Living the Gospel

Introduction

When we think of Colossae, we usually associate the letter written to the Colossians. But the church in Colossae would meet in the house of a man by the name of Philemon. It would seem that Philemon was a man with some wealth. His house was large enough for the church to meet. He had servants. On top of that Colossae is considered to have been a rather wealthy city.

The problem is that one of Philemon’s servants seems to have run away, whether he was running to appeal to Paul or simply fleeing for freedom’s sake, he has run away from Philemon. In so doing, in someway, he has robbed his master. He either took money or perhaps he was a slave who refused to work while he was still around, or perhaps his absence had cost Philemon quite a bit of money.

There is reason for Philemon to be a bit perturbed. His slave is gone, and he has cost him money. And now Paul wrote to him in an effort to flip his thinking from an offended master to forgiving brother. And in so doing, also demonstrates to us how we can grow our brothers and sisters in holiness. As we go through this short letter, I see four reminders that we can glean from Paul as we seek to have our own gospel conversations with fellow believers. First, we need to remember gospel partnerships. Second, we need to remember gospel positives. Then I see a need to remember gospel purpose. Finally, we must remember the gospel price.

Remember Gospel Partnerships

Remember Gospel Positives

Remember Gospel Purpose

Remember Gospel Price

Philemon 1–25 ESV

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: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all the saints, and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ. For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you. Accordingly, 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. (Formerly he 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. I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel, but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own accord. For this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother—especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me. If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it—to say nothing of your owing me even your own self. Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ. Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say. At the same time, prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping that through your prayers I will be graciously given to you. Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you, and so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

Remember Gospel Partners

The first reminder that I see in this text this evening is that we must remember gospel partnerships. This may in fact be the second most important reminder that we gain from Paul’s example. Over and over again, in this text, we find Paul appealing to Philemon as a partner.

Verse 1 - He is a fellow worker

Verse 6 - he mentions the good thing in “us”; he and Philemon have the same working of good.

Verse 17 - he asks to be considered a partner

Verse 20 - he calls Philemon a brother

But even in verses 23-24, Paul mentions others who are fellow prisoner and workers with him. The thing with Paul is that while he is considered the most influential apostle and probably the most influential person in Christianity outside of Christ himself, he saw himself in gospel partnerships. He did not believe he could do gospel work—kingdom work—on his own. He does not see himself as higher than others, though he would have the right to think so as an apostle.

He even brings this up in this letter.

Philemon 8–9 ESV

Accordingly, 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—

He has the right, positionally speaking, but instead he makes an appeal to a brother who is in gospel partnership. This is not just humility, but gentleness on display.

Brothers and sisters, the moment that we think of ourselves as outside gospel partnership with other believers, we begin to lose gentleness and we start throwing commands rather than appeals. And though we may have the right to give those commands, for love’s sake, we must first appeal to brother or sister. You see, it is love that brings us to obedience, not commands.

Jesus pointed this out when he said,

John 14:15 ESV

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

That’s not an ultimatum. That’s a fact. It’s not a warning; it’s a chronological truth. “If you love me, then that love will flow into obedience.” It just will happen. John echoes this truth in his first epistle:

1 John 2:5 ESV

but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him:

God’s love is perfected—matured, completed—as we keep his word, as we obey his commands. Love is growing up in us as we obey. Obedience then is a result of love; without love there is no obedience. It is not the other way around. It is not that obedience is matured by love, but rather love being present is matured by obedience.

So when we see gospel partners rather than us and them, me and you, we have the unique opportunity to speak to a brother, a sister, a fellow worker in the kingdom and lead them into greater holiness.

Remember Gospel Positives

After remembering gospel partnerships, we ought then to remember gospel positives. Notice in this letter that Paul does not focus on Philemon’s dilemma at first. He highlights the things he is doing right. And I call them gospel positives because these are areas of life where the gospel is having a positive effect.

Verse 4 - I hear of your love and the faith you have toward Jesus and the saints

Verse 5 - Philemon is sharing his faith as well.

Verse 7 - Paul has received joy and comfort from his love and the saints have been refreshed by him.

