01 Philemon: How to Be a Hero (Philemon 1:1-11)

Krisan Marotta: Good morning. This is Krisan Marotta. Thank you for joining me for the Wednesday in the Word podcast. Today we're gonna start a two-part series on Paul's letter to Philemon. We'll look at the first 11 verses today and we'll finish it up next week. You'll find lecture notes for today's talk on our website. Just go to wednesdayintheword.com slash Philemon 1. I'm really excited to start this letter to Philemon today because it's one I've always wanted to teach and could never find the right format because it's so short. It doesn't fit into a weekly Bible study very well or a retreat format, but it's got a lot to say. I've often heard this letter used to talk about the evils of slavery, sometimes to condemn Paul for not taking a stance against slavery, or I've heard it applied to like some kind of revolutionaries or freedom fighters. And when I started studying it, it seems to me that this letter says a lot about just how to be a hero, how to be a strong Christian and the choices we're called on to make. But we're gonna get into that. Today we're gonna look mostly at the background of the letter and the introductory material, and then we'll get into the heart of Paul's request and what it means for us in our next talk. So we're gonna start with background. Philemon is a private letter. It was written by the Apostle Paul to a man named Philemon who was from Colossae. And we're gonna start with what do we know about Paul, then what do we know about Philemon and the other character in the book? This is probably review for many of you, but just in case, what do we know about Paul? Paul is also known as Saul. Saul is the Jewish pronunciation of his name. Paul is the Greek version of his name. He did not go through a renaming ceremony like Abraham or Peter. It's just that his Jewish name is Saul, but when that comes into the Greek language it becomes Paul. He was born a Jew around five AD in the city of Tarsus. He was a Roman citizen by birth and he studied at the prestigious school of Gamelel in Jerusalem. Before coming to faith, before converting to Christianity, he was a Pharisee and a persecutor of the Christian church, and he was present at the stoning of Stephen. He was converted to faith on the road to Damascus when the resurrected Lord appeared to him. He then spent some time in obscurity in Arabia before returning and settling in Tarsus. After his conversion he spent a short time in Damascus preaching, but he caused so much trouble and agitation that his fellow believers had to lower him over the wall in the middle of the night in a basket because all he managed to do there was stir up trouble. From there he went to Arabia. Galatians tells us that he stayed in Arabia about three years, and scholars speculate that Paul's three years there was his time where he spent learning from the resurrected Lord in the same way the apostles had three years with him during his earthly ministry. He then returned to Damascus and began to preach and teach. He visits Jerusalem as recorded in Acts 9, but he only sees Peter and James and the Lord's brother. He stays only fifteen days and then he heads back to Syria. As large numbers of Gentiles were becoming converted to the faith, the church in Antioch grew rapidly and quickly surpassed the church in Jerusalem in size and influence. And we learn from Acts 11 that Barnabas, who was serving there, decided he needed help with this growing church, so he went to Tarsus to look for his old friend Paul. And then Paul and Barnabas stay in Antioch, teaching considerable numbers. Then we learn in Acts 13 and 14 that Paul goes on his first missionary journey with Barnabas, and when he returns, the controversy over whether Gentile comforts need to become Jewish or not is growing. In response, he writes the letter to Galatians, and eventually he travels to Jerusalem for the count what we call the Council of Jerusalem to settle the issue. After the council, he returns to Antioch and then goes on what we call his second missionary journey with Silas. During that journey he visits Ephesus, but as far as we know he didn't make it to Colossi. He has a vision calling him to Macedonia, and then he goes on to Corinth and stays there about a year and a half or so, and he writes Thessalonians. Then he goes on his third journey and returns to Ephesus, and while there he writes both the Corinthian letters and the book of Romans. Finally he goes back to Jerusalem, but he never makes it back to Antioch. He's arrested and he's taken to Rome. While he's in prison waiting for his trial, he writes Colossians, Philemon, Ephesians, and Philippians, and he says in Philippians and Philemon that he expects to be released from prison soon, and in fact he is. He returns probably to Macedonia, to that area, and there he writes Titus and Timothy, but he is eventually arrested and taken back to Rome where he writes his last letter, 2 Timothy, and in 2 Timothy he says he expects to be condemned, and in fact he was. And if all of that was confusing, I have a chronology of the Apostle Paul on my website. You'll find a link to it in the lecture notes. It might make it easier to sort all that out. But what we learn from that timeline is that he wrote this letter to Philemon from a Roman prison, probably around 60 to 62 AD. So during his first Roman imprisonment when he was under house arrest, he writes this letter along with Colossians and Ephesians. This letter is probably being carried on its way by a man named Ticicus, and that man Tychicus is also carrying the letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians. Ephesians