To Win the Prize

"Do you remember how, on a racing-track, every competitor runs, but only one wins the prize? Well, you ought to run with your minds fixed on winning the prize! Every competitor in athletic events goes into serious training. Athletes will take tremendous pains—for a fading crown of leaves. But our contest is for a crown that will never fade" (1 Corinthians 9:25, 26, J.B. Phillips).

I ran track in high school—the 100 and 200 meter hurdles. When I got to college, however, I realized that everyone in the Southwest Conference—even the equipment managers—could run faster than I and turned in my spikes. 

One thing I learned about competing at the highest level: "Every competitor in athletic events goes into serious training."

That analogy—running with your mind fixed on the prize—is often applied to the Christian life with inducements to establish a set of dreary disciplines—rising at 4:00 a.m. to pray, a chastisement that only made me grouchy. Thankfully, however, that's not how Paul applies that phrase.

Paul argues that though we have been endowed with certain rights, we can, out of our love for Jesus, impose limits on ourselves—discipline ourselves, if you will—give up those rights in order to bring others closer to him. That's what Paul means when he writes, "I run the race with determination. I am no shadow-boxer, I really fight!" (9:27). (Here Paul uses a technical boxing term that evokes memories of  Mammy Yoakum's fabled "Goodnight Irene" knockout punch.)

Stern discipline indeed: To “knock ourselves out” to gain the greatest prize—the spiritual good of another. It's what Jesus did when He set aside his rights as Almighty God and humbled himself to bring salvation to us. He was willing to give up his throne in glory and every other right as God to seek our highest good. There is no greater discipline. There is no greater love.

David Roper

6.24.20