HE SETS THE PRISONER FREE Studies in Philemon

HE SETS THE PRISONER FREE

Studies in Philemon

Preached at St Andrew’s Church, Islington, Toronto

August 2011

 

(1) Becoming a True Community of Faith

(Philemon 1-7)

 

 (2) Love’s Urgent Appeal for a Son

(Philemon 8-16)

 

                                                  (3) “Charge That to My Account”

(Philemon 17-20a)

 

(4) Christian Hospitality

(Philemon 20b -25)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7 Aug 2011

HE SETS THE PRISONER FREE

(1) Becoming a True Community of Faith

(Philemon 1-7)

 

For the month of August we will be studying the shortest of all of Paul’s letters, an epistle that can easily be missed as we go through the twenty-seven books of the New Testament.  There are only 335 words in the original Greek of Philemon but each has something to reveal to us – in a way that none of his other writings can – of the personal life and attributes of Paul the Apostle.  Here we see Paul the man. And Paul the gentleman.  Philemon has been called the polite epistle, “Dignity, generosity, prudence, friendship, affection, politeness, skillful address, purity, are all apparent here” one writer notes. “True delicacy, fine address, consummate courtesy, nice strokes of rhetoric … it shows the perfect Christian gentleman.” ¹

 

But Philemon is more than a model of Christian courtesy and caring correspondence.  It provides us insight into the nature of Christian community, the way Christians handle conflict, their attitude towards the burning social issue of their time – slavery, and also the way Christians are expected to provide an open heart and an open home.   These 335 words have a great deal to teach us about our own Christian discipleship.

 

            In these verses Paul has much to tell his correspondent – and us – of the nature of what it means to be a true community of faith.

 

I A FAMILY

 

Paul is speaking to a family, a community, a home in which mother and father and son all live, but in which another family is to be found: a house church who become themselves brother and sisters in a common Lord.  Three people are the recipients of Paul’s letter: Philemon, Apphia and Archippus.  They are described, in sequence, as “co-worker”, “the sister” and “fellow soldier.”

 

From earliest days it has been agreed that Philemon was the father, Apphia the mother, and Archippus their (only?) son.   Philemon is a “fellow-worker” and thus shares in the responsibility of ensuring that the community is governed in a God-honoring manner, a place where the Word is authenticated in loving acceptance. The mother is included in this appeal because in a large household the lady of the home had to deal with the slaves on a day to day basis and any appeal to receive back Onesimus, their runaway slave, must also have her approval. And finally Archippus, as a “comrade-in-arms”, bears responsibility for the community as one who shares in the ministry of the apostle Paul.

 

They were a remarkable three-some, that father-mother-son combination.  They serve as a reminder of one of the most compelling features of the early church: the households of faith that were the nucleus of early Christian advance as the gospel spread throughout the Roman Empire.  As Michael Green notes in his Evangelism in the Early Church: “Christian missionaries made a deliberate point of gaining whatever households they could as lighthouses, so to speak, from which the gospel could illuminate the surrounding darkness.”²

 

There were two reasons for this strategy.  One was the enormous power of the family unit and the almost dictatorial powers given to the pater familias, the father of the family in Roman society.  The household unit was a complex one, and included far more than blood ties: the slaves, even freemen who took the family name and became its clientalia.  Even amici, trusted  friends, became a part of the circle, being given intimacy with the understanding that they would provide support and devotion.

 

This strategy began with Cornelius. We read in Acts 10:24 that he gathered “his relatives and close friends” to hear Peter bring the gospel to the Gentiles, and when the response came the entire household – having received the Holy Spirit in power –  was baptized.  The strategy continues with Lydia, the purple seller of Philippi, whose entire family is baptized³. Again we read that the Philippian jailer opens his home to Paul and Silas, and on asking “What must I do to be saved?” the entire household is baptized as they “believe in the Lord Jesus and are saved”⁴. Aquilla and Priscilla likewise open their home to Apollos⁵ and “explain the way of God to him more accurately”.

