Book of Philemon - Parenthetical on Slavery Conclusion

Alrighty, well, last week, we're still introducing our next verse-by-verse study, which is going to be the book of Philemon, a very short little letter, but last week we began kind of setting up a little bit of the historical context of the book, and it's important because it's not necessarily anything that Paul addresses.

However, a lot of commentators, a lot of contemporary commentators believe that it is exactly what Paul, what the theme of this letter is, and that is an attack on the institution of slavery. So we kind of took a little diversion away from the book itself, about halfway through last week's lesson, and we'll finish that up today, at least I assume or hope that we'll finish it up today, and we're talking about the reality that, in contrast to popular belief or popular desire, the scripture, Philemon, but as well as the rest of scriptures, actually never attacks, does what we would deem a full-out attack on the institution of slavery.

In fact, it usually talks about it in the context of teaching Christian principles. That seems a little bit bizarre to us because of our perception of slavery, because of where we live here in the United States and the history that we have with it, and so we're having to kind of, you know, go a little bit higher, take a higher level view of slavery historically and how it has been different from civilization to civilization, culture to culture.

We kind of last week talked about the Mosaic economy and how slavery under that was quite a bit different than under the pagan economy of the Roman Empire at the time Paul is writing to Philemon, and of course that is very different, as we said last week, to what we had here in the United States as well, and so it's kind of an odd topic, but again, it plays a big part into understanding the historical context of Philemon because Paul is exhorting a slave, as we will find out as we go through it, to go back to his master and to serve him well.

Well, you know, we think a lot of people with just the very narrow kind of tunnel vision perception of slavery would think, why didn't Paul, you know, give him props for escaping a slave owner, and why didn't he condemn the slave owner and, you know, go all in on the freedom of the slave?

So, you know, again, when you're thinking about stories like what we're about to learn about in Philemon, but using the mindset in the context of slavery as it was in the United States, it doesn't make sense.

That's why you have to get a little bit more of the historical background to it, and so last week, we started talking about that. We, of course, talked about the reality that all of the principles that not only Paul taught, but all the rest of the apostles, Jesus himself, the principles they taught were absolutely the foundation for the abolition of anything evil, certainly the abuses of slave and slave-owner relationships.

There, within any institution, there are going to be egregious abuses within that, as we saw with slavery in the United States, as well as throughout all of time. It's always been an abused institution, and the principles that Paul delivers are absolutely a refutation of that, of the abuses of that, but what's amazing about it is it goes beyond that as well.

It's a refutation of the abuses of anything, and so we talked about that a little bit. Again, we gave a little bit of the historical background behind the mosaic, slavery within the mosaic economy, the mosaic law.

Then we fast-forwarded up to slavery within the Roman Empire, and here we are. We're just going to pick it up today and continue on. So, the very last thought that we had last week—I guess this is worth repeating one more time—is in the New Testament, you have the Roman Empire, which was a pagan empire, top to bottom, left to right, you know, all the way around, as pagan as it gets at the time of Jesus and at the time of the apostles, as Paul is writing here as well.

In the middle of that, in the middle of this totally pagan empire, you have first century Christians rising up and kind of blossoming. It's the first time ever that you start having converts and the very beginning of the church, and so you have that right in the middle of a pagan empire where slavery was not only an institution, it was one of the greatest foundations of the empire itself.

So, you have Christians that are getting saved. They're out there trying to—first century Christians preaching the gospel. As they are doing that, you have slaves being converted, but you also have slave owners being converted, and this created quite the paradox because, again, the principles of Christianity, what the gospel is bringing is something that can liberate all of these people, not just the slaves, but also the slave owners.

So, the ones that succumb to all of the various lords of life, lowercase l, that may contribute to their abuses of that institution, they are being convicted. Everybody's being convicted. They're being saved, but like I said a second ago, you have the entire institution of slavery at this time protected by pagan laws that wouldn't permit you to do anything about it or to reform it or amend it or change it in any way, and so we ended last week by giving the analogy of—because people are like, well, why wouldn't first century Christians—why wouldn't the apostles have gone all after slavery and just demanded that it end and gone full-out revolution against it?