This is not Paul trying to butter Philemon up in order to manipulate him. This is Paul’s M.O. If there is something good for Paul to notice, he would mention it. This was his mindset. He always sought to find how the gospel was working in the nitty gritty. He wanted to praise God for the grace at work in his gospel partners’ lives. How good are we at seeking the gospel positives in other believers’ lives? Is it the norm for us or are gospel positives the exception? There is only one letter that Paul wrote that had nothing good to say about those who were receiving it. He was determined to look for it wherever he could find it.

Perhaps he understood something we often miss. If the gospel is within the person, then there must also be a gospel work within that person. Therefore, we need to look for that gospel work first before we focus on the indwelling sin or the areas that are not growing like we think they should.

Even though Philemon has much to grow in, Paul does not doubt his love for Jesus or his love for the saints. Paul does not make this a personal vendetta. He doesn’t make any accusations against his faith or faithfulness. Perhaps there is bitterness, anger, held-onto hurt, or maybe it’s just a legal thing for Philemon, but whatever it is, Paul doesn’t say “Your actions, your feelings, your issues are causing me to question your very faith in Jesus.” Yet so often, we allow a person’s shortcomings, feelings, and sins to cause us to question a gospel partner’s faith and love.

It is almost as if we have trained ourselves to look for those shortcomings rather than gospel positives. And it isn’t that we never focus on them, but we need to remember that every one of us is a work in progress and we need to watch for how each gospel partner is progressing.

Remember Gospel Purpose

And we do this by remembering gospel purpose. So we first need to remember our gospel partnerships, then gospel positives, and now gospel purpose. And this is the most important gleaning.

Everything that Paul is doing has a gospel purpose: love. This letter is filled with love. It’s everywhere we look. Look at the way Paul speaks to Philemon and how he speaks about Onesimus.

Verse 1 - Philemon is his beloved fellow worker

Verse 9 - he appeals for love’s sake

Verse 10 - Paul refers to Onesimus as his child and then in verse 12 as his very heart.

Verse 16 - Paul wants Philemon to receive Onesimus, the one who has done him wrong, as a beloved brother, to see his slave as he sees Paul.

This is the gospel purpose of the letter: love. It’s always about love. Paul loves Philemon, Philemon loves Paul. They both love Jesus and the saints. Guess what then, the one who caused hurt to Philemon—that guy—is now a gospel partner. And Paul now desires Philemon to treat him as such. It’s the whole purpose for Paul’s letter.

The purpose of the gospel itself is to make us a people of love. We have two commandments that we are to obey: love God with everything that we are and have and love our neighbor as ourselves. Yet, we are unable to do that on our own. Therefore, the love God propelled him to send his Son to save us that we might love as well.

John says it like this: we love because he first loved us. Peter reminds us that above all, we are to love one another because love covers a multitude of sin. Paul spoke extensively on love to the Corinthians telling them that they can have any spiritual gift, they can be as give everything away, but if they aren’t loving, then its all worthless. Love is the gospel purpose. The gospel makes possible what was once impossible: love toward God and love toward brother, neighbor, and enemy. And as we saw earlier, it is love the propels us to obedience.

There are many side reasons for us to involve ourselves into the lives of those around us. It may be that we’re simply perfectionists. It’s our nature to try to be perfect. We grew up with the idea that if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. And so we put all our might into being as perfect as possible. After all, doesn’t God deserve our best? It’s in our nature to do it; we grew up doing it; we expect everyone to do it. And that propels us to involve ourselves in the lives of those not living up to our standards. If that’s your purpose; it’s not a gospel purpose.

Beloved, some of us are seeking to make up for our past. We kind of feel like we owe God. We can’t accept the grace that is given to us. We need to earn what we’ve been given. We need to pay back the debt of mercy that is ours. Again, we expect others to be that way too. We know who they were. We know what they’ve done. They should be acting better. They should be making more progress than they are. And we are propelled by this compulsion of paying God back. If that’s our reason, it is not a gospel purpose.

Many times for us parents, it is embarrassment that drives us to seek our children’s “sanctification.” It’s not so much that we really want them to love Jesus as much as it is that we just don’t want people seeing what they’re doing. And they pick up on that. If we are seeking others’ sanctification due to embarrassment, it’s not a gospel purpose.