 

That is the second reason why reaching the home, seeing particularly fathers converted, and then the entire household being brought into personal faith in Jesus as Lord, was so significant.  The First Century home was a place of tyranny, adultery and lust characterized its head, and there was little love or respect within its bounds.  The Christian revolutionized the home life of an Empire: showing it a higher way, a nobler  identity, a greater destiny.

 

Is not the home today in similar disrepair?  Does the Christian faith not have an answer to the domestic dysfunction of our time?    Surely today as two thousand years ago the most attractive and attracting feature of our believe in the transforming and revolutionary power of the gospel is its capacity to radically alter the lives of its families.  This has to be one of our great callings in our time, and a building block of the church today as it was two centuries ago.

 

“Come and see our homes, our families: they are a place of healing and of wholeness; love and acceptance are their mark; responsibility and self-giving are their characteristic; joy and peace their hall-mark.”  Can there be any greater testimony to the love of Christ, and any goal more worthy of our efforts?

 

“And to the church in your home”: this is the fourth party to whom this letter is written.   The church, as the wider family of God, is called upon to shape its identity upon God’s ideal for a community whose common inheritance is a second birth.  We call ourselves sisters and brothers of a Father God and His Son our Savior, Jesus whom we jointly acknowledge as Lord.

 

There is a longing today for that kind and quality of community.  Tragically so often people find the church as dysfunctional as their families.  They look for a quality of relationship which will bring healing of the memories of their damaged childhoods, the pain and the suffering of growing up in  a tortured environment where things were said that can never fully be erased from their memories and instead they find anger and resentment even amid the family that derives its name from one Father, God.

 

Or they find indifference or shallowness in the quality of relationships in the church.  Looking for acceptance, they are often brushed off by the busy-ness of the lives of their fellow church members, and the unwillingness of so many within a congregation to listen and to love.  Large churches, which sociologists and students of religion tell us, are the ones that will remain after this generation, are not fulfilling the needs of an impersonal and computerized generation where numbers have been substituted for nearness.

 

This may explain the reason why the number of Christians in Britain that have abandoned the institutional church, with its paraphernalia of liturgy, buildings and organizational life, and become committed to a house church has doubled in the last decade⁶.  The church that met in the home of Philemon knew each other: intimately and personally.  They could work out, in the sharing of their lives together, the complexities of bringing a runaway slave, who had wronged its master, who was their host, back into the family circle.  The prodigal was returning: the home is ready, the renegade returns and is to be accepted. Their love must be unconditional and consistent.

 

An Australian academic, Robert Banks, who has developed house churches in Sydney and Canberra, has defined Paul’s use of the word “church” as “a regular, local gathering before God”⁷,  an “actual gathering of people”, a “regularly constituted meeting”, “not merely a human association .. but a divinely created affair.”

 

The reality is that vital membership in a small group of believers is essential if Christians are to grow: all the homes of our congregation should, ideally, be places of worship.  Fathers should be serving as priests within the circle of their own accountability.  Visitors should not only be welcomed but given the sense that within the walls of your home or apartment a living Lord is present.  And unless we in the larger, institutional churches, recover some of the strengths that made  “the church in the home”  so significant in the expansion of Christianity: its individual concern, its personal commitments, its accountability, its involvement and its participation, our life as an organization will die.  It was only when Christians in China found their meeting halls and edifices closed, and they were forced to assemble in smaller numbers, clandestinely, for worship and for mutual encouragement, that the church started its dynamic development.  Will it be any different here in Canada?

 

II A COMMUNITY

What qualities then are required to make the church a true family, where the community sense of meeting in a home, can be retained.   We have several clues in these opening verses:

 

(a) it will be a community where the only authority is that of authenticity:  Paul could have described himself as an apostle, as one fit to arbitrate differences between Christians, rushed in to affirm his prerogatives.  He might have felt that that was the only way that the wealthy Philemon would have heard him.  Instead he says simply: “Paul a prisoner of Jesus Christ”.  He simply speaks of his personal integrity as he makes an appeal on the basis of who he is and Whom he serves.

