Prison, Restoration, and the Way of Jesus (Philippians 2:25–30)
Philippians 2:25–30
About Roman Prisons
The second chapter of Philippians tells us a great deal about Paul’s imprisonment because it introduces us to Epaphroditus, the person the Philippian church sent to care for him. Epaphroditus had become ill while serving Paul, “nearly to the point of death” (v27) and Paul is sending him home.
Roman imprisonment worked differently than modern prisons. Prison was often temporary detention while someone awaited judgment, punishment, release, or execution. Prisoners were not necessarily provided with what they needed to survive. Family and friends were responsible to bring food, clothing, money, and other necessities and a prisoner without a support system were likely to die in prison.
Epaphroditus has been sent to Paul with food, clothing, and whatever else he needed. The Philippian church that was helping keep Paul alive.
The God of the Prisoners
The biblical story does not promote prison as one of God’s solutions to human wrongdoing. There is no command in either Old or New Testament to build a prison or even to lock anyone up as a punishment. Of course, Torah contains laws dealing with theft, violence, murder, and other serious offenses, but long-term incarceration is not the prescribed solution.
Instead, the prisoner repeatedly appears as someone oppressed, remembered, visited, or liberated. Israel’s own identity begins with God saying that he brought them out of bondage. Joseph is imprisoned. Jeremiah is imprisoned. Jesus is arrested. Paul and nearly all of the other apostles are imprisoned. Again and again, the biblical story is told from the perspective of people who have experienced chains at the hands of powerful governments, and the conclusion is always that Gods desire is that all people be set free from all forms of bondage.
Jesus makes this especially clear in Matthew 25 where he describes people standing before God in judgement, but the surprising measure is neither theological knowledge nor religious accomplishment. Instead, Jesus says, “I was in prison and you came to visit me” because whatever they did “for the least of these,” they did for and to him.
Those outside the church took notice of the empathy the early church held for prisoners. Lucian of Samosata, a second-century writer, mocked Christians for the extraordinary care they showed prisoners; bringing food, staying nearby, reading together, and doing everything they could to care for their well-being.
The difficulty for the modern Christian is our lack of imagination for a society without violent incarceration as a peace-keeping measure. We cannot imagine a world without walls and barred doors, or men with weapons and shackles, we cannot imagine the kingdom of God because we struggle to believe that love and grace can work more effectively than fear and coercion. Theologizing this way does not answer all of our modern question about crime, safety, or justice. It does, however, force Christians to ask where our assumptions about justice came from.
Defaulting to Culture
Is justice primarily something imposed downward by powerful institutions onto people beneath them?
Or is justice something pursued on behalf of people who are being harmed by those with power?
The biblical story overwhelmingly comes from the second perspective. Jesus begins his public ministry by reading Isaiah: “He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners... to set the oppressed free” (Luke 4:18).
The Christian imagination should therefore begin with liberation and restoration rather than punishment. We don’t ignore harm or pretend violence does not matter, but instead of jumping to punitive measures, perhaps we can ask what actually restores victims, repairs communities, addresses the conditions that produce violence, and makes reconciliation possible.
The Bible repeatedly connects violence with poverty, exploitation, exclusion, and injustice. If we want less violence, we must also care about the conditions that produce it.
The kingdom of God is not imagined as a world filled with better prisons. It will not be built upon coercion and violence, but by love and restoration. It is imagined as a world where captives are released, restored, and brought back into community. Prisoners appear so frequently in the Christian story that it should at the least remind us of where Jesus said he would be found.
House Church Discussion Questions
Before hearing this, what did you picture when you thought about Paul being “in prison”? Does understanding how Roman imprisonment worked change the way you read Philippians?
Jesus says, “I was in prison and you visited me.” What does that statement bring up for you personally?
Have you ever known someone who had been incarcerated, or known a family affected by incarceration? How did that experience shape the way you think about prisoners and punishment?
When you hear the word justice, what do you instinctively imagine?
Punishment, restoration, protection, repair, something else?
Where do you think that understanding came from?If Christians began with Jesus’ language of liberation and restoration when thinking about crime and punishment, what questions do you think we would start asking differently?