Devotional Sharing, Submitted by Matthew Kim, Gracepoint Berkeley
God’s understanding of relationship between between his followers is that it should be based on grace. It’s the same basis with which God relates with us. He deals with us with grace. He saved us purely out of his mercy. He forgave our sins and adopted us as his children purely out of his mercy. He has reconciled us to him through the cross. And he expects us to relate to one another in the same way. He expects us to deal with one another with the same kind of grace, forgiving each other, adopting each other as brothers and sisters, restoring broken relationships and reconciling with another.
On the other hand, the world’s understanding of relationships is often based on merits, benefit analysis or keeping score. It’s often based on: “What can you do for me? What good can you bring to our relationship? What have your done for me lately?” People tend to relate with only those who can benefit them. We are told to be wise in picking our friends or our network of associates, who can ultimately help us in our career and life. The world also teaches us to keep score in relationship, telling us to avoid those who hurt us, betray us or do not benefit us.
Philemon would have no obligation to receive Onesimus back if he were to relate to him based on the world’s understanding of relationship. Onesimus was no longer useful him, he betrayed him, cost him, and hurt him. But, according to God’s understanding, Philemon was to deal with him with grace. He was to overlook his past betrayal and lack of personal usefulness to him as a slave and to embrace him as a brother.
How do I deal with others. Do I keep score? I should not hold the past mistakes, sins and shortcomings against them. When I relate with people, I cannot choose to relate only with those who have redeeming and attractive qualities or have the potential of somehow benefitting me.
Devotion Questions:
- What does Paul’s request to Philemon reveal about God’s understanding of relationships between His followers versus the world’s understanding of relationships between its people?
- Philemon lost a slave, but gained a brother eternally as a result. What shift in perspective would Philemon have needed to embrace Onesimus as a brother?
Commentary:
vv.12-16 Paul would have liked to keep Onesimus but he sends him back to Philemon, for he will do nothing without his consent. Here again is a significant thing. Christianity is not out to help a man escape his past and run away from it; it is out to enable him face his past and rise above it. Onesimus had run away. Well, then, he must go back, face up to the consequences of what he did, accept them and rise above them. Christianity is never escape; it is always conquest.
But Onesimus comes back with a difference. He went away as a heathen slave; he comes back as a brother in Christ. It is going to be hard for Philemon to regard a runaway slave as a brother; but that is exactly what Paul demands. ‘If you agree,’ says Paul, ‘that I am your partner in the work of Christ and that Onesimus is my son in the faith, you must receive him as you would receive myself.’
Here again is something very significant. The Christian must always welcome back the man who has made a mistake. Too often we regard the man who has taken the wrong turning with suspicion and show that we are never prepared to trust him again. We believe that God can forgive him but we, ourselves, find it too difficult. It has been said that the most uplifting thing about Jesus Christ is that he trust us on the very field of our defeat. When a man has made a mistake, the way back can be very hard, and God cannot readily forgive the man who, in his self-righteousness or lack of sympathy, makes it harder.[1]
[1]The letters to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. 2000, c1975 (W. Barclay, lecturer in the University of Glasgow, Ed.). The Daily Study Bible series, Rev. ed. (Phm 18). Philadelphia: The Westminster Press.