 

(b) it will be a community of sisters and brothers: Paul models for Philemon the kind of church which reflects the Spirit of its Lord.  “Timothy our brother” is the designation he gives that rather weak, child-like, acolyte of his, Timothy, the product of a mixed marriage, a person with frequent bouts of ill health, whose appearance was so unimpressive.  “Timothy my brother”: if I can reach out and embrace this unlikely youngster, how much more should you not accept Onesimus, Philemon?

 

(c) it will be predicated on love: “Philemon our dear friend” “our beloved”.  The word begins the letter and will repeat itself over and over in the letter – in verses 5, 7, 9, and 16.  Indeed by emphasizing that love – agape love, the love of the cross – is the adhesive that holds the church together he is providing a frame work that will mean that Philemon have been embraced as “beloved brother” he will  then (verse  16) be able to accept Onesimus, who had so badly wronged him, as likewise a “beloved brother.”

 

(d) it will transcend racial, ethnic and cultural barriers: “grace” and “peace” are the greetings of Paul to a congregation of mixed race.  “Grace” the Greek greeting, “peace” or “shalom” the Jewish one.   Jesus Christ has broken down the middle wall of partition: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”⁸  Paul sensitively brings the two together, giving evidence of the reconciling grace of a God Who restores peace to His warring creatures.

 

(e) it is a community shaped by the two divine gifts of grace and peace: grace is what makes it possible for the church to exist.  Grace is what makes the most unlikely people coexist, and love each other.  Peace is what comes when that grace is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit: the wholeness of Christ’s presence gives us the assurance that He has accepted us and that having made peace by the blood of His cross, we can now reach out to our brother and sister.

 

In some striking words Martin Luther speaks of what Paul was doing here:

“This epistle gives us a masterful and tender illustration of Christian love.  For here we see how St. Paul takes the part of poor Onesimus and, to the best of his ability, advocates his cause with his master.  He acts exactly as if he were himself Onesimus, who had done wrong.  Yet he does this not with force or compulsion, as lay within his rights; but he empties himself of his rights in order to compel Philemon also to waive his rights. What Christ has done for us with God the Father, that St. Paul does also for Onesimus with Philemon.  For Christ emptied himself of his rights⁹ and overcame the Father with love and humility, so that the Father had to put away his wrath and rights, and receive us into favor for the sake of Christ, who so earnestly advocates our cause and so heartily takes our part. For we are all his Onesimus’s if we believe.”

 

“He sets the prisoner free”: Jesus calls us to share in His family transformed by the reality of His acceptance, the waiting Father ready to welcome us into the circle of His love.  May our homes reflect that reality, may our church translate it into reality and truth.

 

III A PLACE OF PRAYER (vs 4 – 7)

 

            “I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers.”What a person of prayer Paul was!  He speaks in verse 4 of “my times of prayer”: specific periods of praying set apart (as we saw in Colossians¹¹) when Paul laid aside the cares of his office and prayed for his churches, his friends, his family.

 

One of the Yale Lectures on Preaching that J. H. Jowett, delivered has the title “The Perils of the Preacher”. Jowett was then at the height of his powers as minister of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, He notes: “We are not always doing the most business when we seem to be most busy … We must … hold firmly and steadily to this primary principle, that of all things that need doing this need is supreme, to live in intimate fellowship with God.”¹²

 

He cites the private diary of Andrew Bonar: “By the grace of God and the strength of His Holy Spirit I desire to lay down the rule not to speak to man until I have spoken to God: not to do anything with my hand until I have been upon my knees.”  “It is my deepest regret that I pray so little. I should count the days … by the times I have been enabled to pray in faith, and to take hold upon God.”¹³

 

Of all of Paul’s prayer-thanksgivings, this is the shortest and the most personal. It speaks of “my God” and seeks to assure Philemon that Paul is not out to solve a messy problem, checking off in his “To Do” list – or his red file folder for “unresolved issues” – the question of the runaway slave Onesimus. Paul’s use of the personal pronoun “my” speaks of the psalms, such as the refrain in Psalm 42¹⁴:

“Put your hope in God,

for I will yet praise him,

my Savior and my God.”

If you are struggling in prayer: try the Psalms. They are full of intercession and Paul obviously bathed himself in their emotion and their language.

