The Purpose of the Technician

Just outside the city of Corinth, on the Isthmian Plain, triennial Greek games were held. These games were famous. At the time of Paul’s writing they even overshadowed the Olympian games. The Corinthians were proud of these games, the chief glory of their city. Paul draws on this important athletic event for an illustration as to how we should live in view of the judgment seat cf Christ.

Paul pictures a race. The word he uses is stadion, denoting a stadium or a racetrack. The stadium with which the Corinthians were familiar measured about 600 feet (Greek) or about an eighth of a Roman mile. Traces of the great Corinthian stadium where the games were held are still discernible on the isthmus.

The crown was among the Romans and Greeks a symbol of victory and reward. The crown or wreath worn by the victors in the Olympic games was made of leaves of the wild olive; in the Pythian games, of laurel; in the Nemean games, of parsley; and in the Isthmian games, of the pine.

Proud were the mighty conquerors

Crowned in Olympic games;

They thought that deathless honors

Were entwined about their names.

But dead was soon the parsley leaf,

The olive and the bay;

But Christian’s crown of amaranth

Shall never fade away.

It, too, occurs only here. It means to fight with the fist, that is, to box. It was a serious matter, in Paul’s day, to get into the ring. Instead of being covered with a padded boxing glove, the hand was covered with the cestus. This consisted of leather bands studded with pieces of metal. It could inflict terrible punishment.

The word for castaway is adokimos, meaning “to be disapproved or rejected for the prize.” Paul was horrified at the thought that, having told others the laws of the contest, he should himself violate them and be ignominiously rejected by the Judge.