Christ in All: When a Slave Becomes a Brother

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. This is the word of the Lord. So I want you to imagine for a moment that you are a small business owner, and you've got a couple of key employees who are pivotal to your business and your clientele.

And Monday morning, you show up to work and you find out one of your key employees, Bob, is not there. He hasn't shown up. You text him. You check your emails. He hasn't sent any, you know, sick leave or anything like that.

He's just gone. At the end of the day, when you close up shop, you're like, I don't know what's going on with Bob, but hopefully he's okay. He'll come back in tomorrow. This is not like him. So Tuesday, you come in, and Bob's not there again.

And so during your lunch break, you can't reach him. You decide to go to his house. You go to his house. There's no cars there. You knock on the door, and you look through the window of the house, and you see that it all looks like they've left in a rush.

Bob has deserted and fled the city. Now Bob has caused you a lot of damage. You've lost a lot of income through your business. He was a key worker. Some of your clients are going to be upset.

Deadlines are going to be pushed back. Bob has wronged you. But imagine, to develop the story a little further, that one day you come into church, you're the small business owner, and you see Bob sitting in one of the pews, and someone else from church comes up to you and says, Bob's actually become a Christian. Do you know this guy? And you have to wrestle with how you're going to treat Bob.

You might have legal rights to punish Bob or make him pay back some of the money. There might be all sorts of things that are going through your mind, but what are you going to do when this man who wronged you has now become a brother in Christ? Now the reason I share that is that it's kind of like a modern parallel of the background behind the letter to Philemon. This letter that we're opening up today in our New Testament was written in the first century, probably at the same time when Colossians was written by Paul. He's this apostle who was in the ancient city of Rome.

He was under house arrest. Epaphras had come from Colossae. He was a local, probably sort of like the pastor there, who has come to Paul and said, the church is in trouble. There are false teachers among us. We looked at that in the last eight weeks of the letter of Colossians, and he's told Paul the story, and so Paul has written two letters.

One was the letter of Colossians that we looked at over eight weeks, and one is this letter to Philemon, this letter to an individual man in the Colossian church. And Philemon is interesting for us because we get to see the theology, the teachings of Colossians applied to a specific and personal situation in the church. This is why the sermon today is called Christ in All: When a Slave Becomes a Brother. Because Onesimus was a slave that fled from Philemon's household. Under Roman law, he could be at least imprisoned for that, maybe even put to death.

And now he's sheepishly coming back with Tychicus, who's the one entrusted with the letters, coming into church on Sunday, and they come to read these letters out from Paul, and Onesimus is in the pews, and Philemon's over there, probably just with his mouth open, looking at this guy who's come back who's wronged him. And Paul's going to give him some advice now about how he is to treat this new brother in Christ. So to understand this letter well, we're going to have to understand a little bit about ancient Roman slavery, because the letter itself assumes that we think that Onesimus is kind of like the bad guy, the slave that's coming back, and Philemon is the good guy who's been wronged and has to receive him. But in our modern minds, Philemon is the slave owner. Like, we would normally think Philemon is the evil guy, and Onesimus, good on him.

He ran away. Like, good. He gets his freedom. So how can we kind of get ourselves into the first century mindset? Now before I do this, disclaimer: yes, the institution of slavery is evil, and yes, the Bible is anti-slavery, but what we're doing right now is just trying to put ourselves in first century shoes and understand how Philemon was feeling, how Onesimus was feeling, how the church would be hearing this letter as it was read out.

So just a bit of information about the slavery that existed in the Greco-Roman world. First of all, it was ubiquitous. It was everywhere. About a third of the population, it's estimated, were slaves. Imagine that.

One in three people in this room serving in households and in other forms of slavery that existed. Secondly, it wasn't racially motivated. We often think of the vile form of slavery that we see in the African American slave trade. It wasn't actually racially motivated. You could be from any ethnic background and become a slave.

