Philemon: Introduction and Overview

All righty. So I'm covering our

Wednesday night study for this week and next week. And I was trying to find something that would be short that I would just be able to pinpoint.

And so Philemon is pretty short. And we will see as our conversation goes whether it's one part or two, but at least

I have that liberty to extend. I was also thinking about, and I might for next week, talking about the brevity of life.

You know, I was reading through Psalm 144 at some point recently and I was talking about how the breadth of life for man is so short.

And it got me thinking about how many times we actually read that, but how often do we think about the shortness of our lives and what that should mean for us.

So perhaps we'll talk about that next week or some other time. But for now, I want to discuss the book of Philemon.

So what I'm going to do is I have the ESV up here, different translations. The Greek is kind of interesting for this one.

So your translation, if you have something different, might be a little different. But I'm going to read it straight from here.

So feel free to follow along reading on the screen or reading in your Bible or just listening.

I'm going to turn it here so I can actually read what I'm reading.

Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus and Timothy, our brother, to Philemon, our beloved fellow worker in Apathia, our sister and archipiests, our fellow soldier, and the church in your house.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always when

I remember you in my prayers because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the

Lord Jesus and for all the saints. And I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.

For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.

Accordingly, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love's sake

I prefer to appeal to you. I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus, I appeal to you for my child,

Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.

I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart. I would have been glad to keep him with me in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel.

But I prefer to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion, but of your own accord.

For this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you may have him back forever, no longer as a bondservant, but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother, especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the

Lord. So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me.

If he has wronged you at all or owes you anything, charge that to my account. I, Paul, write this with my own hand,

I will repay it, to say nothing of your owing me even your own self.

Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ. Confident of your obedience

I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say. At the same time, prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping that through your prayers

I will be graciously given to you. Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you, and so do

Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Is that the

Mark from the gospel? Yes, I believe so,

John Mark. He refers to him in Colossians as well, and if you remember, that was the reason for the split between Paul and Barnabas at one point, where Paul and Silas go off one way and Barnabas and Mark go another way, because Mark had departed from them for a bit and then came back and they were in disagreement, but we see in Colossians that they were reconciled.

He goes, you've received instructions, if he comes to you, receive him, you know, so here they are together and on good terms.

We also see Demas there, who you might remember is someone who actually later leaves Paul, so he's no longer with them later on, but this letter comes by the hands of Onesimus and also

Tychicus, who brings the letter to the

Colossians. So I think they have two messengers who come, Tychicus, I'm going to keep saying his name wrong,

I'm sorry, and Onesimus, who is referenced in the end of Colossians, but it's from Paul and Timothy, and then he talks about all the people who are with him who send greetings.

So how many people are familiar with the letter to Philemon, that short little, brief little letter?

I see a couple hands, Baptist Revival, I see that hand, right? So would you say it's a letter that you're pretty familiar with, or,

I've read it, I know it's in there. I hear something in the back, but I can't, okay.

So what do we know about this letter? What kind of letter would you say this is? A persuasive one, indeed.

It's a personal letter, but is it just personal? I think that was the interesting part for me.

There's a couple things about this letter that I always found interesting. I found it to be, when

I was younger, it really seems like Paul's giving him a guilt trip. It seems like Paul's sort of manipulating him into a situation of like, hey, this is what you got to do.

It just seems very, you owe me, yeah. It seems like it's very heavy in that sense, right?

I was also going to say, historically, at least in America, it's a controversial letter as well.

It can be used to justify some bad things, slavery.

Yeah, it's controversial regarding the issue of slavery. When it talks about bond servant there, other translations are a little better, and they just say slave, and that's what he was.

So yeah, so that's an issue. It's also something of a public letter.

Not fully public. I mean, we're reading it. There's two letters that come.

There's a letter to the Colossians from Paul and Timothy, and all those people who send greetings.

But here, when Paul is writing to Philemon, now Philemon, he's the intended addressee as far as the main person, but he also references

Apphia, who's probably his wife, and Archippus, who might be his son, and there's talk about whether he's actually in charge of the house church or not there.

