Monthly Study
August 2023

Paul's Letters from Prison

I am in chains for Christ.—Philippians 1:13

Can hardship be a blessing? Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn blessed prison for being in his life because of what he learned there. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul spoke of the unexpected gifts God gave him as a prisoner. His letters, written under dreadful circumstances, may surprise you with their spirit of joy and hope. Through this study, we hope you will:

  • Discover how God works through unlikely circumstances
  • Understand how we can follow God even in times of trouble
  • Witness the power of God to forever change lives and set us free

Your devotional author,
John Koessler

Volume 36Edition 8
Managing Editor: Jamie Janosz, Senior Editor: Elena Mafter, Contributing Editor: John Koessler, Writer: John Koessler, Art Director: Lynn Gabalec, Graphic Designer: Rachel Hutcheson, Marketing & Production: Paul B. Currie

About the Author

John Koessler

Dr. John Koessler is Professor Emeritus of Applied Theology and Church Ministries at Moody Bible Institute. John authors the "Practical Theology" column for Today in the Word of which he is also a contributing writer and theological editor.

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Devotional Calendar

Podcasts

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Letters from a Roman Prison
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When Martin Luther King Jr. penned his Letter From a Birmingham City Jail in April 1963, he joined a long tradition of Christians who wrote letters and books while in jail, including John Bunyan, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and most notably, the apostle Paul.
August 1, 2023
Reality Check
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People sometimes use the phrase “reality check” to mean recognizing the...
August 2, 2023
A Prayer from Prison
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When I was a boy, I occasionally wrote letters to my grandmother who lived in another state. They were handwritten, brief, and usually began the same way: “How are you? I am fine.” Letter writing in Paul’s day also had an opening formula that generally included a greeting to identify the letter’s recipient and a blessing.
August 3, 2023
Before and After
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Ads and commercials for diet supplements and exercise equipment sometimes include “before” and “after” pictures of those who use the product. A famous ad from the 1920s for the training regimen developed by bodybuilder Charles Atlas boasted that it had enabled him to go from being a 97-pound weakling to “the world’s most perfectly developed person.” Paul paints an even more striking before-and-after picture of his readers in Ephesians 2:1–13.
August 4, 2023
Breaking Down the Wall
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In Paul’s day, non-Jews who visited the Temple of Jerusalem were confined to the outermost section known as the Court of the Gentiles. A fence separated the Court of the Gentiles from the inner courts. A warning on it read: “No man of another race is to enter within the fence and enclosure around the Temple. Whoever is caught will have only himself to thank for the death which follows.”
August 5, 2023
A Servant of the Gospel
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I was nervous when I first told my mother I wanted to attend school to learn how to become a pastor. We were not a church-going family. But instead of being disappointed by the news, she was thrilled. “Oh, Johnny!” she beamed. “You would make a darling minister.”
August 6, 2023
Praying for Insight
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William Willimon once observed, “We preachers so want to be heard that we are willing to make the gospel more accessible than it really is, to remove the scandal, the offense of the cross, to deceive people into thinking that it is possible to hear without conversion.” The truth revealed in the gospel is more than a matter of common sense. In this chapter, the apostle Paul describes it as a revelation that comes from God. Instead of using clever arguments to persuade his audience, Paul adopts a more radical strategy. He prays for them.
August 7, 2023
A Worthy Life
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In his beloved hymn, “Amazing Grace,” John Newton celebrates how God “saved a wretch like me.” The apostle Paul would have agreed. He said of himself, “For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Cor. 15:9). Yet in the very next verse, Paul asserts, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect” (15:10).
August 8, 2023
The Way of Life
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Followers of Jesus were not always called Christians. The term Christian first appeared in Antioch (Acts 11:26). It is a Latinized form of the word Christ that indicates allegiance and suggests that it arose among the Gentiles. It may originally have been an insult (1 Peter 4:16). Before Jesus’ followers were called Christians, they were called “the Way” (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 24:22).
August 9, 2023
Marks of Wise Living
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According to Tertullian, the North African theologian who lived around 160–220 AD, the early church was known for its love. Paul says the same in today’s passage, where he gives several characteristics of those who follow God’s example as dearly loved children (v. 1). Above all else, Christians are known by their love, as we imitate Christ’s sacrificial life (v. 2).
August 10, 2023
Submit to One Another
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In a culture that prizes independence, submission is not a popular idea. Many modern readers bristle when they come to Ephesians 5:22, where Paul says wives should submit to their husbands. However, the command to submit is not just for wives. In this section of his letter, the apostle speaks of submission as a universal obligation and as an expression of reverence for Christ (v. 21).
August 11, 2023
Submission to God
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Escaped slave, abolitionist, and statesmen Frederick Douglass observed, “Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked.”
August 12, 2023
The Secret of Spiritual Strength
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When I began attending church regularly in the early 1970s, it was customary for people to dress up. Men wore suits and ties, and women wore dresses. Today, there doesn’t seem to be a dress code. Most of the people I see dress casually.
August 13, 2023
