I Was in Prison and You Came to Me

There are certain passages of Scripture that you can read a hundred times and think you understand, until life puts you inside the passage. For me, one of those passages is Matthew 25. I had read the parable of the sheep and the goats before. I knew the words. Jesus describes the day when the Son of Man comes in His glory and separates the people before Him “as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats” (Matthew 25:32). The sheep are placed on His right and the goats on His left. Then Jesus says something that should cause every Christian to examine the way we live: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me… I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me” (Matthew 25:35–36).

I understood those words intellectually. Then I went to jail. Suddenly, “I was in prison” wasn’t an abstract category of people anymore. Prisoners weren’t just people wearing jumpsuits behind concrete walls. They had names. They had families. They had regrets. They had fears. They had stories. Some had made terrible decisions. Some had spent much of their lives making terrible decisions. Some were angry. Some were broken. Some were scared. Some seemed hardened by years of living a certain way. But they were people. They were souls. And every one of them needed Jesus. So did I.

There is something about losing your freedom that strips away many of the things we use to define ourselves. Your career doesn’t mean much inside a cell. Your possessions don’t mean anything. Your house, your vehicle, your clothes, your résumé, your social status, none of it comes through that door with you. You’re just a man in a cell, and when many of the distractions of ordinary life disappear, some very big questions become difficult to avoid. Who am I? What have I done with my life? What happens when this life is over? Does God still care about me? Can God forgive someone like me?

Those last two questions are precisely why the gospel belongs inside prisons.

The Least of These

What strikes me now about Matthew 25 is the way Jesus identifies Himself with people society can easily overlook: the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the person without adequate clothing, the sick and the prisoner. The righteous are confused when Jesus tells them they ministered to Him. They ask when they ever saw Him in those circumstances. Jesus answers, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).

That verse looks different to me now. It is easy to talk about loving people when those people are respectable, agreeable and easy to love. Prison complicates that. The men behind those walls may have committed crimes. Some may be guilty of things that make us uncomfortable even discussing. Justice matters. Consequences matter. Scripture never requires us to pretend sin isn’t sin. But neither does the gospel allow us to conclude that a person’s worst sin has placed him beyond the reach of Jesus Christ. If that were true, none of us would have hope.

Romans 3:23 tells us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The crimes, sins and earthly consequences may be different, but every one of us ultimately has the same fundamental problem: sin has separated us from a holy God, and we desperately need a Savior. Prison is filled with people who need to hear that Savior’s name.

The Sheep and the Goats

Keith Green recorded a remarkable song called “The Sheep and the Goats,” based directly on Matthew 25. If you haven’t listened to it, you can find it here. Rather than simply writing a song loosely inspired by the passage, Green dramatically retells Jesus’ teaching about the final separation of the sheep and goats. Near the end, Green summarizes the challenge of the passage with a piercing observation: “The only difference between the sheep and the goats… is what they did and didn’t do.” That’s uncomfortable, and I think it’s supposed to be.

Jesus wasn’t teaching that we purchase salvation by accumulating enough good deeds. Scripture is clear that salvation is by grace through faith and “not a result of works” (Ephesians 2:8–9). But the very next verse tells us that believers are “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Ephesians 2:10). Works don’t purchase salvation. They reveal something about the faith we claim to possess. James makes essentially the same point when he writes that “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17).

The sheep weren’t serving people because they were trying to accumulate enough points to enter heaven. In fact, they seemed surprised that Jesus even noticed what they had done. They simply saw people who needed help and responded.

The goats are equally surprised. They essentially ask Jesus, When did we ever see You needing those things and refuse You? Jesus responds, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me” (Matthew 25:45).

That should bother us a little because Christians can become very good at avoiding uncomfortable people. We can attend church, sing worship songs, study theology, post Bible verses and talk about reaching the lost while remaining comfortably separated from many of the people who desperately need to hear the gospel. Prisoners are especially easy to forget because they’re intentionally removed from society. Out of sight. Behind walls. Behind fences. Behind razor wire, but they aren’t out of God’s sight.