But then he says, the church in your house. So that's who he's addressing it to. That's who the greetings are to.

This is from Paul and Timothy, and all you guys. So it's not saying to the church at Colossae.

When letters are sent to the churches, you normally get a city name, right? To the saints at Ephesus, or to the church at Thessalonica.

And so you have the entire body of that city. They didn't have yet the denominational splits and all that stuff.

But they probably met in somewhat smaller groups. They would meet in houses.

And so why do you think this seemingly very personal letter is addressed to not only

Philemon and his family, but also the church meeting in their house? And why does he end the personal letter with, and by the way, all these guys say hi.

Oh, you're reading to Philemon? What's that about? I have a few reasons, possibly.

It was a public thing that happened. I mean, everyone probably knew that Onesimus ran away.

And then him coming back was going to be a big thing. Maybe he would even get pushed back from people, like, why are you taking him back?

Also, I don't know if you're probably going to get into this, but it's a picture of the gospel. Yes, and yes.

And she didn't see my notes ahead of time. But yeah, on the one hand, it's a personal issue.

Onesimus was Philemon's slave. And based on what we read, he ran away.

And it's likely that he stole money or somehow defrauded him on his way out.

And so when Onesimus leaves, and under those conditions, he's a fugitive.

He's a criminal. And so now he's coming back.

And not only would Philemon be aware of the situation and his family members, but more than likely the whole household would be aware of it.

If he was a slave of Philemon, they were probably aware of him.

They had seen him. And they were aware of the situation that he left behind.

And so while this isn't addressed to the entire church at Colossae, it is addressed to the people who would know about what's going on.

And the greetings come from the people because he says Onesimus has come to him in his imprisonment.

And there he experienced the new birth. He came and he heard the gospel. He got saved.

And so now he's being discipled by Paul and all those other brothers are there.

And he ever has like, hey, tell me your testimony. Well, you know, and so through their conversation and through the things, these people would also be aware of this situation.

So on the one hand, it's private, but it's not fully private. People are aware of it. And so this letter, while he's addressing

Philemon, because Philemon has a choice to make about what he's going to do here in bringing

Onesimus back or and how he's going to handle that relationship. But it's also on display for the church there to recognize how they should be viewing it and how they should be responding to it.

So it's personal, but it's also public to an extent. Thinking about this, who do you feel would be the most impacted by this letter?

That might seem obvious, but I'm just curious as you read through. Yeah, I wasn't thinking of that.

But yeah, there is there is something to say about slavery in this and depending on how you want to read what what

Paul is saying. Onesimus. Now I'm thinking, you know, initially when

I was younger, like Philemon's really, you know, sort of like he's on the hot seat. He is. There's this expectation is coming and the apostle

Paul is writing him and he's got a letter specifically for him. But how about Onesimus, who's the fugitive from justice, who, you know, has traveled who knows how far.

Does anyone know where Paul is writing from when he writes this letter? Anyone?

I'm not sure. So I was hoping someone could nail it down for me. Possibly Rome.

Some people think Rome. But in terms of imprisonment, he doesn't say where he's at. There were time there was a time where he was imprisoned in Ephesus, you know.

So it's possible. Now Ephesus is only about 120 miles away from Colossae, where Rome is about 1 ,300 miles away.

Now, is it possible that Onesimus traveled all that way? Possible, you know, and then traveled all the way back.

It's certainly possible. We don't know for sure. People debate on, you know, some letters are clearly

Roman imprisonment and then some are in Caesarea, is he in Ephesus.

So there's points and counterpoints. So my point is not to say that exactly what it is.

But he might be as far as Ephesus. He might have gone there and that was another city close by that he might feel some, you know, he'd be somewhat anonymous.

He wouldn't be known necessarily. He's over a hundred miles away from, you know, where he's from.

And then maybe how did he come to meet Paul? Did he make a beeline for Paul? That doesn't seem likely.

