Much vital, new and hitherto unprophesied truth is proclaimed in the Apostle Paul’s “prison epistles” – those written while he was incarcerated in Roman dungeons. They lift Christian experience so high our imagination can scarcely comprehend it. Who can grasp that God makes us part of Himself and his glory for all eternity? Yet it seems this pinnacle of revelation is not everybody’s cup of tea.

Most Christians, if they seriously study the Bible at all, plump for truth from the Old Testament, the gospels, Acts and Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians and Galatians, the epistles written in the Acts period. Strangely, the glorious truths of Paul’s “prison epistles” are never high on their agenda. Indeed, many church-goers may never hear a message or read a study based on an expository examination of these seven letters written by a jailed, ageing apostle from Rome.

Indeed, many are just content with their salvation, and want to know nothing more. Paul is derided and shunned. Far from being respected as God’s chosen spokesman to proclaim the new era of grace and blessing (the ‘dispensation of the grace of God, Eph. 3:1-4) , he is left out of consideration.  

Despite this ignorance, it seems God does not shut out those who ignore Paul from the blessings of this new revelation. The door to grace is left open, but most believers fail to walk through it. They simply won’t take the trouble to get into the truth of it. Yet it is “present truth”, the latest report from the Lord, truth He wants everybody right now.

Despite this widespread rejection, the high and glorious truths of Ephesians, Philippians, Colossian, 1^st and 2^nd Timothy, Titus and Philemon are offered to all who are “faithful in Jesus Christ” (Eph. 1: 1). That is, those who have made it a practice to implicitly believe all God has said and had written in his book the Bible; and who also believe God is who He says He is and not someone else.

Amazingly, these “prison epistles” speak of a whole new creation, “the one new man” (Eph. 4:24), a new and a very different assembly of saints to that of the Acts period. Why? Because the “one new man” has been made part of Christ Himself, “of his flesh and of his bone” (Eph. 5:30). Thus in grace the “one new man” becomes the “church which is his body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all (Eph. 1:22-23).

As intimated earlier the “prison epistles” also herald and proclaim a new, hitherto unknown dispensation, or eon, in God’s dealings with men, called the “dispensation of the grace of God” (Eph. 3:2-3). It is this that God is working through today.

But you need your “eyes” divinely opened to such truth. For, unless the Lord Himself performs the spiritual eye surgery of Eph. 1:18, “that the eyes of your understanding be enlightened”, and also opens your ears to hear his voice speaking from scripture, you will remain blind and deaf to higher truth.

You see, Ephesians and the other “prison epistles” were not written to believers at large. They were written to the “chosen”. Thus Eph. 1:4 tell us “…He hath chosen us in Him [Christ] before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love…” Many Christians may well feel they were “called” in that they got saved, and, thank God they were, but those “chosen” in Eph. 1:4 know something more.

They know what the Lord Jesus meant when He said “Many are called but few are chosen” (Matt. 22:14). They also know, because the Lord has showed them personally, “the hope of his calling” (Eph. 1:18) and experience something of the “riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints” (Eph. 1:18. The “calling” which is our hope, has to do with a world to come and our role in serving the Lord Jesus Christ when He takes over government of the world.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them (Eph. 2:10)

Are you chosen to be, do you want to be, a recreated holy servant of the Lord, fit to serve Him in the next age, the new world, to come? That is the calling of the faithful believers Paul writes to in Ephesians.

Perhaps, you baulk, as many do, at the thought that Christ specially chooses some but not others. There was a time when I also used to assert God chose “everybody”, but that is not what the Bible says.

Jesus when on earth said more than once, “Many are called but few are chosen”, and showed what He meant by doing such choosing Himself.

And…He went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. And when it was day He called unto Him his disciples: and of them He chose 12, whom He also named apostles (Luke 6:12-13).

Why only these 12 and not others? Perhaps we will never know the answer. Certainly, it was not because they were better, more spiritually perceptive or less sinful than others. And the same goes for the “chosen” saints of Ephesians 1. The Lord Jesus does not choose the qualified: rather he qualifies those He chooses.

Fact is none of us deserve to be saved, let alone selected for high-ranking service to King Jesus in the hereafter. But clearly the Lord is choosing some for this purpose and He has been doing so for the last 2,000 years.

Should you want to know if you are among the chosen, check out whether you have been “quickened” (Eph. 2:1) “together with Christ” (Eph. 2:5) and whether you have been drawn by the “Spirit of truth” to follow the Apostle Paul as he presses …

                …toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:14).

I pray you will be not like many who ignore or reject the latest truth revealed by God through the Apostle Paul and recorded in the “prison epistles” in the Bible. It is God’s word to us now.

John Dudley Aldworth

Email: john.aldworth@hotmail.com