“Unto you it is given on the behalf of Christ, not only to believe, but also to suffer for His sake” (Philippians 1:29).
“Given”—yes, something that costs us nothing; something that enriches us—a gift.
We have known an infant with delight grasp the gift of a penny in his chubby hand, and walk away with the feeling of being fabulously rich. Exhibit on the palm of your hand a golden sovereign and a penny fresh from the mint, and the infant will invariably choose the glittering penny so little is its discernment. It judges by size and not by quality.
But if someone comes on behalf of His Majesty the King with a gift, we know the gift will be valuable, will be in keeping with the royal giver.
How much more so when the gift “is given in the behalf of Christ”?
What a wealth of blessing is wrapped up in the word, that it is given to the Christian to believe. In believing the believer receives gifts that make him a spiritual multi-millionaire. “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things” (Rom. 8:32)—forgiveness of sins, pardon, salvation, justification, eternal life? We are indeed “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17).
It reminds us of the Lord God saying to Abram, “Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for all the land which thou seest to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever” (Gen. 23:14-15).
So the believer can lift up his eyes, and behold a vast spiritual inheritance, stretching out to the eternal ages, far beyond the horizon of time.
“Given … not only to believe, but also to suffer for His sake.” Here we touch a different line of things altogether. “Given … to believe,” yes, gain, pure unadulterated increment. “The unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8) are ours. A vein of wealth that can never be worked out. But “given … to suffer” that seems a matter of a doubtful nature. We shrink from suffering. We look on that as loss, as negative.
But our verse tells us “It is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe, but also to suffer for His sake.” It puts the believing, the gain, the spiritual riches on the same plane as the suffering. Ah! there are three words we must emphasize—“Suffer FOR HIS SAKE.” “FOR HIS SAKE” makes all the difference. They light up the suffering with a glory, an effulgence not of this earth, but with a light “above the brightness of the sun.”
We are seeing this worked out just now in German prisons and concentration camps. German pastors have been flung into strict confinement, not because of any crime against the state, but because of their loyalty to their Lord. They have refused to substitute Hitler for Christ as Head of the church. They have dared to stand for the truth, and now “it is given them to suffer for His sake.” It is no new experience, as they have freshly found out.
There has been issued in the press a modest volume composed of letters written by these imprisoned pastors to their wives and loved ones. It bears a significant title, “I was in prison.” Christ in prison in the person of these pastors! Yes! Our Lord speaks of a time of suffering yet to come, “I was in prison, and ye came to Me” (Matt. 25:37). The enquiry is made, “Lord, when saw we Thee … in prison?” Then comes the glorious answer, “INASMUCH as ye did it to one of the least of My brethren, ye have done it UNTO ME” (v. 40).
What a glorious title this precious collection of letters is given—“I was in prison”—Christ in prison in the persons of His servants, the pastors. How that thought will light up with an unearthly glory the narrow cells in which they may be incarcerated.
What an arresting thought for Saul of Tarsus—God about to turn Christ’s bitterest opponent into His most loyal and self-denying servant. With all the force of a masterful personality this brilliant young man was bent upon stamping the name of Christ off the earth. Armed with letters of administration from the high priests, he was found searching out the humble believers on the Lord Jesus, that he might bring them, bound to Jerusalem, consenting in some cases to their death, as in the case of Stephen. He believed Christ who died on the cross was an imposter, and that he was doing God’s service in sweeping the importune off the face of the earth.
What must have been his thoughts, when he heard the voice of the Lord from heaven, unmistakable in its power and majesty, saying “Saul, why persecutest thou ME?” (Acts 9:4). He learned that in persecuting these humble believers, he was persecuting the Lord Himself—persecuting the Lord in the persons of His disciples. What an honour for them!
And then Saul of Tarsus became a most eminent servant of Christ, known as Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ. He soon tasted what it was to suffer for Christ’s sake, in prisons often, in deaths oft, five times scourged by the Jews, receiving on each occasion forty stripes save one, thrice beaten with rods, once stoned and left for dead, in perils of all kinds, suffering hunger and thirst and cold and nakedness, his was indeed a record of its being given to him to suffer for Christ’s sake.
Did he complain? Was he distressed? He sang praises at midnight in the prison at Philippi. Listen to his triumphant words, “Therefore! take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutors, in distresses for Christ’s sake” (2 Cor. 12:10). Yes, “FOR CHRIST’S SAKE,” that made all he passed through not loss but gain, not something to be avoided, but to be gloried in, not a matter of pain, though there was plenty of that, but a pleasure.
Read the letters of the German pastors. They witness to the fact that they are at peace, in tranquillity of mind, their hearts rejoicing in the Lord, the Scriptures encouraging them, the succour of their Lord, their great High Priest in heaven, supporting them, they are happier by far in their bare cells than Hitler in his gilded palace, with his over-reaching ambition riding for a terrible fall.
Ten thousand times over would we rather be in the shoes of these pastors, than have the highest honour that their oppressors could bestow.
Listen to some of the echoes from the prison:
“The ways of God are wonderful. When He leads us through dark ways His glory may be experienced at the fullest! And it is always the same: ‘You thought of doing me evil, but God thought of doing me good.’ I am joyfully certain that everything we are suffering now serves rather to the furtherance of the gospel.”
“We are not, after all, swallowed up into nothingness! There is a power that sustains us, we are borne up by God the Father’s everlasting arms; we are supported through the storms, over the abysses.”
“I am not alone, but am certain of the nearness and presence of the living God, even and perhaps because of the narrowness of my cell.”
“One is allowed to thank God, and to praise him for being in the position to suffer for His cause, and one can pray to God on behalf of those who bring me into such a position.”
Many such quotations could be given. There is one remarkable quotation, which raises a range of thought. This prisoner of the Lord writes from his German prison:
“It is most wonderful to read the Bible at such a time! How alive it suddenly becomes and how real! It really gives the impression of having been written specially for prisoners and for prison. And so it is really—in many aspects and senses. Alas! if only the others in — were as well off as I am here.”
We think of many of God’s people in prison as told us in the Scriptures—Joseph, “whose feet they hurt with fetters” (Ps. 13:18), languishing in prison for something like a dozen years because he would not do “this great wickedness and sin against God” (Gen. 39:9). Jeremiah, the brave prophet, who did not shun to give his message, with whom “the princes were wroth… and smote him, and put him in prison” (Jer. 37:15). Hanani, the seer, who, by his faithful message aroused the wrath of King Asa, who “put him in a prison house; for he was in a rage with him” (2 Chr. 16:10).
When we come to the New Testament we read how John the Baptist was flung into prison and put to death; likewise James put into prison and put to death. The apostle Paul could write of “in prisons more oft” (2 Cor. 11:23). The apostle Peter was flung into prison, but miraculously delivered for “prayer was made without ceasing of the church to God for him” (Acts 12:5). The apostle John imprisoned in the Isle of Patmos, where the unrolling of the future in symbolic form was passed before his enraptured soul when he “was in the Spirit of the Lord’s day” (Rev. 1:10).
Indeed as far as we can gather not one of the apostles but sealed his testimony by martyrdom, given to them “to suffer for HIS sake.” What an honour!
Since that day, as the centuries have rolled by, we have one long list of Christian men and women who have accepted prison gladly rather than be disloyal to their Lord, and in many cases have laid down their lives for His name’s sake.
May we be like Moses of old, who “esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.” May we too have “respect to the recompense of the reward” (Heb. 11:26).