You know, like if you want to hear about the gospel or something like why not? This is another interesting thing for Onesimus.

He belongs to a master who's a believer, right?

Who has a church meeting in his house, who's seeing worship on a regular basis.

And he ran away from that. And then he finds himself wherever Paul is.

And it's curious, it was maybe Epaphras, because was Epaphras over there at the time and he would have recognized him because he was from Colossae too and said, hey, what are you doing over here?

You know, and conversation ends up happening. Some way, somehow he ends up talking to Paul and he gets saved.

So there's a lot of things that we don't know all the details about, but it's very interesting when we think about it.

So yeah, thinking Philemon's kind of on a hot seat, but there's Onesimus, the fugitive from justice, who is coming back and saying, okay, you know, now

Paul has probably encouraged him. I know, you know, you know your master.

He's a good man. I mean, look at what he talks about. I don't think, you know, we're very diplomatic and people, when they send their, when you look at old letters and stuff, and we send greetings and people are just, they're buttering up some higher, some higher up, right?

Some King or some Royal official. Oh, we're so glad for you're the King. And you're so wonderful. And you know, so Paul's not going to lie to someone, you know, we've seen some of his letters and they're not always that, that nice and pleasant because he's got serious correction that needs to go on.

But he offers this in his greeting. I thank my

God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the

Lord Jesus for all the saints. And I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.

For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.

I mean, do we think Paul's lying, you know, exaggerating to butter it up?

I mean, is Philemon a perfect man? No, we can say that because we know there's only one, right?

So Philemon, as good as a man as he probably was, was not a perfect man.

You know, Paul's writing this letter encouraging him, saying your reputation, you know, think about Paul and, and where they've obviously met and we read later on that, you know, it goes, you owe me your, your own life, right?

So Philemon came to Christ through Paul's ministry, right?

So they have a relationship, a personal relationship. He, he says, like, if you consider me a partner, like there, there's a love there, there's a connection there.

And he's saying he's joyful and comforted because of his brother, Philemon.

And what do we, what do we know about Philemon just based on this little bit of information? Like economically, socially, got a church in his house.

He has slaves. He had at least one, right? So he's probably, as Alex mentioned, probably wealthy, right?

If we're talking about the, the wealthy class might feel some conviction about how they ought to be viewing things. He's probably well -to -do, probably a business owner, probably socially he's got good standing.

He's known in the church. He has a reputation in the church. I mean, he, he writes a letter directly from the

Apostle Paul, right? And not just like Paul telling someone else, Hey, go tell that Philemon guy, you know, to get his act together.

No, he gets this glowing, you know, accommodation from Paul about how good he was and how much an encouragement he is to the body.

There's a couple of things, you know, we've talked time and again here about the idea of family worship, right?

That we should be, you know, Sunday should not be the only day you're cracking open your Bible, right?

Nor Wednesday, but you should have daily reading, daily time in prayer, and you should engage in family worship.

You should be spending time with your family, opening up the word, singing, praying, the like.

And so there's different things that you can do. We've talked about the different resources out there.

You can sing, you can pray, you can just read through the Bible, you can do catechism, you know, all these different things.

But one of the things that I've done with my family at times was just open up a book of the

Bible and start reading through and discussing it and saying, all right, what can we learn from here?

So I want to do a little bit of that just to give you a sense of just how relatively simple that is to do and the examples that we can be getting from that.

So I just want to start for a moment talking about the beginning, that greeting, grace to you and peace from God, our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, I was reading a commentary on it and one of the theologians was saying, you know, it's a conventional greeting, but it's never just like some pious throwaway line.

It actually has weight, it has meaning. This letter is meant to be a means of grace and the purpose and intention of the letter is that you would have peace.

Where does he say? Never becomes merely a pious phrase or throwaway remark.

This letter is to be a means of grace intending to result in peace, peace being the rich harmony of human beings with God and one another.

And this can only come about if God provides these heart shaped gifts to his people.

