Spiritual Advance according to the Rules

II Timothy 2:4-6

No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.Continuing with the military analogy, Paul gave an explanation of a good soldier. Good soldiering requires a great deal of self-discipline. Good soldiering requires a great deal of training. And good soldiering requires submission to authority. And a good soldier does not allow the details of life to distract him for learning and applying Bible doctrine. The same holds true for the advancing believer. A good soldier of Jesus Christ must discipline himself to study the Word of God on a consistent basis. He must train himself with Bible doctrine and store it in his soul. And he must submit to Jesus Christ as the head of the Church, to the Bible doctrine in his soul and to his pastor-teacher when assembled for Bible class. By doing this, a believer pleases God.

Also, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules.Now Paul used a sports analogy. The Greek word for competesis “athleo,” which means to contend or to wrestle (the root word means a contest). It meant to compete in an athletic contest in the Roman Empire. There were two kinds of established athletes in the day in which this was written. There was the athlete who went to the gymnasium where they lived for ten months. Then there was the other system where they could go down to a gymnasium which was not the official government gym where they could go for an hour or two and work out, and then come back in a couple of days — not really a very serious thing.

So, we have the serious athlete and the one who merely did it to contribute to his own social life and business life, i.e. just for fun and health and never took it too seriously. The serious athlete is comparable to the believer who is positive toward doctrine. The non-serious athlete is the believer who is indifferent to doctrine and will eventually move into some phase of reversionism.

The serious athlete who competed in any of the events of the games in the Roman world had to comply with laws and rules of the games. For a person who maintained a continual state of positive volition toward the job there was no problem. The rules were not impossible, they just demanded a lot of self-discipline and the regulation of your life. And it was impossible to win an event if the athlete broke any of the rules. So it is with the advancing believer. Believers are to follow the Protocol Plan of God and reach super-grace status in order to win the prize of glorifying God to the maximum.

The judges and marshals of the games had the responsibility of enforcing all discipline and rules pertaining to the games. One act of disobedience you were disqualified. This meant no chance for blessing or reward. The analogy is obvious. The reversionist will not accept self-discipline or the authority of anyone but himself. Reversionism not only disqualifies the believer from reaching super-grace status but can result in maximum divine discipline (the sin unto death). The sin unto death is never for carnality, it is for maximum reversionism.

The hard-working farmer ought to be the first to receive his share of the crops.Paul’s final analogy is to a hard-working farmer. As a farmer, a person must have a lot of self-discipline and is analogous to the believer who is consistent in the function of study and application of Bible doctrine. When a farmer disciplines himself and does not become distracted from the task at hand, he receives a reward – a bountiful harvest. For a believer who plants (studies) and harvests (applies) Bible doctrine in their soul, the harvest is the conveyance of his escrow blessings when he reaches spiritual maturity.