1 Corinthians 9:24-27 Focused on our Lifework
Good morning! This is not how today was supposed to go, in fact the last two weeks have been a scramble. Nate was supposed to preach last week and I was supposed to lead worship as Joel and family were traveling. The first Sunday of the year is of course National let the Youth Pastor preach Sunday. So everything was supposed to shift a week but as Nate and Becki tested positive for COVID, here we are…
Nate is planning on preaching the next two weeks so please be in extra prayer for him.
I am also starting a new series on the works of Luke but I didn’t want to start that only to take the next two Sundays away from it so the Lord has provided me this opportunity to share something a little different than usual.
We are going to look at 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, page 957 in the pew Bibles, and consider an illustration that the Apostle Paul uses in reference to his lifework. And we’ll talk a little bit about that term, “lifework,” as well.
24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
Let’s pray
I wonder when considering our individual philosophies of life, the reality is that our thoughts on the matter resemble the poster with the cat hanging from the branch that says, “Hang in there baby!”
For many of us this is true at least to a degree, that our goal in life is to merely survive it, to simply finish the race.
When I was a younger man most of my thoughts about my purpose in life had to do with what my job was, my vocation. I didn’t see a way to fully serve the Lord unless I was a pastor, after all, what can a machinist really do to serve the Lord?
Hopefully you can see the folly of my thinking. If I was right, we would all have to be pastors and preachers in order to be faithful servants of the Lord.
So there has to be more to it than that, and that’s where the idea of, “lifework,” comes in.
When considering our text, what could Paul have possibly meant when he said to run the race in such a way that you might win?
Though Paul is using a metaphor, he clearly thinks that there is a right way and a wrong way to serve the Lord with our lives. He doesn’t instruct us to just finish the race, to just hang in there baby, he says, “run to win!”
So to apply this idea of running the race to win we have to consider what is necessary in order to do that. I’ve never been a competitive runner, in fact, I’ve only ever run in one race, a two mile fun run in Center Harbor maybe fifteen years ago. Two miles was longer than I had ever run before and I thought I was going to die. But I finished.
But running to win races takes preparation, training, determination, and focus. It’s hard work, but that doesn’t mean that it’s bad.
Paul describes, “not running aimlessly, and not boxing as one beating the air.” He understood his lifework, the track that he was to run. He ran with purpose and disciplined himself to avoid distraction.
In looking at the broader context of these four verses in chapter nine, chapters 8-10 of 1 Corinthians, Paul is arguing for the use of biblical freedom in carrying out the progress of the gospel in the wisest way possible, varying his approach based on the needs of the circumstances that he was in.
All of chapter nine, until we get to the four verses of our text, Paul argues that he has the right to make his living off his work of preaching and teaching but he chooses not to. But stuck in the middle of this are these four verses about running the race to win.
If we take these four verses out of this overall context, which, I think probably happens any time anybody preaches on them, myself included, if we take them out of context we’ll start talking about the race of life in a general sense and try our best to describe how to run that race well.
But if you consider the context where Paul has been talking about his use of freedom in the progress of the gospel, and considering the rest of chapter nine is all about how he personally carries out his personal life’s mission as an apostle, considering that overall context, the race that Paul is talking about is much more specific.
He’s not just talking about life, he’s talking about lifework. Jeff Reed wrote, “The race he is talking about is the race of completing the overall lifework that has been placed before him by Christ. He states two things that are necessary in order to complete it: disciplining his life and taking careful aim as he goes about his lifework.”
25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
Exercising self-control and discipline, he sought to bring his whole life under a one-purpose discipline. He knew what his lifework was, to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, to establish churches, to train men to shepherd those churches, and entrust those churches to repeat the process. His focus was on this work and he disciplined himself to keep from getting distracted, he took careful aim.
We live in a world that is loaded with distractions and we love it, we pay through the nose for it, we pay monthly for it.
But for Paul, taking careful aim involved a complete focus on the goal of completing his lifework, he was single-minded in his approach to life. We have a lot to learn about this, at least I do.
One of my favorite verses is Ephesians 2:8-9, but we often skip verse 10.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Though we all have different gifts, circumstances, and opportunities, we are all in a similar situation to Paul.
We all need to follow his example, we all need a single-minded focus on our calling, we all need to use our freedom in Christ to best carry out our lifework, we all need to do the good works which God prepared beforehand for us no matter what our actual vocation is. We need to discipline our lives like athletes that are competing for the prize.
Our prize is the satisfaction of faithfully completing the lifework to which we have been called by the Father and hearing, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
In considering what it takes to develop a single-minded approach to life Robert Banks wrote, “The first step is to become clear about the main path that God requires us to follow. We can be quite sure that whatever God wishes us to devote ourselves to He will grant us time enough in which to do it. Our responsibility is to find out exactly what He wants and hold resolutely to that. One of our greatest problems is that we misunderstand what God asks of us, either by adding all kinds of extra responsibilities or by possessing only a hazy idea of what He wishes. We will gain more time by properly understanding His will for us than by all the time-saving suggestions put together. No amount of reordering and scheduling our affairs, no amount of trimming and delegating our responsibilities, no amount of organizing or managing our time, will achieve the same result. It is a matter of taking Jesus’ words seriously and applying them to this particular issue: ‘Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will come to you as well.’ (Matt 6:33). That is, discover what God’s will is for you and all the time you need to fulfill it will come your way.”
Discovering what we are built for, discovering what those good works are that the Lord has prepared for us to do, that is discovering what God’s will for us means.
We need to evaluate ourselves thoroughly, consider what it is that the Lord requires of us that He requires of every believer, and also consider what it is that He requires of us each individually according to how He built us.
Robert Banks also wrote, “We must draw a distinction between the central and the peripheral in our lives. Like Paul, we need to know where our main responsibilities lie, and we must leave everything else to one side, no matter how worthwhile or legitimate these concerns may be.”
So we are left to consider:
What are some of the things that seem to distract us from giving undivided attention to the call of God on our lives to fulfill our lifework?
How can we live a totally focused life and still enjoy life? What would that even look like?
What would it take to bring our lives under the kind of discipline that Paul models for us?
These aren’t questions that I can answer for you but they are questions worth wrestling with and we can do that together.
24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
Amen