And we talked about last week about the kind of a parallel to that, given the size of first century Christianity, would be about like us in this room going after something like Big Pharma or Big Ag or what are some others?

All of the corruption going on in our military, any kind of political corruption that you can think of. It'd be like us in this room trying to go after that and break it down and start a revolution. There's like 10 of us in this room.

That's about the equivalent of first century Christianity going after slavery, the institution of slavery, which was one of the biggest building blocks of the Roman Empire in the first place, as was every other ancient civilization.

So we have to remember some of these things and understand the apostles, and of course, as they are carried along by the Spirit, they're playing the long game. They're setting the building blocks for the abolition of slavery, as well as, again, any other abusive institution that the depravity of man just absolutely annihilates.

And so we do know that slavery would eventually die, and it died because of the principles being laid out here, but it was not an all-out affront straight out of the gate. And so we have to remember all that, especially given the very popular commentary approach of this book, which is the exact opposite of what's actually going on here.

The Radical Equality of All in Christ

So this, of course, kind of with all of that in mind, sheds a lot of light on just how radical Paul's words were in Galatians when he said that in Christ there's neither Jew nor Greek, when he said that in Christ there's neither slave nor free, male nor female, etc.

When Paul came in and said that, when he said that all are one in Christ, you have to understand how absolutely taken aback everyone would have been when they heard those words, because the slave-owner dynamic, the slave-owner distinction was so important to the economies of that time, to the cultures of that time, again, pagan, and the way they operated, all these kinds of things.

Paul comes out and he says there's neither slave nor master, male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Greek. It's incredibly radical. So people nowadays want to complain that Paul, the apostles, Jesus, maybe even the prophets weren't, maybe Moses weren't radical enough, but that's because they are thinking about it through the context of 21st century United States of America, which is absolutely unfair in any kind of historical analysis, but all the rules can be broken when it comes to the Bible, apparently, when it comes to studying the Bible and giving it its fair context, historical context as well.

And by the way, you think, well, who cares about historical context? It's God-breathed. It's God's words. Absolutely true, but you have to think about it. God ordains the means as well as he ordains the ends, and his ordained means for delivering his word was in an historical context with actual men writing these letters with their own flair, like with their own personality in there.

How does that work? Do you ever wonder, like, why don't the gospels, you know, there's all this dispute. This is totally a rabbit trail, but you know, there's people that want to attack the synoptic gospels and the inconsistencies or the contradictions that are there.

Well, first of all, there aren't any contradictions, and if you want to hear something funny, go listen to a debate with any kind of, like, you know, any kind of apologist that's worth his salt against an atheist that's trying to attack the contradictions in the New Testament, it's kind of humorous.

The arguments that they bring to the table, the atheists bring to the table, these so-called contradictions, terrible argumentation, and they've lost every debate I've ever seen within that. But, okay, put that totally aside.

There are some differences in the gospels. There are things that are worded. There are stories that are told differently than others, and you got to ask, why is that the case? It's because God works through his people.

Matthew had his own audience he was talking to, his own personality, his own writing style that the Holy Spirit was able to Luke, same thing. John, same thing, and the gospel of Mark is the same as well.

And so, again, it has an historical context that we have to look at. Yes, it's God-breathed scripture, but it wouldn't be fair for us to also ignore the historical context because God used that as well to deliver his words to us.

And so, again, Paul was incredibly radical when you considered the framework, the foundation that he was laying as well as the other apostles for what would become the abolition of slavery. All are one in Christ was one of the messages in Galatians.

So, all of a sudden, when you had people coming to church, like walking into a church building, they were typically houses as we have already learned in our introduction to Philemon, the church in Colossae was in Philemon's house.

