Introduction
One of the things we have wanted to do in our community is to figure out how to be “a Bible people” in all the details as we live together in the modern world. This entails learning how to think in biblical categories, and how to apply biblical principles to modern situations. And as our community has grown, one aspect of this community has grown right along with it, and has grown in a somewhat spectacular way. It is plainly time for us to study what Scripture teaches us about this subject, and I am talking about athletics and our children.
Now this is a subject that is relevant to everyone—if you are playing, if you used to play, if you are irritated by those who do play, if you are a teacher whose students athletes are gone on Friday, and so on. When it comes to how we think about athletics, no one is on the bench. This involves us all.
The Text
“For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come” (1 Timothy 4:8).
Summary of the Text
Discipline of the body is a good thing, Paul says, but godliness is profitable across the board, both in this life and the next. So athletics are certainly lawful in their own right, but could be very profitable if you learn to transfer the lessons learned over to the spiritual realm. And the lessons can transfer, as we shall see in a moment—discipline, drive, focus, intensity, and so forth have obvious applications in the pursuit of godliness. If you don’t transfer them, you have achieved a modest good. If you do transfer them, you are learning about life and about the life to come.
So we must begin by establishing our priorities. The bedrock assumption has to do with the lawfulness and potential profit of athletic training and competition. It is not necessarily a waste of talent, energy, resources, or mental bandwidth. Just because a ball is involved doesn’t make it about the ball.
At the same time, because much of this series will be addressing ways in which athletics can go wrong, it is important to begin on a positive note here. If we don’t get the scriptural balance right, we will find ourselves echoing the sentiments of Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who once said that being a senator was a lot like being a football coach—you had to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it was important.
The Need to Bring the Scriptures to Bear
Logos teams have won state championships. We have hundreds of kids involved in our rugby program. Scores of kids are involved in baseball. And at a Logos football game, you might sometimes think the number of dads on our sideline outnumber the opposing players.
Communities grow tighter as they do things together, growing in like-mindedness as they do. We already worship in the same way, across numerous churches. We sing psalms in the same way, out of the same psalter. We share the Bible Reading Challenge, where many of us are reading the same passage on the same morning, all together. Most of our kids are receiving a classical Christian education. But if we don’t make a point of developing a Christian worldview framework when it comes to athletics—since so many of us are involved in it—the effects of that will start being corrosive in our community. Hence this series.
Sports Metaphors
The way the apostle Paul used sports metaphors, it seems plain that he must have had a subscription to ESPN. He uses such images all the time, and the way he uses them shows how he believes that sports lessons are transferable concepts. In wisdom, they can carry over, and ought to carry over.
“Athletic images conjure up a number of stimulating associations, including rigorous training or exercise (1 Cor. 9:25; 1 Tim. 4:7-8), singleness of purpose (1 Cor. 9:26), delayed gratification (1 Cor. 9:25), streamlining for maximum performance (Heb. 12:1), self-control (1 Cor. 9:27), perseverance (Heb. 12:2) and endurance (1 Tim. 4:8). Athletic endeavor also involves intense competition with lofty objectives (1 Cor. 9:24) and high stakes (Eph. 6:12), and it requires faithful adherence to a prescribed set of rules to avoid disqualification (2 Tim. 2:5; 1 Cor. 9:27). In spite of all the hard work, the end result is transitory fame. But for the Christian the crown to be won is imperishable (1 Tim. 4:8; 1 Cor. 9:25).”[1]
Little Brother of War
There are certain lessons, of great spiritual value, that cannot be learned in a classroom. In fact, about the only way they can be learned is by praying to the Lord while throwing up by the side of the field. There were two very intense periods in my life that bore a very great and valuable similarity—one was boot camp, and the other was three-a-day football practices in August.
“No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully. The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits. Consider what I say; and the Lord give thee understanding in all things” (2 Tim 2:4-7).
The verb that is translated twice as strive here in verse 5 is athleō. Paul uses three illustrations here, back-to-back. The first is the vocation of warrior, the second is that of an athlete, and the third is that of a farmer. All of these callings require hard and very physical discipline. Men who have learned discipline in the military, or on the playing field, or in a southern cotton field, are men who know the value of hard work elsewhere as well, whether in preaching the Word, or starting a business, or building a house.
If you are thinking about athletics rightly, you are preparing to extend the principles of discipline into your more ordinary life—say, business, or ministry, or politics. You are not trying to escape from the hardship, but rather to apply it. If you get this wrong, you fall into the trap highlighted by that old Southern saying, which is that a hot sun and a slow mule were responsible for many a call to the ministry.
“And I went up by revelation, and communicated unto them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run, or had run, in vain” (Gal 2:2).
When Paul uses the illustration of “running,” he is including the idea of prizes and the playing of national anthems. And if Hebrews is from his pen, as I think it is, we also have the additional idea of a stadium and a sold-out crowd (Heb. 12:1-4).
“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: 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 Cor 9:24-27; cf. 2 Tim. 4:6-8; 1 Pet. 5:4).
Christ as the Finish Line
So not only is Paul acquainted with sports, it appears that his favorite sport is track. The idea of the Christian life or Christian ministry being very much like a race is never very far from him.
“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:13-14; cf. 2:16).
And never forget that this makes Christ the finish line. Not just a successful business, or a decent middle class Christian life. No, the image is one of the Christian straining to reach Christ in glory the same way a runner kicks in the back stretch. And Christ Himself is the tape.