‘Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last for ever’
(1 Corinthians 9.25).
As the Olympic Games come to London this month, with all the excitement and celebrity status that it can bring, it’s good to stop and reflect on the way in which the apostle Paul, in particular, uses the first-century Greek games to teach valuable lessons about Christian discipleship.
Dedication to training
No one will be competing in London’s games by accident. You don’t just turn up and have a go! The very idea is ludicrous. As the world’s greatest athletes gather, they come from months and years of immense dedication to their training, to their diets, to their persistence and their sacrificial commitment. You don’t become an Olympian without being hugely focused, single minded, utterly committed — to what? To winning the prize. Whatever may be said about simply competing being the main point of it all, no one is going to make the sacrifices needed to attain victory unless they have a clear and persistent visionary motivation of the podium and the medal ceremony at the end of the road. They all want to win gold, whether their event takes ten seconds or several days.
Immense challenge
All this provides an immense challenge to our discipleship. Doesn’t it say something about our Christianity, if athletes can get up before dawn day after day, to be pounding the streets, or at the pool, or lifting the weights, before the rest of the world is really conscious, and then we can’t roll out of bed just ten minutes earlier to read our Bibles or pray? It must say that the prize doesn’t matter enough to us. Only one athlete can win the gold, but every competitor is in it to win it and it matters so much that they will do whatever it takes. As Paul says, ‘Run in such a way as to get the prize’ (v.24). But our prize is available to every one of us who competes and its value is immeasurably greater that the fame and glory of the Olympic champion, great though that is for them. It is a crown that will not last. For many apparently, life is all downhill after that one moment of Olympic magic; it is a short-lived triumph even at its best. The Christian’s prize is an eternal inheritance that will never perish, spoil or fade.
Christian ambition
So why are we not more animated and excited about our discipleship? Why doesn’t the eternal reward motivate us more, on a daily basis? Why are we not ‘Olympian’ in our Christian ambitions? I think there are two factors here. The first is a matter of faith, because our reward is unseen and can seem unreal, just because it is intangible. Olympian athletes have seen past events and their medal ceremonies. They are real to them and they envisage themselves there in the picture. But we walk by faith and not by sight. We have not seen the risen Lord, we did not watch his ascent into heaven, though the apostles did, and we believe because of their eyewitness testimony. Yet the heavenly reward can sometimes seem insubstantial and unreal, rather like the taunts of the unbelieving world that it is just ‘pie in the sky, by and by’.
That can mean, secondly, that we are not prepared to make the sacrifices, to undergo the spiritual discipline which alone can produce a spiritual champion. If the ultimate goal is not our dominating vision. we shall have no incentive to curb our self-indulgence and to make sacrifices for Christ and his kingdom. Paul’s own testimony is rather, ‘I beat my body and make it my slave so that … I myself will not be disqualified for the prize’ (1Corinthians 9.27).
More than worthwhile
When the national anthem is played, the flags are raised and the crowds applaud the victors, only the athletes have any real idea of what it has cost them to get there, in terms of self-denial, pain and relentless practice. Was it worth it all? Only the individual can answer that, deep in their own heart. But when we see our Lord Jesus face to face and share his everlasting victory in the new heavens and the new earth, do you not think that we shall only wish we had served him better, more devotedly, with greater zeal and commitment during our little spell on planet earth? The triumph will all be down to his mercy and grace, but let’s live today in the light of that reality.
David Jackman is the past President of the Proclamation Trust.
