A recurring realization that I have is how lightly the Christian Faith is taken by so many persons among us who call themselves Christians. It used to be that Christians could not be assured of salvation except through a series of sermons or pastoral sessions. Now it is rare to meet a professing Christian who doesn’t claim complete assurance of his saving state. This danger got to bothering me so much that I began to keep an eye on the subject during my reading and studies. This article is the fruit of that.
“But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway” (1 Corinthians 9.27.)
A strong sense of duty will be accompanied by a principle of doubt concerning our works or character yielding evidence of saving faith, for we can never do enough nor be holy enough for him who died for us. We should expect to be accepted only if we do what God commands the accepted to do. Even were we to come up to as high a level as the apostle Paul, and maybe because of this attainment, a doubt concerning our security would exist. It is the Holy Spirit who threatens our sense of acceptation as he presses upon the Christian conscience the need to run into that very kingdom that has been planted in the heart. He does not cause doubt directly, but indirectly as we are made sensitive to our duty. The title for the verse above could be, The Christian’s Fear of God; or it could be, The Perseverance of the Saints. But these titles are not specific enough to address the suspense in the words, ‘lest…I myself should be a castaway.’ The apostle’s experience is that salvation, or his claim to it, is suspended on the hook of how well he does his work and how mortified he is to self and sin. We are not propelled to heaven on the steam of a languid life. Those who think they can be, or will be, are at special hazard of being falsely assured of where they are going. We persevere toward what has been procured for us by Christ. We fight to lay hold on that eternal life which was gifted to us when we believed (1 Timothy 6.12.) We are beseeched to not receive the grace of God in vain (2 Corinthians 6.1.) Both of these verses, in line with the text at the top, admonish us to prove ourselves by being sanctified. We do this by resisting sin and by walking in truth. And so: “The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6.23); but “receive not the grace of God in vain” (2 Corinthians 6.1) and “lay hold on eternal life” (1 Timothy 6.12.) The apostle Paul feared that he ‘should be a castaway.’ This is another way of saying that he was scared of being cast away. As T. S. Eliot observes in the first sections of Pascal’s Pensees, ‘the demon of doubt’ is inseparable from ‘the spirit of belief’ (Blaise Pascal, Pensees, p. xv.)
Verses 22 to 26 of 1 Corinthians 9 read as follows: “To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel’s sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you. Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air.”
The apostle’s drift in these verses—in these verses leading up to his final one in chapter nine—is a lesson on perseverance. The Christian is like the athlete in a sporting contest, whether running or boxing, striving to obtain the crown of victory. This crown is the crown of life, the imperishable crown. The Lord is the trainer; the Christian is the athlete. The athlete has been purchased from the slums, as it were. Both his person and rights are owned. The crown is in the Lord’s possession, to be presented to the rigorously trained athlete upon completion of the event. In verse 27, it is stated that the athlete keeps his body subdued because he fears being disqualified, or cast away: “But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” The picture is given as a parallel to the Christian life. The Christian who is not mortified and motivated ought to fear disqualification from obtaining the spiritual crown (of eternal life), just as the Olympic competitor should fear disqualification for his lack of discipline. Recent Bible scholars avoid this interpretation. The definition of that word ‘castaway’ scares them. They think they might have a heresy on their hands if they take the apostle Paul seriously. Charles Ryrie says that this is a ‘reference to the possible loss of reward.’ C. I. Scofield believes the same. An old commentary that I have from 1880 (usually precious) intimates that the apostle could have fallen from grace, which is, I suppose, the false teaching that Ryrie and Scofield, by their understatement, are determined to dodge. A more honest treatment of the text constrains us to maintain that the apostle teaches that the Christian who does not subdue his carnal desires has just cause and good reason to doubt his salvation and that it is hazardous to his soul not to be of this mind. Paul’s message is not that he keeps his body disciplined for fear of losing rewards. His message is that he keeps under his body because he knows that intemperance (verse 25) is the mark of an infidel. There is a material difference between these two interpretations. The one which is correct is obvious from a fair treatment of the text. Which interpretation the professing Christian receives can mean more than a marginal difference, both in this life and hereafter. We should bear in mind that the apostle was addressing Corinthian converts, many of whom were courting carnal behavior. The possibility of being a castaway is the fair interpretation, and it is not an inconsequential one. Believing this interpretation may lead to salvation from being falsely assured; and this belief, at the least, should serve as a spur to both morality and ministry, and an aid to laying up treasures in heaven. The faithful interpretation of a text is the word of God explained and amplified—what the Puritans used to call ‘improved.’ It is not merely a design to make people behave. Salvation should be reckoned doubtful when disciples are immoral or when ministers are less than blameless in ministry; in the apostle’s case, such a doubt hangs in the air at the mere thought of a second-rate performance. We could, like Ryrie and Scofield do, attempt to instill a sense of duty by warning that rewards may be lost if the body is not kept under. If we take the text at face value, however, and give it the interpretation that it calls for, the incentive to prove ourselves is driven by an actual risk of being cast away; and then a sense of duty to persevere ought to follow. Some Christians would never risk going against what Ryrie and Scofield say. I used to fear the impulse of doing so myself. As far as scholars go, however, these two men are bantams, not heavyweights.
I will prove my interpretation in three ways: by the definition of words, by the peripheral context, and by the proximate context. There is good reason to believe that even an apostle was scared of being cast away; and we have good reason to be glad that he had that scruple.