So the idea of grace and peace is something that we do want to see in the lives of others and that we do want to be helpful to and then the

Word of God brings about that grace. In verse 4, you know, what do we see?

I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers. Why does he thank God for them in his prayers?

What do you think? It's not meant to be hard, it's just with the girls.

It's not a trick question. Anyone?

Buehler? This is definitely gonna be a two -parter I can see. What's that?

He's encouraged. It's the fruit of his ministry.

They were birthed out of him proclaiming the gospel to them. It's like they're his children.

Well, I mean, as a Christian, it's a natural thing. We thank God all the time for what he's done here at Hope.

It's him, it's his church that he's building. And that's actually what I'm looking for specifically.

It's what he's done. When he says I thank my God always when I think of you, well,

I mean, because their salvation, the ministry, the fruit of the ministry, is all because God is sovereign over it.

So, of course, thank you, Lord. Thank you for saving them.

Thank you for blessing this ministry. Thank you for bearing fruit. And he says, I remember you in my prayers because I hear of your love and of the faith.

So there's a couple things there. I say, you know, when we pray, and even throughout our lives, we should have an attitude of gratitude towards God.

And we should be regular in prayer. You know, that's something you always see the Apostle Paul talking about. This is when he's praying for them.

And go ahead. You can see aspects of the Lord's prayer in how it's stated, in how he writes.

Go ahead. You want to elaborate on that? I mean, yes, we have, it's a pattern, right?

It's a type, it's a model. And so, yeah, you will see those things. God our Father, right?

And seeing what he's doing and praying for others, praying for our needs, and praying for others, praying for the kingdom to advance and his will to be done.

Jerry. The other thing that I think that Paul is doing here, you tongue -in -cheek talked about it being manipulative.

But I think what he's doing is he's reminding Philemon, I can't say it all of a sudden.

Philemon. Yeah, Philemon. He's reminding him of number one, the history they have together.

Number two, the relationship that he has with God, the relationship he has with his fellow

Christians in the church there. And a lot of other stuff he's reminding him of.

But I'm sure that Philemon, Philemon. He's a fantastic piece of steak,

Philemon. I thought they're going to go for the Jamaican, Philemon. Yes, I hope.

I'm sure that humanly speaking, he's got to be at least a little perturbed that his slave has run from him.

So, yeah. So, what Paul is doing is he's reminding him where he's,

Paul, that guy, where he stands in Christ and what the expectation is as a

Christian, how he should be viewing this. He's re -educating him, if you will, so that I know that, let's take for example, if I'm angry at something, right, or concerned about something, a lot of times

Dorcas will remind me of my stance in Christ. And all of a sudden, that little bit of anger starts to go away because there's a bigger picture here.

And that's what he's saying to him. Look, there's a bigger picture. Remember who you are in Christ.

Look at what God has done in your life. Look what you've done for my life and I, for your life. This gentleman who has run from you is now a

Christian. He's one of us. Right. It's something about perspective, you know, and having the right perception in this.

So, I hope I didn't derail. No, no, not at all. So, there's a couple things.

So, I mean, one, he's for us to remember as a example for us is that, you know, him thanking

God and him being regular in prayer. This is a common theme in Paul's letter and it is a pattern for us.

We should be grateful to God for the body of Christ. And are we regularly remembering them in our prayers?

You know, verse 5, talking about the content of that Thanksgiving, because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the

Lord Jesus and all the saints. Right. And then when he'll be talking about how he's derived comfort and joy because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed.

Keep in mind, Paul is a kingdom minded guy. You know, he goes through it one in one passage talking about all the persecution he's gone through, you know, the shipwrecks and the stoneings and all that, you know, danger from the

Gentiles, danger from the countrymen, all this stuff. And it goes on top of all those external things.

I have the daily pressure on me with concern for the churches. You know, when the churches are dealing with heresy, he's distressed.

When they're dealing with sin, he's grieved. But when they're encouraging one another, when they're building one another up, he's joyful and he's encouraged.

