“And I want you to know, my dear brothers and sisters, that everything that has happened to me here has helped to spread the Good News. For everyone here, including the whole palace guard, knows that I am in chains because of Christ. And because of my imprisonment, most of the believers here have gained confidence and boldly speak God’s message without fear.”
Philippians 1:12-14 NLT
Where was Paul when he dictated these words? He wasn’t in a comfortable house, or an inn or hotel room…with the prospect of a hot meal and a warm bed. He was in a cold, dark dungeon, chained night and day to a Roman soldier, as if he were some dangerous criminal.
Why was he there? He was on trial for his life because he proclaimed, in an empire controlled by a cruel and capricious dictator, that there was another king…not Caesar…who is to be worshipped and honoured as Lord. He was at the mercy of someone who took revenge on anyone who dared to question his authority…a tyrant who had people killed in the most cruel way for daring to say that he was not God!
Paul had a mission, a mandate from Jesus, to tell the world that He, Jesus alone, is king. This commission consumed Paul’s life…occupied his thoughts…drove his ambitions and plans…and kept him steadfast despite the opposition he faced… but now he was restrained and muzzled. How could he continue to fulfil his mission when he was locked up in prison?
There was only one way… out there, in the public space, there were many who could continue the witness of the one when the one was restricted and shut up in jail.
Paul was only one, but he never kept quiet about Jesus. If he could not tell the world outside, he could tell the soldiers in the prison! Imagine the poor Roman guard…chained for hours to the man who never stopped talking about Jesus!
Paul’s fellow believers caught the fire. If Paul was muzzled and restricted, they were not. If one man was imprisoned, they were free. Little did the Roman government understand that they could not put the fire out by adding fuel to the flames.
“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” (Tertullian…197 AD)
“This famous phrase means that the persecution and execution of Christians often leads to the growth of the faith. Coined by the early church father Tertullian in ~197 AD, it suggests that the sacrifice of martyrs inspires others and helps the church multiply.” (Source: Google AI)
What captures my attention most is that Paul’s optimism, born of a faith in God that could not be dampened or diluted by circumstances, gave him a resilience that no dark prison or threat of death could extinguish.
Paul lived, even in the realities of his own life…including incarceration in a Roman dungeon…where he counselled others to live…in the realm outside the earth…the command centre of the universe.
“Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.”
Colossians 3:1-3 NLT
Not even his body shut up in the darkest hole in the city of Rome could put out the fire in Paul’s heart for Jesus, nor destroy his confidence in the sovereign purposes of God. If he was there for Jesus’ sake, he was content, knowing that Jesus was in charge.
If, in the sovereignty of God, Paul was locked up in prison, God, in His sovereignty, had also already set in motion another plan. Nothing ever took Him by surprise and…Paul knew that. God had kick-started the evangelism of Asia Minor and Europe through his chosen apostle, Paul, but His strategy didn’t end there. Lock that one person up…and release many more like him to carry the mission forward. That’s God’s strategy. Multiply!
Jesus put it into words about His own mission and, by implication, the strategy of multiplication that works in His kingdom.
“Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.” …Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”
Mark 4:8, 20 NIV
The principle is general but also specific.
“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
John 12:24 NIV
Jesus died, one seed, but that one seed was producing a harvest everywhere.
To the world, Paul was already dead but…there was a harvest of new “plants” beyond the prison walls that could continue to proclaim the good news, scattering the seed of God’s word into all kinds of soil.
The harvest was guaranteed. No earthly Ceasar, however powerful, could stop the process. So, no prison walls could dampen Paul’s joy or optimism…that the kingdom of God would spread and grow on earth. Not even Rome…not even his own imprisonment or impending death could halt God’s power at work. Even if another seed died, the ingathering of God’s harvest was guaranteed and would never stop.
To be continued