Reconciling Love (Philemon 8-16)

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Good morning, church. I think you all know where we are today. Anyway, we will be in Philemon. All right, well done, just like the kids. So, if you want to go ahead, open up to Philemon, we’ll be starting in verse eight this morning. Now I have it on good authority that Jake said he is going to have the sermon on while they’re out driving, and they got to get all the way to Nebraska today. I’d love to keep them entertained, so you guys don’t mind if I go like six or seven hours, do you? As you turn into Philemon eight, let’s do a little thought experiment here. You’ve got neighbors across the street from you that are just the worst, like you just can’t stand them. They are not good people, they are not nice people, like they’ve got kids that play with your kids. Kids, you know what these neighbors are like. They’re the ones where, when they come outside, you go inside, because you’re worried, like, you know, they’re gonna bully you, they’re gonna call you in, and give you labels you don’t want to receive. You know, last summer you got a new scooter, and they used it the first day, they broke it, and didn’t seem to care in the slightest, didn’t offer to fix it or replace it, or anything like that, you know. Parents, you’re having a hard time with them as well, like they’re foul mouthed and just deeply offensive all of the time. Finally, they move. I mean, thank goodness, good riddance, right? Although he had borrowed your weed whacker and took it with him when he went, so okay, he stole some of your stuff too, but still, like, you give the weed whacker if it means they’re out of your lives, and it has been the most peaceful year you’ve had in the neighborhood in a while. And then you’re out of town this summer for a little bit, and you show up after a couple weeks off, and you walk in, you sit down in your usual pew, you’re coming in late, you feel bad about that, but you come in late, you sit in the pew, first song’s already playing, you look in front of you, one pew in front of you is that family singing, arms raised in jubilant praise. What are you doing? How are you feeling in that moment? Some tension probably going on inside of you, I would guess shock is probably the primary emotion that these people were not worshiping Jesus the last time I saw them, you know, excitement, I guess that the Lord’s doing something in their lives, but maybe little anger, little bitterness, kind of a tap on the shoulder of like, good to see you here, so maybe now’s the time to make restitution for the things you stole, so you’d have that tension inside of you. Do I want retribution or reconciliation? As you know, because Kyle’s given us the story already, that’s not far off the situation in which Philemon finds himself, and Paul’s writing this short letter to help him think through his response. What are you going to do? And it’s helpful, because, of course, it forces us to think through our response as well, like how the gospel should motivate our willing reconciliation, those who have wronged us in the church going to help us think through that by giving us really three choices that we have to make as we go, so let’s take these choices one at a time. The first one is whether our obedience will be legalistic or loving, from verses eight to 11. Let me read it for us. Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do. Yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love. It is as none other than Paul, an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus, that I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me. So Kyle kind of drew this out already. It’s just an astonishing moment that Paul would be sending runaway Onesimus back to Philemon.
You got to think of the fear that Onesimus would have felt as he’s walking in, Philemon has every right to kill him as a runaway slave and as a thief, we’ll see that in next week’s part of the letter, and so you know he’s walking in nervous, I would think Paul’s probably nervous sending him back, and so with all that trepidation in his heart, how does he address the issue? He says, I could be bold, I could just order you to do what you ought to do. That word “ought” is important, isn’t it? It reminds us that there is a right and a wrong here. So, Philemon doesn’t just have a choice, do I go this way or this way. Do I sin? Do I do wrong, or do I do what God would have me do? So he can order Philemon to do the right thing, but he doesn’t. Instead, he appeals to him on the basis of love, really on the basis of relationship. Philemon, as we saw last week, is his dear friend and fellow worker. Now, interestingly, Paul identifies himself with Onesimus. Here, he says he’s an old man. Actually, a very good chance I won’t get into why, because it will bore you, trust me, but more likely that that word means ambassador. Here, so he’s an ambassador for Christ, the one proclaiming Christ’s message, and as a result, he is a prisoner, which is how he described himself all the way back in verse one. I mentioned last week he doesn’t ever call himself a prisoner. This is the one place that he does it, because he’s identifying himself with Onesimus. There’s this point of contact between the two of them that should probably affect how Philemon feels toward Onesimus. It’s almost like Paul is saying, if you feel for me when I’m in chains, why is that? Is it only because it’s me, or is it because of the chains themselves? Like, are you upset by injustice wherever you see it, but of course, even if it is just a preexisting relationship, like if this is only because