Colossians Chapter 4

As Martin Luther King might have preached it

A collaboration between Lewis McLain & AI

“Remember My Chains”

I. A Room, a Chain, and a Word That Would Not Be Bound

Come with me this morning to a little rented room in the city of Rome. I want you to see it. There is no stained glass in that room. There is no great organ, no robed choir, no procession down a marble aisle. There is a low lamp burning down toward its last hour. There is a soldier at the door. There is an old man sitting on a hard floor. And there is a chain. And that chain is wrapped cold around the wrist of a preacher named Paul.

Now somebody walking past that room might look in and say, well, that’s the end of it. Somebody might look at that iron and say, the gospel has finally been stopped, they have shut the old man up at last. The empire looked at Paul and saw a prisoner. The empire counted him finished, filed away, forgotten in a back room of the capital.

But I have come to tell you this morning that you can chain a man, but you cannot chain the Word of God! You can bind two wrists, but you cannot bind the truth. You can lock the door, but the gospel slips right out through the keyhole. They had Paul’s hands — they never laid a finger on his message. For out of that very room, off of that very floor, in the shadow of that very chain, there came a letter that we are still reading two thousand years later. The soldier went home and was forgotten. The chain rusted away into nothing. But the Word — the Word marches on!

II. The Praying Prisoner

And I want you to notice what this man does with his chains. He does not curse. He does not despair. He prays. He says to that little church, devote yourselves to prayer. Now the Greek word there is a strong word. It means to cling, to hold fast, to refuse to let go. He is not talking about a casual word tossed up toward heaven when the trouble gets deep. He is talking about a prayer that grips, a prayer that endures, a prayer that keeps watch through the long night the way a watchman stands his post on the city wall — eyes open, awake, waiting. Because the watchman knows something the sleeping city does not know: morning is coming!

And then he says, keep your prayer full of thanksgiving. Now think about that. A man in chains, telling free people to be thankful. The world says be thankful when the chains come off. Paul says be thankful while they are still on. For he had learned, somewhere down in the deep places of the soul, that gratitude is not a response to your circumstances — gratitude is a defiance of them. When you can give thanks in the prison, you have a freedom the jailer can never touch.

And here is the wonder of it. When this chained man finally asks them to pray for him, what do you suppose he asks for? You would think he would say, pray that these chains fall off. You would think he would say, pray that the trial goes well, pray that Caesar shows mercy, pray that I get to go home. But that is not what he says. He says: pray that God would open a door for the word. Here is a man behind a locked door, and the only door he is interested in is the one the gospel can walk through! He does not pray for his own freedom. He prays for the freedom of the message. Oh, that we had hearts like that this morning.

III. Salt on the Tongue

Then Paul turns and he says something to us about the way we talk to one another and to the world. He says, let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt. I want to stay right here a moment, because the church needs to hear this.

There is a way of being right that is so bitter that nobody can swallow it. There is a way of holding the truth that is so cold and so hard that it freezes the very people it was meant to save. Some folks have got the truth, but they have lost the grace, and they go through the world like a sharp wind in January, and everywhere they pass, something good shrivels up and dies.

But Paul says: put some salt in it! Salt does two things, beloved. Salt preserves — it keeps a thing from going rotten. And salt gives flavor — it makes a thing worth tasting. He is saying, let your words preserve what is good and let them have a savor that makes the stranger lean in instead of turning away. Speak the truth, yes — but speak it so that grace drips off of every syllable. Speak so that the man who disagrees with you still wants to keep listening. That is the speech of a gospel people. Not bland — salt has flavor. Not bitter — salt heals the wound. But seasoned, gracious, full of mercy, so that you know how to answer each and every soul that God sends across your path.

IV. The Roll Call of the Faithful

And now — oh, now watch what happens. The chained man begins to call the roll. And I want you to listen to these names, because there is a sermon hiding inside this list.

He calls Tychicus, the faithful one, sent to carry comfort to people he had never met. He calls Onesimus — and church, do you know who Onesimus was? He was a runaway. He was a slave who fled his master, a man the world had written off as a criminal. And Paul does not call him a runaway. Paul calls him a beloved brother. Grace took a fugitive and made him family! That is what this gospel does. It takes the one who ran and brings him home.

He calls Aristarchus, in chains right there beside him — a man who chose to share the suffering. He calls Mark. Now you remember Mark. Mark is the one who quit. Mark is the young man who turned back, who abandoned the mission, who failed when the going got hard. And here he is again, restored, useful, written into the honor roll. Because our God is the God of the second chance! The God who does not throw a man away because he stumbled once. He calls Luke, the beloved physician, the doctor who stayed. And he calls Epaphras — and it says Epaphras is down on his knees, wrestling in prayer, agonizing, laboring for three little towns he could not even get to in person.

Do you see it? They thought they had Paul alone. They thought they had isolated him, shut him away from every friend. But this man in his lonely cell was surrounded — surrounded by the faithful, surrounded by the restored, surrounded by the praying. The world could lock the door, but it could not make him lonely. For wherever the people of God are bound together in love, no prison wall is thick enough to make a child of God truly alone.

V. “Remember My Chains”

And then we come to the end. The letter is almost finished. And Paul takes the pen out of the scribe’s hand, and with his own bound, cramping fingers, he writes the closing words himself. And I want you to hear what he writes. He does not write, pity me. He does not write, feel sorry for the poor old preacher. He writes three words that I cannot get past this morning. He writes: Remember my chains.

Remember. Remember that the gospel you hold so lightly in your hands cost somebody something. Remember that the freedom you sing about on Sunday morning was carried to you by men who wore irons. Remember that grace is free — it is gloriously, wonderfully free — but it was never, ever cheap. Somebody paid. Somebody bled. Somebody sat on a cold floor in Rome so that the message could run to you across the centuries.

And is that not the whole story of this faith? A Savior who wore our chains so that we could go free. A Christ who took the prison of our sin upon Himself, who hung bound upon a tree, who looked down across all the ages and said, in effect, remember. Remember the cost. Remember the love that paid it.

VI. The Benediction

So I am going to leave you this morning the way Paul left them. After the chains, after the roll call, after the long night in that little room, he writes one last line. And it is not a complaint. It is a blessing. He says: Grace be with you.

Grace be with you in your own chains, whatever they are. Grace be with you in the long night, when the lamp burns low. Grace be with you when the world says you are finished and forgotten. For the same grace that walked out of a Roman prison and ran to the ends of the earth is walking with you still.

The chains could not hold him. And they will not hold you.

Walk on, church. Walk on.

A Closing Prayer

O God, our gracious and eternal Father, we come before You this morning with bowed heads and open hearts. We thank You for the old preacher in the Roman cell, and we thank You that his chains could not silence Your Word.

Grant us, O Lord, a portion of his faith. Teach us to pray as he prayed — not first for our own comfort, but for an open door, that the message of love might run free in a world that has locked so many doors against it. Season our speech with the salt of grace, that our words might heal and never wound, that we might speak truth so tenderly that even those who differ from us would want to keep on listening.

Make us, O God, a people of the second chance — quick to restore the one who stumbled, slow to write any soul off as finished. And when our own chains come, as come they will, let us not curse the darkness, but light the candle of thanksgiving and hold fast until the morning breaks.

We remember the cost, O Lord. We remember the love that paid it. And we ask only this: that whatever binds us, You would walk beside us still, until that great day when every chain is broken and every prisoner goes free.

These things we ask in the name of the One who wore our chains that we might go free. Amen, and amen.