So far in our study of Hebrews 13 we’ve discussed two ways we show the depth in which God has changed our lives, from selfish individuals to people who truly love others—loving our siblings in Christ, and loving strangers (sometime outside of Christ).
1 Let brotherly love continue. 2Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. 3Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.
The third exhortation to love is towards the imprisoned. “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body” (Heb. 12:3). These were people you could no longer invite into your home, so our author encourages us to go to them. These were not people in prison because they had committed crimes, but because they were Christians who stood up for Jesus Christ. Our author is encouraging them to care about these people. So what about those who, robbed of their freedom, cannot visit our homes, but long for us to visit them? Do we care?
R. Kent Hughes relates this story:
Herman Melville in his novel White Jacket has one of the ship’s sailors became desperately ill with severe abdominal pain. The ship’s surgeon, Dr. Cuticle, waxes enthusiastic at the possibility of having a real case to treat, one that challenges his surgeon’s ability. Appendicitis is the happy diagnosis. Dr. Cuticle recruits some other sailors to serve as his attendants.
The poor seaman is laid out on the table, and the doctor goes to work with skillful enthusiasm. His incisions are precise, and while removing the diseased appendix he proudly points out interesting anatomical details to his seaman-helpers who had never before seen the inside of another human. He is completely absorbed in his work and obviously a skilled professional. It is an impressive performance, but the sailors—without exception—are not impressed but are rather appalled. Why? Their poor friend, now receiving his last stitch, has long been dead on the table! Dr. Cuticle had not even noticed (Eugene H. Peterson, Working the Angles (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), p. 74).
Cold Dr. Cuticle—a man with ice water in his veins—was insensitive and void of empathy. We might lack empathy today, not because we are cold professionals, but because we have experienced compassion fatigue.
In the mid-’80s Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death, which explored how media affects public discourse. He made the observation that before the telegraph, people found out about tragedies, fires or illness by word of mouth. They felt empowered because they were responding to local situations. They could express their compassion concretely and immediately.
Then, in 1906, when news of the San Francisco earthquake was telegraphed across the country, people were horrified but didn’t know what to do. Since the turn of the last century, there has been an exponential increase in the amount of news we hear or read from every corner of the globe. In turn, there is an increasing sense of disempowerment or impotency in the face of such suffering and pain because we don’t know what we can do.
Add to that our addiction to our phones and we find that our attention to others is eroded, our penchant for communicating our anger has increased, and even the fact that everyone is one their phones only serves to alienate us from one another.
So empathy and compassion are in short supply these days. But our author wanted his original audience, who faced their own obstacles to empathy and compassion, as well as us today with our challenges, to…
Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.
“The prisoners” in view were evidently Christians who were suffering for their testimonies (cf. 10:34; Matt. 25:36, 40).
Prisoners depended on relatives and friends to provide food, clothing, and other necessities. The numerous references to Paul’s experiences as a prisoner reveal that his friends came to take care of his needs (Acts 24:23; 27:3; 28:10, 16, 30; Phil 4:12; 2 Tm 1:16; 4:13, 21). Prisoners, then, had to be remembered; otherwise they suffered hunger, thirst, cold, and loneliness (William Hendriksen & Simon J. Kistemaker, NT Commentary: Hebrews, 409).
The existence of a significant number of prisoners (plural) supports a date of writing after A.D. 64, when an empire-wide persecution of Christians began. In July of that same year Emperor Nero set fire to Rome and blamed the Christians. This resulted in much persecution of Christians.
Remembering these people would involve praying for them and assisting them in any way possible. Christians are to have eyes and ears and hearts open to those who are in need around them and do something about it. This is true whether the needy are in prison or otherwise oppressed or mistreated. As Christians, we are all called to the ministry of compassion (Ray C. Stedman, How to Live What You Believe, 182).
Our author had expressed earlier that they had been assisting prisoners before. In 10:32-34 we read:
But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.
And how important their sympathetic caring had been, because those suffering the abuse of prison were virtually dependent on the church for survival.