But when you had people walking into these houses, these buildings that were now meant for brothers and sisters to meet, congregate, and learn, you didn't have these third-class citizens known as slaves walking in anymore.

According to Paul, you had all equal in Christ. So, there was total, absolute equality in Christ. Now, you think about the ways that our culture has diluted the meanings of equality, and they oddly lost sight of the definitions of words in some cases as well.

Equality, equity, equality of outcomes, equality of opportunities, all of these silly things that people are arguing about these days. But we can't let the frustration with the changing of words and definitions and things like that, we can't let the frustration in that make us lose sight of the true meaning of some of these concepts and these words.

Equality is a great example. There is true, absolute equality for every single human being that is in Christ, and that was, again, a big message of Paul in Galatians as he was rebuking the legalizers who wanted to think they were high and mighty and something special.

And so, you had slaves walking into church in the first century that weren't third-class citizens anymore. They were just as equal as the slave owner, the master that may have even been going to church with them in the same place.

That certainly would have been the case with Philemon and Onesimus as we go through this book and learn more and more about their relationship together. They were equals. So, we have these important historical distinctions.

We have to make these distinctions to understand why we don't see these direct attacks on slavery from the apostles the way that the so-called liberation theologians wish they had. They want it black and white, cut and dry, exactly how they would do it now in the 21st century.

That's what they want, but that's not what we get. Well, do we get, though? What did the apostles do? All throughout the New Testament, any call to righteousness that they would make, and it permeates every epistle, every letter, every thing that the apostles wrote, and it's in the gospels as well, but any call to righteousness, any call to righteous living, any call to living a holy separate life coming out of the world, following Christ, of which, of course, there are many, like I said, throughout the entire New Testament, all of those things will eliminate the abuses of any social system.

We talked about that a little bit last week, but it bears repeating any chance we get. That's how the apostles approached it. Like I said a minute ago, they played the long game. They approached the abolition of slavery through sanctification, teaching sanctification, teaching the gospel first and foremost, repent and believe, but what is the greatest symptom, going back to Dad's topic just a few weeks ago, of salvation?

That is the manifestation of sanctification. That was quite the mouthful. People living a godly Christian life, sanctifying themselves in conjunction with the Holy Spirit, striving to be closer to the Lord the next day than they were the day before, the next year than they were ten years before.

If you get saved early on in life, like I had the blessing of, Maddie had the blessing of, many of us in this room perhaps, by the time you're 80 years old, you should be so much closer to the Lord through that process of persevering and sanctification than you were when you got saved that you think back and you see your eternal security in your growth, if that makes sense.

A lot of people struggle with the security, the assurance of their salvation. It's one of the most important realities of Scripture, and that is that we are assured of our salvation, that we can actually have peace.

We read about that in Romans 5 in Devo last week. We can have that peace, but as humans living in a linear time frame, moment-by-moment walk, we are growing both physically and hopefully spiritually every single year.

Sometimes we can struggle with that assurance, but it's the sanctification process that can give us that assurance where we can look back and say, you know what? I am closer to the Lord. I do love Him more now than I did last year or five years before.

I know more about Him. I have a desire to learn more about Him still that I've never had before. All of these things are not only part of the sanctification process, which is again exactly how the apostles approached abolishing egregious abuses of any institution, but it is also one of the greatest signs of our eternal security.

As we grow, we have even more of that assurance, if you can put it in those terms. I don't know if you can say you can have more assurance. You either have it or you don't, but I think you get the point.

Through that sanctification, you can actually see all of that play out in your own life. Again, on the contrary to what modern Christians in the context of the 21st century would prefer, there are many passages in the New Testament that actually utilize slavery.

This sounds bizarre to us with the context that we have, but they utilize slavery as a model for Christian principles and even as a type of our relationship to God. One of the most powerful words in all of the New Testament that's used pretty often is the word, is it doulos, Dad?