Hebrews 13:3 says, “Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison.” I understand that verse differently now because, for a short time, I was together with them.

They Remembered Me in Prison

There’s another side of Matthew 25 that became real to me while I was in jail. I wasn’t only surrounded by prisoners who needed someone to remember them. For that period of my life, I was the prisoner who needed to be remembered, and people remembered me.

My pastor reached out and was preparing to visit me. Another friend was so angry about what had happened that he was practically ready to bust me out himself. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen, but I’ll never forget knowing that somebody cared about me that much. Another friend put money into my commissary account so I could buy some of the basic things that make life inside a little more bearable.

Then there were several friends from The Redeemed who were preparing to make a multi-state trip just to visit me in jail. What makes that even more remarkable is that we had never actually met in person. Our friendships had developed through meeting together online each week, yet over time, those friendships had become very real and very strong. Think about that for a moment. These men were willing to get in a car, cross state lines, and spend hours traveling to visit someone they had only ever known through a screen, simply to make sure I knew I wasn’t alone or forgotten.

They never got the chance. My attorney filed an emergency motion with the judge, and thankfully I was released early before my friends could make the trip. I was certainly grateful to get out, but looking back, what those people were willing to do has stayed with me.

Jesus said, “I was in prison and you came to me” (Matthew 25:36). For a brief period of my life, I experienced what the other side of that verse feels like. Someone was going to come. Someone put money in my account. Someone picked up the phone. Someone was willing to drive hundreds of miles. Someone remembered that behind the jail walls was their friend. When you’re sitting comfortably outside those walls, visiting someone in jail can sound like a relatively small act of kindness. When you’re the person behind the walls, it doesn’t feel small at all. Knowing someone hasn’t forgotten you can mean everything.

Maybe that’s part of why this passage means so much more to me now. People remembered me when I was behind those walls. Now I have an opportunity to remember the men who are still there.

Going Back Through a Different Door

I never expected jail to become part of my story. I certainly wouldn’t have chosen it. But God has an extraordinary ability to redeem the places we would rather erase from our stories, and that is part of why I am getting involved in prison ministry.

The next time I enter a correctional facility, I want it to be through a very different door and for a very different reason. I want to go back carrying the gospel. I know what it feels like when the door closes. I know something of the loneliness, uncertainty and shame that can accompany incarceration. I know what it feels like when the rest of the world keeps moving while you’re sitting behind a wall wondering what your future is going to look like. I don’t know every prisoner’s story, and my experience certainly doesn’t make me an expert on incarceration. But perhaps it gives me a little more compassion for the person sitting on the other side of that table.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1:4 that God comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have received from Him. Maybe some of our hardest experiences eventually become places where God allows us to minister to someone else. I cannot change the fact that jail became part of my story. But I can decide what I do with that experience now.

Greater Love Has No One Than This

This morning at church, my pastor brought up another passage that challenged me in a completely different way. Jesus says in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

I’ve heard that verse plenty of times, but this morning I found myself really thinking about what Jesus was saying. Could I actually do that? Could I literally lay down my life for someone else?

I can imagine a parent doing it for a child without hesitation. I can understand soldiers on a battlefield sacrificing themselves for the brothers beside them. We’ve heard incredible stories of soldiers putting themselves in harm’s way to save the men fighting alongside them. There is something extraordinary about that kind of love. But if I’m truthful about where I am in my own walk with Christ, I’m not sure I possess that kind of love yet, and maybe admitting that is part of spiritual growth.

Jesus didn’t merely teach John 15:13. He lived it. Shortly after speaking those words, He went to the cross. Romans 5:8 makes it even more astonishing: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus didn’t lay down His life only for people who treated Him well. He died for sinners. He died for people who rejected Him, mocked Him and ultimately nailed Him to a cross.

