It's fun to watch a little child running around aimlessly, going here and there and everywhere, just for the sake of running. When it comes to the life of faith, the Apostle Paul exhorts believers to run so as to win the prize. And today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg teaches us how to stay properly focused and finish our race victoriously.
We're looking together at the closing verses in 1 Corinthians chapter 9. I say no to aimless running, I say no to shadow boxing. He introduces one of the other elements of the Isthmian Games.
There was wrestling, there was boxing, there was actually a combination of boxing and wrestling, which was a perilous sort of activity as it is today. And again, he would be identifying in the minds of people what he was saying. The literal statement where he says, I beat my body—it may say, I buffet my body in your version—when he says, I beat my body, he says this, I give my body a black eye.
That's what it literally says in the Greek. I punch myself underneath the eye. Does this sound like self-help? Does this sound like self-esteem? No, this sounds like something different.
That's because it is something different. He says, I recognize I've got a problem. I'm the biggest problem I've got. The biggest thing that prevents me ever from getting the prize is me, not somebody else. Therefore, I'm going to have to take me under control.
I'm going to have to beat me up. Doesn't sound right, does it? That's because we've spent thirty years being told it isn't right.
It's not just right, it's vital. The cross-reference that you need, that I need to, is Romans 6 verse 13. Romans 6 verse 13.
Paul has already explained what it is to be justified by faith. He then says, since our sins have been forgiven, how should we live? Should we go out and be sinners? No, he says that's a bad idea. So in order to bring our lives into line with what God intends, he says in verse 12 of Romans 6, therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you will be its evil desires.
Then he tightens it up a little more. He says, do not offer the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. Does this sound like legalism? No, he explains, verse 14, for sin shall not be your master—now, he doesn't say because you are under law, but because you are not under law, but are under grace. It's because Jesus loves you, and you love Jesus, that you're not going to do that stuff with your body, he says. But your body has got a propensity within itself, driven by the seat of our emotions and our desires, to do its thing in a way that is displeasing to God, even after we become Christians.
So how in the world are we going to be able to take it in check? Not by boxing the air, not by running aimlessly, but by beating on our desires in a way that brings them into line with what the Scriptures say. Now, I wonder, do you get the impression here that this is a kind of emotional thing? There's no sense of emotion in it, is there? There's nothing here about how he feels. If he was to express how he felt, then he would be speaking in a different kind of language and tone. No, he's speaking about what he knows he ought to do. There's no suggestion here of a shortcut to the life of usefulness or holiness. And yet we live in a world, loved ones, where it's held out to us all the time.
Don't buy that running stuff and the boxing stuff. I've got the answer here for you. You read this, and you memorize this, and you can be holy in twenty-five minutes without all the pain and the agony of the Romans 6, 13, 1 Corinthians 9. Is that appealing to you?
Of course it is. Now, I want to tell you that if you read books and you read contemporary Christian books, you'd better be careful for this reason. Because there are enough books out there that will tell you that there's a way to get the way Paul says you need to get without any of the effort. And they don't work, and they won't work, and they'll make you a liar or a loony.
You need to read good books. Books like J.C. Ryle's Holiness, in which he says this, when people talk of having received, quote, such a blessing and of having found, quote, the higher life after hearing some earnest advocate of, quote, holiness by faith and self-consecration, while their families and their friends see no improvement and no increased sanctity in their daily tempers and behavior, immense harm is done to the cause of Christ. True holiness does not consist merely of inward sensations and impressions. It is much more than tears and sighs and bodily excitement and a quick impulse and passionate feelings of attachment to our favorite preachers and our own religious party and a readiness to quarrel with everyone who doesn't agree with us.
True holiness is something of the image of Christ which can be seen and observed by others in our private life, in our habits, in our character, and in our doings. And it is to this end that Paul says, making the application to myself, I say no to aimless running and I say no to shadow boxing. That brings us finally, then, to the exhortation which he gives to those who are his readers. And the exhortation is in verse 24.
It's a striking exhortation—clear, concise, no child here can misunderstand it this morning. Run in such a way as to get the prize. That's the message. Phillips paraphrases it, you ought to run with your minds fixed on winning the prize.