Paul and Philemon are buddies, even still that should transfer to Onesimus, because Paul calls him his son, says Onesimus became my son while I was in captivity, while I was a prisoner, meaning he came to Christ through the ministry of Paul. In that moment, that’s how Paul uses the language of son throughout his letters, and so the point that Paul’s making is you should act toward him the way you would act toward me, because we’re family, Onesimus has become part of the family at this point. If you mistreat my kids, we’re not gonna be good anymore. Like, that’s just a real thing. You mean to Callum, I would be mean to you. Like, that’s it. I’m not redeemed enough to do otherwise at this point, and that’s how most of it works, right? I think most of us would feel that way. Like, I can take personal offense, mess with my kids, you’re seeing Mama Bear, you’re not going to like her, you know, like that kind of thing. That’s very real. On the flip side, when you see people investing in your children, loving them well, it just means so much, doesn’t it? It’s almost better than if they were loving on you in that way. So that’s what Paul’s saying, like he’s my son in the faith. To how you treat him is going to really impact our relationship. I love this, because you see what Paul’s doing. It means before he even gets to the appeal. Did you notice that he hasn’t actually asked for anything here in this paragraph? He says, I appeal to you on the basis of love. You’re like, great, what’s the appeal? He hasn’t even said it yet. So, before he even gets to the appeal, he lays the groundwork for its reception. Incredibly persuasive letter that he writes here, like just a masterpiece of persuasive writing, but he’s helping Philemon to flip the switch in his head from self-centered to Christ-centered, and if you’re Christ-centered, you will be others centered as well, and that’s the force of that key word love that he uses. We are by nature bent inwards on ourselves, but love is to be focused outward, directed outward.
So, love is what happens when you stop thinking about you and start thinking about others. That’s what Paul is encouraging. This is a challenge for all of us, though. Again, we’re, we’re bent inward, that’s our, that’s our normal posture, is to be bent inward, so we need the same appeal constantly in our lives. It is so easy to ignore or diminish the plight of others and only consider what’s going on in your own life. There’s another masterpiece of persuasive writing. It’s such an important work. In fact, that we study it in English classes. Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. He was imprisoned in Birmingham for demonstrating during the Civil Rights Movement, and eight clergy published this editorial. These were Christians and Jews, but you know, religious leaders published this editorial, saying he shouldn’t have been here, he should have been stirring up all this trouble, like just wait for the process to work itself out. And here’s how King responded, and to help them bend, unbend, right, and actually think of others, he says this. Longer quote, but goes quickly. He says, perhaps it is easy for those who’ve never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say wait, but when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim, when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters, when you see the vast majority of your 20 million negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society, when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she’s told that fun town is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people. When you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile, because no motel will accept you. Then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. You see what he’s saying. It’s the same movement that Philemon, that Paul was encouraging Philemon to make, like get outside your bubble, think of others for a moment. In essence, King is saying, I appeal to you on the basis of love, because if our heart orientation is loving, we will enter into the plight of those around us and respond the way family would respond, and that’s why family and heart language kind of predominates in this section. I don’t know if you noticed, but Paul doesn’t say Onesimus’ name until a third of the letter is gone, and even then he says it after a bunch of descriptions, right? He says, verse 10, I appeal to you for my son, and in the original language it actually says, I appeal to you for my son, who became my son while I was in chains, Onesimus. It’s like all the way at the end. He really wants the sun piece to come out, like this is family. When we talk about this last week, something changes when you become family, or at least it ought to change when you become family, especially when you become Christian family, because when you become Christian family, it means that you’re a new creation in Christ. There’s transformation. It’s the transformation that Paul even describes. Formerly, he was useless to you. One estimate we know based on his story that he would be a Phrygian slave. Phrygian slaves were notorious for being really, really lazy, so he was useless. His name, Onesimus, means useful, the common name for slaves back then. So he’s supposed to be useful, and instead he’s useless, but now you got him back, and he is actually useful again. Why? Because he’s been transformed. He is now a fellow worker, because he is a Christian, like Philemon and Archippus, that we met last week, because he’s different. You can treat him differently than you did before. What I want us to see is this is how God transforms us.