There are different ways that you could become a slave. It could be because you fought against Rome in an army, and you were captured and they made you a slave. It could be because you had debts to repay, and you decided to sell yourself into slavery to repay that debt over a period of time before you regained your freedom. So it could be something you voluntarily entered into. So there are different forms of slavery.

They were also really harsh forms of slavery. So the slaves that worked in the salt mines in Rome, that was like a death sentence. They had a very low life expectancy in those kinds of conditions. But there were also household slaves, and their life conditions were really determined by the master of the household. If he was a pretty good guy, they could actually live a lot better than many of the free peasants that were in society.

And then there were, like, high class slaves that were highly educated. Caesar would have them in his household. Elite people would hire them, and they could be worth millions of dollars apiece in today's currency. And they would live a better life and have more status and a better standard of living than most free people in the empire. So you have different forms of slavery in the Greco-Roman world, and when Paul writes in his letters to slaves, he's actually speaking to household slaves.

He's speaking to that category specifically. So not the vile salt mine stuff, not the elite of the elite, but the household slaves, and Onesimus was one of these, and that's why our English Standard Version translates the Greek word doulos as bondservant. We think he's probably someone who sold himself into slavery to pay back a debt for a period of time before he regained his freedom. Now you still might say, well, I've got a bit of a problem with the New Testament's teaching on this because I don't see anywhere in the Bible where it says abolish slavery, destroy the institution. We saw in the letter of Colossians that Paul spoke to people in slavery, and he told them that your ultimate master is Jesus.

He espoused principles that were going to undermine the Roman version of slavery, but he doesn't directly say abolish it. Why? Well, here are a few reasons for you. First of all, slaves wouldn't necessarily have been better off if we just said abolish slavery. Craig Keener is a well known historian on the New Testament background, and he says, economically, socially, and with regard to freedom to determine their future, many of these male household slaves, like Onesimus, were better off than average free persons in the Roman Empire.

Many scholars commonly say most free persons were rural peasants working as tenant farmers in the vast estates of wealthy landowners. Okay? So if they couldn't quickly find a source of income, they could starve and die if they were just immediately set free from slavery. And remember, they didn't have this massive bourgeoisie middle class with a fair bit of wealth themselves. It was mostly they had some middling people, but most people were peasants if they were free.

They just lived hand to mouth day to day. Secondly, Christians were a tiny religious minority in an authoritarian empire called Rome. So if Christians decided to do modern day democracy, which they didn't have back then, and go, let's abolish slavery, abolish the institutions, Caesar would just be like, kill them. Dead. They didn't have democratic privileges like we have or influence over lawmaking like we have.

And so it's kind of anachronistic, that's the word. It's reading your own chronology back into the ancient world and saying, well, they should have done this because this is what we would have done today, but it's actually a different context. Thirdly, and I think this is one of the most important, Christians didn't understand their calling in terms of Christianising the empire. They became Christians, and they wanted to live out this new social reality in their churches. So they may have been out there in the Roman Empire.

They may have been slaves, or they may have been wealthy, or they may have been an artisan, or they may have been a tentmaker, but when they came into the church, they were brothers and sisters in Christ, and they looked to live out that reality as God's people in that community, and then to share the gospel and invite people in. They didn't see their calling as let's create social institutional change across the empire. So those are a few of the reasons why Paul doesn't come out and say, abolish the institution. But I want to show you that Philemon is deeply an anti-slavery book, and I want to show you that if Christians take this book seriously and Christianity grows, which it did, it would be lethal to the institution of slavery. It couldn't coexist with the teachings of the New Testament and the Greco-Roman form of what slavery was.

So this is why some scholars ranging from the sorry, the nineteenth to the twentieth century say things like, a principle is boldly enunciated in this letter, which must in the end prove fatal to slavery. F.F. Bruce, a famous scholar from last century, says, Philemon creates an atmosphere where slavery could only wilt and die. Moo, another scholar, says, Paul applies an explosive charge to the whole institution. I love that image. Philemon is like this ticking time bomb that's placed inside the institution of slavery, and it's a matter of time before the institution is destroyed.

