1 Corinthians 9:24

24. Know ye not They had abundant chance to know, from the exhibitions at the Isthmian stadium, near their city.

A race Here, for the first time in the New Testament, occurs an allusion to the ancient games. They are mentioned neither in the gospels nor in the Old Testament. The solemn Hebrews never practised them; and when introduced, with theatres and other spectacles by the Herodian family, they were the abhorrence of all earnest Jews. In the days of his bigoted Judaism Paul would, probably, never have used them as a religious illustration.

But with the Greeks these games, traceable to an heroic age of gods and demigods, were a part of their religion. They were practised to bring the human form to that same idealized perfection as Grecian genius endeavoured to produce in its statues of heroes and gods. They formed a part of the worship of beauty in the human person, as in all other noble forms. Hence the victor in those games, at which all Greece was ambitious to be present, was a noblest of the race, a masterpiece of humanity. He was gazed at, as he proudly passed, as a model of manhood. He was the pride of his family, and honoured by his state and city among her great generals and statesmen. From the victory he departed crowned with a garland, was escorted home in a triumphal chariot, and, in some instances, instead of being received through the ordinary gate, a breach was made in the city wall, that he might be received with a unique triumph.

When, a short time before the birth of Christ, Rome conquered the known world, she adopted the games, varying their form, and in every respect debasing them. By the Greeks they were idealized, by the Romans brutalized. They were no longer heroic exercises in which the noblest men engaged for self-perfection, but exhibitions of ferocious and bloody contests by professional or compulsory combatants, for the gratification of spectators gazing from their safe and cowardly seats upon scenes of savage bloodshed of which others were the inflictors or victims. There were beast fights; of men with beasts or beasts with beasts. There were gladiatorial fights of men with men. These sanguinary exhibitions were not, like the pugilistic fights of our day, followed solely by the baser classes in violation of law, but by the highest aristocracy, and provided for by either eminent individuals or the state itself. The civilization of the age exerted itself in the invention of new ferocities, or in the increased amount of the exhibition. Sylla, the despot of Rome, sent a hundred lions into the arena to be butchered by as many men. But Pompey had six hundred lions and twenty elephants thus slaughtered. Under the Emperor Titus (surnamed “The Delight of the human race”) five thousand wild and four thousand tame animals, and under Trajan eleven thousand animals, were slain for Roman amusement. Still more ferocious were the gladiatorial fights, in which professional combatants, or captives taken in war, or criminals, were made to slaughter each other. This practice began B.C. 264, and made such progress that Trajan exhibited a bloody fight of ten thousand gladiators on the arena for Roman amusement. These scenes created not bravery in the public heart, but a base and cowardly appetite for blood. They aided in spreading that utter depravity through all classes of society that prepared the empire to sink before the northern barbarians.

With these games in their Grecian form the Corinthians, and St. Paul at Corinth, would be familiar. As he travelled from Athens to Corinth he passed the stadium, or race-course, of the celebrated Isthmian games, so called from the Corinthian Isthmus. In the nature of those games he saw the elements of a vivid physical imagery (especially in the race) for the illustration of the Christian life. Almost every point of the gymnastic contest he has in some part of his writings brought into use. Galatians 2:2; Galatians 5:7; Philippians 2:16; Philippians 3:14; 1 Timothy 6:12; 2 Timothy 2:5; Hebrews 12:1; Hebrews 12:4; Hebrews 12:12. In the present passage we have the race, the racer, the prize, the temperance, the garland, the herald, the rejected combatant. At 1 Corinthians 9:26, by a momentary change, the boxing match is the source of allusion.

Run all All the competitors.

One Paul here illustrates by contrast. In the Isthmian race there could be but one victor among all the runners; in the Christian race every candidate that rightly runs may win the garland.

So run With such applied vigour, with such self-control and concentration, with such increasing persistence, to the end.

Obtain Win.