Now there is an obvious discrepancy between the illustration that he uses and the application that he makes. In the illustration that he uses, there was only one prize. For the Christian running in the life of faith, there is not simply one prize. Otherwise we would all be vying with one another as to who was going to get it.
In 2 Timothy 4 and verse 8, Paul says, verse 7, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me, he says, the crown of righteousness, and not only to me will it be awarded, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. So we're not all running trying to get one crown. That would be a tyrannous thought.
And most of us would assume right from the beginning that there's little likelihood of us getting the one crown that was going. So God has prepared crowns for those who will run in the way that he says we ought to run. If you have a King James version, the sense of it comes out clearly. The King James version says, So run as to get the prize. So run.
Paul says the same thing. He says, So I run, or I so run. I run hutos in such a way I run like a prize winner. I don't run like a straggler. I don't run like a wanderer. I don't run like a half-hearted participant. When they give out the t-shirts on these 5K races or 10K races, they ought to prepare a number of t-shirts on the front or on the back. It simply says, I'm only in this to get the jolly t-shirt.
And presumably there are some people who go pay their entry money, get their t-shirt, and then walk around with it. They're no more in the race than fly in the air. They're stragglers, they're wanderers, they're not participants, they're not running so as to get the prize. That is not, he says, to be the perspective of the Christian. The Christian perspective is that he competes. The word therefore competes, verse 25, is the word agonizomai, from which we get our word agony. The Christian, he says, agonizes.
The Christian is so committed to being there, he moves body, mind, soul, life, family, career, demands, money, girls, boys, everything, because he is consumed with where he's going. There is a day when we will stand before the judge. He will give out the crowns, and that crown is so important to me that I will order all the rest of my life, all the rest of my time, be it short or long, in relation to that great objective. That's what he says we're supposed to do. We're to run in that way. That's how you go to job interviews. That's how you choose a wife.
That's how you decide whether you remain single. That's how you set up your career. That's how you respond to disappointment, in the light of the fact that I'm running so as to get the prize. Prize winners in a world of egalitarianism.
America of all places ought to know about prize winning, because it led the world in establishing goals and objectives and showing how it can be done. Then don't let's miss the point. Don't let's fail to take our own medicine. Isn't this in keeping with the words of Jesus, Matthew 16.25, whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life, for my sake, will find it? Eric Sauer, writing in an earlier generation in a book called In the Arena of Faith, says this, He who is not prepared to sacrifice will not be honored to gain the crown. He who has regard to his ego will one day, when Christ appears, have a great disappointment. He who holds fast to an earthly mind, to his own convenience, to enjoyment of sin, to pride, renders himself unequal for racing. Only serious training in practical holiness, in self-denial, in true discipleship, can strengthen spiritual muscle.
Now let me try and wrap this up for you. One of the key reasons, I believe, for the ineffectiveness of the church as a whole at this point in history, one of the explanations for the shipwrecked lives of so many, is that a whole generation of Christians has been growing up without an awareness of the necessity of running so as to get the prize. Growing up without an awareness of the necessity of dealing with sin.
Without an awareness of what the Reformers called the mortification of the flesh. In other words, being prepared to deal ruthlessly with who and what I am. Being prepared to pronounce the death sentence on the sin which lingers within my life, and to be in the process of putting that death sentence into daily effect, killing everything in my life that opposes itself to God's purposes. Now that won't necessarily be the same in my life as it is in yours. The sources of temptations in our lives differ according to our personalities, our backgrounds, our temperaments, our circumstances. Each of us has to determine at what points we are the weakest and then to give ourselves to discipline in relationship to those things. Now lest somebody misses this, I want to say it very clearly, and you'll find it in Colossians chapter 3 verse 23, external rules won't handle this.
External rules won't handle this. You heard me say it, and you heard me say it here, and you heard me say it this morning. Don't miss the point. Colossians chapter 2 verse 23. Verse 20, actually, since you died with Christ at the basic principles of the world, why as though you still belong to it do you submit to its rules? Don't handle, don't taste, don't touch, da-da-da-da-da-da. Verse 23, such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship, their false humility, their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
Now understand, it's the same guy who wrote 1 Corinthians 9 verse 24 to 7, who wrote Colossians chapter 3 verse 23. So for those of us who are immediately beginning to say, I got the point, I know what you do, you have to do all these external things, and then it all fits, Paul says, don't make that mistake. It won't work that way.
