By
D.
M. PANTON, B.A.
A grave and
imminent peril that attends all who teach the highest truths of the Kingdom is
embodied by Paul in the person of the herald at the Isthmian Games.
If also a man contend in the games, he is not crowned, except
he have contended lawfully (2 Tim. 2: 5) - that is, according to the rules
laid down for the athletic contests - leaping, throwing, racing, boxing, and
wrestling; and the Herald was the embodiment of the rules. He marshalled the runners; he explained the
regulations of each contest; he gave the signal he watched the running; he named
the disqualified at the goal; and he apportioned the prize-chaplets. In all the concourse of runners, the Herald
stood alone, in the supreme danger of all.
A
PRIZE
Through Paul the Holy Ghost says that the Christian race and
the Greek races have a close analogy, with identity on the main points: as the
combats were trials of physical strength, tests of muscular excellence, so our
running and wrestling prove exactly what is our spiritual fibre and efficiency.
Know ye not - a knowledge therefore that we ought
to possess that they which run in a race - that is, what is about to be
expounded is not the Christians standing but his running all run, but one receiveth the prize?* Even so run, that ye may attain - the prize. The prize, therefore, of which the Apostle
speaks, is no gift of grace, no part of [eternal] salvation: it is the award of keen endeavour and undying effort: apathy, weariness,
indifference forfeit it: it is open to all the saved, but won by few. To deny or decry the race is manifestly to
lose the crown. So run, says the Holy
Ghost, that you be crowned; for you will never find crowds at the Strait Gate,
and keen, swift, tireless runners are always few.
* Upon the pillars along the stadium
inscriptions were posted:- Excel!
Hasten! Finish the
course!
A
CROWN
What exactly the Prize is the Apostle explicitly states, and
in doing so emphasizes its value. Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown - a wreath of wild olive or a chaplet
of parsley but we an incorruptible - the unwithering amaranth
of God. The athletes crown had its perishability stamped upon it, whereas the Christians
crown is the crown of glory that fadeth not away (1 Pet. 5: 4). No
Greek ran for the olive or parsley only, but for the immense honour it conferred;
nor does the Christian run so much for the Crown, as for the Kingdom. For the Crown is merely an
alternative phrase for the Kingdom, and so Paul immediately follows*
with the great type of the Kingdom won or lost by the believer. In the words of Godet:- The analogy
between this passage (1 Cor.
10: 1-11) and the preceding is striking: this
nation, that had come out of Egypt to get to Canaan, corresponds to the runner
who, after starting in the race, misses the prize, for want of perseverance in
self-sacrifice. The one runner whom the
judge of the contest crowns is the counterpart of the two faithful Israelites,
to whom alone it was given to enter the Promised Land. The prize of the crown is coronation in the
Kingdom.**
* For I would not have you
ignorant (1 Cor.
10: 1). [
see the
Greek words], which
is the right reading instead of [
], gives the reason for [
] in 9: 27, and thus connects the two arguments together (Dean Stanley).
** The link between the chapters is
extraordinarily illuminating:- For I would not, brethren, have you ignorant: that is,
you will discover what the prize, or crown, is - which even an Apostle might
lose by what follows. All under the
Passover Blood, all delivered from Egypt, all following the God-indwelt Cloud,
all feeding on Christ, all drinking of the Spirit howbeit with most of them
God was not well pleased. The five times repeated all
corresponds to all that ran in the races, the
vast majority of whom missed the Prize. In the application, the goal is no more identical with the prize, than in the actual case. The goal is perfect holiness; the prize is glory,
the crown of holiness (Godet).
CERTAINTY
Paul now reveals that, while he is a herald, he is also himself
a runner, and incidentally introduces the figure of boxing. I therefore so run, as not
uncertainly; it
is no phantom race, no imaginary crown: so fight I, as not beating the air - I am not sparring in the
stadium for mere practice: he is not
among those who beat the air, but those who beat their passions - he lands
his blows. A Greek athlete could
be outrun by a stronger runner who yet had trained infinitely less, and so lose
the prize; but in the Christian race every competitor, who fulfils the conditions, wins the crown: moreover,
mutual emulation is mutual profit, and the better our brothers are running, the
greater our own chance of the prize. Pauls
certainty (as he himself says) is not that he will achieve the Prize, for the standard of holiness it requires
is not revealed: his certainty is that, if he fulfils the conditions, the Crown is as sure as God.
THE PERIL
But now we arrive at the peril, and by fastening it upon
himself Paul makes any exception among Christian teachers impossible for ever.
