We often give opposing things and people way too much credit for what they didn't do. We give them credit for what they haven't purposed. We all too quickly point out the apparent sin in the lives of those who face opposition, or difficulty, because as we know and understand God, we believe living in a certain agreement with His rules seemingly provides us with an immunity to anything that is undesirable, painful, or oppressive in nature. And we are quick to locate the specific sin in our lives for which we assume God has this cause against us for which we are apparently suffering. But that is not necessarily the case, and indeed likely isn't at all the case. Difficult situations display something far greater than plans and purposes and results of the sinful and even our sin.
We need not look far into the life of the Apostle Paul to recognize that he was living quite in step with the will of God and yet he faced quite possibly as great an opposition as anyone has ever known. And by the time we get to reading his letter to the Philippians we find out early that he has been imprisoned (1:7). Funny that we've yet to figure and identify the particular of Paul's sin to get him there. The reality is nobody has accused Paul of such sin as the cause of his imprisonment. Not only do we do well not to assign credit to personal sin as the cause for Paul's imprisonment, but we'd do well not to assign it so quickly to all these other difficulties (our own, or others). So what is the cause of Paul's imprisonment?
Obviously the devout Jews of Paul's day had a considerable amount against him. I suppose we might wish to give them credit for Paul's imprisonment and feel it is a perfectly tenable argument. And while Paul was arrested in the temple, largely because of the devout Jews, they are not to blame for his imprisonment. So maybe we could say it was the pagan contingent ruling through the Roman Empire. After all, it was before a number of regional rulers and kings before whom Paul went to plead his case and appeal for freedom. But none of them are responsible for Paul's imprisonment. Not even to the top of the chain of command in the Roman Empire, Caesar himself, was responsible for Paul's imprisonment. So it must have been the greatest enemy, Satan, who stood against Paul and put him in prison. But a second look reveals that even Satan himself did not craft and design this plan of his own concoction.
See none of these people had a purpose that was realized in the imprisonment of Paul. In fact, what they ultimately try to do, to silence the messenger and kill his message was nowhere near what happened. What ultimately happened was every bit the opposite. The more Paul was threatened and bound and imprisoned, and the more he spoke the more his message shifted and shaped the landscape of the many hearts he spoke to and wrote to even as he was imprisoned.
Paul got to a place where he recognized his very imprisonment as something that he can only describe as being "put here for the defense of the gospel" (1:16). Who could have authored such a plan? The devout Jews, the Roman rule, Caesar, or Satan? None of them! Not even Paul himself deserves any credit for this. Paul uses that language to speak of what only God could have purposed in this imprisonment. It is GOD who deserves full credit for Paul's imprisonment. Only God can purpose something so wonderful as this to reach even the "imperial guard," and to cause other believers a greater confidence to "speak the word without fear" (1:13-14). And too, it is because of Paul's imprisonment that more people are proclaiming Christ, in which Paul rejoices (1:17-18). Who but GOD could purpose all this?
If Paul's imprisonment was something in which he rejoiced how much more should we where we are at rejoice in God's faithfulness and purposes? I am not imprisoned, and I doubt you are. This is not to deny the difficulty that you, or I, or any other believer is enduring right now. Rather it is to boast in the greater purposes amid such difficulty, because God has put us here. And we have this assurance because of the faithfulness of God. The difficulty we face is not God's anger with us, or punishment for what we have done wrong or been misguided in, rather it is full of purpose. See, we too have been put right where we are, because God has put us here. And as He will be faithful to us in our own difficult situation, or good situation, it is to the end that we display His glory. So learn to know, and believe, and live with a rich joy in difficulty that God designs because it allows for you and I to: 1) see God's faithfulness to us, and 2) see a display of His glory shine in and through our very reality.
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