Right. So, he identifies with the body of Christ. And so it's a reminder for us.

So we have this letter here and it's starting off as where it's, especially if you think about this letter and if you read it alongside

Colossians and you realize Paul's writing these letters and, you know, you know, to the saints at Colossae, he's got all these things on his mind and there's doctrinal issues he's addressing and stuff.

But you can see that he wants, there are certain themes that are running through his mind.

So in Colossians 1, talking about reconciliation, he's the head of the body of the church, he's the beginning, the firstborn from the dead and everything he might be preeminent.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross.

Because you who are once alienated, hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

If indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has proclaimed, been proclaimed in all creation under heaven and of which

I, Paul, became a minister. And then in chapter 3, the same one, think about some of the other themes that he's talking about.

Here he's addressing the master and the slave. Here there is not

Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all.

Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another.

And if one has a complaint against one another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful.

And was there anything else? Oh, yeah. Oops, too far.

Who wants to read that for me? Me neither. And then when he's talking in Colossians, he gives something similar that he gives in the letter to Ephesians, talking about households and how they relate to one another, wives and husbands and children and parents, bond servants, obey and everything, those who you're earthly masters, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the

Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.

You are serving the Lord Christ, for the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done.

And there is no partiality. And then there's a masters, treat your bond servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven, right?

You also have a master in heaven. I knew what it said. Okay. Question, comment?

Just a comment. I thought it was interesting that he had the thing about the relationship between bond servants and masters in Colossians, considering he was also sending this letter to fine laymen about a mess.

Right. So here it is sort of emphasizing that, you know, none of us can really get into a mindset of a time when there were slaves.

And as you read these verses, it's so radically different that, you know, this person was your slave, but he's a brother now.

Right. I mean, it really is. At the time, it had to be earth shattering that these are issues that they're dealing with that, you know, yeah, he's my slave, but he's my brother.

And how do I treat my brother? You know, praise God. Yeah. I mean, we see these things to some degree in the

Old Testament. You know, he's sending Onesimus back and he's saying, I would have loved to kept him with me and that he could serve in your stead.

You know, he's like, I know your character. I know you'd love to help me if you could. And here you probably thought you didn't have an extra slave to spare because this one's useless.

And all of a sudden, you know, Onesimus, his name means useful. And yet that's the play on words because he was useless.

Apparently he didn't have a good attitude. He wasn't a good worker. And then he took off on him and stealing on the way out.

So now he's he's useless. And he comes to Paul, you know, and it's interesting because in Deuteronomy, it says that if you receive, you know, if a slave runs away from a master, don't return him.

Now that's talking about not Hebrew slaves, not people who have indentured themselves because they need the support or their, you know, there was slavery in the

Old Testament as ordained by God was dealing against something with the hardness of people's hearts because they, you know, but it was one of those things where it provided, it provided sustenance and provision.

Like if you couldn't pay and survive on your own, there weren't credit cards, there wasn't the welfare office, there wasn't all these, you know, different things.

You went to someone who was prosperous and you basically put yourself in bondage to them that they would provide you work, you know, and they would provide you with food and clothing and stuff like that.

So that was perfectly legal, right? It was something you chose to do because it was better than the alternative.

Then there were slaves who were slaves because they had to pay off a debt, they had committed a crime, they stole and they had no way to repay.

They could be put into slavery to return the debt. And then there were prisoners of war where the other alternative is that they could kill them.

So all things considered, they'd probably rather live, right? It's something about, you know, they were laws about how you were to treat the slave, even to the point of releasing them at that year of jubilee.

So there was mercy in there, there was expectations of right treatment. You know, if you mistreat them, you hurt them, then you had to release them and pay for the harm you had caused them.

There was protections for them. The pagans knew nothing of that. So if a pagan ran away from his master and decided to live in the land, you were to treat him as just another foreigner.

You weren't supposed to send him back, right? They had come to the land of mercy. Now here he escapes

Philemon, he runs away, but he gets saved and he's telling him, you have an obligation to go back to your master.