and Colossians are not that far apart when compared to Rome, so we have this picture of Paul sending Tychicus with these three letters, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon at the same time. Traveling with Tychicus is a man named Anesimus, who is an escaped slave, and he's the one of the principal characters in this letter. This letter is an appeal to Philemon to open his heart, to be open hearted, open handed, and to take the right action with regards to Anesimus. Anesimus was his slave who has run away, and Paul is appealing to Philemon to take him back and free him. So what do we know about Philemon? Philemon was a member of the church at Colossi, which probably met at his house. He had been saved several years earlier under Paul's ministry, probably at Ephesus. He must have been wealthy enough to have a house large enough for the church to meet there, and he owned at least one slave, this man Anesimus, who's the subject of the letter. What do we know about Anesimus? Well, as a slave he was probably not a believer. He stole something, we think, we don't know what, it could have been money, it could have been something valuable like a piece of gold or silver. He stole that from his master Philemon and he ran away. Like many runaway slaves of the day, he fled to Rome, seeking to lose himself there in the large population and start over. And through circumstances not recorded in Scripture, Anesimus somehow met the apostle Paul in Rome and became a Christian, and they formed a fast friendship. As we'll see as we go through the letter, Paul longed to keep Anesimus in Rome with him, where Anesimus was providing valuable support and service to Paul during his imprisonment. But by stealing and running away from Philemon, Anesimus had broken Roman law and defrauded his master. And Paul knows that those issues have to be dealt with, and he decides to send Anesimus back to Colossi with Tychicus, who's returning there with the letters of Colossians and Ephesians. And along with those letters and with the man himself, Paul sends Philemon this personal letter urging him to forgive Anesimus, welcome him back as a brother and to free him. That's the general background and the setup for the letter. Those are the principal personalities we'll meet in it. Let's start looking at the text itself. So we'll start with one and two. Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy, our brother, to Philemon, our beloved fellow worker, and Apia, our sister, and Archipus, our fellow soldier, and the church in your house. The first two verses of this letter follow the typical greeting for a New Testament letter, which is the author identifies himself first, then the recipients are mentioned, then there's some sort of greeting, like grace and peace or something. And like our formula, when we write a letter, we say dear recipient, then we give the body of the letter and we put some closing like sincerely in the author's name at the end. New Testament letters identify the author first, then the recipient, then the greeting, and then the body of the letter. Timothy is mentioned here because he's with Paul as Paul writes and he knows the recipients, but these are not his ideas, he's not a co-author. We don't know exactly who Apia and Archipus are. Tradition claims that Apia is Philemon's wife, and Archipus is either his son or one of the leaders in the church that met in his house. Well, we can neither prove nor disprove those claims, but it does make sense for Paul to greet Philemon's wife and family or his fellow church leaders in this letter, so it's a likely possibility. Notice in this greeting that Paul omits the fact that he is an apostle. He identifies himself as a prisoner for Christ Jesus. He calls Timothy our brother, and he addresses Philemon as our beloved fellow worker. So he's putting everyone on equal footing in this letter. He omits any reference to his authority as an apostle or his claim to be an ambassador for Jesus Christ. And I think that's significant because of the tone he wants to set in this letter and the fact that he will later say that he is specifically refraining from commanding Philemon to respond a certain way using his apostolic authority. So he starts from the beginning identifying them all as equals, as brothers in the Lord, and refrains from mentioning his authority. Then verse three, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. You could paraphrase this something like, My desire for you is grace and peace. My desire is that God would be gracious to you and give you peace. Now, peace could be peace as opposed to strife or war, peace as opposed to wrath, peace as reconciliation. That's one way the New Testament often uses this word. Or it could be peace in the more profound sense of blessing, fullness, well-being, the way we would think of the Hebrew word shalom, well-being, shalom. And I think it's that understanding that Paul has in this letter. Different commentators will pick either option. I'm not sure it makes a whole lot of difference in your interpretation because one leads to the other. You have to be reconciled to God to enjoy that shalom or well-being and blessing that he gives. Basically, he's saying, I think I want God to give you grace and in his mercy bring you that kind of peace. And he has an agenda for this letter that's going to drive what he says. He's going to ask Philemon to do something really difficult, which I think raises the question, are these really your values? Do you really want grace and peace from God our Father? Is that what you're seeking? Is that what you're after? Is that your highest priority? Do you want grace and peace from God such that it influences your choices and your desire to do and follow what God thinks is right? Because that's the test Philemon's about to face. All right, going on, let's look at four through seven. 