Bonds in Christ
“My bonds IN Christ are manifest in all the Palace.”
—Phil. i. 13.
Y bonds m Christ!”
Thus was Paul’s monogram inscribed on
the very place of his captivity.
The Apostle, when he wrote these words, was a
prisoner in Ptome. Not as yet immured in a dungeon;
but certainly under restraint; chained to soldiers from
the pretorian barracks, who kept guard over him by
1 ‘Ev 8lip t4> 7r/3aiTw/)iV- It matters comparatively little to what the ^prsetorio’ strictly refers. The “royal household,” as in our version (the * Caesar’s Palace ’ on the Palatine of iv. 22), is the view supported by Chrysostom, Theodoret, and the Greek commentators; also, Erasmus, Beza, Grotius, Bengel, and others. Luther renders it “Richthaus,” Judgment-hall: as it is translated in Matt, xxvii. 29, &c. (Prof. Eadie in loc.) The meaning adopted by many recent scholars is the “Imperial barracks,” or “Imperial troops” (Praetorian guard). [See the subject treated in an exhaustive dissertation by Bishop Lightfoot, (pp. 99-104).] It is possible, such is the view of one modern writer there stated, that while the reference may be (probably ought to be) to the ’ body -guard,’ that body-guard was itself attached to the Palace “for the protection of the Emperor, either lodged in its courts or standing sentry at its gates.” — Dean Merivale’s ‘History of the Homaru,* vi. p. 268, quoted by Jb.
turns; that, too, by day and night without intermission. And ere long this * fettered freedom ’ (he must have had his own premonitions), was to end in incarceration in the Mamertine/
At first sight, strange and sad entry is this in such a life — Paul in bonds! a chained and caged eagle: instead of mounting with joyous pinion up the blue heavens, exulting in the liberty with which Christ had made him free, he is found chafing and beating his wings against the enclosing bars. To all human appearance, no occurrence could be more adverse and fatal to the propagation of the Gospel. The arrest of its noblest representative and champion, might surely well be considered equivalent to defeat.
Not so! However qualified at first may have been the illustrious captive’s own verdict on this unseasonable repression, he can write on a calm, mature retrospect, “The things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the Gospel” (Phil, i. 1 2). It is the old story; the apparent reverse and discomfiture of man turned into the triumph of truth and of God; garnered mercies found hidden in provi-
1 It is worthy of note, that the Apostle applies two different words in speaking of these “bonds.” As in our motto-verse, heaixovs, (the same also in vers. 7, 14, 17; Philem. 10. 13; Col. iv. 18). The other, ivaXdaei, as in Eph. vi. 20; Acts xxviii. 20. ‘* The latter,” says Bishop Lightloot, *’ seems to differ from the former, only as bringing out the idea of attachment rather than confinement... the word is used especially of the * coupling- chain,’ * hand-cuff,’ by which the prisoner was attached to his guard, as in the case of Agrippa. Josephus ?i<. xviii. 6, 7, 10. ’ — (Introduction to Philippians, p. 8.)
dential dealings, at the time dark, mysterious, untoward.
Similarly incomprehensible (to take another “New Testament memory), was that weeping and wailing in the desolate home and dreary graveyard of Bethany, — the cry of bereft hearts unsuccoured in their agony. Why so sudden an eclipse of their home joys, — the deprivation of a brother beloved, and the removal of a prop so needed in the infant Church? Why, above all, the mysterious delay in the advent of the One only Being in the world who could either arrest the footsteps of the dreaded foe, or give back to the mourners their beloved dead? We hardly seem to wonder at — we dare not chide — the half-reproachful refrain — “If He had been here our brother had not died!” But wait the Divine disclosure. What lessons of consolation have these three days of doleful watching taught the Church of Christ in every age! How our Bibles and our souls would be shorn of perhaps their most treasured solace, had that Eleventh chapter of the Fourth Evangelist never been written; or rather, had these tears of the Bethany sisters never been suffered to flow, and that weary interval to elapse! The Lord of these weepers was, by that seemingly cruel postponement of succour, really only preparing a fuller cup of consolation for them, and for mourners of all times.