You know, he's repented of his sins, but repentance means not only change of mind, but that should affect a change in behavior.

And if there are people you have wronged and it's in your power to make it right, then a sure sign of genuine repentance is that you're making it right.

So he's sending him back and saying, you know, go and face him. But he's a godly man.

He's refreshed the saints before. And Paul is going to encourage him to grow in his love and stretch him even further in his sanctification there.

Yeah. And even like in Exodus 21, for example, when it talks about, you know, they're caught stealing another man there to be put to death.

That's the whole difference between antebellum slavery that happened here as opposed to indentured servitude.

Even in Genesis 24, when Abraham sends out his servant to go get a wife for Isaac, you know, it says in verse 2, he said to his servant, that's the same

Hebrew word for slave, the oldest of his household were charged of all that he owned.

Please place your hand under my thigh. So, you know, he had, you know, a high up position in Abraham's life, you know, and he had charge of these things.

And so they were part of the family, I guess you could say, to a certain degree. Oh, yeah. I mean, slaves could be high ranking.

They could have their own possessions. I mean, again, it was very different than the chattel slavery that we had in America. That was akin to man stealing.

It was a capital offense. Even in the Roman Empire, where anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of the entire population were slaves.

Some of them had different roles. Some of them had a better situation than other slaves. Some of them had power and prestige even as a slave.

Some of them were even wealthy as slaves. Some of them could buy their own freedom.

You know, when Paul talks about slaves, you know, he says if you came to the

Lord as a slave, don't worry about it. Remain a slave. He goes, if you can gain your freedom, he doesn't say run away, but if you can lawfully get out of your slavery, by all means do that.

So I don't know the specifics of their situation where, you know, I don't think that they were

Hebrews that he's talking to. I think these are Gentile believers. But in the Roman Empire, that's what the situation was.

So some people say, why wasn't, you know, why didn't they speak more about slavery? Why didn't they speak more about war?

These aren't, you know, there's so much evil out there and corruption. But the idea is, these things change over time.

You know, when the gospel comes to people, you know, the question later on in Philemon is, is he encouraging him to release him?

He says receive him and not just as a bond slave, but more than a slave, you know, as a brother.

So is he telling him to release him or he's telling him you have so much more now?

I think we recognize as believers that slavery is not a good institution.

It was necessary and the hardness of heart, I think there's reasons why, you know, Jesus says that he gave, Moses gave a certificate of divorce because of the hardness of your heart, right?

But he says that God hates divorce and let not man separate what God has joined together. Slavery was another one of those things where,

I mean, we think about in the Old Testament, there was polygamy, you know. But again, the hardness of people's heart, willing to care for others and bring them into your household and meet their needs without looking for something in return, you know, more than just being productive and being efficient.

So there was slavery, there was multiple wives, there were different things because the fullness of the gospel hadn't come, you know, and hearts weren't changed to that degree where, you know, we don't buy our

Christian brothers and sisters anymore, right? We recognize that God's ideal is for one man and one woman in marriage and that we should be caring for the needs of others, showing hospitality and meeting them, not just enslaving them.

And so I think it's one of those things where if they had tried to start off that way, they would have had the ire of the empire for different reasons and a different focus where the gospel enough and saying there's another king was enough of an issue for them to deal with.

But as Christians, as we come to Christ, as we grow in our sanctification, we should recognize how we should be loving one another.

And we would say that the general equity of what's written in Colossians 3 applies to people today, like working not in the way of eye service or to your earthly boss, for example.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you can still apply this to general employment, how we should be treating one another.

Yeah, I was just going to interject something similar, but now I'll go to another vein. With the way that Philemon is being, did

I say it right this time, at least close? Well, for all I know, I say

Philemon. Okay. Well, him and Onesimus, I got that one right,

Onesimus. The relationship would have been different before because he was not a

Christian. Now the relationship has changed, which is obvious, but I think that's also what

Paul is reminding him of. Again, trying to skirt that bit of anger that might be there, or the expectation that maybe there's some justified punishment for Onesimus.

