God’s Reconciling Grace The Book of Philemon

Christianity Still Makes Sense

God’s Reconciling Grace

The Book of Philemon

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;that is,

in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:17-19).

“Slaves were found in all professions and generally had more opportunity for social advancement than free peasants; unlike the vast majority of slaves in the United States and the Caribbean, they were able to work for and achieve freedom, and some freed slaves became independently wealthy.

This social mobility applied especially to the household slaves—the only kind of slave addressed in Paul’s writings. Economically, socially, and with regard to freedom to determine their future, these slaves were better off than most free persons in the Roman Empire; most free persons were rural peasants working as tenant farmers on the vast estates of wealthy landowners.” Craig Keener

“From the standpoint of ancient slave owners, the lost time of an escaped slave was lost money and was legally viewed as stolen property, to which one harboring him was liable. But more important, slaves themselves were not cheap, and Philemon might have already bought another slave to replace him.)

Recapture normally meant severe punishment. Old Testament law required harboring escaped slaves (Deut 23:15–16), but Roman law required Paul to return Onesimus to his master, with serious penalties if he failed to do so. Paul uses his relationship with Philemon to seek Onesimus’s release: in a standard “letter of recommendation,” one would plead with someone of equal (or sometimes lower)

status on behalf of someone of lower status. Paul was not Philemon’s equal socially or economically, but as his spiritual father he had grounds to claim the equality that characterized ancient friendship.” Keener

Six Feautures Regarding God’s Reconciling Grace

1. God’s Reconciling Grace Encounters Each of Us in An Undeserved State

2. God’s Reconciling Grace Is Designed to Change Us

3. God’s Reconciling Grace Should Motivate Us to Reconcile with Those We’ve Wronged

“No Christian should grumble at extra demands of love. They are golden opportunities to draw on the reserves of divine love, and in so doing to become more fully oneself in Christ, more completely in the image of God, more authentically human. It is not merely Onesimus for whom Paul is here pastorally concerned.” N.T. Wright

4. God’s Reconciling Grace Is Always Costly

5. God’s Reconciling Grace Contains Within It the Power to Overcome Social Evils

“Paul’s message to Philemon goes beyond other documents of his time in not only pleading for clemency for an escaped slave but asking that he be released because he is now a Christian. So powerful was this precedent that many early U.S.

slaveholders did not want their slaves to be exposed to Christianity, for fear that they would be compelled to free them; only in time was a distorted enough form of the Christian message available for use in sustaining slavery.” Craig Keener

6. God’s Reconciling Grace Transforms Relationships

“If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18).