 

To assure an addressee you were thinking of them regularly was a standard procedure in letters of Paul’s day: a polite convention with which to begin correspondence. Paul goes further saying that his recollection of them begins with God and his conversation with the Almighty.

 

(a)   Prayers of Thanksgiving (vs 5)

 

And as he remembers and prays for him, Paul has cause for gratitude. Two characteristics stand out for Paul. He begins uncharacteristically with Philemon’s love and only then speaks of faith, as though to emphasize that quality that will most be needed if Philemon is to respond favorably to Paul’s request and receive Onesimus back. He goes on (in an A B B A form) “love” is matched with “all the saints” and faith with “Jesus” – love towards all the saints and into Jesus Christ. The further our love towards our sisters and brother travels, the deeper our commitment to Jesus grows and vice versa. The faith informs the love and gives it content; the love verifies the reality of the faith and gives it authenticity.

 

(b)   Prayers of Supplication (vs 6)

 

Paul has now prepared the way for his request, which we discover in verse 6.  In other words his prayer has specific content,  He wants God to do something through Philemon and he now shares this concern/request with the object of that prayer.  And he assumes a positive response because of the love and faith of the individual for whom he prays.

 

The key word in this request is koinonia which the New International Version -incorrectly I believe – translates as “sharing your faith”.  Koinonia is that mutual sharing that Christians experience with each other: weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice.  It is the glue that binds us together, the adhesive that makes us one in a common Lord.  The idea then¹⁵ is one of mutual participation, which is the whole point of the letter: that we as believers are bound up in the parcel of life, that we share together because we belong to each other.

 

This “mutual participation” which we all should experience as Christians within our community of faith, binds us together and “is proper to our faith”.  And this is how Paul can appeal to Philemon.  This koinonia will “work powerfully” in him, and will produce “knowledge”: not just head awareness but actually being able to integrate and personally apply “every good thing” of what God has done in Christ and what we must do in consequence.  If Philemon – and any one of us today – allows this principle to govern our actions it will powerfully affect us and alter our lives.

 

And that is what Christ is powerfully doing in us: hence the last words of this verse.  It is what Paul says in Ephesians  4:12 and 13: “so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” “Participation in Christ” means that all of us will then experience the fullness of what He has given us. And in the case of Philemon, the reconciliation between slave and master will be just another example of the unity and love we have for each other.  “Mutual participation” must be practical or it is nothing.  Maturity is not simply a matter of the head: it expresses itself from the heart in action. “This is how we know what love is” – John in his letter¹⁶ – “Jesus Christ laid down his life for us … If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother (or sister) in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?”

 

So we are left with the request itself: “I am praying that the mutual participation which is proper to the Christian faith you hold may have its full effect in your realization of every good thing that God wants to accomplish in us to lead us into the fullness of Christian fellowship, that is, of Christ.”¹⁷

 

(c)    Prayers of Refreshment (vs 7)

 

The reality of this “mutual participation” is that Paul has gained much joy and encouragement through the faith of Philemon, who has the gift of “refreshing” the hearts – literally the entrails, the place of deepest feeling – of the saints.

 

That word “refresh” leaves us with a beautiful picture. The term is a technical one: infantry, on march, weary and footsore from the journey, find as they tread through the desert, suddenly a place of refreshment where they can receive a cooling draught.  That is what Philemon does for his fellow church members: weary in the battle, they struggle with the temptation to give up and desert the Lord’s army. Then “brother” Philemon comes along: he gives “refreshment” and they can start on their way, strengthened for the next battle, more conflict, knowing that they have the victory and that they can be encouraged to press further.

 

Would that that ministry were given to many of us here.  It reminds me of the tribute that Matthew Arnold made of his father, Thomas, the great headmaster of Rugby School:

“But thou would’st not alone

Be saved, my father! alone

Conquer and come to thy goal,

Leaving the rest in the wild.

We were weary, and we

Fearful, and we, in our march,

Faint to drop down and to die.

Still thou turnest, and still

Beckonedst the trembler, and still

Gavest the weary thy hand!