Because it's not possible for slavery as it existed to continue to exist if you're a master and this person has become a brother in Christ, and they're an equal in the kingdom of God and so on and so forth. It just doesn't work. Slavery had to eventually wilt and die. Now fast forward to the twenty-first century, to today. What does the letter of Philemon teach us? Well, it shows us that the gospel, the good news about Jesus, creates a new family that transforms the way we relate to one another.

It shows us that the gospel creates a new family that transforms the way we relate to one another. It changes power dynamics. It changes our obligations to one another in all sorts of ways that were once normal ways of relating between people. If you're a follower of Jesus in this building or online, this letter is going to be helpful for you, because what if that scenario I mentioned in the beginning, what if someone like Bob does come to church, they were a former enemy, someone that's wronged you, and they actually become a genuine Christian, and they're a brother or a sister in Christ? How are you going to relate to them?

What do you do? Or if you're here and you're exploring Christianity, you wouldn't claim that label, but you're spiritually interested. You're welcome here. We're so glad that you're here, and you're welcome to ask questions. You're going to see why Christian community can be so beautiful.

As Christians, we actually call each other brothers and sisters in Christ. We actually believe we are the household of God, the Bible says, and we want to be involved in each other's lives, and support each other, and help each other follow Jesus. And that could sound a little bit overbearing to you, a bit full on, but isn't that actually what you deeply desire? I think of what Timothy Keller says. He was a pastor in New York.

He said, to be loved and not known is shallow and superficial. I think that's what a lot of people on the Gold Coast have. We project in this life. We've got this beautiful social media page. We've got nice lifestyles and things like that on the Gold Coast.

Not known, but maybe loved by some people, but that's shallow. It doesn't really fill our tanks. To be fully known, flaws and all, but not loved is our worst nightmare, to be rejected. But to be fully known, flaws and all, and fully loved, that's the dream. That's paradise.

And that's something that the gospel can create in human communities, a place where we actually can be honest enough to confess our flaws and amazed that Jesus covers them and enables us to be fully known and fully loved. So I hope you'll see that as we open up this letter. We're going to get into it now, and we're going to look at it under three different headings. And the first one is this: the gospel creates a new family. The gospel creates a new family.

We're going to see that in the first few verses. So if you've got your Bible or your Bible app, please open it up because I'm not going to put a lot of the verses on the screen. And we read this starting in verse one. Paul begins, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, to Philemon, our beloved fellow worker, and Aphia, our sister, and Archippus, our fellow soldier, and the church in your house. So notice the intimate and familial language.

Paul calls Timothy his brother, even though he's not a blood related brother. He's a brother in Christ. He calls Aphia his sister, even though she's not a blood related sister. She's a sister in Christ. The gospel creates a new family.

He calls Philemon beloved, dearly loved, and a valued fellow worker. It's this intimate, loving community. And he calls Archippus a fellow soldier. There was also this common mission that they had, this common thing they were suffering for and that they were working towards together. Now isn't it interesting that this letter that is to Philemon is addressed to multiple other people?

We've got Aphia, our sister, and Archippus, our fellow soldier, those are in verse two. Scholars say we can't be certain, but we think that Aphia is Philemon's wife and Archippus is the son. That might be why they're singled out in connection with this Onesimus returning situation. They probably belong to the same household, Philemon, Aphia, and then their son, Archippus.

But the whole church is being addressed as well. And notice, well, you won't be able to see this in the English translation, but in the original Greek of this, when this was written, verses one to three, when it's saying, for example, verse three, when it says grace to you, it's plural. So it's like grace to y'all if you were American. Grace to y'all. But in verse four, it goes to the singular.

I thank my God always when I remember you, singular. Remember you, Philemon. So in the first three verses, he's speaking to the whole church, and then he directly addresses Philemon. But let's not skip past the significance of the fact that Paul addresses the whole church. Let me just read to you what Doctor Douglas Moo says about these words.