You can't do it. John Owen, writing in an earlier generation, says, mortification from a self-strength carried on by ways of self-invention unto the end of self-righteousness is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world. Well, then, what is the key to it? The key to it is actually in chapter 3 of Colossians, if your Bible is still open there. Since then you've been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. You've been raised with Jesus.
You're now seated in the heavenly places. Get your heart there. Get your mind there.
Get yourself there. And verse 5, chuck out all the garbage. Why? Because you're now in tune with Jesus. And Jesus doesn't like that stuff. He knows it's no good for you.
He doesn't want you to have it, and you'll never win the prize if you keep up with it. It's as simple as that. And we are breathing a generation of people who don't understand it, who don't realize that every day you live your life and every day you go to school or to college or to the office, it is a constant battle against sin that we fight. Victory depends upon the refusal to allow our eyes to wander, our minds to settle, and our affections to run after the things that draw us away from Christ. What is involved is, and I quote, the deliberate rejection of any sinful thought, suggestion, desire, aspiration, deed, circumstance, or provocation at the moment I become conscious of its existence.
It is the consistent endeavor to do all in my power to weaken the grip which sin in general, and its manifestation in my life in particular, has. Think about the level of commitment involved in an Olympic gold. Yesterday afternoon at Koenigs, there was a young lady there, won an Olympic gold for United States in swimming.
I happened to be there, and I saw her. I didn't realize the line was so long, otherwise I would have got her photograph signed so that I could have held it up today and said, she told me she had to train like crazy to get it. I never managed to get the quote, but I didn't need it, because I know that you can't get Olympic gold without that.
It regulates your whole life, changes everything about you, changes everything you do, changes the way you eat, changes the restaurants to which you go, changes the time you spend, changes your views on marriage, changes absolutely everything. It is impossible otherwise. And why? All for the transient applause and the hurrah of a fleeting crowd with a short memory and for a piece of rusting metal that will sit in a velvet box somewhere which you can show your grandchildren but which they will only be marginally impressed with, because the world record, an Olympic record, will have been so soundly beaten since that day that it will be like, well, that was nice, Grandpa, but couldn't you have tried a little harder? And what he's saying is this, if they do that for that kind of crown, to what end are we prepared to go for a crown that will never perish? You know, in all of this, probably more than anything else, models are important, aren't they?
Models. We all have had them and have them. No one exemplified this spirit more to me than the memory of Eric Liddell. Died in 1945 in the prisoner of war camp in China. I was born in 1952, but ushered into a Scotland that still remembered Eric Liddell. All of Scotland mourned the day he died.
People lined the streets, although he was dead in China, and they were thousands of miles away. Immortalized in his stand for principle in the 1924 Olympics, in which he won the Olympic gold in the 400 meters, despite the fact that he had been preparing, along with his Jewish counterpart Abrams for the 100 meters, the key event in the Olympics as they were then understood. He trained not only in the last moments for that 400 meters and won it, but he also broke the world and Olympic records in doing it. It was an unbelievable event. Reading in conclusion from a little booklet I have on the life of Eric Liddell, it says this, The newspapers called him a traitor, and it seemed as if the whole sporting world turned against him, even to the Prince of Wales trying to get him to change his mind.
For Eric the decision was final. It was God first. His own desires or those of his country would have to take second place. In the time that remained before the Olympics, he trained instead for the 400 meters, although it was not at all his best distance. The 400 meters final took place at 7 p.m. on the evening of Friday, July 11th. He arrived a little late. As he arrived late, as he passed the cheering crowds, he glanced briefly—and they changed this in the movie—he glanced briefly at a note that had been pressed into his hand by one of the masseurs in his hotel who had worked on his body before he left. It was not Schultz that gave him the note, as in the movie, but it was a masseur in the hotel. He'd never opened it, and as he walks into the stadium, he opens it up, and the message written on the sheet—so there was a message, they just changed its source—it said on the sheet, in the old book, it says, He that honors me I will honor, Wishing you the best of success always. For a moment, quick scenes flashed through his mind, Harold Abrams is the first European to do so, winning gold for the hundred meters just days before, in 10.6 seconds. See what I mean?
