Written From Rome
317
“Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the
Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God upon every remembrance of you,
always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy,
for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now; being
confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in
you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ: even as it is meet for
me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart; inasmuch
as both in my bonds, and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel,
ye all are partakers of my grace. For God is my record, how greatly I
long after you all.... And this I pray, that your love may abound yet
more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; that ye may approve
things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offense till
the day of Christ; being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which
are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.”
The grace of God sustained Paul in his imprisonment, enabling
him to rejoice in tribulation. With faith and assurance he wrote to
his Philippian brethren that his imprisonment had resulted in the fur-
therance of the gospel. “I would ye should understand, brethren,” he
declared, “that the things which happened unto me have fallen out
rather unto the furtherance of the gospel; so that my bonds with Christ
are manifest in all the palace, and in all other places; and many of the
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brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more
bold to speak the word without fear.”
There is a lesson for us in this experience of Paul’s, for it reveals
God’s way of working. The Lord can bring victory out of that which
may seem to us discomfiture and defeat. We are in danger of forgetting
God, of looking at the things which are seen, instead of beholding
by the eye of faith the things which are unseen. When misfortune or
calamity comes, we are ready to charge God with neglect or cruelty.
If He sees fit to cut off our usefulness in some line, we mourn, not
stopping to think that thus God may be working for our good. We need
to learn that chastisement is a part of His great plan and that under the
rod of affliction the Christian may sometimes do more for the Master
than when engaged in active service.
As their example in the Christian life, Paul pointed the Philippians
to Christ, who, “being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to
be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon
Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and