Doulos. In the King James, it's typically translated as servant. A more literal translation would be slave. You could also translate it like bond slave because there is kind of a neat connotation within it when it's used in those terms that implies that we are willing slaves.

In other words, we are slaves to Christ without a doubt, but we also are loving it at the same time. Kind of the idea of the bond servant, the bond slave. Personally, I like the more literal translation of slave anytime that word is used because it carries kind of a gravity to it because of how terrible the abuses of slavery are.

When you see the depravity of man come out in a master-slave distinction, and you have that person that is trying to just impose his power and abuse his power just because he wants to feel powerful, and he's breaking every code of conduct that the New Testament and the Old Testament gives in that relationship.

He is breaking every kind of moral guidance and law that God gives in Scripture, but he's doing it to satisfy his own lust and desire for the feeling of power. So we understand that, and when you have that picture in your head, it actually kind of makes the reality of us being slaves to Christ even more unbelievable because in him we see the perfect master.

We see that he could boss us around. He has even more prerogative to boss us around and mistreat us as the ultimate ruler and owner of everything than even that silly guy over here who thinks he's something and is actually nothing, and his life is but a vapor, and soon he's going to be judged for the way he's acting, and the slave very well may be in a higher place in heaven because of what he's going through.

And we see that actually Jesus over here has every right to do whatever he wants. He's the ruler, the creator of the universe, and our master, and we his slave, and yet he's the perfect master. He's the perfect master over our lives, and so again, slavery is actually used as a type of our relationship with God because we are his slave, and he is our master, and again, it's also used as a model for Christian principles as well.

And finally, as we get into it more and more, if we ever get past the introduction stuff, we will see those principles practically laid out before us. Slavery becomes a picture of how we're related to God, again, as his slaves and his servants, and repeatedly the apostles tell slaves to be obedient and to be submissive, loyal to their masters no matter how the masters treat them.

Again, we hear that, and it makes us feel a little bit funny because we're like, but look what they're going through. Why should they be told to be in an obedient and submissive point through all of that?

There's a couple of reasons, although I may not be able to flesh them out with the amount of time we have, and I kind of alluded to them already. Number one is that just like marriage is a type of Christ and his bride, this particular institution can be a type of us and our relationship to God.

What happens when the type of the bride of Christ and Christ himself is broken, whether that be through homosexual acts, whether it be through promiscuity before marriage or affairs during marriage, any kind of breaking of the marriage covenant that God gave us, what is that?

It's an abomination. Why is it an abomination? Because it breaks the picture. It breaks the type that marriage is supposed to represent between Christ and his church. The exact same thing is true in the slave and slave owner relationship.

If that is broken, and the slave is mistreated and abused and not treated like family, which as we will see, that was actually kind of the reality of a lot of these relationships at the time that Paul is writing.

It wasn't like slavery in the south of the United States. They're supposed to be treated like family, and when that is broken, it is an abomination, all right? So that is why we can, we are, and should be justified in the disgust we have when we do learn more about the abuses of slavery in any culture, but I would say since we are Americans, we have the right to put a little bit more thought into the total breakdown of morals that we saw during the time when slavery was happening, and it's because it was an abomination.

We are supposed to hate that kind of evil, that kind of sin. It broke the type. It broke the type that that's supposed to picture, and so, again, the apostles tell the slaves to be obedient, be submissive, but they also tell the masters that they are to treat their slaves with love and with kindness and with equity in the proper sense no matter what, and you could look at Ephesians 6, Colossians 4, which we'll be getting to in Dad's verse-by-verse lesson eventually, 1 Timothy chapter 6, 1 Peter chapter 2.

All of these are areas where the apostles are telling slaves to be obedient. It's the exact opposite of what contemporary 21st century liberal theologians and liberals in general want to hear out of the Bible, and it's a little bit uncomfortable because we have the cultural sway around us all the time, so it could be a little bit awkward to talk about, but if you're diligent and dive into the word and take the context seriously, the historical context as well as the text itself, it doesn't have to be uncomfortable.

