Septuagesima to Quinquagesima: Prepare to Run the Race
Short answer: Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima are the three Sundays that historically began the Western church's season of preparation before Lent. In the old calendar they formed a ramp of roughly seventy, sixty, and fifty days leading to Easter. Their traditional readings press three themes: the race and self-control of 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, the sowing of the word in Luke 8, and the humility of the Pharisee and tax collector in Luke 18:9-14. They do not add a new gospel; they give the church time to repent, train, and fix its eyes on Christ. Many churches keep them and many do not. Scripture does not command the observance, and faithful Christians differ, but the passages appointed for them remain profitable for correction, endurance, and hope.
What the three names actually mean
The names come from Latin numerals. Septuagesima suggests seventy, Sexagesima sixty, and Quinquagesima fifty. The arithmetic is loose: the Sundays were numbered approximately by tens from Easter, and the intervals do not fall exactly on seventy, sixty, and fifty days. This devotional counting was one way the church marked the approach to the resurrection.
The season was not a second Lent. It sat before Lent as a kind of prelude, a gentle on-ramp. In some traditions the joyful acclamation was set aside and services grew plainer. The point was not gloom for its own sake. It gave the church weeks to think about discipline before the intensity of Lent arrived.
None of this is commanded in Scripture. There is no verse that says to observe Septuagesima. Christians are free to keep such days or not, and many Bible-centered churches never mention them. If you observe them, observe them as a servant of Christ; if you do not, do not despise those who do.
The race imagery behind 1 Corinthians 9:24-27
The classic text for Septuagesima is Paul's athletic metaphor. He writes in 1 Corinthians 9:24, "Don’t you know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run like that, that you may win." The Corinthians knew the Isthmian games held near their city; they needed no explanation of the stadium, the training, or the crown.
Paul's point is not that believers compete against one another for a single prize. The point is effort and direction. Everyone in the stadium runs, but not everyone runs to win. Paul calls for purposeful Christian living rather than drifting. He insisted on this while he had rights which he was willing to give up for the gospel.
That is why the passage fits the pre-Lent Sundays. The church is not being told to earn salvation. It is being told that grace produces discipline, and that a runner who refuses to train should not expect the prize. The race is already laid out; the question is whether we will run it with our whole heart.
Self-control, the crown, and the body
Paul continues with training language. He uses the picture of an athlete who exercises self-control in all things. The contrast is with an athlete who wins a perishable wreath of leaves, while Christians run for an imperishable reward. The value of the goal sets the measure of the discipline.
The phrase about disciplining the body is often misread. Paul is not teaching contempt for the physical body; the body is God's good creation and will be raised. He means the body must not be allowed to rule the person. Appetites are to be governed, not worshipped, and not hated either.
So the pre-Lent emphasis on self-control is not moralism. It is training shaped by hope. Anything that masters a believer — food, drink, money, comfort, approval — becomes a weight that slows the runner. Giving something up for a season does not make a person righteous. It exposes what rules the heart and drives the runner back to grace.
Galatians, Genesis, and the curse of sweat
Septuagesima's older readings sometimes reached back to Genesis, where work itself is placed under a curse. Genesis 3:17-19 records God's word to Adam: "Because you have listened to your wife’s voice, and ate from the tree, about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ the ground is cursed for your sake. You will eat from it with much labor all the days of your life."
That is why the pre-Lent season could speak soberly about labor, sweat, and mortality. The race metaphor fits the world as it actually is. Running is hard because creation groans and because the runner is a sinner who needs mercy. Discipline is not pretending the curse is gone.
Yet the same Scripture holds out hope: the one who bore the curse for us fulfilled everything Adam failed to do. So the toil of the Christian life is not pointless striving. The runner runs on a track made possible by Christ, not on a treadmill of self-salvation. The ground is cursed, but the goal is resurrection.
Sexagesima and the seed of the word
Sexagesima traditionally centers on the parable of the sower, with its soils: path, rock, thorns, and good ground. The emphasis is not on the farmer's skill but on the reception of the word. The seed is the word of God, and the outcome depends on where it lands and whether it is kept.
This parable does not prove that the word fails. It proves that the human heart is the battleground. Many in a crowd listen, but only some hold fast and bear fruit with perseverance. Jesus himself interprets the soils, so the application is plain: hearing is not the same as believing.
This reading dovetails with the race language. The seed must endure through temptation, and the runner must endure the long middle miles. That endurance is over time, not in a single emotional moment. If Septuagesima asks how we run, Sexagesima asks what we are listening to while we run.
Quinquagesima and the humility of the tax collector
Quinquagesima traditionally prepares for Lent with the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Luke 18:9-14 begins by saying Jesus told it to certain people "who were convinced of their own righteousness, and who despised all others." That is the target audience: the self-assured and the contemptuous.
