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Christianity Today, February, 2008 |

CHRISTIAN VISION PROJECT

Singing in the Chains

To be saved means more than we might think.

Mark Buchanan | posted 1/30/2008 08:44AM

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The jailer sees prisoners going nowhere. He sees prisoners who, hours before, would have seized this opportunity gleefully, without a second thought, now sitting still. If they are not as concerned about the jailer's welfare as Paul and Silas are, they at least respect Paul and Silas enough to follow their example. The guard sees hard men with hard hearts suddenly acting against their most entrenched instincts, and all because they eavesdropped for an hour or so on two men deeply in love with God.

The more that saved means includes knowing a God who empowers us to subdue the hardest heart.

And maybe there's one other thing that the jailer means by saved. Maybe he knows what happened in town that day, the events that led to Paul and Silas being beaten and arrested and imprisoned. Maybe he knows that these two men are no criminals. That their crime is not murder or thievery or sedition, but simply and only setting a captive free.

Paul and Silas are in prison because they had pity on a slave girl, doubly enslaved, held in thrall by her earthly masters and the Devil. She followed Paul and Silas around town, giving them one doozy of an endorsement: "These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved."

She spoke the truth, every word. And her endorsement could only have helped Paul's cause tremendously: she was a local "spiritual authority," sought for her clairvoyance, her insight into hidden things. By all appearances, the foreign spirit in her was subject to the Holy Spirit of God.

Still, there was a foreign spirit in her. And it troubled Paul. So, in the name of Jesus, he cast the spirit out. As so often happens in the Gospels and Acts, when all heaven breaks loose, all hell does as well. The incident provokes a riot, and the result is that Paul and Silas exchange their freedom for hers. She's free, at least from the prison of the Evil One, and they're captive, at least in the prison of the state.

The more that saved means includes knowing a God who defeats the powers of darkness and at the same time makes us willing to forsake our own freedom for the sake of another's.

Glimpsing Transformation

What must I do to be saved?

Believe in Jesus. Yes. Believe in Jesus, so that your sins will be forgiven and your name written in the Book of Life. Please, let us never, in the name of any fashion or fad in theology, make the gospel less than this.

But what do we mean, what should we mean, by saved? Does it not also include freedom and power, here and now, to live a life so transformed that others glimpse in it the possibility of their own transformation? Please, let us always, in the name of the God who saves us, mean this by the gospel as well.

Arthur Burns, a Jewish economist of great influence in Washington during the tenure of several Presidents, was once asked to pray at a gathering of evangelical politicians. Stunning his hosts, he prayed thus: "Lord, I pray that Jews would come to know Jesus Christ. And I pray that Buddhists would come to know Jesus Christ. And I pray that Muslims would come to know Jesus Christ."

And then, most stunning of all: "And Lord, I pray that Christians would come to know Jesus Christ."

Such a good prayer, I've started praying it myself.

Related Elsewhere:

Previous Christian Vision Project themes were culture in 2006 and mission in 2007. Articles include:

The Lima Bean Gospel | The Good News is so much bigger than we make it out to be. (January 8, 2008)

Unexpected Global Lessons | How short-term mission is becoming a two-way street. (December 4, 2007)

The Dread Cancer of Stinginess | When it comes to missions giving, donor dependency may not be the greatest problem. (October 2, 2007)

Powering Down | World Vision India head Jayakumar Christian on how the poor become movers and shakers, and movers and shakers become poor. (August 31, 2007)

Liberate My People | Theologian and educator Ruth Padilla DeBorst says true Christian mission addresses issues of power and poverty. (August 8, 2007)

From Tower-Dwellers to Travelers | Ugandan-born theologian Emmanuel Katongole offers a new paradigm for missions. (July 3, 2007)

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February 2008, Vol. 52, No. 2

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justgroovy

Posted: February 04, 2008 8:53 PM

My take on the "Miracle in the Jail" is this; the miracle was not that the doors were opened and the chains fell off. The miracle was that under the most difficult circumstances they were doing behind bars what they would have been doing with the other believers in some upper room. They did not let their circumstances dictate their actions. They let their "vision" that Christ had imparted to them lead them to live a live of fellowship and devotion wherever they were. The gospel was truly a new way of being and they embraced it without hesitation. What could Man truly do to them that Christ had not already endured? Could they do no less? That is the mark of faith that the world marvels at when they get a glimpse of it.

Tim Stradling

Posted: January 31, 2008 12:09 PM

"Buchanan is blessed because he believes and has not seen nor heard the voice of Christ and so he receives blessing upon blessing upon blessing." "Has not seen nor heard" ... I don't understand why the writer makes this conclusion. Buchanan seems to be seeing and hearing quite well to me. I have been seeking God's wisdom on this subject for weeks prompted by a conference with Steve Deneff. His book "More Than Forgiveness" might be helpful if you are interested in why the gospel today seems weak and ineffective. Also, it's interesting to note that to the Gentile mind of the Philippian "to be saved," Greek "soteria," had to do with being "released from the governing the fate of man and the material world" Longenecker, Expositor's Bible Commentary Acts. So, the jailer (and/or Luke) was certainly alluding to the girl who had been delivered from the power of the spirit in the beginning of the passage. And, to be saved means more of being delivered from the "powers" that control us.

Ephrem Hagos

Posted: January 31, 2008 3:00 AM

The Jews, the Muslims and the Christians all have what it takes not just to know about but even to know personally and firsthand Jesus Christ as the immortal God with the self-sufficient life revealed, first, in the burning bush and, lastly, in the unique and absolutely stunning manner of His exclusively self-inflicted and self-revealing death on the cross --a mystery which, strangely enough, is today more in the minds of Muslims than Christians. To judge from the Book of Acts and Paul's epistles, this is the power and the glory he had earlier seen in vision on the road to Damascus and now together with Silas acknowledged in singing and praise; and for which they deemed themselves honored to be beaten and imprisoned. It is this explicit praise to the supernatural demonstration of the living and immortal Christ who was crucified in public only recently and, therefore, still fresh in the minds of the inmates and jailer that elicited the question "What must I do to be saved?"

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