But I keep under my
body, and bring it unto subjection: lest that by any means, when I have
preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. (1 Cor 9:27)
The term translated as “castaway” is αδοκιμος.
This term also means “reprobate.” Notice the other instances of
this term being used in the Pauline corpus:
And even a
they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a
reprobate (αδοκιμος) mind, to do those things which are not convenient. (Rom
1:28)
Examine
yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your
selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates (αδοκιμος)?
But I trust that ye shall know that we are not reprobates (αδοκιμος).
Now I pray to God that ye do no evil; not that we should appear approved, but
that ye should do that which is honest, though we be as reprobates. (αδοκιμος) (2 Cor
13:5-7)
Now as
Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of
corrupt minds, reprobate (αδοκιμος) concerning the faith. (2 Tim 3:8)
They profess
that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and
disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate (αδοκιμος). (Tit 1:16)
That Paul did not hold to “eternal security” or any other
variant of this theology (e.g., perseverance of the saints [the “P” of Calvinism’s
“TULIP]) can be seen when one reads 1 Cor 9:27-10:6, where Paul also brings in
the issue of the Israelites in the wilderness and how they lost their own salvation
and standing before God; I will reproduce the NIV, a popular Evangelical
translation:
No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so
that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for a
prize. For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters,
that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through
the sea. And were all baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all
ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank
from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.
Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were
scattered in the wilderness. Now these things occurred as examples to keep us
from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.
Unless one wishes to engage in a lot of scripture-wrenching, the plain, exegetically-sound reading of this pericope refutes, not supports, many popular, though biblically deficient, theologies of salvation.