If Paul was endangered, all are so, and the more Scriptural the teacher, the
more liable he is to this peculiar peril. Lest - for a danger is looming on the
horizon - by any means - for there are a thousand pitfalls ‑ after that I have acted the
herald to others, I myself should be
rejected* - disqualified, disapproved at the goal, prizeless:
lest
after having declared to others what they ought to do, I should myself be
rejected as unworthy of the prize (Dean Stanley). This, obviously, is a peril peculiar to the
Herald. The teacher of the profoundest
prophetical truths, who is in the ministry, accepts the converts, and marshals
the lists; he expounds the Scriptures that are the rules of the running - what
conduct is rewarded, what particular actions and habits forfeit the Prize; he
throws his whole soul (it may be) into stimulating the runners; and he knows,
probably better than most, who is leading in the race. But his prominence as a herald infinitely
aggravates his peril as a runner. Paul
assumes a teacher perfectly Scriptural in all he lays down for the running, and
on the very fulness of his expert knowledge bases the aggravated disgrace of
his failure. Such stands forth as the
man who brought others to the Crown, and lost it himself.
* Unworthy of a prize, of a
crown. It is a word which is used in the public games (Bengel).
By this
we are not to understand disqualified for the conflict, but unsuccessful in
the issue (Lange). Pauls lest, that by any
means, of fear, answers to his if by any means, of desire,
in Phil. 3: 12. The object of hope is before him
in the last, the object of fear in the present case (Govett).
The crown may not only be lost by the
believer, but he may forfeit it after it is won (Rev. 3: 11).
THE
BODY
Now it is vital to
observe where exactly
Paul locates the enemy. But, he says, - lest I should so collapse -
I
buffet - again he
employs the language of the pugilistic contests: I box black and blue my body, and
bring it into bondage: I bruise my body, and lead it about as a slave. Here is the deadly enemy. The careful expounder of Scripture is likely
to be safeguarded from the world by the inevitable costliness of his teaching,
and he is probably sufficiently informed and awake to avoid Satanic deception;
but the worst enemy of all remains - self; that is, principally, THE BODY. The body, as in part the seat and
organ of sin, is used for our whole sinful nature; it was not merely his
sensual nature that Paul endeavoured to bring into subjection, but all the evil
propensities and passions of his heart (C. Hodge, D.D.).
Paul himself, as herald, names a number of prohibitions in
the Christian stadium, and all centre in the body. Now the works of the flesh are
manifest, which are these, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry,
sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, parties [R.V. margin], envyings,
drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which
I forewarn you, even as I did forewarn you, that they which practise such
things [do them habitually] shall not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal. 5:
19). Any one of these forfeits the Prize, and
of any one (or more) the Herald can be guilty. The shifting among the runners that never
ceases is embodied for ever in our Lords warning:- So the last
shall be first, AND THE FIRST SHALL BE LAST (Matt.
20: 16).*
* It is astonishing how strongly, even
angrily, the truth of the responsibility God has put on His servants, with its
momentous consequences, is resisted; but the Galatian
word supplies a reason - all the works of the flesh, in whomsoever
lying concealed, are deadly enemies of this truth. Even comment on this passage
can be its total denial:- It
is a gift, and not a reward to which there is a just claim; there is no case of
merit here (David Thomas, D.D.).
If so, the whole statement and reasoning
of Paul is a flagrant false hood. Evangelicals
who think to defend grace by denying reward are doing a grave disservice to
grace by bringing it into fatal (and utterly untrue) collision with explicit
Scriptures. Moreover, the failure to
discriminate between the Prize of the Kingdom and the Gift of eternal life
leads logically to the Arminianism
of Bishop Wordsworth (in loc.):- Paul was not assured in his own mind of his own salvation,
and did not know but that he might become reprobate. consequently,
no one can be fully assured of his own final acceptance with God.
BUFFETING
So now we reach the sole solution. The Apostle had already indicated the general
condition of success:- Every man that striveth in the
games is temperate - exercises self-control (
* For example, what can shake the
lethargy, or waken the slumber, of the millions of denominationalists in the
modern world? If the denominations
around us are not Pauls factions, divisions, parties
(Gal. 5: 20), where are these latter to be
found? and if the denominations are not factions, divisions, parties, what are they? But this Scripture explicitly states that all sectarianism cancels the Kingdom, a
warning which not one believer in a thousand seems to heed.
THE
GIFT
No foreigner could run in the Greek race. Only he ran who was a full-blooded Greek: so no
competitor can run in the heavenly race except one who is born again, that is,
of heavenly stock, - no more aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise (Eph. 2: 12). And eternal life is no prize, but a
gift; a gift set at the beginning of the Christian course, and not at the end;
and a gift which, the moment it is accepted, creates the competitor in the race.
The FREE
GIFT of God is ETERNAL LIFE
(Rom. 6: 23). But
there are last entered who may be first crowned.
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