The Pharisee's prayer is not a confession; it is a résumé. He thanks God that he is not like other people, and he lists his fasting and his tithing. He is accurate about his own religious behavior, but he has forgotten what fasting and tithing were for. The tax collector stands far off, beats his chest, and asks for mercy.
This is why the pre-Lent season was never meant to produce pride. If a person fasts or gives more and becomes like the Pharisee, the discipline has backfired. The one who goes home justified is the one who asks for mercy. The whole season drives toward that posture: empty hands, looking to God.
Matthew 20 and the laborers who grumbled
Another traditional reading for these Sundays is the parable of the vineyard laborers in Matthew 20:1-16. The master hires workers at dawn, then at the third, sixth, ninth, and even the eleventh hour, and pays them all the same. Those hired first grumble, not because they were cheated, but because they assumed they would get more.
The parable presses grace upon us. If God gave us what we deserved, none of us would have any standing at all. The reason the pre-Lent Sundays could ask for a lifetime of disciplined running is that the reward is finally a gift and not a wage. Grace received leaves no room for comparison with another runner.
That is a needed correction to any Lenten pride. The goal is not to be more impressive than the person in the next pew. The kingdom is not a meritocracy, and the last are first. The discipline of the season is real, but it flows out of undeserved generosity, not toward earning it.
Does any of this bind the conscience?
No. Scripture nowhere commands the observance of Septuagesima, Sexagesima, or Quinquagesima, nor does it command Lent as a whole. A church may keep the traditional calendar, adapt it, or set it aside entirely. Colossians 2 and Romans 14 establish the pattern: days observed and days not observed are both to be received and neither used to judge the other.
Where the pre-Lent tradition is helpful, it is helpful as wisdom and not as law. It gives structure to the human need for preparation, and it lets whole congregations read difficult passages together and let them cut. Where it becomes a burden or a substitute for the gospel, it should be dropped or reformed.
So the right attitude is freedom. If the calendar helps you run with perseverance, use it. If it distracts you, you are not sinning by skipping it. Whether you count the days or not, the apostolic command remains: run to win, keep the faith, and fix your eyes on Jesus rather than on a number.
Biblical fidelity check
These passages establish the shape of the Christian life: it is a race run with effort and self-control, over a long course, with the word of God as seed to be received and kept. They establish that justification is given to the humble who ask for mercy, not earned by the proud who count their deeds, and that the reward of the vineyard is the master's generous decree, not wages owed for hours worked. They do not establish the precise names, dates, or the number of days in the pre-Lent season.
A common misreading is that 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 teaches salvation by athletic achievement, as if intense discipline earns acceptance with God. That fails on the text and on the rest of the letter. The runner is already called into the race; discipline is the fruit of grace, not the price of it. Another misreading treats the Pharisee's fasting as the problem rather than his contempt. Fasting is not condemned; self-righteousness is. Dispose of the pride, not the practice.
Other passages that speak to 1 Corinthians 9
Paul's athletic imagery does not stand alone. In 1 Corinthians 10: Warnings and Freedom the apostle warns a confident church about presumption, the very danger a race metaphor guards against. His letters open with the language of a church already called and sanctified, which shapes how effort and grace relate: What Does 1 Corinthians 1:9 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application traces the faithfulness of the God who calls. Because a divided church cannot run well, What Does 1 Corinthians 1:10 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application places unity on the same track. And for the whole argument of the letter, 1 Corinthians 1: Called, United, and Boasting in the Lord frames the cross as the ground beneath all Christian striving.
Frequently asked questions
Are Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima commanded in the Bible?
No. They are a historical church tradition, not a biblical command. The names come from Latin numerals and marked roughly seventy, sixty, and fifty days before Easter. Scripture commands repentance, faith, self-control, and love, but it never commands a pre-Lent season. Churches may observe these days, adapt them, or ignore them freely, because such calendars are matters of wisdom rather than binding law. What matters is that the gospel of grace is not obscured.
Why does Paul use athletic imagery in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27?
Because his readers in Corinth knew the stadium games held nearby. Everyone runs, but only one wins, so Paul urges purposeful effort rather than aimless drift. The point is not that Christians compete for a single crown. It is that the one who runs to win trains, exercises self-control, and keeps the goal in view. Grace does not cancel effort; grace makes effort meaningful, since the reward is imperishable rather than a fading wreath.
Do these Sundays add anything to the gospel?
No. They add nothing to the finished work of Christ and must never be treated as a supplement to it. They are simply an opportunity to read particular passages together before Easter and to examine the heart. In that sense they are like any devotional plan: useful if they serve the gospel, harmful if they replace it. The runner runs because grace has already got hold of him, not in order to secure the favor of God.
