Winning 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—100 and 200 meter hurdles. When I got to college, however, I realized that almost everyone in the Southwest Conference could run faster than I and turned in my spikes at the end of my freshman year.

One thing I learned at that level: "Every competitor in athletic events goes into serioustraining."

That analogy is often applied to the Christian life with inducements to establish a set of dreary asceticisms like rising at 4:00 a.m. to pray, a "discipline" that only made me grouchy. Thankfully, however, that's not how Paul applies it.

Paul argues that though we have been endowed with certain inalienable rights, we can, out of our love for Jesus, impose limits on ourselves—discipline ourselves, if you will—to give up those rights in order to bring others closer to him, which is 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 set aside our rights to gain the greatest prize—the spiritual good of another. It's what Jesus did: He set aside his rights as Almighty God and humbled himself to bring salvation to us. He was willing to give up life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and every other right to seek our highest good. There is no greater discipline. There is no greater love.

David Roper

4.16.19