Paul, Prayer and Persecution

A week ago, I preached on Philippians 1:18-26. If the reference doesn't automatically jog your memory, it's the passage where Paul proclaims "to live is Christ and to die is gain." I spent a great deal of time unpacking that main idea, but it's what Paul says just before this famous quotation that I've been thinking about this week.

"Yes, and I will rejoice, 19for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, 20as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death." (Philippians 1:18b-20)

In this long sentence spanning two and a half verses, Paul states that he will rejoice and have confidence despite his circumstances (he was writing this while imprisoned, most likely in Rome and possibly awaiting execution) because all was being worked out for his deliverance ("salvation" is a better translation, to mean something like "the Gospel is being worked out in me") and that ultimately, God would be glorified. But I think what is most interesting (and applicable) is how Paul knows all this will turn out for the Gospel and God's glory.

Paul says "through your prayers and the work of the Spirit of Jesus Christ." The English translation seems to separate these two things, simply listing them as a series, but Paul was expressing a much closer relationship than that. Both the prayers of the Philippians and the work of the Spirit are grammatically organized to emphasize their unity and interrelation. As Gordon Fee says, "the Philippians...are inexplicably bound together with him [Paul] through the Spirit. Therefore, he assumes that their praying, and with that God's gracious supply of the Spirit of his Son, will be the means God uses yet once more to bring glory to himself through Paul and Paul's defense of the Gospel."

This Sunday is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. Across the globe there are thousands of believers who are facing persecution; they are imprisoned, beaten, separated from the ones they love all because they claim the same God for their Father that we do with relative ease. They are living today the same life that Paul was living when he wrote this letter to the Philippians, and we are those bound inextricably together with them. Our prayers are not just an expression of our sadness at their predicament or a plea to the Father for their comfort, but much more than that.

The work of the Holy Spirit allows them to rejoice in their circumstances and have the surety that Paul expresses: the Gospel is being worked out in their lives, and God is being glorified. And the means that we have a critical role to play: we are called to pray for the persecuted church, knowing that our prayers are a means by which the Holy Spirit works in their lives. As Moises Silva says, "The Spirit's help itself is...manifested through the koinonia [common fellowship, unity] of fellow-believers." They are not just people we don't really know, but a part of the same body that we belong to, members of our family, our brothers and sisters.

So pray, not just on Sunday, but begin to pray daily for the part of the body of Christ that suffers daily for the Gospel. Pray knowing that your prayers have an effect, that through the Spirit, the joy your persecuted brothers and sisters have in the midst of these dark hours and their certainty of God's glory in their situation is directly related to your prayers. And pray that He would hasten the day when their faith shall be sight and all that is broken will be made new.


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