He says, we should not overlook the fact that Paul chooses to include two other individuals and the whole church that meets in Philemon's house in his address. Paul's inclusion of the whole church in the address of the letter is not simply then a way of putting greater pressure on Philemon. You better do as I say or all the church will know you have scorned me. It is actually the reflection of a social and theological reality of the early Christian community. See, this letter, the fact that it's being addressed to these people when it's actually something directly for Philemon, it's showing us the social and theological reality of the church, of the early church.

They were actually involved in each other's lives, uncomfortably so. I'm not sure if a church leader had to write a letter to you to be reconciled to someone, and read it out in front of the whole church family and address it to you, I don't know if you'd be comfortable with that, but that's what was going on here. Tychicus and Onesimus, they come to church, and they read these letters out. One of them is for Philemon, but it's read to the whole church family, because the way that Christians understood themselves together is that they were a family, they were a household together, and they wanted to be involved in one another's lives.

And Paul goes on, and he addresses Philemon directly. He says, I thank my God, verse four, 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. We saw that in the last series in Colossians in chapter one. Paul started talking about faith, hope, and love. Here, faith and love are mentioned.

Those are those three Christian virtues that Paul keeps holding up to us as something we should have as God's people. So he's thankful for Philemon that he's got faith, deep trust in Jesus, and love for people, love for his church family. And then he says in verse six, 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. Now that's a mouthful. That verse right there in the original Greek is the hardest verse to translate into English, because some of the Greek words, you could translate it this way or that way, and then the next one, you could translate it this way or that way, and it needs to be determined by the context of the letter.

I don't actually like the ESV's translation that we're using here where it says Paul says, I pray that the sharing of your faith, because the sharing of your faith to modern ears sounds like evangelism. That sounds like sharing your faith with other people, but that's not actually what Paul's talking about. The Greek word that underlies this is the Greek word koinonia. It can mean sharing, but it also means partnership. It means participation.

It means fellowship. When Paul uses koinonia, he's talking about this communal reality that we share in because of our faith in Jesus. This new communal reality that has been created by Jesus. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. So that's why I actually prefer the translation of the NIV, which we'll put on the screen.

Paul says, I pray that your partnership, that's the Greek word koinonia, with us in the faith may be effective in deepening your understanding of every good thing we share for the sake of Christ. What I think Paul's trying to get across here is he's actually doing some groundwork with Philemon before he gets to the difficult request. He's saying to Philemon, I want you to reflect on this koinonia, this partnership you have with your brothers and sisters in Christ. I want your understanding of that to deepen, so that you know how you're to relate to this new guy, Onesimus, coming back as a brother in Christ. Does that make sense?

He's wanting him to reflect on this reality that we have in Christ Jesus, that we are brothers and sisters, that we are the family of God. And that's ultimately what the letter of Philemon is about. It's not actually about slaves becoming brothers. That's the specific situation, but at its core, it's about this new reality, this koinonia, the sharing that we have in the faith that is in Christ Jesus that changes the way that we relate to one another, and it should apply to the specific situation of Philemon and Onesimus. So Paul goes on.

He says, for I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints, that's just God's people, have been refreshed through you. Now this is one of the reasons I think it's important for us to have a formal membership process, actually. Because we have this koinonia thing happening, this fellowship that's been created by Christ that actually unites us together quite intimately. And in the modern western world that we live in, we're so individualistic. And I read a good blog this week. Someone talked about church shopping.

It's so easy to church shop and sort of change around churches to suit your own consumeristic desires. And then sometimes there are good reasons to change churches, so I'm not condemning all that. But it's so easy for us to kind of keep people out, to treat this as just a Sunday thing or a religious affiliation, and then we don't want these people to have anything more to do with our lives. But for membership, it's not a way of creating a higher class of Christians.

It's not that. It's not a way of deciding who is a Christian. It's not that. We don't create extra bars for people to become a Christian. We become a Christian through faith alone, by grace alone.

