1 Corinthians 9:27

27. I keep under Viewing his body as ready, with its fleshly appetites, (the reverse of the temperate of 1 Corinthians 9:25,) to break the certainty and surety of his running, he beat it to discoloration. Note on Luke 18:5, where the same Greek word is used in a slightly different sense. The term is a pugilistic one; literally, to black-eye one. Paul refers not, as the Romanists pervert the word, to any bodily flagellation, any more than beateth the air refers to a muscular blow. Nor, as Mr. Alford well says, does it refer even to “fasting and prayer,” but to the self-subduing and self-denial, as we have specified in note to 1 Corinthians 9:25.

Bring it into subjection Literally, enslave it.

Have preached Have heralded. The Greek word for preacher in the New Testament is κηρυξ , herald, and to preach is to herald, (the word used here,) that is, to proclaim, to announce, to call. In the games the herald was one who made the proclamations; so that Paul happily uses the word in its double sense. So Chrysostom, quoted by Wetstein, says: “Tell me, I pray you, at the Olympic contests does not the herald stand proclaiming strong and high, ‘Does any one charge that this candidate is a slave? a thief? a man of bad morals?’”

A castaway A rejectee, or reprobate, who could not stand the double scrutiny. The first scrutiny was to decide whether he was worthy to enter the games: the second was to decide whether he had so run, honourably and according to rule, as to be entitled to the evergreen chaplet. If not, he was rejected as a reprobate and a castaway. It is by only an apparent confusion that Paul here makes himself play the part both of herald and athlete. In fact, the Emperor Nero did once play both these parts. He was combatant, victor, and chosen herald to proclaim his own triumph.

This elaborate illustration of the Christian life from the Isthmian games, for the first time drawn by Paul, must have formed a striking picture to the Corinthians, who were so familiar with the animating spectacle. Henceforward the sight of the stadium would awaken higher thoughts. It had a lesson to inspire them to new earnestness in the Christian race to make sure work of winning the incorruptible crown.