'So run, that ye may obtain.'--1 COR. ix. 24.
'_So_ run.' Does that mean 'Run so that ye obtain?' Most people,
I suppose, superficially reading the words, attach that significance
to them, but the 'so' here carries a much greater weight of meaning
than that. It is a word of comparison. The Apostle would have the
Corinthians recall the picture which he has been putting before
them--a picture of a scene that was very familiar to them; for, as
most of us know, one of the most important of the Grecian games was
celebrated at intervals in the immediate neighbourhood of Corinth.
Many of the Corinthian converts had, no doubt, seen, or even taken
part in them. The previous portion of the verse in which our text
occurs appeals to the Corinthians' familiar knowledge of the arena
and the competitors, 'Know ye not that they which run in a race run
all, but one receiveth the prize?' He would have them picture the
eager racers, with every muscle strained, and the one victor starting
to the front; and then he says, 'Look at that panting conqueror. That
is how you should run. _So_ run--'meaning thereby not, 'Run so that
you may obtain the prize,' but 'Run so' as the victor does, 'in order
that you may obtain.' So, then, this victor is to be a lesson to us,
and we are to take a leaf out of his book. Let us see what he teaches
us.
I. The first thing is, the utmost tension and energy and strenuous
effort.
It is very remarkable that Paul should pick out these Grecian games
as containing for Christian people any lesson, for they were
honeycombed, through and through, with idolatry and all sorts of
immorality, so that no Jew ventured to go near them, and it was part
of the discipline of the early Christian Church that professing
Christians should have nothing to do with them in any shape.
And yet here, as in many other parts of his letters, Paul takes these
foul things as patterns for Christians. 'There is a soul of goodness
in things evil, if we would observantly distil it out.' It is very
much as if English preachers were to refer their people to a
racecourse, and say, 'Even there you may pick out lessons, and learn
something of the way in which Christian people ought to live.'
On the same principle the New Testament deals with that diabolical
business of fighting. It is taken as an emblem for the Christian
soldier, because, with all its devilishness, there is in it this, at
least, that men give themselves up absolutely to the will of their
commander, and are ready to fling away their lives if he lifts his
finger. That at least is grand and noble, and to be imitated on a
higher plane.
In like manner Paul takes these poor racers as teaching us a lesson.
Though the thing be all full of sin, we can get one valuable thought
out of it, and it is this--If people would work half as hard to gain
the highest object that a man can set before him, as hundreds of
people are ready to do in order to gain trivial and paltry objects,
there would be fewer stunted and half-dead Christians amongst us.
'That is the way to run,' says Paul, 'if you want to obtain.'
Look at the contrast that he hints at, between the prize that stirs
these racers' energies into such tremendous operation and the prize
which Christians profess to be pursuing. 'They do it to obtain a
corruptible crown'--a twist of pine branch out of the neighbouring
grove, worth half-a-farthing, and a little passing glory not worth
much more. They do it to obtain a corruptible crown; we do _not_ do
it, though we professedly have an incorruptible one as our aim and
object. If we contrast the relative values of the objects that men
pursue so eagerly, and the objects of the Christian course, surely we
ought to be smitten down with penitent consciousness of our own
unworthiness, if not of our own hypocrisy.
It is not even there that the lesson stops, because we Christian
people may be patterns and rebukes to ourselves. For, on the one side
of our nature we show what we can do when we are really in earnest
about getting something; and on the other side we show with how
little work we can be contented, when, at bottom, we do not much care
whether we get the prize or not. If you and I really believed that
that crown of glory which Paul speaks about might be ours, and would
be all sufficing for us if it were ours, as truly as we believe that
money is a good thing, there would not be such a difference between
the way in which we clutch at the one and the apathy which scarcely
cares to put out a hand for the other. The things that are seen and
temporal do get the larger portion of the energies and thoughts of
the average Christian man, and the things that are unseen and eternal
get only what is left. Sometimes ninety per cent. of the water of a
stream is taken away to drive a milldam or do work, and only ten per
cent. can be spared to trickle down the half-dry channel and do
nothing but reflect the bright sun and help the little flowers and
the grass to grow. So, the larger portion of most lives goes to drive
the mill-wheels, and there is very little left, in the case of many
of us, in order to help us towards God, and bring us closer into
communion with our Lord. 'Run' for the crown as eagerly as you 'run'
for your incomes, or for anything that you really, in your deepest
desires, want. Take yourselves for your own patterns and your own
rebukes. Your own lives may show you how you _can_ love, hope, work,
and deny yourselves when you have sufficient inducement, and their
flame should put to shame their frost, for the warmth is directed
towards trifles and the coldness towards the crown. If you would run
for the incorruptible prize of effort in the fashion in which others
and yourselves run for the corruptible, your whole lives would be
changed. Why! if Christian people in general really took half--half?