That’s why I asked the question, is my obedience, is your obedience legalistic or loving? Laws don’t work because they don’t change us. I think that’s why Paul says I could just tell you to do it, but that wouldn’t really do what I need to be done, like Philemon might pardon Onesimus, but still have a heart filled with resentment towards him, and so what would that really have accomplished? So that’s why Paul doesn’t want just legalistic, just do what you ought. He wants it to be motivated by love. Laws can’t change us. We know this. You’ve been coming for a while. We did Exodus in the fall. We saw what laws do for the people of God. God gave the law to show us that we fall short, that we cannot earn it, we cannot do it on our own, which is the whole reason Christ came, so that He could do it for us, keep that law perfectly when we could not, and then take the curse of the law on Himself, bearing its punishment in our place when we come to Him by grace through faith. When you see that, when you know that that’s what he’s done for us, like that love changes us, as we talked a lot about in Exodus, and even in Galatians as well. Love like that, ironically, empowers us to keep the law that we couldn’t keep before, because it’s no longer an ought but a want, it’s no longer self. Ish, but loving, so Paul appeals on the basis of love, and in the same way we should be moved by love to do what we ought, not because we ought, but because we want to do it. Takes us to that second question. Then very similar, Venn diagram overlaps a lot in these two paragraphs, for sure. Is my love my act of love forced or free? Verses 12 to 14. Here it is. I am sending him who is my very heart back to you. I would have liked to keep him with me, so that he could take your place in helping me while I am in chains for the gospel, but I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do would not seem forced, but would be voluntary. Paul wants to keep Onesimus with him. He is a fellow laborer, like Philemon was, and especially helpful laborer, while Paul is in chains, and clearly this is an especially close relationship. Paul is drawn to Onesimus immediately. That’s why he says he’s my very heart. I don’t know if you’ve had people like that in your life. I remember it was one of my students in Columbia, in particular. We went back down, they took a youth group on a mission trip back down to Columbia, and he was there and he helped us out. He was a translator, he was the one who knew stuff, and I just remember thinking the whole time, like, I’m so glad he’s here. This was 2014 I was not at a point in my professional life where I needed a personal assistant, but if I had needed a personal assistant, like, this is the guy I’m hiring, for sure. That’s how Paul feels toward Onesimus. He’s just the one where you’re like, I wish he was the guy who could stay with me. Philemon can’t be there in Rome, most likely is where Paul’s imprisoned. Maybe it’s Ephesus, doesn’t really matter. Philemon can’t be there, he’s in Colossi, he’s got a big house, probably a business, all that stuff. So the church is meeting there in his home, that’s good. But since Philemon can’t be there with Paul Onesimus, can this would be such an easy switch. Just let him stay with me. We’re all on the same team. We all want to see the gospel spread. I mean, here you have the ambassador in chains, and so you’ve got the deputy director all set to step in and do Paul’s work in his place. Paul’s saying all this because he’s still trying to get Philemon to see from another perspective, but he’s unwilling to be selfish himself. So, even though he’s saying this is exactly what I want, I could definitely command it.
I’m not going to, I won’t insist, he says, because he wants Philemon to come to his own conclusion, and I love this, because it means Paul trusts the power of the gospel to transform Philemon’s heart. He trusts the spirit of God at work in Philemon. Do you ever find it difficult to trust the power of the gospel to transform someone’s heart or to trust the spirit of God to work in somebody’s life? You all just looking at me like totally blank faces here. Somebody nod. Thank you. Okay, because I feel that a lot of the time, where I would like to control the situation manipulates, probably a better word, you know, like make it happen. It is so difficult to trust, but it’s so important at the same time, because it would have a very different feel if it were forced instead of voluntary, you know. This again, let’s take some, some family examples, since it’s Family Worship Sunday, and we’re in a family sort of book here. I mean, imagine that you know Grandma gets a thank you note from a grandchild, opens it up, so excited to see, and it says, “Dear Grandma, Mom said I had to write this. Some of y’all are like, yep, I read that letter, it’s cute, but maybe not exactly what you were hoping it would be, very different from I’m just so excited to thank you of my own accord. Or here’s another one. How sweet is one of my favorite moments in child rearing is that moment when kids, right around, I don’t know, year one or so, start giving you kisses voluntarily, or saying “I love you” without prompting, you get the prompting, you know, “Daddy’s leaving for work, give him a kiss goodbye. Okay, that’s fine. I love that too. But it’s very different when they just like come up and kiss you, because they’re like, “I know this is an expression of love, and I want you to know that I love you. What makes that so sweet? It’s the sincerity, because you know love motivates the action, and so you feel loved as a result, instead of just accepting the act of compulsion. You can certainly see how this matters for. Christian life as a whole. I mean, if you’re just keeping rules so God doesn’t smite you, you can earn His approval. That’s going to have a really different feel, won’t it? I mean, imagine the way AI is going. We could probably work this out in the next year or two, but you, you scan that QR code, and you put your information in, and it just a mad automatically, like grabs your bank info, and from then on, for as long as you’re here at CityView, it automatically deducts 10% of your paycheck. Now, can I tell you, if it were to do that, we would be a healthier church financially. I don’t know that there’s a church in this country that wouldn’t be healthier financially if it was a compulsory 10% deduction, because the average gift in the American Evangelical Church is not 10% we’ll just put it that way. We would be healthier financially, but we would be impoverished spiritually. I would much rather we do it this way, because that would feel like a burden, might be some resentment coming out. Maybe you don’t even notice it’s like your tax withholdings. I didn’t even know that that part was gone. There’s no opportunity for extravagance, but mostly it’s just it wouldn’t be an act of love. This is a real thing, by the way. There are all sorts of state churches in Europe, in particular, where the tithe is a part of your taxes. How’s the state church doing in Europe not so good, not so good. I would much rather do it this way. So that’s what we’re talking about here, is my obedience. Are these acts of love, or at least they’re supposed to be love, forced or free? Do acts of service, do acts of sacrifice spring from love, or do they spring from fear, people pleasing, just compliance? Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. If you love me, keep my commandments. If you love me, you’re going to want to obey, because we want to please the one who loved us first.
