By Rick Liggin
“Therefore, though I have enough confidence in Christ to order you to do what is proper, yet for love’s sake I rather appeal to you—since I am such a person as Paul, the aged, and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus—I appeal to you for my child Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my imprisonment, who formerly was useless to you, but now is useful both to you and to me. I have sent him back to you in person, that is, sending my very heart, whom I wished to keep with me, so that on your behalf he might minister to me in my imprisonment for the gospel; but without your consent I did not want to do anything, so that your goodness would not be, in effect, by compulsion but of your own free will.” (Philemon 1:8-14)
We are all relatively familiar with the back story of Paul’s letter to Philemon. Philemon was obviously a relatively wealthy member of the Lord’s church, perhaps the church in Colossae (cf. Colossians 4:9). He owned a slave by the name of Onesimus, who before obeying the gospel himself, ran away from his master and fled to Rome. There in Rome, whether by God’s providence or his own intention, Onesimus came into contact with the apostle Paul who was imprisoned there. During the course of their interaction, Onesimus obeyed the gospel and became a disciple of Jesus Christ. But he still had something that he needed to make right. He had sinned against his master Philemon by abandoning him and running away. He needed to return and make things right with his earthly master. This was a considerably daunting task, as it was well within the rights of slave owners to punish runaway slaves however they felt was best. Nothing, including death, was out the question. Fortunately for Onesimus, his master was not a worldly man. In fact, now that Onesimus had obeyed the gospel, he was united with his master in the family of God and was now his brother in Christ (Philemon 1:15-16). Another thing in Onesimus’ favor was that Paul didn’t send him back to Philemon empty handed. Paul vouched for him, and sent a letter to Philemon on behalf of Onesimus explaining the circumstances of his conversion in Rome. In addition to this, Paul made a personal appeal in this letter to have Onesimus returned to him, so that he could continue to help him while in Roman imprisonment.
It is very interesting to me that Paul doesn’t command Philemon to do anything, but rather appeals to him to do the right thing. He places the ball totally in Philemon’s court. There was no undue pressure from the apostle attempting to force his hand in this matter. Now we don’t know for sure what Philemon ultimately decided to do in this matter, but Paul seemed pretty confident that he would do the right thing. In fact, it would appear that Paul was so confident that Philemon would do what was right, that he felt that he could have just told him what to do (1:8). The only reason he didn’t order Philemon to do the right thing, was so that Philemon would be able to do it from his own free will (1:14). Wow! That is quite a bit of confidence to have in your brother! That is impressive! Now, I know that I have said, on more than one occasion, that if you put your confidence in anyone other than your Lord you will eventually be disappointed. And this is, indeed, a sad reality. We are all human, and we will all eventually fail. Our perfect Lord is the only One who will never disappoint or fail us. If we put our confidence in our fellow man, even our brethren, they will all someday fail us, in some way or another. And, when this inevitably happens, we will no doubt be disheartened, probably discouraged, and perhaps even deflated. We may even have our faith shaken. And for this reason, it is essential that we do not put all of our confidence in our fellow man. Now, having said that, I do not mean to suggest that we cannot, or shouldn’t, have confidence in our brethren. We should have expectations of one another, and should be able to be fairly confident that our brethren will faithfully follow God and do what is right.
As I consider how much confidence Paul had in Philemon, I come to a realization about myself: do my brethren have that kind of confidence in me? Am I the type of believer who does the right thing so often and so consistently that my brethren, without having to talk to me, can be confident that I will do what is proper? I want my brethren to be able to have that kind of confidence in me! But how do I get there? I believe that consistency is key here. If we want to instill confidence in people, we will have to be consistent in our devotion to God. We will have to do what is right in the big things and the little things. We will have to follow God’s will when it is easy and when it is difficult. We will have to actually be faithful disciples of the Lord. It has to be who we are, a consistently obedient believer, who to the best of our ability always do what God instructs us to do – to do what is proper. Let us all try to be more like Philemon – men and women who embolden our brethren to have confidence in us.
This bulletin is being published for the purpose of encouraging a further study of the Word of God. Editor – Josh Liggin
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