And I think he's saying, look, this is a different man, his heart is changed, he's even different in relationship to you.

And I think that's what's being emphasized. Well, I have plenty more to say, but not enough time.

So I have next week. So with our last few minutes, are there any questions or comments on what we've taken so far?

Again, it's a short book and there's something, there's actually a few things for us to learn here.

A lot of different things that can be applied as we look at that, as we look at Colossians, as we consider the different things.

I mean, what we see in Colossians and Ephesians as far as like, when he's telling them what it looks like, you know, in household relationships, husband and wife, parents and children, slaves and masters.

Now you can say bosses and employees, right? These are your everyday relationships.

These are your normal relationships. And he's telling them this, this is what you're going to see every day.

And this is how you should be looking at it and viewing it. And now you have a situation where here's a brother who's doing well for himself, who has good standing in the community, most likely good standing in the church.

He's got the church meeting out of his home. He's got this reputation, but now he's got to bring, now he's asked to reconsider this man who had left and who knows how much damage he had left or whatever.

Paul's not specific about it. He says, you know, if he's wronged you, if he's defrauded you, charge it to my account.

So we'll talk about that. But think about what he means about bringing him into the, receiving him, you know?

And so we'll talk about that later on. Is he talking about, all right, just receive him and then send it back to me? Or is, you know, he's saying, well, prepare a room for me.

So I'm hoping to come to you, right? So what kind of relationship is he expecting Philemon to have with him after the fact?

Because what do we see here? He talks about getting him forever. Now, again, you can be thinking about just the eternal state.

There's a lot of things I want to address, but he was parted from you for a while that you might have him back forever, no longer as a bond servant or a slave, but as a beloved brother, especially to me.

How much more do you both in the flesh and the Lord? I mean, that doesn't seem like, Hey, just shake hands and say, all right.

It's like, he's looking to him to have another relationship with him.

And think about that as someone who was a slave and now he's not coming back gainfully employed, right?

He's like, Oh, I got this job. I'm doing this thing online. You know, I can, I can support myself.

Think about what the master had to do for the slaves was provide them with room and board, provide them with food, provide them with clothes.

And so now here he's coming back and say, Hey, remember this guy who was a really lousy worker and who stole from you and then ran away.

Yeah. He wants to come back and live with you. That's cool. Right? So thinking about how the gospel changes things and how it should impact us.

Uh, there's, there's so much to talk about, just what your appetite, thinking about it, dwelling on it and see what you want to participate in the conversation next week.

But I mean, think about the things that divide us. I can't tell you as someone who's been in churches for years, you know, who hear people who feel like they don't fit in because like, well, everyone's married.

Right. And I'm not, or, um, everyone's single and we're married.

Like who are we going to hang out with? Like we have kids or we don't have kids and, and how do we mesh with each other?

Or, you know, they're in a different season of life. They're in a different thing economically, socially, they see all these different things that divide them.

And like, how can I have a relationship with them? Or how can I really fellowship with them? We're so different.

What do we have in common? But think about the people who are in this letter. Here's Paul, the bachelor, the missionary, the church planter, the prisoner writing to the, the family man, the well -to -do business owner, you know, um, who's, who's a leader in the church.

And then we have the slave. Again, seems like he's single, right?

Uh, seems like he has a bad reputation from, you know, a checkered past. And he's saying, do you consider me a partner?

Receive him as you would receive me. I'm sending you my very heart. How does that impact how we should be viewing one another?

How we should be responding to one another, how we should love one another, what sort of relationship we should have as a body.

All these different situations, all these different, whether it be social, economic, you know, domestic, everyone's got a different thing.

And even if they don't, they feel like it's different. Like my situation's different. You don't understand. And, and look at what he's calling them to.

Something to whet your appetite to discuss next time. And then, um, we'll talk about a few more things.

I won't complete it, but we're out of time. So I'll pray and then we'll go to prayer. Sound good. No last questions.