Hello, let's ruminate on this article, I found it interesting as I went through it.......God bless your soul!

“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).

The presentation I have heard over the years while growing up in the church world is that a believer can ‘be a castaway ‘ from heaven or from entering heaven and the verse above is the riveting verse to seal their assertion. Well, thank God for knowledge and thank God that I have the willpower to open my heart to knowledge. Firstly, let’s try to analyze this verse and draw out the right doctrine it depicts. The Greek word translated castaway is the word adokimos, it means unapproved, rejected, worthless or disqualified. So we can interpolate these words in the verse this way “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 unapproved, rejected, worthless or disqualified.” The word castaway is the appropriate word to use based on content and context of the write-up.
This is very factual because verse 24-26 of the same chapter establishes the reason why the writer used this word castaway in verse 27. “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” (1 Corinthians 9:24-26). It is emphatic to say that verse 27 of this chapter is not a standalone but a buildup established from the flow of thought of the writer as regards to the subject matter. And the subject matter here is a race or better still a competition and in this race or competition there’s going to be a reward.
Before I go forward, I want us to differentiate these words reward and gift. Now, a reward is given to someone who has done something noble, so he or she receives something tangible because of what he or she has done. But a gift is what someone receives not necessarily because he or she has done something. It is important to also state that for someone to enter into any competition or race; he must have gotten the preliminary qualification from the organizers of the race or competition and this involves his agreement to run or compete according to the rule(s) of the game. The preliminary qualification to be in this kind of race the writer is talking about is that one must firstly be a believer in order to participate in the race. So the race therefore, is the believer’s race and an unbeliever cannot be part of it, which implies the race is not for unbelievers but for believers. And is interesting to point out that the race cannot disqualify one from been a believer because becoming a believer is not predicated on the race but one can be disqualified from receiving the reward from the race because he didn’t run according to the rule(s) of the race.

Continue reading:http://salvationinthelordevangelicalministry..com.ng/2018/05/welcome-to-arena-of-indubitable-truth_5.html