Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.
- I Corinthians 9:24-27
Over the last three days I have used the above scripture twice in the Olympic metaphor themed Unshackled Moments. Last night during my evening meditation it came to me that there are a lot of people who have had a lot of fear and confusion and doubt because of this passage, particularly the last verse. The only things sadder in my view than a person spending decades walking with God and dying unsure of God's saving grace on their life is someone spending a lifetime in the church and dying without a saving relationship with Christ. But is there really a way to know to which group we belong? Can we really rest in Christ assured and confident that we are citizens of God's Kingdom of Heaven and His adopted children? Or is salvation in fact dependent upon my ability to remain faithful?
Faithfulness is at the center of the question. Every sinner falls short of the glory of God, and every saint is a sinner. Therefore, every saint, until God's work is completed and they are made perfect, will sin and fall short. God doesn't grade on a curve. To sin is to be unfaithful. So there's no question about whether or not we will be unfaithful, but to what extent and how frequently and whether we will try to pretend it away. We know we shouldn't, but we flirt with the world and fantasize about having our will and way and wants. Jesus is our groom, and we're sitting in a car in a wedding dress right before the wedding wondering if He's really our best bet for love and joy and a life worth living or if our ex has something better to offer. Maybe we should explore the pleasures of that old relationship before we close that door forever? Now some may say that situation is technically not cheating or being unfaithful as long as the bride to be comes to her senses and returns to the wedding without running off with the ex or turning the mental doubts into physical action. But let's look at it from the groom's point of view.
If you were the groom, prepared to join forever with your love, and while you were taking care of last minute details regarding the ceremony, the feast and the honeymoon your fiance snuck out of the church and climbed in the car with her ex, unsure if she should go through with marrying you or run off with him, how would you feel? Would you doubt the sincerity of her love? Would you be a little heartbroken? A lot heartbroken? Would you call off the wedding or rejoice that she chose to return to you? If she ran away would you go after her and or wait for her to realize she made a mistake or would you write her off and look for another?
Those who believe and fear that it is possible to lose salvation are right in as far as faithfulness is the issue. They don't want to say that salvation is assured or that you can't lose your salvation because they are afraid that if someone believes that they will then live for themselves, sinning willy nilly and claiming to be a Christian. bring disgrace to the faith and die unrepentant and unsaved. They rightfully understand that you can not have a right relationship with God, acknowledging Him as Daddy, Lord and Master and live selfishly, chasing the world and living to fulfill your own will. That is not a right or loving relationship with God. And it leads to misery, destruction and death in our lives, as it led to starvation and the pig pen for the prodigal.
But we all do it, to some extent and at least at times. We all flirt with the fantasy of being wooed by the world. We all take our ex's calls and gifts from time to time. We meet over coffee to catch up and feel the unresolved tug in our heart. Sometimes we run down the road hand in hand and make out a little, backslide just a touch. W let that old nature back in for a few hours or days. In fact it is impossible for us not to on our own. That old relationship is with a powerfully manipulative stalker who just won't give up trying to win us back, and we're all a little addicted to the pleasure he promises. But grace, which is the unearned love of God made available to us, makes it possible for us to remember that the new relationship is the better one. Grace is our chaperone that is always with us to help us remain faithful when the old man comes calling.
It is indeed a question of faithfulness, but whose? If it is about our faithfulness then how unfaithful do we get to be before we are too unfaithful for the groom to keep us? Those who believe that it is our faithfulness that holds the relationship understandably never feel assured of salvation. How can they? They have cheated on their fiance. All of us have. We have all fallen far short of perfect faithfulness in our relationship with He who loved us perfectly. But great is His faithfulness, and it is His faithfulness that holds everything and that can be relied on, not ours.
He has promised to complete the work He began in our lives. Either He is faithful to do that or none of us can ever be secure, no matter how right we live. Jesus said no one, that includes us, can steal those the Father gives Him from His hands. There are far too many places that show these sorts of statements clearly and plainly state that we are not justified, made right, by our works and that if salvation comes from keeping the law we all fail and die. Contrary to some misunderstanding and opinion, the Bible does not contradict itself. Therefore, if a passage is being interpreted in a way that contradicts the rest of scripture is has been misunderstood.
So, what was Paul referring to then when he feared being disqualified in the above passage if not salvation? There are a few different possibilities, all of which fit to some extent. It may be that he meant all of them, as they do not contradict the message of the gospel or each other. First, the chapter over all is about service to others and ministry rather than salvation. While once you were bought with such a great price you can not steal yourself away from your new master, you can make choices and commit acts of unfaithfulness that make you unable to be of service to Him, to make you unfit to minister to others and for His glory unless and until repentance and restoration have done their work. Tied in with this is the understanding that to live unfaithfully, to reject training and discipline for the pleasures of the world and the moment, would be to disqualify us in the eyes of the world. I'm sure most can think of at least one high profile preacher who fouled up on a massive scale, bringing shame to Christianity and causing many to doubt the truth. People no longer believe what they say, even the aspects of their message that were true, because they have shown themselves to be untrustworthy and failing to walk in grace. It disqualifies us in the eyes of others when we walk in sin because it opens the door to the yeah, they're SUPPOSEDLY a Christian, but I happen to know that they.....statements. They can't hear the message of our service over the screams of our selfishness and therefore we can not be of service or minister to them. Finally, there are rewards for service. I admit that I do not completely understand this aspect of things, but scripture clearly states that there will be rewards and an accounting. There will be some aspect of deeper relationship of closeness to the groom, a crown that can be claimed. The crown is a reward for faithful service. It is not salvation. Those who make themselves less usable or unusable to God in the race, those who make their light shine in such a way as to repel and blind the lost rather than draw them to the God who calls to them also disqualify themselves from as great a reward as is possible.
Being a Christian is about love and trust, not church or claiming to be saved. It is about loving God and understanding that He loves you and trusting Him. Even that ideal we all fall short of. None of us really understands how much He loves you and me. None of us return that love to the extent that we should or that His love deserves. And none of us trust Him as well as we should. The relationship is a process of progress and learning, and hopefully we love Him more, understand His love more and trust Him more today than we did yesterday and down the road we do so even more. We rightfully understand that a couple who love each other are not running around chasing attention from and encounters with exes and strangers, nor are they trying to keep any other options open. That's not real love. So if we love Jesus we shouldn't be stepping out on Him like that either. But we do. That's because we are constitutionally incapable of being faithful on our own. We must rely of His power and love to do what we can not do. We need the chaperone of grace to keep us from breaking our vows to the groom who is always faithful and to help ensure that we do not disqualify ourselves from being of service, able to minister and eligible for the reward at the end of the race. But if you trip and fall, He is able to restore. He doesn't revoke your citizenship because you didn't represent well enough. All thanks and praise to Him who is able by grace to make us run worthy....because we surely never could without it.
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