Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
Run to Obtain the Prize
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
24 Don’t you know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run like that, so that you may win. · WEB
The chapter ends at the stadium the Corinthians knew, and the apostle who has just described his freedom says he disciplines himself lest he be disqualified.
Don't you know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run like that, so that you may win 1 Corinthians 9:24.
The imagery is local. The Isthmian games were held near Corinth every second year, one of the great athletic festivals of the Greek world, and every reader had seen the stadium. The analogy is not pressed to mean that only one Christian is saved — the point is the manner of the running, which the next verses supply.
Every man who strives in the games exercises self-control in all things. Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible 1 Corinthians 9:25.
Here is what the figure is for: self-control in all things. Competitors submitted to months of regulated training and diet, and nobody thought this an infringement of their liberty — it was what wanting the prize looked like. A congregation defending its right to eat what it pleased 1 Corinthians 8:9 is invited to notice that the athletes it admired gave up more than meat, voluntarily, for a wreath that withered. The crown at the games was vegetation; theirs is incorruptible 2 Timothy 4:8 1 Peter 5:4.
I therefore run like that, not aimlessly. I fight like that, not beating the air 1 Corinthians 9:26.
Two negatives describing wasted effort. Running without direction and boxing at nothing are both strenuous and both achieve nothing — a warning against confusing activity with progress, which a busy and gifted church might need 1 Corinthians 1:7.
But I beat my body and bring it into submission, lest by any means, after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified 1 Corinthians 9:27.
The last verse is startling from this author. The word behind beat is a boxer's blow to the face, and the object is his own body — not as an enemy to be despised, since this letter has called the body a temple and promised it a resurrection 1 Corinthians 6:19 1 Corinthians 15:44, but as an instrument that has to be governed rather than obeyed. It is the same discipline required of the strong: appetite is not authority.
And disqualified is the risk he names for himself. Not that his message might fail, but that the preacher might be ruled out — a man who had proclaimed the terms to others and failed to run under them. Whatever confidence Paul has, it does not take the form of exemption from the discipline he preaches, which is precisely why the next chapter opens with a generation that was delivered and fell in the desert 1 Corinthians 10:1–5.
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