“Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. Now they do it in order to receive a corruptible crown, but we seek an incorruptible crown,” 1 Cor. 9:25.

The true Christian life requires self-discipline. This discipline is known as asceticism. Typically, for the modern person this word evokes images of a hermit of some sort who is engaged in severe self-denial, austerity, and is striving to escape from the world.

Words are important. Early Christians purposefully chose the word ascetic or asceticism to describe the Christian life, obviously a few thousand years ago they were using the direct Greek words. Asketes was originally used denote a skilled worker or craftsman and especially a person who is undergoing training for competition in the arena. Askein is the action itself, to exercise, to train; to undergo training for the athletic competition in the arena. St. Paul himself uses numerous examples of athletic training as images of the spiritual life.

“Do you know that those who run in a race run with everyone else, but only one receives the prize? Run like that, in order to win! Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. Now they do it in order to receive a corruptible crown, but we seek an incorruptible crown. This is how I run, not without a goal. This is how I fight, not beating the air! Instead, I chastise my body and bring it into submission, for fear that after having preached to others I myself should be disqualified,” (1 Cor. 9:23-27). The direct analogy to athletic training is obvious. In verse 25 the Greek word agōnizomai is used by St. Paul. This word means to enter the contest and to fight in the games. The word translated as “I chastise my body” (vs. 27) in Greek is hypōpiazō. This word is linked to training for boxing. It implies a boxer who is disciplined and, in some sense, merciless with himself in his training. When his body wants to stop, he does not, he continues pushing himself in his training. The boxer is the one who is master of himself. This is the Asketes.

Hypōpiazō is again used by St. Paul when he exhorts, “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold of eternal life,” (cf. (1 Tim. 6:12), and again when he says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course,” (cf. 2 Tim. 4:7). And again, “This is what I also work for, struggling [or one might say fighting, my note] with His energy which is powerfully at work in me,” (Col. 1:29). This makes clear that the fighting is achieved in synergy with the Divine energy/grace of God and is not an independent action, that is, for the training to be successful it must be done in the grace of Jesus Christ. The clear references to athletic exercise and contest are obvious in these above verses also.

St. Paul admonishes St. Timothy to remain steadfast and endure in the faith, which continues the notion of hypōpiazō, and he uses a number of relevant symbols from earthly experience that have to do with training and labor, “You too must endure tribulations as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No soldier on duty entangles himself in the affairs of this life, in order to please the one who enrolled him as a soldier. Likewise, anyone who competes in athletics cannot be crowned unless he has competed by the rules. The farmer who labors must be the first to get a share of his crops. Think over what I have said, and may the Lord give you understanding in all things,” (2 Tim. 2:4-7).

An ascetic is one who understands the training that he has undertaken and is dedicated to fulfilling it. Christianity is fundamentally ascetic. Every serious Christian is called to asceticism because the Christian way of life is spiritual training and fighting in the arena of this life. It is ultimately not for the faint of heart. In the contest, an athlete is at times beaten and bloodied. Sometimes he suffers a defeat, but the true contestant rises, learns from the defeat and presses on for the victory.

The basic of any training is to create an environment of resistance. It is through encountering resistance that strength is made. The beginner will have a lower level of resistance but as strength is acquired the resistance is increased accordingly.

If a person makes the resolve to begin training, one of the first things he must realize is that he is weak. One of the first things faced is one’s personal weakness. This realization is vital because through it strength will be acquired. When a person starts strength training, he may want to bench 250lbs. Yet, this won’t happen by just walking into the gym or buying a bench press. Many a times, one must simply start with the humble experience of benching only the 45lbs bar. Motion and form are vital to focus on. These will be the foundation upon which all future strength is set. Some are tempted to think, “I stink, I’m so weak” and then give up. This temptation must be overcome to gain strength.

Training according to your strength level is important. Too much too soon can cause bad injuries, too little means almost no progress. Either of these extremes will hinder progress and possibly cultivate discouragement which many times can lead to quitting. There is a sweet spot that has the capacity to generate the most progress, which often is personal for the specific person. This is where the athlete must know himself and be honest about his strength limits and his own laziness. He must push himself sufficiently to gain strength and also resist the temptation to laziness. A trainer is often helpful in understanding this.

Certain body types are more predisposed, due to their build, to certain exercises and strengths. Some are shorter and stocky, some are taller and lanky, some are somewhere in between. In heavy lifting, shorter range of motion means the potential to move heavier weights. Being a 250lbs barrel of a man will make calisthenics difficult. Someone may have more natural brute strength; someone may have more natural endurance; some may bulk up much easier but some may get lean faster, for example. Knowing your own self in these matters is important. Then you can capitalize on your natural endowments for strength and strive to bring up your weaknesses. Then you can admire the varying strength differences of people while understanding what is best attuned for your abilities. Exercise and strength come in great variety. Not everyone is built to be in a strong man competition, but anyone can admire the strength that is exhibited. When you are functioning in your own strength potentials you find the freedom to appreciate the variety of competitions and strengths.