It doesn't have to be awkward. In fact, we can actually glean some unbelievable truths in regard to our relationship with God through all of that. So, while nothing attacks the institutions of slavery in the way that modern man feels that it should, everything within Christian principles attack the abuses of any social system, including slavery, as I've said numerous times already.

People wonder why Jesus didn't start a revolt when He was on earth for 33 years to free slaves when He was here, but you have to understand that slavery was such an important part of the pagan Roman Empire that it, I said this I think already as well, it acted as one of the primary foundational pieces, perhaps even a cornerstone, for which that empire stood in the first place.

So, think about that for a second. Can you imagine going out and attacking right now any kind of equivalent cornerstone of a modern-day superpower, whether it be the United States, Russia, China? Just think of something that you could go attack, but that their entire culture and economy is built upon.

What would happen to you in about five seconds? It would not be a pretty picture, and so people wonder, well, why didn't Jesus do it? By the time that Jesus came to earth and was living within the Roman Empire and started His ministry, there were approximately 60 million slaves within the Roman Empire.

I don't know the population of most states, but I'm pretty sure that exceeds the population of every individual U .S. state. I think we have about 30 million in Texas. Is that right? I don't know. We might have to Google it, but 60 million, I'm pretty sure that exceeds just about every state population.

That is a ton of people. It's a ton of slaves, and that's how many there were within the Roman Empire. Again, can you imagine what a revolt would have looked like if 60 million slaves tried to take on the force of the Roman army?

It would have been a lot of people, that's for sure, but against the Roman army, which was the largest in the world at that time, the strongest, the most technologically advanced as well, it would have been an absolute massacre.

But people want to sit over here in the 21st century and complain why Jesus didn't start a revolution with 12 people. But here's the thing. Rather than a massacre, what happened was God providentially ordained the hope, that joyful expectation of abolishing slavery through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the spreading of the gospel throughout the world.

It was through changed hearts, regenerated hearts, people being regened, that the seeds of the end of slavery were sown in the Roman Empire, the very capital of slavery, by Christians. So, there's absolutely no parallel between the morals and the moral foundations and what the kind of reforms Christians have been able to bring to the table since the first century, so our entire history, the last two thousand years, than any other institution.

And if you want to combat that a little bit, and people want to give some examples of, well, look over here, a hundred percent of the time, if you dig deep enough, you can see that anything good that came out of anything other than Christianity was because it was borrowing the morals of Christianity.

They were being inconsistent with their own worldview because you can't have an opposing worldview to Christianity consistently and use parts of the worldview of Christianity, and yet people want to use that as an argument against, well, you don't need Christianity to have morals and blah blah blah blah blah.

And so, Christianity is the thing that, again, actually brought real change, changed hearts, and all of this kind of stuff, and eventually, again, slavery did die. Everywhere Christianity goes, eventually slavery dies, which is an interesting thought for a couple of reasons.

Number one, you got to ask, well, okay, if slavery could be a type of us and God, then why should we be happy when it dies? Well, the reason we should be happy about it is because of the depravity of man.

There are certain types. I mean, marriage is abused all the time. We're not going to go out and argue for the end of marriage because of that, though, because marriage is absolutely necessary according to not only the creation mandate, but also, I would argue, even the Great Commission.

I mean, think about it. What is the most fertile ground for spreading the gospel and saving people from the human viewpoint? Having a family and giving the gospel to your kids, first and foremost, and then you've just multiplied yourself by, in my case, five, perhaps seven or eight or however many someday, and then they go out and they do the same thing.

You know what I mean? And so, marriage is a particularly special type that we have. Slavery, on the other hand, because of the depravity of man, and when Paul comes in and they start talking about there's neither slave nor free, nor Greek, the abuses of that particular institution, as we discovered in our own country, think about it.