The only gospel purpose the we have is love. Love for God. Philemon has that. Love for brothers. Philemon has that. Love for neighbor. Philemon has that. Love for enemies? Onesimus—the one who ran away from him and wronged him in ways we don’t even know. Paul is writing for him to do that as well. Church, we must have love as our only gospel purpose.

Remember Gospel Price

And that takes us to the last reminder. The first is that we need to remember gospel partnerships; we need to remember gospel positives; we need to remember gospel purpose, and now we see we need to remember gospel price.

The gospel comes with a price; if we don’t think it does, we don’t understand the gospel. Clearly Jesus paid the price that we could never pay. He died on our behalf. Paul told the Corinthians that we were bought with a price, the very blood of Christ. The gospel, as we tend to think of it, was costly.

But the gospel doesn’t stop at the cross. It doesn’t stop at the resurrection. It isn’t a momentary event in our lives when we prayed a prayer, walked an aisle or got baptized. The gospel is at work in us. Thus, to live out the gospel in our lives, means that there will continuously be a price to be paid. If the gospel purpose is love, then the gospel price is sacrifice. Sacrifice is only sacrifice if it costs us something.

In this case we see Paul dealing directly with such a cost.

Philemon 18–19 ESV

If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it—to say nothing of your owing me even your own self.

In order to bring about the gospel purpose: love, he was willing to pay the gospel price: sacrifice. Charge Onesimus’s wrong to me. I’ll pay it back. Whether it was an actual cost of money, perhaps of time, or some other cost, Paul was willing to take it upon himself for the gospel purpose of love. He called upon Philemon to be willing to do the same. You owe me your life. The gospel calls for sacrifice. There is not only a price to purchase our salvation, but a price for us to sacrifice for the good of our brothers and sisters. The kingdom calls for sacrifice. We who want to enter into the kingdom are called to take up our cross and follow Jesus. We are called to deny ourselves.

When Peter asked Jesus how many times we should forgive a brother, and he says seven times? Jesus said 77. Then he tells the parable of the king who forgave his servant but then that servant refused to forgive his fellow-servant. Both amounts of money were significant amounts. The first servant owed what would amount to about $600 billion in today’s money. The second servant though owed about $20,000! That’s nothing to sneeze at. That’s a lot of money! So when Jesus calls on us to forgive, he isn’t taking it lightly. He would have known that 100 denarii was a significant price to pay for forgiveness. But that’s the gospel price. And we are compelled by love—love for God as we imitate him as beloved children, and love for brother as we seek to cover a multitude of sins as Peter wrote. Paul told the Corinthians that they ought to be defrauded—even by their own brothers—than to shame the church and God’s kingdom by going to court.

So as we partner with others for their growth in sanctification, we need to remember that there is a price that comes with it. It will cost you something. It may cost you time, money, frustration, sleep, your favorite show or ballgame. It can come in any number of ways. But it will come and we need to be ready to pay whenever it does and whatever way it does.

Conclusion

As we finish up in Philemon, we have seen that Paul wrote a letter that actually demonstrates to us how to have gospel conversations with fellow believers for their sanctification. And we’ve seen that as we have these gospel conversations, we need to remember to come to gospel partnerships. They are our brothers and sisters, not our underlings or superiors. We need to remember gospel positives. We need not be curmudgeons that can’t see the good that the gospel is working, but those who see and praise the gospel work in our gospel partners. We’ve seen that our gospel purpose in these gospel conversations is love. We approach in love, speak in love, and propel them to love: love God, brother, neighbor, and enemy. And we’ve seen that all this will come with a gospel price that we pay by the grace of God.

And I’ve used the word “gospel” as an adjective throughout the sermon because it is the entire letter is a picture of the gospel itself. We being slaves to sin and unrighteousness have run to the only one who can release us from such slavery. That one is willing to take our debt and put it upon himself that we may be forgiven by the one we’ve offended. Thus making us a child of the very one we’ve offended.

In this whole letter, we have the gospel of Christ being lived out by Paul the Apostle. It is this kind of life that we are called to live as well. By God’s grace let us do it.