Now, since this is Family Worship Sunday, let me just talk to families for a moment. Parents, there’s some really challenging application to this section. You are right as a parent to insist on certain things. Can I just tell you that? Can I just give you permission right now? Like, as long as they’re living under your roof, you are absolutely right to insist they attend church with you, or go to this or that, or the other thing, too, to be a part of family worship, of course, but that’s not the goal, right? The the aim is voluntary spiritual discipline. Like, look ahead, will your son, will your daughter go to church when they go away to college? Why or why not? Now, parents, we can’t change hearts. You cannot save your children. You cannot raise your children so well that God is obligated to save them, of course not. I understand that, but you do want to model and communicate love, not legalism love for God that is expressed in free obedience, and I do mean model and communicate, like you talk about it. I just mentioned tithing is an example. I mean, do we only give because the Bible tells us to? No, of course not. And we give because we’re going.. I can’t believe how much the Lord has given me. And so, of course, I’m going to bring this, but Who am I, and Who is my family that we should be given all of this? So you have those conversations all sorts of areas, but kids, let me talk to you as well, because this is a good question for you too. On the flip side, like, would you read your Bible if your parents didn’t make you, and hopefully they do. If you’re young, we homeschool a large group of children, and it’s just the first thing on their checklist each day is their devotional time. It’s great, and we’ve got no problem with that. But if it weren’t on the checklist, would you still do it? That’s the question. Why or why not? As you’re answering that question, lean into the gospel, like, see how much he loved you, that he was willing to send his son to die for you. Love like that should make us want to love him, and obedience is like the ultimate thank you note. Sincere, we would hope. A love like that should make us want to love him, to love God. Sure, but what about loving the person who wronged you, that neighbor that’s sitting in front of you, who still has your weed whacker? Let’s get there in this last section. The last question, do I see the person who wronged me as a sinner or a sibling, verses 15 and 16. Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave, but better than a slave as a dear brother. He is very dear to me, but even dearer to you both as a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord. So, here’s where we get to the heart of the matter, and these are the most important verses in the book. This is that question: Do you want retribution or reconciliation? What will motivate Philemon’s free loving obedience. The answer is, how he gets Philemon back. Sorry, how he gets Onesimus back. No longer as a slave, which would be useful, brings profit to Philemon. No longer as a slave, but as something much, much better, a dear brother, because he’s been adopted by God the Father, and so they’re now siblings in Christ. I love that story, of course, and Kyle gave it to us, but in God’s providence, runaway Onesimus meets, of all people, Paul, and here’s the gospel from him, because he meets Paul, he meets God, and is saved by God. This is like Joseph’s story, where he’s, you know, sold into slavery by his brothers, and then tossed into prison unjustly, where God uses sin to bring salvation, that’s what’s happening here too, and God’s not just using sin to bring salvation to Onesimus, but sanctification to Philemon as well. I think it’s so good to know that all our ways are in God’s good hands, we can trust Him with our lives and with the lives of those we love. That’s why we pray.
