The Greek terms he used in this verse could be metaphorically said in another way:  “I pummel my body and make it a slave.”  He understood that becoming a faithful servant of Jesus did not happen accidentally but required hard, conscious effort and the discipline to continually say “No” to Satan’s temptations.

Thus, his metaphorical running of the Christian race was not done mindlessly but with purpose (9:26a).  He set goals for his spiritual growth and worked hard and with commitment to achieve them.  Every decision was consciously made under the parameter of whether it met with God’s revealed will in Scripture (Col. 3:17).  When he failed and committed sin, he purposefully chose to acknowledge his disobedience and repent of it, thus continually receiving grace and forgiveness (1 John 1:7-9; 2 Cor. 7:10-11).

As a result, his metaphorical sparring with the devil’s temptations was not as if he was “beating” nothing but “the air” because his efforts to Satan were failing (9:26b).  Rather, with every soul he brought to Christ, with every temptation he resisted, with every heart-felt penitent prayer for forgiveness he offered to God, with every conscious decision to put others before himself, with every thoughtful planning on how he could set the best example of Jesus to all around him, Paul was blocking Satan’s punches and landing painful body blows to the devil in return.

Why make all of this effort?  Because Paul knew that salvation was not guaranteed just because he preached Jesus to others (9:27b).  He knew that Christians can in fact fall away due to willful, unrepentant sin (Heb. 10:26-31).  Thus, he ran the Christian race with the goal to win the prize.

Brethren, can you and I say the same?

— Jon