Training, whether it is for personal or professional goals, requires dedication, discipline, and routine. On a certain level it involves lifestyle changes. Depending on the level of training these changes may be substantial, involving food, drink, free time, relationships, and so on. The mode of life outside of specified training times also has varying influences on the overall goals of strength. Excess in any one of these life areas can detract from the strength goals. Managing the relationship between these things is asceticism. The athlete’s knowledge of how to rightly use and relate to the things around him is asceticism. It is self-control, on an athletic level. It is the understanding of what is for his benefit and what may detract from his goals. For a serious athlete, this self-knowledge is just as important as his gym training.

If an athlete is ready to hold himself in such a manner regarding temporal things, how much more should the Christian be ready to do so for the eternal things. Thus, within the earthly endeavor of training for athletics is a spiritual reality. If the body must be trained, disciplined, and refined through training, how much more the spiritual man.

For the Christian, asceticism is not an escape from the world (as in the creation of God) but the right and proper use of the things of creation. It is an inner disposition of the virtues, energized by God, by which a man trains himself to use the material order around him in a proper way. This is vastly different from the misguided understanding of asceticism as escape from the things of creation, an austere individualizing of oneself in isolation from the created order. In true Christianity, matter is the creation of God. It is the misuse of matter– creation– due to sin that leads to abuse and the descent into materialism, which involves the wanton abuse of matter for individualistic and passing gratification. The ascetic is one who is harmonizing the right use of matter within himself. Through self-control, also known as chastity or temperance, a person becomes rightly oriented to the things around him, this is authentic strength. When we are wrongly oriented to matter, the problem being inside of us, then we give it authority over us in a negative way and we become slave to the passions, which are the drivers of the wrong use of the created order around us.

“On the road of our approach to God stands the world– we must pass through the understanding of it. Every man has a mission connected with the world. Everyone must know it according to the power given to him, in as much as knowledge can’t come until the gaining of virtues; everyone must develop before hand a moral activity of relationship to the world. A mainly negative attitude to the world frustrates salvation itself. The world is imposed on everyone as a stone for sharpening his spiritual faculties,” teaches St. Dumitru Staniloae (Orthodox Spirituality. St. Tikhon Seminary Press, pg. 205). Asceticism is rightly using the created order around us as it is intended, to sharpen and strengthen us in things eternal. This created world and this life are both training and the arena in which we are fighting the good fight of salvation in Jesus Christ.

St. Dimitry of Rostov says, “True life is not relaxation but battle and war, a time for enterprise, a school, a navigation across the sea. There can be no tranquility during a war, nor rest in commerce; no leisure in school, nor ease when sailing upon the sea … be not slothful in the things of God, nor despondent, but resolutely ready yourself for labor” (Spiritual Guidance on the Christian Path, pg. 74-75). Just as the warrior must rise up when he falls and continue faithfully in the battle, so the Christian is dedicated to this endurance in the way of Christ. When an athlete fails to win the trophy, he must make a resolution to continue to train and to learn from his possible mistakes so as to be prepared to conquer in next contest.

At some point the body, due to age and other things, begins to weaken and its inevitable end is the grave, no matter how strong. There in the grave it will await the general resurrection. Yet, the inner spiritual person, full of faith in Jesus Christ, never dies. In fact, the spiritual strength that is acquired will never wither or fade because it is made of things eternal and everlasting. Asceticism is the training and founding of the inner man in the immovable and eternal strength of the living God, this inner transformation inevitably permeates our bodies too.

St. Paul teaches, “Train yourself for godliness. Physical exercise has some value, but godliness has a value in all things, having a promise for the present life as well as for the one to come” (1 Tim 4:7-8). I’m an advocate for physical exercise, it has its importance, but the health and strength of the body has an end. Yet, the simple practice of physical exercise has the potential to teach us deeper ascetic realities that touch the inner man. For the Christian, physical exercise can be a positive symbolic instructor of the everlasting principles of ascetic living to which the Christian is called. True Christianity also provides the spiritual equipment that is essential to exercising in the ascetic life. Yet, all of our journey through this arena of earthly life is ascetic. If we allow it, it will, by God’s grace, through resistance challenge us to exercise ourselves in the way of Jesus Christ. All around us is the potential for the acquisition of spiritual strength. Let us train diligently as ascetic athletes of Christ.