Believers were always trying to find ways to smuggle food and themselves into the prisons. Often it cost them their lives to reach and help an ailing brother. The early Christians became so notorious for this that one Roman emperor, Licinius, passed a law forbidding anyone to show mercy to starving prisoners. Anyone caught supplying food to them was to share the same fate as the one he was trying to help. Yet that didn’t stop those early Christians. They bribed guards, paid ransoms, anything to help their brethren (C. S. Lovett, Lovett’s Lights on Hebrews, 323). Some early Christians sold themselves into slavery to get money to free a fellow believer (John MacArthur Jr., The MacArthur NT Commentary: Hebrews, 428).
Similarly, The Apology of Aristides describes Christians’ care for the incarcerated, saying: “If they hear that any of their number is imprisoned or oppressed for the name of their Messiah, all of them provide for his needs, and if it is possible that he may be delivered, they deliver him. If there is among them a man that is poor or needy, and they have not an abundance of necessaries, they fast two or three days that they may supply the needy with their necessary food (J. Rendel Harris, The Apology of Aristides, Vol. 1, 48-9) (R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word: Hebrews, vol. 2, 211-2).
Lucian, again, has his bogus Christian, Proteus Peregrinus, tossed into prison, and, satirical as Lucian was, the sympathetic care of Christians shines through. Says Lucian, the Christians
. . . left nothing undone in the effort to rescue him. Then, as this was impossible, every other form of attention was shown him, not in any casual way but with assiduity [diligent attention]; and from the very break of day aged widows and orphan children could be seen waiting near the prison, while their officials even slept inside with him after bribing the guards. The elaborate meals were brought in, and sacred books of theirs were read aloud (The Passing of Peregrinus , 12).
How beautiful the church had been and would continue to be! Lights in a world gone dark.
They were to remember them “as though in prison with them.” The unadorned empathy commanded here was not based on the esoteric truth that Christians are members of each other in Christ, but rather on the truth of shared humanity. Project your humanity into the place where their humanity now is—in suffering or in prison. “These believers knew that at any time any of them could be imprisoned for his or her faith. They could become one another’s “fellow prisoners” in a very real sense. Those who were sent to prison ought to be remembered by those who were still free” (Bruce Barton, Life Application Bible Commentary: Hebrews, 231).
When we do go through pain and trouble and heartache, it is easier for us to sympathize with others. Charles Spurgeon says, “It must be a terrible thing for a man to have never to have suffered physical pain. You say, ‘I should like to be that man.’ Ah, unless you had extraordinary grace, you would grow hard and cold; you would get to be a sort of cast iron man, breaking other people with your touch. No, let my heart be tender, even be soft, if it must be softened by pain, for I would fain know how to bind up my fellow’s wound. Let my eye have a tear ready for my brother’s sorrows, even if in order to that, I should have to shed ten thousand for my own. As escape from suffering would be escape from the power to sympathize, and that were to be deprecated beyond all things.”
Love to the brethren is to manifest itself in sympathy for sufferers. Most reprehensible and un-Christlike is that selfish callousness which says, “I have troubles enough of my own without concerning myself over those of other people.” Putting it on its lowest ground, such a spirit ministers no relief: the most effectual method of getting away from our own sorrows is to seek out and relieve others in our distress. But nothing has a more beneficial tendency to counteract our innate selfishness than a compliance with such exhortations as the one here before us: to be occupied with the severer afflictions which some of our brethren are experiencing will free our minds from the lighter trials we may be passing through. (Arthur W. Pink, An Exposition of Hebrews, 1121)
“Sympathy is a shallow stream in the souls of those who have not suffered” (William E. Sangster). Sympathy sees and says, “I’m sorry.” Compassion sees and says, “I’ll help.” Jesus says to minister to such people “in prison” is to minister to Him (Matthew 25:36, 40).
This is intended to mean more than simply to call to mind: it involves the idea of identification with them. This would require deep Christian understanding and sympathy; to sit as it were with those who are afflicted (Donald Guthrie, Tyndale NT Commentaries: Hebrews, 268). The words “since you are also in the body” are added to remind the readers that they too could be exposed to the same treatment. The readers themselves might one day suffer the same fate as these prisoners, since they were still leading a mortal existence (“are in the body”).
