And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Thus united to them in the fellowship of life, he will both understand the things revealed to them by God and, thenceforth escaping the peril that threatens sinners in the judgment, will receive that which is laid up for the saints in the kingdom of heaven.
St. Paul did not want the sufferings encountered by being a Christian to discourage or dishearten anyone. He realized that when the Christian saw the blessings and grace that poured upon him after his trials, he would gain courage to suffer in his turn.
God uses whoever he wants.
St Paul, in his second letter to Corinth, spells this out further in the important eighth and ninth chapters, where he urges some of the Christian communities to be generous to others so that they may also have the chance to be generous in return.
Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.
The gods, as they are beneficent, if they find anyone who is healthy and whole and unscarred by vice, will send him away, surely, after crowning him, not with golden crowns, but with all sorts of blessings.
Heaven takes care that no man secures happiness by crime.
Jail didn't make me find God, He's always been there. They can lock me up, but my spirit and my love can never be confined to prison walls.
You cannot make a sinner into a saint by killing him. He who does not live as a saint here will never live as a saint hereafter.
The devil had as good have let Paul alone, for he no sooner comes into prison but he falls a preaching, at which the gates of Satan's prison fly open, and poor sinners come forth.