If in the paths of the world,

Stones might have wounded thy feet,

Toil or dejection have tried

Thy spirit, of that we saw

Nothing! to us thou wert still

Cheerful, and helpful, and firm.

Therefore to thee it was given

Many to save with thyself;

And, at the end of thy day,

O faithful shepherd! to come

Bringing thy sheep in thy hand.”¹⁸

 

Our commitment demands faithfulness in prayer, and then providing for all our sisters and brothers within the community of faith “brooks by the traveller’s way”.

 

Thus may it be said of each of us “I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through, my brother, my sister.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14 August 2011

 

HE SETS THE PRISONER FREE

(2) Love’s Urgent Appeal for a Son

(Philemon 8-16)

 

Into our home, coming back from a business trip when our children were very young, I brought back a plaque which has been a constant reminder to us over the years:

 

Bless our home,

Father that we cherish the bread before there is none,

discover each other before we leave,

and enjoy each other for what we are while we have time.”

 

The three greatest gifts any parent can give their children are unconditional love, freedom, and Christian faith.

 

Paul the bachelor was also Paul the father. “I appeal to you for my son Onesimus,” he writes Philemon.  A spiritual father: Paul had the capacity to collect children in the Lord.  Timothy the child of a godly mother and grandmother, but a faceless pagan father.  “Timothy my dear son” he would address him^[1], “my true son in the flesh[D1] .“  Or Titus “my true son in our common faith”^[2].  The early church was full of Paul’s children, children whom – as in the case of Onesimus he had “begotten in chains”, born to him when in bonds, an ambassador for Jesus.

 

In these verses 8 through 16 Paul takes the part of his child, pleading for him, representing him, identifying with him.  There is a lot of identification here: Paul with Philemon, his “fellow-worker” (verse 1), Onesimus for Philemon in his service to Paul (verse 13), Philemon in the response he makes to his runaway slave’s return as Paul’s representative (verses 17 – 19).

 

Many of us younger dads had the privilege of watching our children being born. A young father told me recently how he had cut the umbilical cord. But as I reminded him, we never totally cut that umbilical cord with our children.  From the moment of birth we are identified with them: the union is indissoluble and will last until death finally cuts that chord.  We are tied up in the bundle of life, our children’s pain becomes ours, and their joy is one we share.

 

How does Paul appeal for his “child” who is in trouble to the person whom that child has wronged?

 

(1) ON THE BASIS OF LOVE (vs 8 and 9)

 

As Paul says “I could have ordered you to do what was right, but instead I am appealing to you on the basis of love.”

 

It is that same love that we observed in verse 4 – the agape love of the Christian community which was defined by Christ’s self-giving on the cross.  That love determines all human relationships /but none more than the family.  One couple gives themselves a “love exam” by using The Living Bible‘s paraphrase of I Corinthians 13:4 – 7.  “We ask ourselves”, they report, “if we are meeting God’s expectations for us in demonstrating love as it is outlined in this passage.”^[3]

            Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful or proud, never   haughty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or         touchy. It does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong. It         is never glad about injustice, but rejoices whenever truth wins out. If you love someone,      you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost.  You will always believe in him, always            expect the best of him, and always stand your ground in defending him.

 

           

(2) THE APPEAL ITSELF (verses 10 – 12)

 

“I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains.”

 

Onesimus was born once: and he was – through the witness of Paul – born again a second time.  That rebirth has meant that Paul has given birth to a spiritual son – as he wrote to the Galatian Christians: “My little children, for whom I again in the pains of childbirth until Christ be formed in you.”

 

It is a wonderful thing to be present a spiritual rebirth, or to be the one responsible -through the Holy Spirit – for that rebirth.   I recall recently, after speaking in one of my former congregations, a man coming up to me and saying:  “Do you remember January 8, 1984?” and I did for that evening, in his home, he had opened his heart to the Lord.  But how much more wonderful to be the instrument of birth twice so that our children owe not only their natural birth but their spiritual birth to us.

 

For that Spiritual birth makes a difference.  In a simple pun Paul says that Onesimus whose name means “useful” was useless to his master but now has become useful.  There is a play on words in the Greek, and it further suggests the Christ presence can make that difference.

