The Apostle’s Insight Into the Mysteries of Christ—Paul as Prisoner

“For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles, bow my knees before the Father.” Verse 1.

In deep admiration for what God had done for the Gentiles, Paul bowed his knees and thanked God from the bottom of his heart for what He had done for these poor people who for generations had lived in darkness and ignorance. Paul had just illustrated for them how, by being grafted into the body, they had come to have the same rights as the Jewish people.

He who had ascended to heaven gave gifts to men and led cap­tivity captive. This same One had also “captured” Paul and had ap­pointed him as an apostle to the Gentiles. Paul felt that he was a prisoner on behalf of the Gentiles. He was bound in the Spirit to the truths that had particular relevance for them. The Spirit of God apprehended and inspired Paul, focusing his vision on those truths and leading him to revelations that unveiled the work of Christ for the Gentiles so thoroughly that their faith brought them to a solid insight into those things which had been hidden from earlier generations.

If yours is the work of a shepherd and a teacher, and you love the sheep and the lambs God has given you to watch over, then for their sakes you, too, will be bound in the Spirit as a prisoner of Jesus Christ. You will be restricted for their sakes, just as a good mother is restricted like a prisoner for the sake of her children.

When a man preaches the Word and begets children in Christ and then forsakes them as though they were of no concern to him, he is just as hard and insensitive as a mother who abandons her nursing child. It is the love of Jesus Christ that constrains us to as­sume the position of a prisoner of Jesus Christ for the sake of the lambs. What a blessed position, and what happy children who are thus begotten through faith by such conscientious instruments of God!

I have seen many examples of how the gospel has been preached so that sinners are saved. Young people’s eyes have sparkled with joy. But then, sad to say, events invariably take this course: the preacher goes his way and leaves his children just as heartlessly as the ostrich forsakes her eggs in the hot desert sand.

This must under no circumstances be the case among us. We are to tend the lambs until they become sheep, and even then we are to keep on looking after them. Let us pray that God will give us a heart to be a prisoner of Jesus Christ for their sakes. Preaching the Word for sinners is just about the only part of the work that has any honor associated with it. The laborious and less visible work comes during the rearing, during the continual attention we give in caring for the sheep. In the same way, a mother’s work can go almost unnoticed, but what she sows in the hearts of her chil­dren hour by hour, all during their childhood and youth, remains firmly implanted and gives them a foundation for their lives.