Hebrews 13:3 Commentary and Bible Study

This is the second item we have in this list of practical matters, which we are very forgetful about. Of course, in the case of those who are in bonds, there is an extra reason why we may forget them – out of sight, out of mind. They are somewhere else, perhaps thousands of miles away, and we do not get all that much information about them, so there is a tendency to forget them. Their circumstances are not pressing on me, we may say, therefore they are easily out of my mind and out of memory. But I have a daily duty – ‘Remember them that are in bonds.’ To remember them, means that I pray for them, and I do whatever I can do to help them. If there is a collection for the saints, or some route has been opened up to provide relief, I take advantage of it. I have to be as practical as I can to help. Prayer and helpfulness. ‘As bound with them.’ You do not wear, as they do, chains or manacles. You are not behind bars. But there is a sense in which you are bound with them. And you must pray as one bound with them. How am I bound with them? First and foremost, I am in the bonds of Christ with them. Like they are, I am bound to Jesus Christ. We have so much in common. We are spiritually one. They are members of my family, brothers and sisters, and I must learn to think like that, as bound with them. In Christ there is a sense in which I am bound emotionally with them. If it was somebody very close to me, I would feel their bonds much more, and that is how I must learn to think. I am bound with them in bands of hostility. Their hostility is much more painful than mine, but I know something about it, so I can project my imagination to their situation. There are people who are against us, we have the offence of the cross. There is a price we have had to pay. Perhaps we have had to forfeit promotion at work for the sake of our testimony. We have had people turn on their heel, people who will not have anything to do with us, people who shout us down. We can understand their trials, and the great hatred which is directed against them. So, as bound with them, we pray for them. We have to give a little time before we pray to imagining their situation, and what it could mean to them, and what they have to suffer, and then, our prayer will be altogether different. Then you are bound in bonds of responsibility for them. The body of Christ is such, says Paul. that when one part is in pain, the rest of the body is in pain with it. The whole person is aware of it, and is dragged down to some extent. ‘Weep with them that weep’, says the apostle Paul in Romans 12. ‘Who is weak,’ he says, ‘and I am not weak. Who is offended and I burn not?’ He means, I feel the offence with them. He was a very feelingful man and an imaginative man, because he cared, and he felt close to people who were miles away. That is how it ought to be with us also, so that we can bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.