“I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content,” is experience of the deepest order. I am sure Paul could not have said this at any other time of his life than when in his prison in Rome he was taught the wondrously blessed lesson that Christ could do without him—great vessel and all that he was. When we contemplate the pathway of this man, as summed up in the few verses which the folly of the Corinthians forced from him, in 2 Cor. 11:23-3223Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. 24Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. 25Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; 26In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; 27In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. 28Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches. 29Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not? 30If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities. 31The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not. 32In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the Damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me: (2 Corinthians 11:23‑32), we see in some measure what the vessel has to pass through before it could write such a Scripture as Phil. 4. How often is such a Scripture as this taken up and read, as if it could be understood without the vessel being prepared to learn it by the lessons which preceded its utterance.
I have been deeply struck by the remark of an old Roman Catholic woman to another. When it was repeated, it at once connected itself in my mind with some of the experience of this chapter. But, like it, it could not be uttered by a mere tyro in the path of a Christian, or indeed by any who had not been taught it through those sort of trials that lead the heart to know God. Her remark amounted to this— “My experience of Him is, that He either gives me what I want, or makes what I have do!”
Speaking of Paul in this Epistle, I may also name another striking feature, as to his being cut off from that twofold ministry (of “the Gospel to every creature under heaven,” and “of the assembly to complete the Word of God”), and of which he was the chosen vessel-separated from his mother’s womb, and called by grace to it. He found that both these lines of God’s testimony were going on better without him! —him, the very vessel to whom they were entrusted. “The things that happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel,” marks the one. While, if the Church was obedient when the Apostle was there, and while she had such a great gift as he, now she was much more so, when hearts were true. “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh in you, to will and to do according to his good pleasure.”