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. Paul is grateful to God for the evidence of the faith that he sees in Philemon's life, particularly the love that he has demonstrated toward Jesus and his fellow believers. Paul is saying the evidence that I've seen in your life suggests that you are genuinely seeking after the things of God, and he is grateful for that, for that evidence and for that maturity of faith. And as he says in verse seven, seeing God at work in Philemon's life and seeing how God has used Philemon and his local church has brought Paul much joy and comfort, and he's praying that Philemon's faith would continue to grow and mature and be evidenced in his life. So I would paraphrase that something like, I thank my God always mentioning you in my prayers because I've heard of your love and faith in Jesus and your love for other believers. I pray that you will put into action that generosity of spirit that arises from your faith through an understanding of every good thing which is within our grasp because of the Messiah. And I rejoice and am grateful for the evidence of that generosity that I've seen so far. So he is praying that that strong faith will now once again be manifest and be evidenced by the action that Philemon takes with regard to Anesimus. And that's the agenda for this letter. He's praying that Philemon's faith would continue to make a difference in his life, especially as he faces this question that Paul's about to ask of him. It's interesting to me that Paul is linking this generosity of spirit, or as the ESV translates it, the fellowship of your faith. He's linking that with an understanding of the implications of the gospel. And this is a common theme in the New Testament. We see this over and over in many of the letters. The authors say, look, we have this vast spiritual wealth because we are children of God through the work of Jesus Christ. So because of what Jesus did for us, we have been granted this incredibly valuable inheritance in the kingdom of God. Once we recognize that inheritance, how can we be stingy with our trivial earthly material possessions? When we've been given this vast wealth of eternal life in the kingdom of heaven, all the treasures and the material wealth of earth, it becomes irrelevant because we have been given this abundant life in the age of ages. God has open-handedly, against all that we deserve, granted us forgiveness and grace and mercy and life in His kingdom as His children. In spite of the fact that we deserve punishment, in spite of the fact that we deserve judgment and condemnation, God has generously granted us forgiveness, mercy, and life. So in light of that fact, how can I turn around and be stingy with my fellow believer? How can I refuse to give you a nickel when I have been granted this wealth in the kingdom of God? If I'm stingy in earthly matters, it calls into question whether I have really understood the spiritual riches I stand to inherit and the supreme value of those riches over and against my earthly material possessions. And that comes up over and over again in the New Testament letters, and I think that's what he's getting at here. He wants Philemon to be generous and open-handed with Anesimus, and he's calling on him to put his faith into action, to realize what riches he's been granted, and then not be stingy with the material earthly possessions he has. Now it's easy to grasp intellectually that concept. It makes sense to be generous, and we can see the value of that, but it's really difficult to be generous and especially to be cheerful givers in real life. I was talking to Professor Ken Elzinger, and he told me once that a skeptic asked him if he had ever seen a miracle, and Ken said, why yes, he had seen a miracle, and the miracle was that God had made Ken him a cheerful giver. And that surprised me because Ken is one of my role models and I think an exemplar of a cheerful giver. And the Lord has used his example in my life to make me more generous and more of a cheerful giver, and of course, that is a miracle as well. So I would echo Paul's prayer that we have our eyes open so that our generosity toward others might become active. And it's more than financial generosity, it's generosity in all kinds of ways of giving of our time, our compassion, our empathy, and so on. It's not just financial. I think it's likely that Paul is bringing this up and praying for this in the early opening of the letter because Philemon's about to face a really difficult test. Paul is sending Anesimus back to Philemon, and Philemon has to decide how to respond. He has to decide am I going to exact my due under Romans' law and punish this runaway slave, or am I going to forgive him and even free him? And it's an economic test, it's a test of faith, it's a test of what he values, and Paul is praying that his faith would become active such that he makes the right choice. Okay, going on in eight and nine, 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. So here's where he states, I could command you as an apostle, I could tell you this is what's required and command you to do it, yet I prefer for love's sake to appeal to you. He's an apostle, he is Philemon's spiritual father. Philemon became a believer through Paul's ministry, and Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles. Philemon's one of those Gentile believers. Paul has, in a very