ay! a tenth part of--the honest, persistent pains to improve their
Christian character, and become more like Jesus Christ, which a
violinist will take to master his instrument, there would be a new
life for most of our Christian communities. Hours and hours of
patient practice are not too much for the one; how many moments do we
give to the other? 'So run, that ye obtain.'
II. The victorious runner sets Christians an example of rigid
self-control.
Every man that is striving for the mastery is 'temperate in all
things.' The discipline for runners and athletes was rigid. They had
ten months of spare diet--no wine--hard gymnastic exercises every
day, until not an ounce of superfluous flesh was upon their muscles,
before they were allowed to run in the arena. And, says Paul, that is
the example for us. They practise this rigid discipline and
abstinence by way of preparation for the race, and after it was run
they might dispense with the training. You and I have to practise
rigid abstinence as part of the race, as a continuous necessity.
_They_ did not abstain only from bad things, they did not only
avoid criminal acts of sensuous indulgence; but they abstained from
many perfectly legitimate things. So for us it is not enough to say,
'I draw the line there, at this or that vice, and I will have nothing
to do with these.' You will never make a growing Christian if
abstinence from palpable sins only is your standard. You must 'lay
aside' every sin, of course, but also 'every _weight_' Many
things are 'weights' that are not 'sins'; and if we are to run fast
we must run light, and if we are to do any good in this world we have
to live by rigid control and abstain from much that is perfectly
legitimate, because, if we do not, we shall fail in accomplishing the
highest purposes for which we are here. Not only in regard to the
gross sensual indulgences which these men had to avoid, but in regard
to a great deal of the outgoings of our interests and our hearts, we
have to apply the knife very closely and cut to the quick, if we
would have leisure and sympathy and affection left for loftier
objects. It is a very easy thing to be a Christian in one aspect,
inasmuch as a Christian at bottom is a man that is trusting to Jesus
Christ, and that is not hard to do. It is a very hard thing to be a
Christian in another aspect, because a real Christian is a man who,
by reason of his trusting Jesus Christ, has set his heel upon the
neck of the animal that is in him, and keeps the flesh well down, and
not only the flesh, but the desires of the mind as well as of the
flesh, and subordinates them all to the one aim of pleasing Him. 'No
man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life' if
his object is to please Him that has called him to be a soldier.
Unless we cut off a great many of the thorns, so to speak, by which
things catch hold of us as we pass them, we shall not make much
advance in the Christian life. Rigid self-control and abstinence from
else legitimate things that draw us away from Him are needful, if we
are so to run as the poor heathen racer teaches us.
III. The last grace that is suggested here, the last leaf to take out
of these racers' book, is definiteness and concentration of aim.
'I, therefore,' says the Apostle, 'so run not as uncertainly.' If the
runner is now heading that way and now this, making all manner of
loops upon his path, of course he will be left hopelessly in the
rear. It is the old fable of the Grecian mythology transplanted into
Christian soil. The runner who turned aside to pick up the golden
apple was disappointed of his hopes of the radiant fair. The ship, at
the helm of which is a steersman who has either a feeble hand or does
not understand his business, and which therefore keeps yawing from
side to side, with the bows pointing now this way and now that, is
not holding a course that will make the harbour first in the race.