 

Do we really believe that faith in Jesus Christ is the most important thing we can give our children?  That Jesus does make a difference?  And that the first demonstration of that difference that they see, from the earliest age, is from us as their fathers and mothers.  There is no greater gift we can give, no stronger commendation, than that Jesus has made our child “useful” in the service of His church and kingdom.

 

(3) GIVING FREEDOM TO THE ‘CHILD’ (verses 12 – 14)

 

Paul’s appeal is an emotional one – from the heart.  “I would have liked to keep him with me,” he tells Onesimus.

 

What parent does not feel that way about her or his child?  We need to realize that from the moment we receive our children from the Lord at birth we are training them for that time of independence.  One parent expressed their goals as follows:

                        “Our overall goal for our sons and daughters is

                        that they grow into mature, independent, godly adults

                        who base their lives on sound principles,

                        who are emotionally and spiritually strong,

                        who have a strong sense of responsibility toward their fellowman,

                        who will face good and difficult times with calmness and perseverance, and

                        who, if married, become competent and faithful husbands, wives, and                                                 parents.”^[4]

 

But, instead of keeping him with him, Paul let Onesimus go.  He sent him back to his employer, whom he had robbed.   He refused to cover for him – write a check, hire a lawyer.  He made him face the consequences of his action.

 

Freedom.  The greatest gift we can give our children.   Freedom not only for Onesimus, but also for Philemon. “I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do will be spontaneous and not forced.”  Philemon – Paul says – the same principle applies to you.   You have to be free: I cannot protect you from yourself any more than I can my son.

 

 (4) TRUSTING GOD FOR THE CHILD (verses 15 – 16)

 

So finally Paul tries to make sense out of the pain of parenting.   Why does he have to suffer the loss of his “child”?  Why does Onesimus have to face the consequences of his action?  Why did he lose the way?  Was there a purpose to all the heartache and grief that only a parent can know? There is a Yiddish proverb, which a Jewish member of my previous congregation used to quote to me: “Small children disturb your sleep, big children your life.”

 

“Perhaps”, Paul reflects, “the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good – no longer a slave … but a dear brother.”  God has His purposes even in the fragmentation of our lives, the tears, the sorrow.  We cling to the reality of Romans 8:28: “all things do work together for good to those who love God”.  He knows, He understands our secret longing, the unanswered prayers.

 

And that is where we leave our children: where Paul left Onesimus: in the safe keeping of His love.  God loves your child more than you ever could.   He sees what is ahead.  He knows.  And never lose that confidence, keep that prayer, be nourished by its reality.  Prayer is the one thing we can do as parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles: prayer from their earliest days and through all their lives.  Never give up the persistence of prayer.

 

One of my great heroes is Amy Carmichael, a single woman missionary to south India for over forty years. Miss Carmichael ran an orphanage, rescuing children from a life of prostitution in Hindu temples. She told her story often in poetry and prose, a story about a life given to the rescuing children and then pointing them in a different direction through the Christian community she established, by education, to a life lived in obedience to a new Master, Jesus Christ. It was above everything else a ministry of prayer, as she wrote:

Father, hear us, we are praying,

Hear the words our hearts are saying,

We are praying for our children.

Keep them from the powers of evil,

From the secret, hidden peril,

From the whirlpool that would suck them,

From the treacherous quicksand, pluck them.

                                    From the worldling=s hollow gladness,

From the sting of faithless sadness,

Holy Father, save our children.

Through life=s troubled water steer them,

Through life=s bitter battle cheer them,

Father, Father, be Thou near them.

Read the language of our longing,

Read the wordless pleadings thronging,

Holy Father, for our children.

And wherever they may abide,

Lead them Home at eventide[D2] .[5]

 

The greatest gifts we can give them are unconditional love, freedom, but above all faith in our God and His Son, Jesus Christ.

 

“I appeal to you for my son … on the basis of love …I would have liked to keep him with

me … He is very dear to me … in the Lord.”