That kind of love is difficult for me to comprehend. Sometimes I’m still learning how to forgive people who have hurt me, much less imagining laying down my life for them.

But maybe laying down our lives doesn’t always begin with literally dying for someone. Maybe it begins by giving something up: my time, my comfort, my pride, my convenience, my money, my Saturday morning or my desire to remain safely inside my own little world. Maybe it means walking through the doors of a prison when I could spend that time doing something easier. Maybe it means sitting across from a man whose life looks nothing like mine and listening to his story. Maybe it means opening a Bible with someone society has written off and telling him that Jesus Christ has not written him off.

And when I think back to the people who reached out to me while I was incarcerated, I realize they were already showing me a glimpse of that kind of sacrificial love. My pastor was willing to give his time. A friend gave his money. Others were prepared to give up hours of their lives and travel across state lines just to visit me. Nobody was literally laying down his life, but each person was willing to lay something down.

That’s where the sheep and the goats becomes even more challenging to me. The sheep gave something. Food to the hungry. Drink to the thirsty. Hospitality to the stranger. Clothing to those who needed it. Care to the sick. Presence to the prisoner. None of those things necessarily required them to physically die, but every one of them required them to surrender something of themselves.

Maybe that’s where I need to start. I’m not going to pretend I’m spiritually mature enough to confidently say I could lay down my physical life for another person. I hope that if that moment ever came, God would give me the courage and love necessary to do it. Until then, I can learn to lay down smaller pieces of my life. Perhaps that is part of what following Jesus looks like: dying a little more to myself so that I can become a little more like Him.

The Gospel Behind the Walls

Prison ministry isn’t primarily about making prisoners more comfortable. It isn’t about excusing crime or pretending consequences shouldn’t exist. It’s about Jesus.

It’s about telling a man who believes his life is over that Christ still saves sinners. It’s about telling the ashamed that forgiveness is possible. It’s about telling the forgotten that God hasn’t forgotten them. It’s about telling the guilty that Jesus Christ carried guilt to the cross. It’s about telling the hopeless that there is hope beyond a sentence, beyond a criminal record, beyond a cell and even beyond this life.

Jesus said He came “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Some of the lost are sitting in church pews. Some are sitting in offices. Some are sitting in expensive houses. And some are sitting in jail cells.

They all need the same Jesus, and perhaps that’s one of the greatest things my own experience taught me. When the cell door closes, all of the labels we place on ourselves and one another don’t matter nearly as much anymore. On one side of the door we may identify ourselves by careers, income, accomplishments, possessions or reputation. Behind the door, you’re reminded very quickly of how fragile all of those things are.

But the gospel doesn’t change when the door closes. Jesus is still Jesus. Grace is still grace. The cross is still sufficient, and no jail cell is beyond the reach of God.

Which Side Am I Living Like?

The parable of the sheep and the goats ultimately isn’t an invitation for me to point across the room and decide who I think is a sheep and who I think is a goat. It forces me to examine myself. Do I merely say that I follow Jesus, or does following Jesus actually change what I do? Do I notice people others ignore? Do I serve people who cannot repay me? Do I care about people whose lives are messy? Am I willing to surrender some of my own comfort for someone else? Do I remember the prisoner?

Keith Green’s “The Sheep and the Goats” makes Matthew 25 difficult to ignore because the song forces the listener to confront the weight of Jesus’ teaching. And Jesus’ words are uncomfortable. They are supposed to be.

I once read the words, “I was in prison and you came to me,” from the safety and freedom of the outside world. Then I experienced those words from the other side of the door. I experienced what it was like to need someone to remember me, and I experienced the blessing of discovering that people did.

Now, by God’s grace, I hope to return through that door carrying something I desperately needed myself: the hope of the gospel. People remembered me when I was behind those walls. Now I have an opportunity to remember the men who are still there, because behind every number is a name. Behind every charge is a person. Behind every cell door is a soul, and Jesus hasn’t forgotten a single one of them.