The story of the apostle Paul is an inspirational comeback story along the lines of any tale of underdog sports champions. From his rescue from his previous life through suffering, shipwreck, temptation and more. He is described as “a man small in size, bald-headed, bow-legged, well-built, with eyebrows meeting, rather long-nosed.” From this unlikely source came some of the most powerful evangelism the world has ever seen: dozens of churches, thousands of converts, many scriptures, and the foundation of the body of Christ across Europe and Asia.
In this book thus far, Paul had told the Corinthians that, first, being loving is more important than being right. Second, he himself has adjusted his behavior to their weakness, as he is calling them to do. Here, he gives us the “why?” to all this. He uses an athletic metaphor, well understood by the Corinthians, hosts of the Isthmian Games.
The method of qualification for these games, held in off years when the Olympics were not, was to go through a certain exercise and training regimen for 10 months. If they shirked their training, they would be disqualified. There was only a single winner, as Paul observes here.
Paul’s point here is that he devotes himself to victory in the same way athletes do. Winners plan to win. Victory is the goal, not second place. This requires training, preparation and self-control, pushing through the boring redundancy of training. Winners make sacrifices to win.
Paul’s other point is that he trains specifically to compete. He doesn’t run for fun or shadow box for entertainment. Winners train to compete, not train to train. Paul’s rigid discipline is not for its own sake, but is aimed at winning the prize.
But what is that prize? What is the meaning of this metaphor of victory and disqualification?
Some see “winning” in this case as eternal life in heaven. Paul is working so hard to avoid losing his salvation. This is the position of both the Roman Catholic church and Wesleyans. John Wesley specifically cited this passage as evidence against eternal security and Calvinism as a whole.
Another version of this sees it also as being about salvation, but from the point of view of predestination. If we don’t keep up our training, then we had gone through a false conversion of some kind and were never truly followers of Christ. This view also draws upon the parable of the sower and other passages that urge us to persevere to the end. If we are a true believer, that is what we will do.
However, this passage is probably not about eternal life at all, but rather about eternal rewards. We see this concept of crowns throughout the New Testament, the notion that there are rewards for Christians who actively seek God’s favor. This ties back to Paul’s earlier discussion of judgement of believers, with some being rewarded and others barely escaping “through the flames.”
In more direct context, Paul specifically refers to the rewards of evangelism. Each convert, each church is reward that Paul shares in. Elsewhere, he calls the churches in Philippi and Thessalonica his “crowns”. This is what he trains for, suffers for and endures for.
Each of us has our own role in the process, but the call ultimately is the same, as are the rewards we seek. It’s not that everyone needs to be a single, letter-writing traveling missionary. As Paul wrote just earlier, we should work within the station we are given.
But we also can’t go too far in that direction – we are called to participate in gospel work somehow. We can’t just live out a secular life and call it missional. In all we do, we must be working to draw people closer to God, even if in a very small way.
One important key is intentionality, just like Paul described with the athletic metaphor. We must train and prepare ourselves, mentally, biblically and spiritually, to participate in evangelism. We need to have to the tools to take advantage of and create opportunities.
Winners train to compete and compete to win. Too often, Christians train just to train. We must train in order to act. If a church holds a class called “Better Ways to Share Your Faith,” it could be very popular. But if a church holds that same class with the promise that on week 4, everyone would be required to share the gospel with 3 people, that class would be nearly empty.
If churches were to devote themselves to training, preparation and action towards sharing the gospel, we would see amazing things happen.
– Sermon Notes, Brent Rood, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA
1 Corinthians 9:23-27
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