Frankly, He Didn’t Win The Race

The other day I was reading from Our Daily Bread, a short daily devotional, and came across a devotional about running the race. The devotional talked about the annual Iditarod Trail Race in Alaska where sled dog teams traverse  1,049 miles from Anchorage to Nome. While the trek is long (8-15 days), the prize seems small (a cash prize and a new pickup truck). However, as Christians we strive for an imperishable prize, much larger than our efforts.

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.  Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.  So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

I Corinthian 9:24-27

Paul was training himself, practicing self control, in order to win others over for Christ. Yet he also calls us to run the same way. We as Christians are to run for the ultimate prize, eternity with God, and in such a manner that we will attain it. However this race is not to be taken lightly. We must “exercise self control” so that we do “not run aimlessly… as one beating the air.” We need train ourselves for this race, but how?

As I was thinking about preparing ourselves for virtues, I was brought back to one man’s attempt to do it on his own, 

Justin’s Apology for Plato

One of the purposes of this blog is to find the redemptive portions of texts that aren’t about God or Christianity. What are the universal truths that we can find in works like Machiavelli’s The Prince or things that can speak into our lives as Christians such as Homer’s gods in the Iliad?  The idea of redeeming other works is not new. One early Christian apologist, Justin Martyr, did this with Plato. Justin Martyr believed that Plato went to heaven because he knew God, the logos. While I cannot argue myself for Plato’s salvation, I will show how Justin, in his First and Second Apologies, can extend salvation to Plato. Justin has personal investment in his project as he is a philosopher himself who studied Plato’s works and seeks to show Christianity as the true religion and philosophy. He was martyred under Marcus Aurelius, another Torrey author.

The Logos

Justin believes that Socrates (and Plato) had received revelation from the Logos. The Logos in Greek philosophy was the idea of knowledge or discourse. In the Bible and Christian thought, it is