Thankful for God’s People
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If you had asked Paul which of the New Testament churches was his favorite, he might probably have said: the church at Philippi. God directed the apostle by a vision to go to Macedonia after he tried to enter Bithynia (Acts 16:9). Philippi was a major city in the region. Still, at first, it must have seemed not promising.
August 14, 2023
Reasons to Rejoice
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In the account of his conversion, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis describes joy as “a pointer to something other and outer.” The joy Paul writes about in the first chapter of Philippians serves the same function.
August 15, 2023
The Mindset of Jesus
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Followers of Jesus initially called themselves “the Way” (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 24:14, 22). When the gospel came to Antioch, some people began to refer to them as Christians (Acts 11:26). The label signified that they belonged to the group associated with Jesus Christ. Eventually, the believers adopted it themselves. Today, followers of Jesus still call themselves Christians.
August 16, 2023
Working Out Salvation
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Can you have both fear and love? 1 John 4:18 observes, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” Yet in Philippians 2, Paul urges his readers to work out their salvation “in fear and trembling.” What is the difference between these two kinds of fear?
August 17, 2023
Learning How to Lose
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C. T. Studd was born to wealth and prestige on December 2, 1860. He distinguished himself as an athlete while a student at Eton. But when Studd was 24 years old, his brother became gravely ill. C. T. began to question the course of his life and decided that it came up wanting. “What is all the fame and flattery worth...when a man comes to face eternity?” he wondered. Studd determined to let it all go and devote himself to Christ.
August 18, 2023
Out Of Our Minds
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One day, not long after I had begun to follow Jesus, I walked out the door and met a friend coming up the street. He was on his way to my house. “I came to see you because someone told me you had lost your mind,” he said. Word had gotten around that I had become a Christian. But despite what my friend had heard, I had not lost my mind. Like the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable, I had finally come to my senses.
August 20, 2023
The Blessing of Shared Troubles
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A woman recently posted a video of her husband trying to mow their huge lawn with a small push-style lawnmower, an impossible task. But when she looked outside an hour later, she saw several neighbors, people they had not yet met, arriving with larger riding lawnmowers. She was deeply moved by their willingness to step in and help someone in need.
August 21, 2023
Strengthened by Might
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As I write these words, an impromptu prayer meeting that began after a chapel service at Asbury College in Kentucky had been going nonstop for more than a week. There have been many reports of blessing and a sense of the presence of the Lord.
August 22, 2023
Reconciled to God
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If you ask the average person to describe what it means to be a Christian, they will probably identify a moral view, lifestyle choice, or even a political position. While Christianity does have implications for all these areas, that is not what it means to be a Christian.
August 23, 2023
Truly Alive
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The second-century church leader Irenaeus famously said, “Life in man is the glory of God; the life of man is the vision of God.” In Colossians 2, Paul is also talking about life and our vision of God. Christian living, he points out, is the life of Christ at work in us.
August 24, 2023
Living Beyond Rules
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Pastor and author Kent Hughes observes that legalism reduces the message of the gospel. He explains that it “enshrines spirituality as a series of wooden laws” and calls it godliness. “Being in Christ is a relationship,” he explains, “and like all relationships, it deserves disciplined maintenance, but never legalistic reductionism.”
August 25, 2023
Walk This Way
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The other day during a conversation with one of my grown sons, I noticed a familiar facial expression and gesture. It was a bit like looking in a mirror. How did he learn it? Was it DNA or imitation? Perhaps it was a little of both.
August 26, 2023
The Christian Household
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As Christians, we are a part of two families. The first is made up of those people to whom we are related by birth or have joined through marriage. We gather for holidays and birthdays. Sometimes we share physical features. For believers, our other family is the church, the family of God. Sometimes these two groups overlap. Paul speaks to both in Colossians 3:12–21.
August 27, 2023
Prayer and Proclamation
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Most sermons begin with a prayer. Sometimes we are tempted to treat it as a formality, like playing the national anthem before the game. Paul saw prayer as far more. For him, it was a source of help and power.
August 28, 2023
Christian Living Is a Team Sport
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Have you ever been in a workplace where everyone got along perfectly all the time? What about a family? Or a sports team? Living in community with harmony does not come automatically. It’s a learned skill. That’s true in the Christian life. It is no accident that God designed the church to function as a body (see Col. 3:15).
August 29, 2023
A Prisoner Frees a Slave
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Frederick Douglass wrote, “I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” Onesimus tried to obtain his freedom in the same way. He ran away from Philemon’s household and somehow ran into Paul, “the prisoner of Christ Jesus.”
August 30, 2023
A Debt of Grace
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Salvation is by grace. We cannot earn it. The gift we have received from Christ is so great that we could never pay it back. And although we cannot repay this debt, we still owe something to Jesus. As the old song says, “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe.”
August 31, 2023