“Be sure to pray that God will make a way for us to spread his message and explain the mystery about Christ, even though I am in jail for doing this. Please pray that I will make the message as clear as possible” (Colossians 4:3-4 CEV).
The life of the Apostle Paul has served to inspire countless artistic and literary works down through the centuries. He has been the namesake for an untold number of churches and has even had a major American city named after him. Other than Jesus Himself, it might be said that no single person has had a greater impact upon human history than Paul the Apostle.
Paul served as the human author for at least thirteen of the twenty-six books of the New Testament and God continues to impact lives through the Biblical books that bear his name. Yet despite his prominence as a towering figure in the history of Christianity, its may be easy to forget that Paul suffered greatly for his commitment to Christ.
For instance, Paul was the victim of at least five different conspiracies or attempts to murder him, (1) three shipwrecks, (2) and two municipal evictions. (3) In addition, Paul was beaten three times, whipped five times, and stoned at least once. (2) He also endured six different civil trials or judicial proceedings that are detailed in the New Testament book of Acts. (4)
In a message delivered to the first-century church at Corinth, Paul spoke frankly about his life as an Apostle and the challenges he encountered as he brought the message of the Gospel to others: “…I have worked harder, been put in jail more often, been whipped times without number, and faced death again and again and again” (2 Corinthians 11:23 TLB).
The book of Acts expands on that candid admission by telling us that Paul was also imprisoned on at least three separate occasions. (5) In fact, Colossians 4:3 tells us that Paul was incarcerated at the time he wrote this letter to the Colossian church. We can gain a greater appreciation for Paul’s condition if we stop to observe that the penitentiaries of that era were not like the prisons that exist in many modern-day societies. For instance, the prisons of that time were usually cold, damp, and dirty. In addition, there were no beds, toilets, showers, or meals offered in a typical first-century prison.
Yet it was out of those conditions that God worked through Paul to produce the letters that we know today as the Biblical books of Ephesians, Philippians, Philemon, and Colossians. Therefore, it should come as no surprise to read that Paul asked his friends in Colossae to remember him in prayer.
(1) See Acts 9:22-23, Acts 14:19, Acts 21:30-31, Acts 23:14-15, Acts 25:2-3
(3) See Acts 13:49-50, Acts 17:13-14
(4) See Acts 16:16-22, Acts 18:12-17, Acts 23:33-35, Acts 24, Acts 25-26
(5) See Acts 16:23-40, Acts 23:33-35–24:23-27 and Acts 28:16