Wash Each Other’s Wounds

“The jailer called for lights and ran to the dungeon and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and asked, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’”

‭‭Acts ‭16‬:‭29‬-‭30‬ (‭NLT‬‬)

In this story, Paul and Silas’ prayer and praise cause the Lord to show up, shake the room, break their chains, and open the prison doors. When the jailer wakes up, he’s scared to death. He knows that if the prisoners have escaped, he is going to be killed for allowing that to happen. It was the worst failure he could have have experienced.

In the midst of a situation where Paul could easily justify letting the jailer believe they had all escaped, and letting him kill himself, he does not. Instead, Paul loves this man who was there to persecute him and keep him behind locked doors for doing nothing wrong. He stops him and says, “We haven’t left. We’re all still here.” As a result of that love, and the faith Paul and Silas display in the prison, the jailer comes running and falls at their feet, asking how to get saved.

That’s the order we’ve got to get right: love people first, and they’ll come asking for the message we carry. Paul tells the jailer, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, along with your entire household.” The Lord isn’t just after one person, he’s after the whole house. So Paul and Silas get to go teach the whole family about Jesus. The whole house gets saved, the jailer washes the wounds of Paul and Silas, and then that same family goes down into the water and comes up baptized.

Maybe there is someone in your world that needs the love Paul displayed to the jailer when it made no sense. I pray we’re ready to love like that and wait for the discipling that will come as a result. And I pray we’re willing to receive love back, too, when people wash our wounds, because there’s love they can give us that we’ll never receive if we never love them. Then it all comes full circle when they put their faith in God and we become one family in Christ. We get to sit around the same table, serve the same Master, and rejoice at what God has done through a simple obedience to love that makes no sense.