Was Paul a fan of the Olympic games, and why does he mention them so often?
Paul appears to have been a fan of the Olympic Games, as evidenced by his frequent references to them in his writings for illustrations and analyses. He drew on the races and training to teach spiritual lessons about running for reward and temperance.
Les teaches that Paul must have been a fan of the Olympics because he refers to them so often in his writings for analyses and so forth. Les points out that when they had the Olympic Games, in Corinth it was the Isthmian Games, the second greatest set of games in the Roman world after the Athenian Games, the Olympics. Paul comes back to the concept of the Olympic races: all run, but one receives the prize. They race to win, to be number one, and he tells the Corinthian believers to run their spiritual race to obtain reward, not salvation. Every man striving for mastery trains; they did not go overboard eating or starve their bodies, but practiced temperance—maintaining balance in any area of life, not just alcohol.