So with St. Paul. Leave out his bonds from the story of his life, and we are conscious at once of lireparable loss. First of all, we should, in all human likelihood, have been thereby deprived of the most precious and enduring legacy he has bequeathed to the Church of the future: for not the least touching and beautiful of his inspired letters, as we well know, were indited during his Roman imprisonment. There was a meaning in the captive’s words, with reference to himself and his own life-work, he did not probably contemplate in writing them — “I suffer trouble, as an evil-doer, even unto bonds: but the Word of God is not bound” (2 Tim. ii. 9). It was because one bow he bravely carried was broken, that we are indebted to another still spared to him; — for those “winged words” — golden arrows — which have been speeding their flight for eighteen centuries, and are speeding still. Add to this, we should have forfeited thereby a noble — the noblest chapter in the record of his own personal experience; the record of his patience and faith; the calm radiance of evening sky and golden sunset, after a day of storm and tempest. Affliction, “even unto bonds,” in his case (as affliction in the case of all God’s true people), evidently ripened and mellowed the saintly character, — transfiguring him, before he was glorified. Yes, it was not when he walked a free man, in busy mart, or imperial city; not on Athenian Areopagus, nor in Ephesian theatre, nor in Temple-court of Jerusalem, that he experienced the deepest consciousness (and recorded that experience) of fellowship with his Lord in His sufferings, and of attaining “conformity to His death” (Phil. iii. 10). It was rather when he heard the clank of the chain which bound him to his guardsman, and afterwards gazed on damp dungeon walls, that, like the bird of night, the trill of his jubilant song, afterwards to be considered, was heard — “Rejoice IN the Loed alway: and again I say, Rejoice” (Phil. iv. 4). He could use the emphatic symbol of another Epistle, when speaking of a similar season of trial and humiliation — “Most gladly will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Cor. xii. 9) The very soldiers who guarded him could not fail to be subdued into reverence. They saw in their prisoner no semblance of the ordinary criminal type, his hands stained with blood, and his soul with foul perfidy and dishonour. But one, strong in the maintenance of a virtuous cause, — an unimpeachable moral creed; and ready, if need be, as much as the bravest among the legions of Caesar ever were, to suffer and die for it. They carried the story of that calm endurance to their fellow comrades in royal hall and imperial barrack, so that his “bonds in Christ” became thus “manifest in all the Palace, and in all other places.”
It concerns us, however, at present, specially to note the associations of his bonds with the name of his great Lord. They are “bonds IN Christ.” “That,” says Archbishop Leighton, “which the Papists fabulously say of some of their saints, that they received the impression of the wounds of Christ in their body, is true, in a spiritual sense, of the soul of every one that is indeed a saint and believer.” It was the remembrance of Christ’s own bonds and sufferings which imparted strength to Paul in the endurance of his. iN” Him he had victory over obloquy and scorn, sorrow and pain. “For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so also our consolation aboundeth by Christ” (2 Cor. i. 5). Moreover, this participation in his Lord’s sufferings had its counterpart in the glory that was to follow — “We suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.” “If we suffer, we shall also reign* with Him.”
There is one, somewhat enigmatical passage, which may not unnaturally, in connection with the present meditation, suggest itself to the reader. It is that contained in Col. i. 24: “Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake, which is the Church.” What can these words be supposed to mean? We may at once reply, negatively, that we know what they do not mean. It would be to reverse and nullify the whole teaching of the Apostle (constituting a libel on his theology), to represent him describing his afflictions as meritorious: being even in a qualified sense, * factors ’ in “the salvation which is IN Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. ii. 10). Much more incongruous still would it be, with his repeated assertions, had he described any poor endurances of his as forming works of supererogation in the Romish sense: — supplementing some deficiencies and shortcomings in the all-perfect and all-sufficient atoning work of his Lord, who “by one offering hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” Had such been his meaning, I repeat, it would have been to unsay and repudiate the utterances of a lifetime, — to destroy what had taken him years of toil to build up, — putting the wood and the hay and the stubble, in the place of the gold, silver, and precious stones. He would most certainly have been the last to summon in the aid of miserable, inadequate, puny moral forces of his own, to buttress what he had elsewhere nobly spoken of as the one, and only “power of God unto salvation.”
It is enough surely to say, in explanation of the verse in question, that identifying himself with his Divine Master, he willingly rejoiced in being subjected to the scoffs and buffetings — the taunts, reproaches, and contumely which had fallen on Him. While ever feeling alive to the wide, immeasurable interval which separated his afflictions from the far deeper and intenser ones endured by his Lord (not worthy to be named together in the same breath) — he yet rejoiced that his present experience enabled him, so far at least, to diminish that wide disparity. He gloried in anything which brought him nearer in resemblance and in fellowship to the Saviour he loved. To endure His cross was his highest honour, to be ‘like Him* his noblest aspiration. If, therefore, as one of the members of His suffering body, his afflictions brought him closer to the Lord, that approximation would be his best recompense and reward. With undissembled gladness he could say — “I rejoice in my sufferings.”
But to return to the most notable lesson to be derived from the contemplation of Paul’s ‘bonds IN Christ.’
Do they not afford, in the case of God’s servant,’ only another illustration of the great, divine law, that freedom comes out of bondage, glory comes out of suffering, death comes out of life. Nature herself proclaims and endorses this universal experience. Every spring, with its ten thousand thousand verdant lips, utters it over the fallen leaves which autumn winds have swept, and winter frosts have smitten with decay. The tiny grain-stalks which flush the early year, repeat and vivify that utterance of the gracious Teacher we previously quoted when dwelling on the same theme — “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John xii. 2 4). The storm which has roused the ocean into madness, and strewed its shores with wrecks, has dispersed miasma from the air, and on invisible wings driven the pestilence from our homes. The very bed of the lava stream, now furrowing the side of the burning mountain, and which once carried devastation and death in its fiery course; or the excoriated lip of the volcano, have been seen, from a subtle application of the same law, carpeted with flowers or festooned with vines.’^ So is it with suffering, and suffering believers. Hear what the same heroic bondsman himself says as to the noblest exemplification of this law (of life emerging out of death): “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor. iv. 10, 11). “Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Cor. xii. 10).
