
From Bondservant to Brother
What is a Christian to do when wronged by someone—someone who has now become a Christian? The apostle Paul addresses this very matter in a short letter sent to a man named Philemon.
Transcript
If you have ever been to the emergency room, you have experienced “triage.” Triage is a French word that literally means “to sort out.” It refers to deciding who needs treatment immediately and who can wait.
During World War II, the allies used the system of triage in makeshift hospitals near the front lines. It was the duty of the supervisor to tag the wounded. The color-coded tags would place patients in one of three categories. One color was used for patients who were considered hopeless—nothing could be done for them. Another color stood for hopeful. It meant the injured soldier would survive whether he received immediate help or not, so he could wait for treatment.
The third colored tag was for patients marked as doubtful. In other words, these soldiers might survive but only if they were given immediate treatment. A lot of the emergency medical treatment was given to these soldiers marked doubtful.
One soldier named Louis arrived, badly injured. One of his legs was completely shattered, and he had lost a lot of blood. The triage supervisor who examined him decided that Louis was hopeless. His colored tag silently instructed the medical staff to make him as comfortable as possible before he passed away.
The nurse assigned to Louis that evening noticed that he was conscious, and they began to talk. They discovered they were both from Ohio. Getting to know Louis as someone from her home state, and not just another wounded soldier, made this nurse do something that was forbidden. Later that night, she slipped into the hospital ward and changed his colored tag from hopeless to doubtful.
The next morning, Louis was quickly transported to a better medical facility and taken into surgery. Months later, minus one leg, he fully recovered. It was all because a nurse was willing to change his tag and give him another chance at life.
Beloved, that is the gospel. Jesus Christ is in the business of changing tags! Nobody is hopeless. No one is beyond the reach of God’s forgiveness and grace.
As we set sail into one of the shortest books in the Bible, we are going to watch the apostle Paul change the tag on a runaway slave.
Paul is still a prisoner in Rome. He is actually writing a letter to the church in Colossae—we call it the book of Colossians. But in the mail pouch along with Paul’s letter to the Colossians is another letter, a brief letter written to a man named Philemon.
Paul begins this letter with these words:
Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother. To Philemon our beloved fellow worker and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church in your house. (verses 1-2)
This tells us that the church in Colossae was meeting in the home of Philemon—evidently a wealthy man with a large enough home to accommodate this church. Apphia is more than likely his wife. Archippus is mentioned in Colossians 4:17—he is apparently the pastor/teacher. Bible scholars suggest that Archippus is the son of Philemon and Apphia. So, this family is deeply committed to the gospel of Christ.
Paul adds his personal appreciation for Philemon’s ministry in verse 7:
I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.
Paul then gets down to the reason he is writing this little note. He is about to make a personal request regarding one of Philemon’s household servants who had run away, a man named Onesimus.
As an apostle, Paul could have commanded Philemon to respond with forgiveness and grace; but instead, Paul appeals to him:
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—I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment. (verses 8-10)
The information here, along with what we learn in the rest of this letter, tells us this: Onesimus had run away, and Philemon did not know what had happened to him. Paul says Onesimus not only came to him in Rome but also became a Christian through Paul’s ministry. Paul is now the spiritual father of Onesimus.
Beloved, some significant tags have been changed here. Onesimus is no longer tagged a slave; he is now the spiritual son of Paul.
You might wonder how Philemon could have a bondservant if he was such a godly Christian with a church meeting in his home. Well, as we studied back in Ephesians and Colossians, Paul instructed both Christian servants and Christian masters on how to conduct themselves with honesty and kindness.
Paul does not legitimize slavery in the Roman Empire—which was rampant by the way. But I can tell you that Paul is sowing the seeds of emancipation, so to speak. He is changing the tags here so that Christian masters treat their household servants like employees—even like members of the family, as we will see.
In order to understand what is going on here, we need to understand Roman law regarding bondservants. In Roman law, there was a provision that if a household bondservant and his master experienced some kind of breach—some kind of rupture—in their working relationship, the servant could go to a friend of his master and appeal to him to reconcile their differences.
Beloved, Onesimus did not just happen to run away to Rome, which was more than a thousand miles from the city of Colossae. This was intentional. Onesimus did not bump into Paul by accident; he was looking for Paul. He wanted Paul to bring about reconciliation between himself and Philemon.[1]
The first thing Paul does is bring about reconciliation between Onesimus and God. He leads this man to faith in Christ.
We are not told what the specific problem was between Onesimus and Philemon, but we are given a clue in Paul’s words in verses 11-12:
Formerly he [Onesimus] was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me. . . . I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart.
We need to get this straight here. Paul is not supporting slavery by sending a runaway back to his master; he is writing a letter of reconciliation. Paul wants Philemon to change the tag he had put on Onesimus.
Paul makes a play on words in verse 11, where he says that Onesimus has been changed from useless to useful. The name Onesimus means “useful.”
There is another change in his tag as well. Paul makes it clear in verse 16 that he wants Philemon to welcome Onesimus back, “no longer as a bondservant but more than bondservant, as a beloved brother.” How is that for changing someone’s tag in life—no longer a bondservant, but a beloved brother?
Paul writes, “Receive him as you would receive me” (verse 17). In other words, he asks Philemon to treat Onesimus as if he were Paul himself. This is so important to Paul that he makes an offer to Philemon in verse 18: “If he [Onesimus] . . . owes you anything, charge that to my account.”
What a picture of the gospel here! This is what Jesus has done for us. Our debt of sin was placed on His account; He paid off the debt—in full.
While Paul is confident Philemon will fulfill Paul’s request (verse 21), we are never told what happened next. We are just going to have to wait to get to heaven to find out.
And how do we know we are going to heaven? One reason only: God changed our tag—from lost to found, from outcast to redeemed, from hopeless to heavenward.
[1] Mark Dever, “Repentance,” sermon, preachingtoday.com.
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