Inspiring message from St Paul in chains
by Julian Mann, TCW:
THE Prayer Book Epistle reading for today contains a wonderful spiritual resource for Christians to draw on in their prayers for one another in their local churches.
The passage is from the Apostle Paul’s New Testament letter to the church in 1st century Ephesus in the Roman province of Asia (now western Turkey):
[…] Paul spent three years proclaiming the gospel in Ephesus from around AD 53 to 56, as related in the Acts of the Apostles (chapters 20 and 21). He therefore knew many of the members of the Ephesian church personally. He wrote his letter to this church and perhaps other churches in Asia, if the epistle had a broader circulation, from a prison in an unknown location or possibly whilst chained to a Roman soldier under house arrest in Rome, as described in Acts 28.
It is significant that Paul felt the need to urge the Ephesian Christians not to be discouraged by the fact that he was suffering imprisonment because of official hostility to the gospel message he had preached to them: ‘Wherefore I desire that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory.’ Paul’s ministry in Ephesus had been hugely successful with many people in the city and further afield in Asia becoming Christians.
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