Paul's second picture is the athlete. It could be a runner or some other sort of athlete. As with soldiering, Paul draws on athletics more than once for illustration purposes in his letters. Here his focus is on the way an athlete must compete according to the rules in order to win the prize. It so happens that today a lot of attention is focused on the cyclist Lance Armstrong. It seems pretty clear by this stage that he cheated. He did not compete according to the rules. For this reason he has been stripped of his titles. He is not considered worthy to keep the victor's crown he was given. Of course, there are other ways of cheating and missing out on the prize - cheating yourself and not putting in the training required for example - and Paul may have that in mind. The point is that for the minister there is a prize to be won, as it were, a victor's crown. It can only be won by fairplay. To attempt to cheat is to court disaster. God the great umpire knows whether you are competing fairly or not. If you think you can know victory without prayer or without sacrifice, without hard work on those sermons and faithfulness as a pastor then you have an unpleasant surprise coming.
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