The people that to-day are marching with their faces towards Zion,
and to-morrow making a loop-line to the world, will be a long time
before they reach their terminus. I believe there are few things more
lacking in the average Christian life of to-day than resolute,
conscious concentration upon an aim which is clearly and always
before us. Do you know what you are aiming at? That is the first
question. Have you a distinct theory of life's purpose that you can
put into half a dozen words, or have you not? In the one case, there
is some chance of attaining your object; in the other one, none.
Alas! we find many Christian people who do not set before themselves,
with emphasis and constancy, as their aim the doing of God's will,
and so sometimes they do it, when it happens to be easy, and
sometimes, when temptations are strong, they do not. It needs a
strong hand on the tiller to keep it steady when the wind is blowing
in puffs and gusts, and sometimes the sail bellies full and sometimes
it is almost empty. The various strengths of the temptations that
blow us out of our course are such that we shall never keep a
straight line of direction, which is the shortest line, and the only
one on which we shall 'obtain,' unless we know very distinctly where
we want to go, and have a good strong will that has learned to say
'No!' when the temptations come. 'Whom resist steadfast in the
faith.' 'I therefore so run, not as uncertainly,' taking one course
one day and another the next.
Now, that definite aim is one that can be equally pursued in all
varieties of life. 'This one thing I do' said one who did about as
many things as most people, but the different kinds of things that
Paul did were all, at bottom, one thing. And we, in all the varieties
of our circumstances, may keep this one clear aim before us, and
whether it be in this way or in that, we may be equally and at all
times seeking the better country, and bending all circumstances and
all duty to make us more like our Master and bring us closer to Him.
The Psalmist did not offer an impossible prayer when he said: 'One
thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may
dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the
beauty of the Lord and to enquire in His temple.' Was David in 'the
house of the Lord' when he was with his sheep in the wilderness, and
when he was in Saul's palace, and when he was living with wild beasts
in dens and caves of the earth, and when he was a fugitive, hunted
like a partridge upon the mountains? Was he always in the Lord's
house? Yes! At any rate he could be. All that we do may be doing His
will, and over a life, crowded with varying circumstances and yet
simplified and made blessed by unvarying obedience, we may write,
'This one thing I do.'
But we shall not keep this one aim clear before our eyes, unless we
habituate ourselves to the contemplation of the end. The runner,
according to Paul's vivid picture in another of his letters, forgets
the things that are behind, and stretches out towards the things that
are before. And just as a man runs with his body inclining forward,
and his eager hand nearer the prize than his body, and his eyesight
and his heart travelling ahead of them both to grasp it, so if we
want to live with the one worthy aim for ours, and to put all our
effort and faith into what deserves it all--the Christian race--we
must bring clear before us continually, or at least with the utmost
frequency, the prize of our high calling, the crown of righteousness.
Then we shall run so that we may, at the last, be able to finish our
course with joy, and dying to hope with all humility that there is
laid up for us a crown of righteousness.
'CONCERNING THE CROWN'
'They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but
we are incorruptible.'--1 COR. ix. 25.
One of the most famous of the Greek athletic festivals was held close
by Corinth. Its prize was a pine-wreath from the neighbouring sacred
grove. The painful abstinence and training of ten months, and the
fierce struggle of ten minutes, had for their result a twist of green
leaves, that withered in a week, and a little fading fame that was
worth scarcely more, and lasted scarcely longer. The struggle and the
discipline were noble; the end was contemptible. And so it is with
all lives whose aims are lower than the highest. They are greater in
the powers they put forth than in the objects they compass, and the
question, 'What is it for?' is like a douche of cold water from the
cart that lays the clouds of dust in the ways.
So, says Paul, praising the effort and contemning the prize, 'They do
it to obtain a corruptible crown.' And yet there was a soul of
goodness in this evil thing. Though these festivals were indissolubly
intertwined with idolatry, and besmirched with much sensuous evil,
yet he deals with them as he does with war and with slavery; points
to the disguised nobility that lay beneath the hideousness, and holds
up even these low things as a pattern for Christian men.
But I do not mean here to speak so much about the general bearing of
this text as rather to deal with its designation of the aim and
reward of Christian energy, that 'incorruptible crown' of which my
text speaks. And in doing so I desire to take into account likewise
other places in Scripture in which the same metaphor occurs.