Passages on Running the Race

“Haven’t you seen that all these people running in the stadium are in fact running, yet a single person gets the prize? Run thus so that you would seize it. And every single person who contends has self-control in everything, those in fact then so that they would take a crown that decays, but we for one that doesn’t decay. I then run thus like not without seeing where I’m going, I don’t hit air when I box; but I give my body a black eye and bring it into slavery, lest having preached to others I might have become a failure.” - 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

“to know Him by experience and the power of His resurrection and communion with His feelings, being formed together with His death, if I would somehow arrive at the point of resurrection which is from the dead. Not that I already took it or have already been brought to completion, but I chase after it if I also would seize upon what I also have been seized by the Anointed Yeshua. Brothers, I don’t yet count myself to have seized it; but this one thing, forgetting in fact the things behind me yet stretching out to reach for those things in front of me, I am running it down against the finish line for the prize of the top calling of God with the Anointed Yeshua.” - Philippians 3:10-14

     It's important to understand who Paul's competing against in his athletics metaphor. He's competing against his own flesh, his own neurological malfunction hardwired into his physical body. He understood how hard the fight is, and he was fighting to win. What prize was he fighting for? Always he was fighting so that it would be Jesus Christ who was manifesting through Him, and not his own devices. Always he was disciplining his body, his flesh, so that it wouldn't interfere with his union with Christ in His resurrection shining forth through him. Always Paul was fighting to keep "walking in the Spirit" so that he didn't succumb to the desires of his own flesh: fear, aggression, and bodily cravings. Paul understood what was at stake if he didn't fight for it every moment of every day.

“Don’t you know that to whom you offer yourselves slaves for obedience, you are slaves to whom you obey, whether of the malfunction for death or obedience for being set right? … I speak humanly because of the sickness of your flesh. Because just like you offered your body parts slaves to dirtiness and resulting in lawlessness upon lawlessness, so now offer your body parts slaves to being set right leading to holiness.” - Romans 6:16, 18-19

“Because we know that the Torah is spiritual, yet I am fleshly having been exported for sale under the malfunction. Because I don’t know what I’m accomplishing; because I’m not practicing this thing I wish, but I’m doing this thing I hate. And if I’m doing this thing I don’t wish, I am agreeing with the Torah that it is good, but now I am no longer accomplishing it but the malfunction residing within me. Because I have seen that good doesn’t reside within me, that is, in my flesh; because the willing is at hand with me, yet the accomplishing the good isn’t; because I’m not doing the good which I wish, but I’m practicing this harm which I don’t wish. And if I am doing this thing which I don’t wish, I am no longer accomplishing it but the malfunction residing within me.” - Romans 7:14-20

“Yet I say, walk by the Spirit [of Christ] and you won’t bring the desires of the flesh to completion at all. Because the flesh desires against the Spirit [of Christ], and the Spirit [of Christ] against the flesh, because these things are opposed to one another, so that you would do not whatever things you would wish. And if you are led by the [Spirit of Christ], you aren’t subject to the law.” - Galatians 5:16-18