real sense, a God-given authority to say, in this situation, this is the right thing to do, and therefore you should do it. He could command Philemon to respond a certain way, to show Anesima's mercy, and yet he doesn't. He says, I'm appealing to you to do the right thing, and we're going to talk more about why he does that next week. Now it's interesting he has I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner. Most translations have an old man or the aged, but some scholars think this word is an alternate spelling for the word ambassador, and that he's referring to his apostleship, that he is an ambassador for Christ, he's an apostle or and now a prisoner. And if that's true, he's contrasting I am an ambassador but now a prisoner for the sake of the gospel. The other option is that he's not making that contrast. He's simply saying, I am an old man and a prisoner, and he's making this appeal based on his seniority of his age and his status as Philemon's spiritual father. That also makes sense to me because he refrains from appealing to Philemon based on his apostolic authority. Both of those are good interpretive choices, both make sense to me in the context. I've heard arguments both way about how likely it is that this word can be ambassador. Some people say yes, some people say no. If it is truly ambassador, I like that option. I think he's saying I have authority since I've been an apostle and ambassador of Christ and a prisoner for his sake to command you, but I'd rather appeal to you. But either way, you get the gist of what he's saying. I could command you, but I'm refraining. Then he states his appeal. This is ten, eleven, and twelve. I appeal to you for my child Anesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and me. I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart. So in ten he says, I appealed to you for my child Anesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment. I think he means that while he was in prison, Paul explained the gospel to Anesimus, and Anesimus came to faith. And then he says, Formerly in eleven, formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and me. This is a play on words because Anesimus' name means useful. And it was common in Rome at the time to give slaves a name that treated them as if they were property. And this word anesimus, which means useful, was a common slave name. It's like it's like saying you're a useful piece of property. Anesimus was a very common name to give to a slave. And he's making a plan on that. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful, and that useful is anesimus. Before his conversion, he was useless to you, but now that he has come to faith, he is indeed truly useful to both of us because now he's a fellow worker in the kingdom, striving toward the same gospel you and I strive for. So he's not useful only in a property sense, not useful only as a good worker, but because of his conversion, he has become even more useful through the redemption and the reformation of his character that would result from a conversion to faith. And now his love for the Lord, his dedication to the gospel, he would be even more useful. As you might expect, the pagan slave class was not known for their upstanding character in these days. By reputation, at least, they lied and cheated and embezzled and would try to get away with whatever they could get away with, often probably out of necessity, because in pagan households it's likely that they were not treated well, they were treated badly, and so they would respond in kind, they had nothing to lose. Assuming Anesimus was a stereotypical slave, which may or may not be true, he would have been useless in that sense and that he was not to be trusted, that his character was not exemplary, but now that he has come to faith, he would be trustworthy and truly useful in a different way because now they serve the same Lord and the same master. And we're gonna stop there for now and pick up the rest of the letter in the next section. Let me just review what we've seen so far. We've seen that this letter is an appeal to Philemon to open his heart, to be open-handed and open-hearted, and to take the right action with regards to Anesimus. Paul opened the letter telling Philemon how grateful Paul is to God for the evidence of faith that he sees in Philemon's life. The evidence that Paul has seen suggests that Philemon is genuinely seeking after the things of God, and Paul is grateful for that maturity of faith. And he's prayed that Philemon's maturity of faith would continue to make a difference in his life, especially as he faces this choice about how to treat Anesimus and the request that Paul is making of him. So Paul is sending Anesimus back to Philemon, and Philemon has to decide how to respond. Paul says he has a God-given authority to say, in this situation, this is the right thing to do, and I command you to do it. He could command a Philemon to respond a certain way and to show Anesimus mercy, but he refrains and appeals to Philemon to do the right thing based on his faith. And we're going to talk more about why he does that, why he makes that appeal that way through love instead of commandment next week. Both positive and negative feedback are welcome. You can email me at feedback at wednesdayintheword.com. And please subscribe to this podcast. You can find it just about everywhere. Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Tune In, however you get your favorite podcasts. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates of Heartfeltmusic.org. I'm Krisan Marotta, and you can find more talks on wednesdayintheword.com.