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“Felix, willing to show the Jews a pleasure, left Paul bound” (Acts 24:27).
“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you” (Ephesians 4:1).
When the Apostle Paul was in Jerusalem, and later in Caesarea, he was a prisoner of the Romans. They knew very well that he was innocent of any crime, but Felix, the Roman governor, wanted to please the Jews, and left Paul in prison. As long as he could “keep the peace” with the Jews, he did not care much about Paul.
But later, when Paul was in Rome and wrote the epistle to the Ephesians, he calls himself “the prisoner of the Lord,” not the “prisoner of the Romans.” He recognized that nothing could happen to him unless the Lord allowed it, and that the Lord was over all his circumstances.
So it is with us too. We can look at others and the things they do to us, and we can look at how situations develop in our lives, but all of this is ordered of the Lord. We are to accept them from Him, and learn what He has for us in it all.
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