Notice that Paul tells Philemon that Onesimus has worth to Philemon as a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord, literally reads he’s got worth in the flesh and in the Lord, and I kind of like that, in the flesh and in the Lord, like in the flesh he’s got worth as labor, but in the Lord as a fellow laborer in Christ. Onesimus has double value, he’s got value in the flesh because he is made in the image of God, and so he has worth and dignity and equality with Philemon, but he’s got value in the Lord, because now he is a brother in Christ as well. And, of course, this takes us to the question we’re all asking as we’re reading Philemon, especially this side of the transatlantic slave trade. What does the Bible say about slavery? We just do a little excursus here. There are plenty who think the Bible doesn’t hit slavery hard enough. When Paul sends Philemon to Philemon, he’s sending it with the letter Colossians, both to Colossians at the same time, and Colossians has words in it like, slaves obey your masters in the Lord, so you understand why some people think Bible doesn’t hit slavery hard enough. There are some reasons for this. Slavery was very different in first century Roman Empire than it was in 19th century America. Major difference, it was economic reality as opposed to a racial reality. For the most part, did not include the kidnapping that the transatlantic slave trade involved, so it was more economic and often voluntary. Basically, they didn’t have bankruptcy court, so you declare yourself bankrupt, you go, I owe you, you know, $100,000 I’m gonna work for you until the debt is paid, like that’s what it would look like, for the most part, another big difference, of course, is that I don’t know if you knew this, but Rome under Caesar was not a democracy. Caesar did not care what you thought about his policies, and when you raised issues like slavery, guys like Spartacus did this. For example, do you remember how Spartacus ended? Actually, the same way Jesus’s story ended, just without the resurrection afterwards. So, yeah, they just crushed that. So it is true, Paul does not hit slavery head on here. He does condemn the transatlantic slave trade in no uncertain terms in his letter to Timothy, because he talks about people stealing as being a sin. Well, he’s like right there. It is condemned, but he doesn’t just say you shouldn’t have slaves because they would treat him the way they treated Spartacus, then Rome, but what he does is he undermines the foundation of slavery, so that it could not but collapse afterwards. So the letter to Philemon is like the chipmunks who are digging burrows under your front stoop, and eventually it goes, because there’s nothing underneath it. That’s what Paul does here in Philemon. It’s going to collapse. Slavery is going to collapse if you work out the implications of this letter. Also, just help you out with your history here. It did collapse as a result of this letter, and earlier than you think, took Christianity about three centuries to be the influence in the Roman Empire, and so it was right there in the fourth century that slavery was outlawed. It was outlawed for 1000 years in the Christian West until the age of navigation, until the explorers went out, and all of a sudden they discovered another continent with people who looked different, and something flipped, and people lost their Christian roots at that point. Even then, the Pope, who was Pope at the time that, like, all this stuff was happening when the transatlantic slave trade began, condemned it in the strongest possible terms, but it flourished for a moment, and then it collapsed again, and Who ended the transatlantic slave trade? The Evangelical Church in Britain, because of Philemon. So, like, if we think it through, slavery is going to collapse, you know that. What was the abolitionist slogan in the 19th century America, am I not a man and a brother? Boy, where are they getting that from? Probably that whole part about he’s better than a slave, he’s a brother, he’s got worth as a man and as a brother in the Lord, it’s quoting Philemon, like you can’t treat family like this, especially not the blood-bought people of God.
This is why we have songs that we sing sadly only at Christmas time. They have words in it like chains shall he break and Like, for the slave is our brother, and in his name, in Christ’s name, all oppression shall cease. Like, imagine this: the church meets in Philemon’s house. The letter is probably being read publicly, like Colossians, at that point. Other slaves in Philemon’s house are hearing this letter, other slaves from other houses are hearing this letter, seeing Onesimus come back. Do you think they had questions? I would think so. This is why many white southerners didn’t want the Bible taught to their slaves. I just watched a movie, just this past week, in fact, where it was dealing with the theme of slavery, and was talking about how Christianity was forced on the slaves. I was like, are you completely ignorant of history? The answer is yes. Hollywood is completely ignorant of history. We know that, but still it was shocking to me, probably because I’m in Philemon. They would not teach the Bible to their slaves, because they knew if the slaves heard the word of God, they would understand that Christianity made them their masters equals before God, exactly right. But again, it’s not just about equals equality, it’s about family. You respond differently when family is treated differently, when family is treated poorly. We already saw this. Like, I know this was true. When we went to the mission field in Colombia, like, my parents read the news. Matt and Joanne, sitting right here, read the news about Colombia differently. You hear an earthquake in Colombia, or some drug violence in Colombia, by