Glad, in a Prison

The next letter went north out of the same prison, all the way across the sea to Macedonia, to a Roman colony town called Philippi. Ten years before, two men had been dragged across the marketplace there, stripped, beaten with rods, and locked in the deepest room of the prison with their feet held in a block of wood. At midnight they sang. The ground shook, every door swung open, and before morning the jailer who had put them in the stocks was down on the floor washing their backs. Lydia was in that town, who sold purple cloth and would not be argued with. So was the jailer, and all his household, and the women who had gathered down by the river to pray. Out of all of that a gathering had grown, and it was still standing.

Word got up to them that Paul was short of everything. They put together what they had and sent a man the whole way to Rome with it: Epaphroditus. It is a long road, and it nearly killed him. He fell sick on the way, so sick that the news went home that he was dying. He did not die. When he was strong enough to travel, Paul sent him back, and sent a letter home in his hands. It is a thank-you letter for a gift of money, written by a man who did not know whether he would live — and it is the gladdest thing he ever wrote.

“Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus, to all the holy ones at Philippi, and to the overseers and the servants of the gathering. Favor to you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God every single time I remember you. Every time I pray for you I pray glad, because of the way you have shared in this good news from the first day until now. And I am sure of this one thing: the God who began a good work in you is going to keep at it until it is finished. It is only right that I should think that about you, because I keep you in my heart — in my chains, and when I stand up and speak for the good news, you are in it with me. God knows how I ache to see you. And this is what I ask for you: that your love keeps spilling over, more and more, with real knowledge and good sense in it, so that you can tell the difference between things that look alike, and come to that day honest, with nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has actually pushed the good news forward. The whole guardhouse knows why I am in these chains, and so does everybody else in the place. And most of the brothers here have watched me sitting in them and got braver, not quieter. They say the word now without being afraid. Some of them are announcing Christ out of jealousy, hoping to make trouble for a man who is tied up and cannot answer back. Others do it out of love. And what of it? Either way, whether they mean it or not, Christ is announced — and I am glad about that. Yes, and I am going to go on being glad.

“For me, living is Christ, and dying is gain. If I go on living in this body, that means work worth doing. So which would I choose? I do not know. I am pulled hard from both sides. I would like to pack up and go and be with Christ, which is far better — but you need me here more than I need that. So I think I will stay. I think I will go on with all of you, and come and see you again. Only — live like people who belong to the good news of Christ. Then whether I come and see it myself or only hear about it, I will hear that you are standing in one spirit, fighting side by side with one soul, and not frightened by anybody who stands against you. You were given not just the trusting of him but the suffering for him too. It is the same struggle you saw me in, and hear that I am in now.”

“If there is any comfort in Christ, if his love is any consolation, if you have ever shared anything of his Spirit, if there is any tenderness in you at all — then fill my joy right up to the brim. Think the same thing. Have the same love. Be joined in soul, thinking the one thing. Nothing out of rivalry. Nothing done to look big. Be low in your own mind, and count the other person as being above you. Do not look only at your own business. Look at everybody else’s too.

“Think this way among yourselves. It is the way Christ Jesus thought. He was in the form of God, and did not count being equal with God a thing to be clutched. He emptied himself instead. He took the form of a slave. He came to be like human beings, and when he was found in the shape of a man he brought himself lower still, and obeyed as far as death — and it was death on a cross. And so God lifted him high above everything, and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in the heavens and on the earth and under the earth, and every tongue should say out loud that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

“So then, my dear ones. You always did what you were told when I was there with you; do it much more now that I am not. Work out your own rescue, with fear and with trembling. It is God who is at work inside you, both the wanting and the doing of it, because that is what pleases him. Do everything without grumbling and without arguing, so that nobody can find a mark on you: God’s children, straight and clean in the middle of a crooked and twisted world, shining in it like lights, holding on tight to the word of life. Then on the day of Christ I will know I did not run for nothing. And even if my life is poured out like wine over an offering, I am glad about it, and glad along with all of you. Be glad the same way, and be glad along with me.”

“I hope to send Timothy to you soon, so that I can hear how you are and feel better for knowing. I have nobody else like him. Everybody is busy about their own things; he genuinely worries about yours. You know what he has proved to be: he served alongside me for the good news the way a boy works alongside his father. But I had to send you Epaphroditus — my brother, my fellow worker, my fellow soldier, the man you sent to look after me. He has been homesick for the lot of you, and upset because you heard he had been ill. He was ill. He came close to dying. But God had mercy on him, and on me too, so that I would not have sorrow piled on top of sorrow. So send him in gladly when he gets there, and hold men like that in honor. He gambled with his own life to bring me what you were too far away to bring me yourselves.”