How quickly it goes past? Bevel Rudd, the South African, won the 400 at Antwerp in the 1920 Olympics. Could he be nixed? He mustn't let his mind wander. He could only have won gold to bring glory to God, to please him was Eric's highest ambition.
He knew very well the words of 1 Samuel 2.20, Damn that honor me I will honor. His speed for the first 200 meters was unbelievable, putting him an impossible ten feet ahead of the field. It was less than a second behind the 21.6 record time of Jackson Shultz in the 200-meter final. Surely, he is running the race like a madman, someone mused.
He can never keep up such a pace. It then goes on to describe how he won. And in the Edinburgh Evening News of that evening, here's the quote, it was the last fifty meters that meant the making or breaking of little. The last fifty meters. Nobody would know Eric little because he ran the first 200 one second inside the 200-meters time. It was because he finished, and he finished well. Writing years later as a missionary in China, when asked about how he won the 400 meters, he said, The secret of my success over the 400 meters is that I ran the first 200 as hard as I could. Then for the second 200, with God's help, I ran it harder. I want to say to some of you this morning that I've run, as it were, the first 200 meters of your life, and I am one of them in chronological terms. Oh, good if we had a great start. But here we are. There's another 200 to go. Are you prepared to go for the tape?
Are you prepared to reorientate your life, your career, your future, your desires, your dreams, to give up everything for the cause of making the tape and winning the prize? As a teenager here this morning, and this kindles the passion in your heart, that's lovely. You don't need to stand up.
You don't need to do anything. Just in your heart, cry out to God, God, I'll be that guy. I'll be that girl. If I work in a bank for the rest of my life, I'll be that guy.
Wherever, wherever. It's the challenge. Everybody knows the chariots of fire stuff.
Most people don't know the other stuff. 1925, less than a year after he won that, he left Waverly Station in Edinburgh. Thousands of people came to Waverly Station to see him off. He was going as a missionary to China. He opened the windows of the compartment in which he was, and he spoke out onto the station platform there, underneath the scene of Edinburgh Castle and the scene of his university education and his rugby triumphs. And out of the window he said to the people who had gathered to see him off, let our motto be this, Christ for the world, for the world needs Christ. And he then led them in the singing of two verses of Jesus Shall Reign, where'er the sun doth his successive journeys run, his kingdom stretch from shore to shore, till the moon shall wax and weigh no more. Run so as to win the prize. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg.
Alistair will return shortly to close today's program. Well, as we're finding out in our study in 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul wrote with clarity about the supremacy of scripture, the saving work of Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit. These are all foundational beliefs in our Christian faith. And the book Gospel People, a call for evangelical integrity, calls us, as individuals and as the church, to remain firmly rooted in these essential doctrines and to avoid being distracted by less significant matters.
The book warns that these secondary issues can damage the unity of the church and minimize our effectiveness as witnesses for the good news of salvation. This is a book that points you to the basics by embracing the clear theology of the Gospel alone. Ask for your copy of the book Gospel People when you donate to Truth for Life. You can do that through our mobile app or online at truthforlife.org slash donate. And if you'd like extra copies of the book Gospel People for your church or to share with a friend, the books are available for purchase at our cost of only five dollars.
You can find them in our online store at truthforlife.org slash store. Now here's Alistair to close with prayer. God grant that as you look upon our lives this morning, you may find us enlisting in the race. We want to be under starters' orders. We need help with the training. We thank you for the example of others who run alongside and before us. Remind us that there are others watching us run and others coming behind us, waiting to take the baton from our hands. And as grace, that we may kneel down to the project strength, that we may endure the agony and hope that we might anticipate the victory for Jesus' sake, Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. It is good to be confident about our salvation, but there is such a thing as overconfident living. Tomorrow we'll learn about the pitfalls of presumption. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
