In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes:
“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Ephesians 4:1-3
Paul begins by calling himself “a prisoner for the Lord” and finishes by calling his Ephesian audience into a “bond of peace”, analogous to a prison bond.
What is this new prison bond? Unity in the face of brotherly disagreement, lowliness and meekness instead of communal aggression, patience and forbearance instead of division and separation, and finally peace instead of brotherly conflict.
The calling of the Lord does indeed free us from one kind of bondage – bondage to sin, especially sin in the form of egotism and individualism – but it bids us enter into another bond, this time a bond in relationship with others in the body of Christ.
Are we ready to be, like Paul, a “prisoner for the Lord”, happy to carry out our calling in our bonds with members of the body of Christ?
Top image credit: photo of two families praying together at table, from BigStock.com, © by monkeybusinessimages, stock photo ID: 249216940. Used with permission.
Mark Whitters is a life-long member of the Servants of the Word, an international ecumenical brotherhood of men living single for the Lord. Since August, 2001 (25 years and counting) he has been a founding member of Detroit Community Outreach. He networks with local pastors, teachers, and volunteers who are involved in racial reconciliation and community building in Detroit, Michigan, USA.
Mark F. Whitters is an author and university instructor. He has written two books: Memoirs of an Unfinished Tale: A Performance of Acts of the Apostles (2017), and Memoirs of How It All Began: A Performance Interpretation of the Gospel of Luke (2019), both published by Cascades Books, Eugene, Oregon, USA.
Mark completed two M.A. degrees in Classics at The University of Michigan (1991) and in Near Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota (1994). His PhD in religious studies is from The Catholic University of America, where he focused on Syriac Christianity in the Middle East. He has been a full-time lecturer at Eastern Michigan University in the Department of History and Philosophy since 2007. In 2010-11 he was selected by EMU as the “lecturer of the year.” That same year, he learned about the “Reacting” pedagogy through a conference at Barnard College and began to use it often in his classes. In 2012 he took a senior lecturing post in the newly formed program in Jewish Studies.