“For the rest, my brothers — be glad in the Lord. I do not mind writing the same things over again; for you it is safe. Watch out for the dogs. Watch out for the men who do harm. Watch out for the men with the knife, who say you must be cut to belong to God. We are the ones marked out for God — we who serve by the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. Though if anybody wants to play at that, I can play it better. Circumcised on the eighth day. Of the family of Israel. Of the tribe of Benjamin. A Hebrew born of Hebrews. As to the law, a Pharisee. As to being in earnest, I hunted down the gathering of God. As to keeping the rules of the law, nobody could put a finger on me.”

All of that had been money in his hand. “Whatever was gain to me, I have written off as loss, because of Christ. More than that: I count everything a loss beside the worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I lost the lot for him, and I count it rubbish, so that I can have Christ, and be found in him — not standing on a record of my own from keeping the law, but on what God counts right in a person who trusts him. I want to know him. I want to know the power that raised him from the dead. I want to share what he suffered, and be shaped the way his dying shaped him, so that somehow I may arrive at the rising of the dead myself. Not that I have got it. Not that I am finished. I press on to lay hold of it, because Christ laid hold of me. Brothers, I do not count myself to have laid hold of it yet. But this one thing I do. I forget what is behind me. I stretch out toward what is in front of me. And I press on down the track toward the finish, for the prize. So all of us who are grown up should think this way; and if you think differently about something, God will show you that too. Only, let us keep in line with what we have already reached.”

“Copy me, brothers, all of you together, and watch the ones who walk the way we do, because you have us for a pattern. For there are plenty of people walking about — I have told you about them before, and I am crying while I tell you again — who are enemies of the cross of Christ. Their god is their belly. The thing they ought to be ashamed of is the thing they boast about. Everything they think about is on the ground. But we belong to a city in the heavens, and we are watching the road for the one who is coming from there to rescue us, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will change these low bodies of ours and make them like his own shining one.”

“So then, my brothers, whom I love and long for — my joy, and my crown — stand firm like that, my dear ones. I beg Euodia, and I beg Syntyche, to think the same thing in the Lord.” He wrote their two names into a letter that was going to be read out loud in front of the whole gathering, and asked them to make it up. “And I am asking you too, my true yokefellow: help these women. They fought side by side with me for the good news, and so did Clement, and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.”

“Be glad in the Lord always. I will say it again: be glad. Let everybody see that you are fair. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything. Whatever it is, take it to God — ask him, and thank him while you are asking. And the peace of God, which is more than anybody can get their mind around, will stand guard over your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus. For the rest, brothers: whatever is true, whatever is honest, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever people speak well of — if anything is good, if anything is worth praising — think about those things. And what you learned from me, and took from me, and heard from me, and saw in me — do those things. Then the God of peace will be with you.”

“I was very glad in the Lord that your care for me has come into flower again. You were caring all along; you just had no chance to show it. I do not say that because I was in want. I have learned to be content with whatever happens. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to have more than enough. I have been let into the secret of it, in every place and on every kind of day: full or hungry, plenty or nothing. I have strength for everything in the one who puts the strength in me. All the same, you did well to share the hard part with me. You Philippians know this yourselves. At the beginning, when I first went out from Macedonia, not one gathering kept an account with me of giving and taking except you, on your own. Even while I was at Thessalonica you sent what I needed, once, and then again. It is not the gift I am after. It is the fruit that keeps piling up in your account. And I have everything now, and more than everything. I am full, since Epaphroditus brought me what you sent — a sweet smell, an offering God is glad to have. And my God will fill up every need of yours out of his riches.”

“Greet every holy one there for me. The brothers here send their greetings — all of them — and most of all the ones in Caesar’s household.” That is how it ends. Paul was chained up in the emperor’s own city, waiting to find out whether he would live; and inside the emperor’s own house there were people who had come to trust Jesus and wanted their love sent to a gathering of cloth sellers and jailers and praying women up in Macedonia. The letter went out of the prison with Epaphroditus, back up the long road, to the town of the river and the songs at midnight.