Winner!

It has often been said, after a sporting contest, it is regrettable there can be only one winner. When American tennis player John Isner won the longest match in professional tennis history, beating Frenchman Nicolas Mahut seventy games to sixty-eight in the fifth set of a five-set marathon, he said, “It stinks someone had to lose.”* Anyone who has run all 26 miles, 385 yards of a marathon will tell you it’s a grueling event, yet whenever there is a sprint to the finish of a marathon, only one athlete can get to the finish line first. The other athlete, after training and planning and competing and hurting, can do no better than second. It’s a shame someone has to lose.

The citizens of the city of Corinth were very familiar with sporting contests, regularly hosting sporting events very similar to the Olympic Games. Paul referred to these ancient games in his first letter to the Corinthians.

They all run, Paul said, but there’s only one winner.

So, run to win. It would make absolutely no sense to dedicate your life to a sporting endeavor only to fail to give your best when competing on your sport’s biggest stage. Because there was only one winner, competitors gave their all as they strove to win. But Christians can celebrate that in the Christian race, there is more than one winner. This is the difference between the sporting contests Paul referenced and the Christian faith. You need not be the fittest, fastest, or strongest Christian in town.

You need not look with envy at the natural gifts or talents of another believer and wish you could have what he or she has. In the Christian “race,” every believer in Jesus can be victorious. Unlike an athletic event, faith isn’t a matter of being first across the line. If you can have faith in Jesus, you can be a winner —eternally.