Daily Devo - Monday, April 7, 2008

"Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus…"
Philemon 1a (ESV)

Plato once called the body the prison-house of the soul. By this he meant that humans become trapped by the baser things of life (bodily diseases, pursuit of pleasure, sexual cravings, etc). What he didn’t realize, of course, was that even the soul was prisoner. The young man who has given into his drug addiction wants cocaine. His mind wants it. His body wants it. Even his soul wants it. The woman who is prone to jealousy, or the adolescent who is easily angered, or the elderly gentleman who lives dishonestly—all are prisoners to their struggles and faults. The biblical word for this is sin, and it is a prison from which no human can escape.

But the greatest prison break in human history did occur, and it happened about 2,000 years ago. When Jesus—who was both human and God—died on the cross and rose again, he defeated the power of sin and death. Those who live for him are free from the prison-house of sin, and free from death and hell.

The opening lines of this letter describe how Paul is now a prisoner of the Roman empire. As a Roman citizen, Paul would not have been locked up with the common criminals. Rather, he would have been kept in custodia libera (liberal detention). This allowed him the ability to receive visitors and engage in correspondence.¹ Still, make no mistake. Despite a few benefits, Paul was very much a prisoner of Rome. Locked away in a jail cell, he pens this letter to a friend named Philemon. Yet we read no hint of misery, no discussion of difficulty, not even the slightest sense of hopelessness. Rome could kill Paul, and according to church tradition they eventually did, but Paul showed no fear.

Why? Because once you have been freed from the prison-house of sin, you are free indeed. A mere physical jail is a mere child’s game compared to that greater jail-house. In his classic hymn O For a Thousand Tongues, Charles Wesley vividly describes how Christ has set us free from the prison of sin and death. He writes:

He breaks the pow’r of canceled sin,
He sets the prisoner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean,
His blood availed for me.

Paul, looking around the prison cell, realizes the God himself had set him free from something that would have enslaved him for eternity. Sin was like a great chain that was dragging him to hell, and Christ broke the power of that chain. Now, as a man who was spiritually and eternally free, Paul learned that difficulties on earth no longer mattered.

If you have given your life to Christ, learn a lesson from Paul. Let the hardships come, for you are free.

¹ Joseph Fitzmyer, Philemon (Anchor Bible Commentary).