Like an athlete I punish my body, treating it roughly, training it to do what it should, not what it wants to. Otherwise I fear that after enlisting others for the race, I myself might be declared unfit and ordered to stand aside. Paul in 1 Cor. 9:27
That is an interesting interpretation of "lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway."
I think it is curious that the surgeon, Sir Frederick Treves in an effort to save King Edward VII's life ten days before his coronation in 1902 convinced the king to undergo surgery for a burst appendix and then in 1923 Sir Treves himself dies from peritonitis presumably from a burst appendix.What amount of convincing do we need to keep our flesh under subjection? Paul writes in Romans 8:13 about "...if you live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." [notice the capital "S" in Spirit - a very important detail often overlooked by good people]
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One of the reasons you may not like this version of the Bible is that it is a paraphrase rather than a translation, so it is more of an interpretation by someONE of what he/she understands/perceives (usually a translation in their own language) of what is written than being something more exact, like a translation from the original Hebrew/Greek/Aramaic that is done by a team of scholars. I don't care for the Living Bible on the whole, but there are some places that the paraphrase says it in a way that may be more understandable. I remember when I was in high school and found the passage in Romans where Paul is saying that he is doing the things he doesn't want to do and not doing the things he wants to do (yet another passage about getting the flesh into submission!). It suddenly came into focus for me. It is interesting that the doctor died from the same thing that he saved the King from . . .
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