The abolitionists used the Bible for their cause, which was to end slavery. They could see that it was abused to such a degree it just needed to stop, and it did. And you look throughout all of history and everywhere Christianity goes, slavery eventually dies.

But there's another interesting thing about slavery, though, is it actually never dies. It's actually always going to be with us no matter how much anyone ever hates it. Both in the negative sense, as long as this world is as it is before Jesus comes back, somewhere in the world there will be the bad kind of slavery, for sure, because of depravity, because of the devil, because of our enemies.

But it will never go away even when this age is done. It's still going to be here in the Millennial Kingdom. I would argue it's in heaven as we speak, and it will probably be there even after the Millennial Kingdom.

Why? Because we will always be slaves to Jesus. He will always be the master. We will always be his servants. And so the institution of slavery, quote-unquote, it carries so much baggage because of where our minds go with it, but it was set up to represent something, and unfortunately we absolutely obliterated it with our depravity, and it needed to end because of that in wherever it is.

But at the same time, we will always perpetually be slaves ourselves, slaves to Jesus, and thankfully so. It's an amazing thing when you think about it in those terms. So back to Philemon now. Well, first of all, does anyone have any thoughts or anything like that before I keep yapping?

Go ahead. I was just thinking as you were talking about just how amazing it is that for a slave at that time or any time in history, even if you have no freedom over many decisions in your life, depending on, you know, what era you lived in, what kind of slave-master relationship it was, you don't have control over many things in your life.

You do have an opportunity to follow Jesus and to go through that process, that sanctifying process of a relationship with him, and I just picture, of course, this is like a very, probably very a human mindset, but just picturing what if the apostles decided, you know, let's just take on slavery and, you know, point out who the bad guys are, who the good guys are, that is not, that's not the gospel.

We're all sinners. Whether you're, you know, a master or a slave, slaves are still sinners in need of Jesus, and the problem isn't that they're oppressed, it's that they're afraid. So Jesus is the answer regardless of where you find yourself, whether you're in any station of life, you know, there is no bond or free, there's no man or woman, everyone is depraved, and everyone needs Jesus, and everyone can, you know, every child of God can walk through that sanctifying process, and it can be, you can be Joseph or you can be someone who uses your station, your situation in life as an excuse not to obey God, and you'll be miserable because of it, and I think that is just a, like a human condition more than like a situational thing, like is your mind, because you can be very privileged and be miserable because you don't see, you just, you don't have the mind of Christ, you only see, you know, how you're a victim, or you can say, I'm a slave, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna be a good one, and I'm gonna obey the Lord, and I'm gonna be an example to everyone around me by just letting His Word dwell in me and being salt and light, and so that's kind of what I was thinking as you're talking through all of that, and I think the gospel is more powerful, obviously, the way that the apostles handled it, not creating groups of good guys, bad guys.

Everybody's a bad guy. That's a good way of putting it.

Yeah, Ashton's main point there was everybody's a bad guy. It wasn't like, it was, well, here's what's funny about it. If you look super deep into it, Jesus was kind of creating an us and them dynamic, but it was not the kind of modern day version of it that we think of, the oppressed versus the oppressor.

The us and them was the sheep and the goats, but Ashton's point is in regard to proclaiming the gospel, there's not a, there's not distinctions made. There's not, they're pointing out the bad guys here, and the good guys are over here.

Actually, everybody's the bad guy. Every human is depraved and has a stony heart that needs to be made flesh. Therefore, the gospel is repent and believe and pick up your cross and bear it. It's not wherever you are.

Yeah, it's not, don't worry, sweetheart, I'm going to save you. I'm going to protect you now, and we're going to go over here into the safe place, and the bad guys are eventually going to be conquered.

