1 Corinthians 9:25

“Now, whoever strives for the mastery abstains from everything: they to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.”

Edwards rightly says: “This verse reminds the Corinthians of two things: first, the difficulty of winning, and next, the infinite value of victory.” The participle every man striving relates, not to the time when the athlete is already in the lists, but to the time when he enrols himself among those who are to take part in the competition. During the ten months before the day of the games, the competitors lived in sustained exercises and with special self-denial, abstaining from everything that could exhaust or weight the body. For the Christian, whose conflict is a matter, not of a day, but of the whole life, abstinence, the condition of progress in sanctification, is consequently an exercise to be renewed daily.

The abstinence of the athletes did not relate only to criminal enjoyments, but also to gratifications in themselves lawful; so the Christian's self-denial should bear, not only on guilty pleasures, but on every habit, on every enjoyment which, without being vicious, may involve a loss of time or a diminution of moral force.

Should any complain of this condition of final triumph, Paul reminds them that the athletes make such sacrifices with a view to a passing honour, whereas they have in prospect eternal glory. The pine crown which the judge put on the victor's head in the Isthmian games, while it was the emblem of glory, was at the same time the emblem of the transitory character of that glory. For the spiritual victor there is reserved an unfading crown!