These sufferings, moreover, are not only disciplinary, — moulding into a more blessed conformity with the Prince of sufferers; but when thus meekly and uncom-
1 “In the case of a volcanic mountain, the heat, often retained long after eruptions, is added to that of isolation, and so strengthens the wind from the valley. A German traveller, Herr Rein, has lately published some interesting observations of the way in which vegetation is distributed on the sides of volcanoes in Japan. It is continually being propagated upwards by the valley-wind conveying the ripe seeds in that direction. One of the highest mountain-chains in Japan, that of Outake, has a, ridge directed from north to east, in which are eight successive craters. The most southern is proved to be the most recent by having no vegetation, whereas the most northern and oldest is covered up to its interior walls with Arctic and Alpine plants: the charminsf Alpine campanula, larger and more beautiful than its European congeners, including lovely saxifrages, and very varied anemones.” — The Times, Dec. 1879.
plainingly borne, they become a self-evidencing testimony to the power and the grace of Christ. The bonds of Paul were not only manifest alike in all the Barracks and “in all the Palace,” but he tells us they served to nerve and brace the drooping energies of his comrades in the fight of faith. The gracious results of trial in thus bringing into nearer fellowship and identity with Jesus, will only indeed be fully realised and manifested in the bright world where trial is unknown. We must, meanwhile, often rest satisfied that there is much in the trials themselves which are incomprehensible, — the ’ why ’ and the * wherefore ’ of which Heaven alone shall fully disclose. The day is coming, however, when many a child of earthly affliction will be able to utter, with a higher and infinitely nobler meaning — “My bonds IN Christ are manifest in all the Palacer
It was but the other day I read, in the works of a distinguished French philosopher and orator, what I may venture, perhaps somewhat fancifully, to adopt as a beautiful and undesigned comment on these words (assuming for the time the correctness of our own Bible rendering) — “In all the Palace “; — “We are all of us like the weavers of the Gobelins, who, following out the pattern of an unknown artist, endeavour to match the threads of divers colours on the wrong side of the woof, and do not see the result of their labour It is only when the texture is complete, that they can admire at their ease these lovely flowers and figures, these splendid pictures worthy of the palaces of kings. So it is with us. We work, we suffer, and we see neither the end nor the fruit. But God sees it; and when He releases us from our task, He will disclose to our wondering gaze what He, the great Artist, everywhere present and invisible, has woven out of those toils that now seem so sterile; and He will then deign to hang up in His Palace of gold the flimsy web that we have spun.”
Happy those amongst us whose * bonds IN Christ* are working out so glorious a consummation! The web of life, with its chameleon pattern — its strange, incomprehensible interweaving of dark and bright threads, fitted, by. processes we cannot understand on earth, to be made manifest at last as an adornment in the Palace of the Great King! The weaving of the tapestried web, moreover, if we might still carry out the thought suggested by the emblem, is a slow, gradual (shall we say tedious?) process. It is not the photographic picture which is begun and finished with a flash of light: it resembles rather the hour by hour, and day by day, and month by month, of patient and laborious handicraft. This is Paul’s own exact representation of that grander tapestry which the angels of afiBiiction are, behind scenes, busily weaving: — yea, in the quotation we have just given, which is being weaved by a Higher and Better than Angel. Hear his words: “Our
* Life of Ozonam.
light affliction,” says he (others would have given it a different name), “worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. iv. 17). Every stitch of the hand, every turn of the shuttle, is “working out,” in some mysterious but very real way, God’s great cartoon for the Palace halls and walls of Eternity!
Nor are our “bonds in Christ,” in the modern acceptation of the term, necessarily restricted to affliction in its more pronounced form, of sickness, pain, bereavement. These may resolve themselves into some iron fetter in our daily life; — something in the tear and wear of ordinary work; the bonds, it may be, of some seemingly mean and ignoble calling; — the fretting domestic care; — the petty wrong; the ungrateful recompense; — the wretched estrangement. Some of these, indeed, if the incidents of the Great Life be thought over, were the very afflictions which the Master Himself endured. Let us seek to face our bonds and crosses, as He did, in a spirit of calm submission; glorifying God in the day of visitation. Not seeking to get rid of trial; — not seeking to strip off the fetters; — not seeking to battle against the appointments of Providence, to break loose from the meanness and paltriness of our life-work and its surroundings; but rather to import into the mean and ignoble, the common and the trivial, a Christian and Christ-like spirit. Thus, meekly acquiescing in whatever the Divine ordination may be, to breathe the prayer ’ divinely taught, of the Gethsemane agony — “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” All trial will thus be ennobled, consecrated, sublimated; — iron fetters will become golden ones, by their being regarded and accepted as “bonds in Christ.”