1 Corinthians 9:24-27. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on January 09, 2022.
Last week, we looked at the issue of spiritual negligence. This is what we shouldn’t do. The positive is to emphasize spiritual attentiveness and discipline.
There were three areas that we are told not to neglect. First, we must not neglect our salvation, our faith in Christ and our love for Him. We must maintain these at all costs. Second, we must not neglect God’s Word. We must become a student of the Word of the Creator. Whose books in all of the Universe can compare to His? Third, we must not neglect the gifts of the Holy Spirit that are in each of us. You must pay attention and learn how the Spirit is gifting you to strengthen others. You should exercise that gift by faith and by His direction. You must also recognize God’s gifts in others that He is using to strengthen you.
In all of these, we risk eternal things. To be negligent in these areas is to risk deception, weakness, knowledge, salvation, even our very souls.
Today, we will finish up this issue by looking at two metaphors that Paul gives to the Church in Corinth.
Let’s look at our passage.
Paul wrote several letters to the Corinthian Church. He had a heavy burden for them because they were not thinking biblically about how they were living. In short, they were clearly not using the mind of Christ. They were using the mindset of the Greek culture within which they were immersed.
One of the big areas is being dealt with in this chapter of 1 Corinthians. They are stuck making decisions based upon what they think their rights are, rather than out of love for one another. Paul uses several examples of himself throughout the chapter to help them see how the mind of Christ thinks, and the kinds of choices it will make.
One area was material support of ministers. Paul taught churches to care materially for those who care for them spiritually. However, he would not receive that “right” from the Corinthian Church. If he thought like them, then he would be demanding that they send him money or help in some manner. However, Paul was purposefully sacrificing this right. In fact, other churches were sometimes helping Paul so that he could minister to the Corinthians. Paul also worked as a tent maker and mender. He did this out of love for them. Corinth was full of teachers who would come into town, put out a shingle, and make money by teaching some new philosophy to people. Most of the time, this philosophy would be of precious little help to those receiving it, but the teacher made a good living off of it. Paul was aware of these things and cared about the Gospel and the Corinthians too much to even let a hint of such be in his dealings with them. Yes, he had the right, but love compelled him to choose the harder path for their sakes.
Paul also mentions that he had every right to get married and have a family like Peter and some of the other apostles. However, Paul had chosen to remain unmarried so that he could focus all of his time on sharing the Gospel. This is not to put down Peter. Peter was already married when Christ called him. Paul’s point is more about how he has chosen to sacrifice a right that he had out of love and for God’s purposes in the lives of others, like them.
To help them absorb this lesson in a way that came from their own Greek culture, Paul shares an analogy from the sports that Greeks loved to watch and to do.
The first Metaphor is also the main metaphor. In verse 24 Paul speaks of a runner who runs a race. All runners who enter a race hope to win the prize, but only one of them will. In verse 26, Paul adds another metaphor in passing, that of boxing. Boxers punch each other until one of them yields, passes out, or dies (as was the goal in some matches).
Now, it doesn’t take an Olympic coach to figure out the basics of becoming a good runner or a good boxer. With these metaphors in mind, Paul points out areas of neglect in the Christian’s life that would be as foolish as if an athlete had done them, or neglected them.
Verse 25 shows that we must not neglect our training, which is self-discipline in essence. Athletes live in very specific ways. They eat and don’t eat certain foods. The same with drink. They will run or box everyday working on the fundamentals of their sport until it becomes locked into their muscle memory. They will fastidiously adhere to quite rigid rules that they have set for themselves, or their coach, in order to obtain the goal, winning.
If athletes are willing to train so diligently in order to obtain a temporal prize, shouldn’t Christians be even more diligent in our spiritual training in order to obtain an eternal prize? How much more should we bring our bodies and lives under subjection (vs. 27) so that we can spiritually win? The answer is rhetorical, but easy to dismiss as if it is not that important.
It is amazing how many hours we can spend on entertainments, or on books of some value, but not in comparison to God’s Word. We can simply tell ourselves that it is far more fun watching a football game then studying God’s Word. When I was in High School, I remember turning out for football. It seemed that many of the best athletes were more interested in drinking beer than even coming out for the team. Of course, others came out for the team, but were more focused on partying than training. That directly affected what our football team was able to do.
How is your training? Do you study God’s Word as if it was information from the Creator of all things that will help you win the prize that can be won in this life? Or, do you spend more time on things that not only don’t help you, but become detrimental because you have “no time” for studying His Word. “My people perish for lack of knowledge,” says our Lord!
God help us to stop wasting the time that we have outside of work and sleep on temporary things that won’t matter several years from now. Don’t get me wrong. We are supposed to do the temporary for eternal purposes, which redeems it. Our very lives are the definition of temporary, but they can be lived for eternal glory! The only way you can and will do that is if you are serious about your spiritual training in Christ, being a disciple.
But, reading and meditating on God’s Word is not enough. We must put it into practice. Training is all about getting ready for the race or for the boxing match. However, in life we don’t have a schedule and don’t know when these things will occur. In some way, we are tested every day. Life is a series of pop-quizzes, or “pop-races.” You are either ready or you aren’t, but at least at the end of the day you will know what you need to work on. So, let’s look at those quizzes.
How is our running and our boxing? Paul is telling us to run in such a way as to win the prize, called a crown in verse 25. Am I doing well enough to win a crown? The Bible speaks of believers winning crowns in several places of which this is one.
Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing. 2 Timothy 4:8 (NKJV)
Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. James 1:12 (NKJV)
and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away. 1 Peter 5:4 (NKJV)
Behold, I am coming quickly! Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown. Revelation 3:11 (NKJV)
That last word is from our Lord Himself. Notice that God has that crown for you; it is obtainable. But, you are going to have to go after it both in training and executing that training in the trials and bouts of life.
I don’t think that these are actually different crowns that we can stack up on top of each other, but rather, they are different ways of describing God’s crowning of His people. I think we will have some kind of literal symbol of our win, but righteousness, life and glory are just different facets of that singular prize, reigning with Jesus!
There are different things that Paul points out about our running or boxing. First, we are to run with certainty. We are to know how we are to run and in what direction we are to run. Christians are to be examples of God’s righteousness and are to be focused on pleasing the Father, not ourselves, or the world. Too many Christians appear to be running away from God’s Word and towards the world. This kind of running will not win the prize.
Second, a boxer doesn’t close their eyes and wail away at the air. We must fight with a clear picture of reality, both the reality that is going on inside of me and the reality of our opponent. We need to face reality so that we can fight in truth, not a fantasy fight, and with wisdom. This reality includes my recognition that the most dangerous opponent is my own flesh. A Christian who understands the reality of the weakness of their own flesh will train that flesh so that it will serve an eternal purpose rather than a temporal one.
Of course, elsewhere, Paul reminds us that our battle is not with flesh and blood, the people we encounter and tangle with. Rather, our battle is with the spiritual powers that work on my mind and the minds of people around me in order to pull us away from the Lord. May God help us to give the Devil a black-eye by training and then boxing him as the Lord leads the way. In our own flesh, we are unable to stand against the Devil, but “greater is he that is in us, than he that is in the world!”