They were to FEEL the hurt, the same as God feels it when any of us is in trouble. Only in this way could they be an extension of God’s love. Believers are able to express this kind of sympathy inasmuch as they are still in the body and exposed to similar testings themselves. In those days no one knew when it might be his turn to suffer for Jesus. The times were perilous indeed. The ability to put yourself in the shoes of an imprisoned brother and feel his suffering was a part of “brother-love.” (C. S. Lovett, Lovett’s Lights on Hebrews, 323)
Paul urged Timothy not to be ashamed of him when he was a prisoner (2 Tim. 1:8). All the Christians in the province of Asia had abandoned Paul at that time, except for those in Onesiphorus’ household (2 Tim 1:15-18).
Nothing is more pleasing to parents than to see their children caring for each other. “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity!” (Ps 133:1). When His children care for each other, help each other, and live in harmony with each other, God is both delighted and glorified. (John MacArthur Jr., The MacArthur NT Commentary: Hebrews, 424)
Because of our compassion fatigue and distractions through our Smart Phones, we have need of this reminder to think of, feel with and assist those who are imprisoned and mistreated. We must will to identify with the imprisoned and mistreated. None of us can excuse ourselves by rationalizing that we are not empathetic by nature. We are to labor at an imaginative sympathy through the power of God!
And let’s go beyond those who are in prison. Raymond Brown reminds us, “Some patients in geriatric units would welcome regular visits from a Christian. Are not such ‘isolated” people in greater need of the good news of Christ at the end of their lives than others who may often hear of him through everyday contacts with believers? But shut-in people will hear only if they are remembered and visited by Christians who discern this neglected area of work as their opportunity for pastoral service and compassionate witness” (Raymond Brown, The Bible Speaks Today: Hebrews, 252).
Honestly, it is far too easy to forget such people, whether people in prison or people in nursing homes or shut in at their own homes. “Out of sight, out of mind,” we say. But we should care for them because we are linked to them as brothers in Christ, because we share the same humanity and likely we also will share much of the same experiences. Today it is them, tomorrow it may be us.
There is no way you can love others with this kind of sacrifice, commitment, compassion and grace without having your heart changed by Jesus Who exemplified it all. Human nature simply does not have the capacity to do this without the presence of the Spirit of the Living God given through Jesus. (Acts 16:33; Gal 5:6, 22; 2 Pt 1:7; 1 Jn 3:10-11, 14, 17; 4:7-21)
We have the capacity to love like this only because Jesus first loved us (1 John 4:19). His infinite love for us is the source and stimulus of our love for each other. Hence the precept given by the Master in the upper room: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34; cf. 15:12, 17; 2 Jn 5; 1 Jn 3:11, 14, 16-18; 4:7-12). (Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 562)
To understand Jesus’ teachings, we must realize that deep in our orientations of our spirit we cannot have one posture toward God and a different one toward other people. We are a whole being, and our true character pervades everything we do. We cannot, for example, love God and hate human beings. As the apostle John wrote, “Those who do not love their brother who is visible cannot love God who is invisible” (1 Jn 4:20). And: “The one who does not love does not know God, who is love” (4:8).
Similarly, James rules out the blessing of God and the cursing of human beings, “made in the likeness of God,” coming from the same mouth (3:9). He also indicates that humility before God and humility before others go together. Those humble before God do not “judge” their brothers and sisters (4:6-12).
The same basic point of the necessary unity of spiritual orientation is seen in Jesus’ teachings about forgiveness and about forgiveness and prayer. “If you forgive men the wrongs they do you, your Father in the heavens will also forgive you. But if you don’t, neither will he (Mt 6:14-15). (Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, 232)
In summary, we are to stand at the foot of the two mountains—Sinai and Zion–and gaze reverently at God’s consuming fire and consuming love. We are to drink it in with all its mysterious paradox—for in it lies the vision of God.
But having gazed upward we turn from the vertical to the horizontal, from the indicative to the imperative —the ethics of a life aglow with God. And here we must will to obey the imperatives—God’s commands.
We must will to practice brotherly love, philadelphia: “Let brotherly love continue” (v. 1). We must will to contemplate the fact of our mutual generation, its profundity and eternity. Our words and actions must be committed to enhancing brotherly love.
We must will to practice love of hospitality, philozenia —a love for strangers: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (v. 2). Open hearts and open houses are the Christian way. Hospitality builds the Body of Christ and opens the door to a lost world.
We must will to be empathetic, to be imaginatively sympathetic: “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body” (v. 3). The will to have imaginative sympathy will make our hearts like that of the Master and will encourage an authentic Christian walk.
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