They were, it was a big, the gospel went out to everyone. It was a big thing, not for certain good guys or whatever it may be, quote unquote, and Ash, I agree, and I think that's exactly the heart by which Paul is approaching, and Peter, in those citations I gave earlier, all of those New Testament passages where slaves are told to be obedient.

It's not because they were pro-slavery, necessarily. Slavery was, that was just the economic, the socioeconomic setup in their day, so that is the context in which they were writing. They were telling them to be obedient, not because they're pro-slavery, but because they need to be good Christians and emulate the attributes of God, and to be okay with the reality that in his sovereignty, just as Philemon begins, and Paul says, I am a slave, I am a prisoner of Jesus Christ.

In his sovereignty, they are in that position for a good purpose. They may not know it yet, but that is a reality, so you need to be obedient, be submissive, all of these various things. If Paul were living in our day, where we do not have slave owners and slaves here in the United States, he would be telling us the same message, but it may be something more in the context of us and our gross civil magistrates, our government, our government leaders, that we are under the authority, that we are under their authority, and to a degree have to obey.

We're not paying taxes because we want to, or any other. We're not going to be drafted because we want to. We're not going to go fight their wars because we want to, and it's within reason, of course.

There can be scriptural reasons when it comes to government specifically. Maybe that's not the best parallel to use, because he does tell us about that in Romans 13, but there are modern parallels. Paul would be able to teach these exact same messages to us, but it would be different because our socioeconomic setup is completely different than Rome.

So, it's not because Paul was pro-slavery. It's because that is where Onesimus was. That's where the slave was, and he was telling them to emulate Christ even in that situation, to Ashton's point.

So, that's great. Yeah, go ahead, Matt. We're talking about types and whatnot. This whole picture in and of itself, the slave robbing this man Philemon and fleeing away, running away with it, and then Paul coming and saying, it's a perfect picture of imputation.

Jumping ahead.

Well, not today's, but you're definitely getting to some good stuff that I'm excited about.

It's all really good stuff. I'm just seeing the picture and the type.

Yeah, you're exactly right. I mentioned in our intro that Paul teaches some of the greatest, deepest doctrines of the Bible in this tiny letter. Imputation is absolutely one of them,.

To Matt's point, but go ahead. Well, it's just like you see people breaking the types all the time. Then you have Paul here, a godly man. He's bringing that picture of Christ in his own life, character and attitude, just boom, right there in that situation.

He's creating that image after God, just with the way he acts and the way he forgives, which is the theme of this book, or the theme of your lesson, really. And he's like, look, whatever he owes you, put that on me.

So I'm just like, man, we could be showing types of Christ. We're supposed to.

In just everyday situations. Absolutely. This little letter is full of it. All those kinds of things, pictures, symbols. Paul, at the beginning of Romans 9, kind of emulated Christ when he said, if I could, I would give my life for all of my brothers, talking about every Jew.

And then in Philemon, we hear, impute his unrighteousness to me and impute my righteousness to him, essentially. It's not that Paul is trying to be Jesus in the ultimate sense, but he is trying to live like Jesus in the model sense.

I'm having trouble articulating it, but with Jesus as our ultimate model, striving our best within our means and what we're even able to do, let's do our best to live like Jesus would, which by the way, in many cases, includes the absolute rebuke of sin and getting angry at things like selling in God's house and things like that.

So you take the whole package. He was a model for living a Christian walk on the full scale of emotions. And so that's what Paul was trying to do, Matt, not only in teaching Philemon forgiveness, but in modeling the imputation that Jesus did for us, but on a very small scale.

In Romans 9, in the sacrifice that Jesus made for his people, Paul was willing to make that sacrifice for all of his Jewish brothers. That's an amazing thing to pull out of it for sure. And when we get to that verse, we'll talk about that more.

It's even more amazing to picture how the whole reason Paul has this ability to do such a sweet, kind, pure attitude thing is because Christ did the ultimate and the Spirit gives him, Paul, that ability to be that man that Paul is.