The Crowns #4

I have introduced and defined the topic and tell us that from the time immemorial people have been receiving reward for what they are doing, and one of the reward people received is crown in the first article. In the second article I write about the positive and negative usage of the word crown and some of the uses of crown as found in the bible. In this article I desire to write on some other crowns mentioned in the bible and how they are related to believers.

This is given to believers who run the race and crucify their fleshly desires and point men to Christ Jesus.

Some are called to sacrifice some of their desires to be able to serve the Lord in a distant place, some are called to sacrifice what they hope to become in the world to be serving the Lord. While doing this they will depend on people for support, those people who they could be feeding or who may at a time be their servant would be those they shall be looking upward to for assistance in all they do now, sometimes they will not fulfill that and some people who are committed to this would be fulfilling their parts. It is a huge sacrifice.

“And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.

“I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air:

“But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” (1 Cor 9:25-27)

While talking about this, he uses the things of the world to explain the crown unto the believers in Corinth for he knows they had been familiar with such that he wants to use for the explanation. Having said that, he then projected their minds to Christ’s kind of crown that would become of those believers who do what the Lord expects.

Let us see those unto who this kind of crown is meant as written by apostle Paul in first Corinthians 9: 25-27.

Those who shall receive this kind of crown are those who can subdue their desires, those who would not have their desires to be controlling them.

“Keep under” here is a Greek word which is “ὑπωπιάζω”, the romanticized form is hupōpiazō (phonetic spelling is hoop-o-pee-ad'-zo) which means to subdue (especially one’s passion). Passion in Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary is defined as that thing which we have strong feeling of love or hatred or anger or enthusiasm for.

Let us think about the person called Cain whose offering was rejected by God. We shall discover that the man had strong hatred and anger for his brother. God sees this and calls him to control himself, but he failed to control himself until he allows that anger to dominate his mind and he killed his brother.

“But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.

“And the LORD said unto Cain, why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?

“If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.” (Gen 4:5-7)

When we have something like this in our heart for others, we are asked to put it under control we should not allow it to control us if we want to receive a crown as this.

This is what Hannah did, she controlled herself and would not allow what her second wife was saying neither the reaction of her children to her to move her to do and say what was stupid to them and God would vindicate her at the end of it all. (1 Sam. 1)

“Keep under” is again said to mean that thing which we have strong feeling of love for we should put them under control and would not allow those to control us. Some have strong feeling for wealth, money, wife or husband, children, certificate etal. But the apostle is saying all those we shall not allow them to control us if we really desire an incorruptible crown.

Think about the story of the man in Luke 12, that man has strong desire of amassing wealth and would not think of the poor and the needy ones around him, thence he was saying, “I”, “I”, “I”, “I”, “I”, “I”, this grieves the Lord and his life was cut short, because he fails to put his passion, his desire under subjection, he couldn’t control himself.

“And he spake a parable unto them, saying, the ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully:

“And he thought within himself, saying, what shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?

“And he said, this will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.

“And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.

“But God said unto him, thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?” (Luk 12:16-20)

We shall recall that this is one of the things that soldiers are always train to possess, they are trained to put themselves under control when passing through some stages on the battle field, because the enemies would move them to anger because he knows that when they have failed in that wise, easily would they be defeated.

Sometimes when we think about what we have passed through in the world before acquiring what we have acquired, we shall not want to help anyone, neither support the gospel of Jesus Christ, but this should not be our lot, we are asked to put those under control to be able to serve the Lord faithfully and in a way that would impress him.

In the next article I shall conclude this and talk about another crown.