 

 

14 August 2011

HE SETS THE PRISONER FREE

(2) Love’s Urgent Appeal for a Son

(Philemon 8-16)

 

Into our home, coming back from a business trip when our children were very young, I brought back a plaque which has been a constant reminder to us over the years:

 

ABless our home,

Father that we cherish the bread before there is none,

discover each other before we leave,

and enjoy each other for what we are while we have time.”

 

The three greatest gifts any parent can give their children are unconditional love, freedom, and Christian faith.

 

Paul the bachelor was also Paul the father. “I appeal to you for my son Onesimus,” he writes Philemon.  A spiritual father: Paul had the capacity to collect children in the Lord.  Timothy the child of a godly mother and grandmother, but a faceless pagan father.  “Timothy my dear son” he would address him, “my true son in the flesh”^[6].  Or Titus “my true son in our common faith”^[7].  The early church was full of Paul’s children, children whom – as in the case of Onesimus he had “begotten in chains”, born to him when in bonds, an ambassador for Jesus.

 

In these verses 8 through 16 Paul takes the part of his child, pleading for him, representing him, identifying with him.  There is a lot of identification here: Paul with Philemon, his “fellow-worker” (verse 1), Onesimus for Philemon in his service to Paul (verse 13), Philemon in the response he makes to his runaway slave’s return as Paul’s representative (verses 17 – 19).

 

Many of us younger dads had the privilege of watching our children being born. A young father told me recently how he had cut the umbilical cord. But as I reminded him, we never totally cut that umbilical cord with our children.  From the moment of birth we are identified with them: the union is indissoluble and will last until death finally cuts that chord.  We are tied up in the bundle of life, our children’s pain becomes ours, their joy is one we share.

 

How does Paul appeal for his “child” who is in trouble to the person whom that child has wronged?

 

(1) ON THE BASIS OF LOVE (vs 8 and 9)

As Paul says “I could have ordered you to do what was right, but instead I am appealing to you on the basis of love.”

 

It is that same love that we observed in verse 4 – the agape love of the Christian community which was defined by Christ’s self-giving on the cross.  That love determines all human relationships /but none more than the family.  One couple gives themselves a “love exam” by using The Living Bible‘s paraphrase of I Corinthians 13:4 – 7.  “We ask ourselves”, they report, “if we are meeting God’s expectations for us in demonstrating love as it is outlined in this passage.”^[8]

            Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful or proud,             never haughty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when             others do it wrong. It is never glad about injustice, but rejoices whenever truth wins out. If you love someone, you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost.  You will always believe in him, always expect the best of him, and always stand your ground in defending him.

 

           

(2) THE APPEAL ITSELF (verses 10 – 12)

 

“I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains.”

 

Onesimus was born once: and he was – through the witness of Paul – born again a second time.  That rebirth has meant that Paul has given birth to a spiritual son – as he wrote to the Galatian Christians: “My little children, for whom I again in the pains of childbirth until Christ be formed in you.”

 

It is a wonderful thing to be present a spiritual rebirth, or to be the one responsible -through the Holy Spirit – for that rebirth.   I recall recently, after speaking in one of my former congregations, a man coming up to me and saying:  “Do you remember January 8, 1984?” and I did for that evening, in his home, he had opened his heart to the Lord.  But how much more wonderful to be the instrument of birth twice so that our children owe not only their natural birth but their spiritual birth to us.

 

For that Spiritual birth makes a difference.  In a simple pun Paul says that Onesimus whose name means “useful” was useless to his master but now has become useful.  There is a play on words in the Greek, and it further suggests the Christ presence can make that difference.

 

Do we really believe that faith in Jesus Christ is the most important thing we can give our children?  That Jesus does make a difference?  And that the first demonstration of that difference that they see, from the earliest age, is from us as their fathers and mothers.  There is no greater gift we can give, no stronger commendation, than that Jesus has made our child “useful” in the service of His church and kingdom.

 

(3) GIVING FREEDOM TO THE ‘CHILD’ (verses 12 – 14)

 

Paul’s appeal is an emotional one – from the heart.  “I would have liked to keep him with me,” he tells Onesimus.

 

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