the way, a lot of it’s going on right now, even, and you go, whatever, that’s part of the world I haven’t really heard of. When your kid lives down there, that news hits differently, and if I’m reading the word of God correctly, then the spiritual family ties are stronger, even than blood family ties, which means that’s how we should be reading news anytime our brothers and sisters involved, there’s unrest in Bolivia right now, and I’m thinking my brother and my sister live there, not my literal brother and sister, my family of God brother and sister, Greg and Faith Hurst are down there, some of the people I’ve met when I’ve worked alongside them, Osvaldo and Ali, and people like that, and it hits differently, so how do we care for our brothers and sisters? How do we respond when we hear of or see injustice or suffering? Well, we respond the way we would respond if it were happening to our siblings, because it is happening to our siblings by. Way, I didn’t mean for this to come right after the politics series, but shouldn’t that inform our politics right there? Like, I want policies that do what I think need to be done. If this were my brother or my sister that were going through that, but let’s push slavery to the side for a moment and just look at the question of personal offense, even again, Onesimus is a runaway slave and a thief. Onesimus wronged Philemon, so how will he respond to Onesipus? How will we respond when others wrong us, especially in the family of God? Do you want retribution or reconciliation? Think Jesus really helps us answer this question. He tells the parable of the unmerciful servant as a guy who owes 10,000 talents, which, for perspective’s sake, 10,000 talents is about the amount of money they would have in the Roman treasury, so there’s a lot of money, billion dollars, let’s say. Okay, so he owes his master a billion dollars. Master says, “You got to pay me back, I’m throwing you in jail. The guy says, “There’s no way I can pay this back. He falls on his knees, pleads, you know, begging for mercy, and the master forgives him. And what’s incredible is he didn’t just say, “Fine, like I’ll give you 10 more years to pay, but the juice is flowing. No, he cancels the debt. That guy leaves, pardoned, right? His debt is released. There’s a guy who owes him 100 denarii. Denarius is a day’s wages for a typical day laborer. So, what are we talking 20,000 bucks, something like that? Okay, not nothing, but not a billion dollars, that’s for sure.
So he says, “You got to pay me back the money. The guy falls on his knees, “I can’t pay it back, please have mercy. And he says, “No way. Beats him up and throws him in prison. Some of the other servants see that, and they mention this to the master, and the master says this, Matthew 18. The master called the servant in, “You wicked servant, he said, “I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you? In anger, his master handed him over to the jailors to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you, unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. How you feeling about the unforgiveness in your heart right now? Little nervous, but to have been forgiven so much and yet to remain unforgiving, that can only mean that you hadn’t actually received grace. You see, the trouble with seeing your brother or sister as a wrongdoer who deserves punishment, you’re a wrongdoer who deserves punishment. Do you want retribution or reconciliation? Well, which do you want from God? Great, let that shape your response. With Philemon and Onesimus, we don’t have a saint and a sinner, we have two sinners who have been made siblings because the sinless Savior died for them, because his father freely and lovingly adopted sinners into his family. Like in society, Philemon and Onesimus couldn’t be farther apart, but in the church the ground is level at the foot of the cross. So, let’s go back to our thought experiment at the beginning. How would you respond if you saw that neighbor in this room? Well, how should you respond if you saw that neighbor in this room? And do they line up? I should hope so, and that is very much our big idea. Then today, as we close, we can freely, lovingly reconcile with others, because God freely lovingly reconciled us to Himself in Christ, even now, as we wrap up, ask yourself those three questions: Am I motivated by love or legalism, and if the latter, let God’s love thaw your cold heart, is my oh obedience free or forced, and if it’s the latter, if you only do it when you have to do it, let Christ’s willing free sacrifice change you. Do I see p. Who’ve wronged me in the church as siblings or as sinners. If it’s the latter, let the gospel humble you. We have been given the ministry of reconciliation. We are God’s ambassadors, just like Paul calls himself in verse nine, imploring others to be reconciled to God, but surely we should practice what we proclaim. The church is the place for sinners to be made siblings, where love motivates forgiveness and welcome and reconciliation. We can freely, lovingly reconcile with others, because God in Christ freely and lovingly reconciled his people to himself. Let’s pray to him now. Father, we are reminded again of the depths of our sin and the welcome we deserved when we returned to you, runaway children that we are, that we should have been swept aside by your judgment. That’s not how you received us, Lord. Instead, you reconciled us to yourself at great cost, the blood of your son, a cost you are willing to pay because of your free and forgiving love. God, may that love change us and make us truly loving the depths of who we are. May we look around this room and around the world, see our brothers and sisters in Christ, see our fellow man, and may we be motivated to love as You’ve loved us. We ask for Christ’s sake. Amen.