But formal membership is helpful because there's a chance for us, and if you're not a member yet, to sit down together and say, here's what we believe. Here's where we're going as God's people. Do you want to commit to following Jesus with us as a local church? Do you want to have koinonia here? Do you want to submit to the elders of this church?

Do you want to bind yourself to us and let's work together? That's what formal membership helps us to do. That's why I think it's a blessing to have that, even though the Bible doesn't command us to have a formal membership process. I think it's a helpful outworking of what the Bible teaches. Either way, what we see in these first few verses is that the gospel creates a new family.

Next, Paul's actually going to move from the groundwork now. He's going to start to address the elephant in the room. And we're going to look at that under the second heading, the gospel transforms social structures. The gospel transforms social structures. So Paul goes on, and he says to Philemon, accordingly, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required. Let's just remember Paul was an apostle.

He was an eyewitness of Jesus. He was one of these few that were authorised to pass on Jesus' teachings. And so he's like, I have the authority to do that, but I'm not going to command you to do what's required, Philemon. Verse nine, yet for love's sake, I prefer to appeal to you. I, Paul, an old man, and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus.

What he's doing here, he's starting to pull on Philemon's heartstrings. He's like, I'm getting old, and I'm suffering for Christ. I'm actually imprisoned for the gospel, and I'm going to make a really hard request of you, Philemon. It's going to require lots of forgiveness, lots of generosity. You were wronged in our culture, but I want you to do something really hard, and he's sort of setting up the scene and saying, I'm old. I'm suffering for the gospel. I want you to do something for me.

Now scholars say he was probably between 52 to 62 years old when this is written, so maybe we should put a letter into parliament and lower the retirement age to 52 or something like that. I don't know.

Anyways, bit of a bad joke. So Paul says, verse 10, I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus. Okay. He's finally addressed the elephant in the room.

He calls Onesimus his child, very intimate language, and Onesimus actually literally means useful. It was a very common Greco-Roman name, especially for slaves. I think we can connect that, useful. That's why they used it a lot for slaves and household servants. And the reason I point that out is because Paul's going to do a bit of a play on words in just a moment with that name that means useful.

He says, I appeal to you for my child, whose father I became in my imprisonment. What Paul's trying to say is not that he adopted him legally, but that he became a spiritual father. Somehow, in the Lord's providential guidance, Onesimus has met with Paul. He's heard the gospel, and he's become a child of God. He's become like a spiritual child to Paul. He's become a Christian.

And Paul says, verse 11, formerly, Onesimus was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me. He's actually living into the reality of what his name means. He may have been useless before. Maybe he stole something from you before he left, Philemon. He fled away.

He's cost you money and your business, but now he's become a Christian, and he's become useful to you. It reminds me of what Paul taught in the letter of Colossians when he spoke to slaves. He said, you might have an earthly master, but you have an ultimate master in heaven, and work as if you're working for Jesus. He's the ultimate master. Work heartily.

And Onesimus seems to have become a Christian. He's like, well, even if I'm still going to work for Philemon, even if he doesn't set me free, I'm going to work heartily for him as if I'm working for Jesus. So he's become useful. Verse 12, Paul says, I'm sending him back to you, sending my very heart. That's the Greek word splachnon.

I love that word, splachnon. It refers to your innermost parts, like bowels in that culture. It's kind of like when we say, oh, that was a kick in the guts. That means that really hurt, and I felt it right here in my gut. That's the area that Paul is talking about.

Onesimus occupies a deeply affectionate place in Paul's heart, in modern day language, or if you're an ancient person, he would say in my bowels, which sounds weird to us, but that's what the Greek word literally meant. And he says, I'm sending him back to you. 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 prefer to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion, but of your own accord. That's beautiful. It reminds me of when Paul talks about giving in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9.

He talks about how God loves a cheerful giver, not under compulsion, but willingly, voluntarily giving. That pleases the Lord. The Lord's not pleased when we are coercing each other. The Bible commands us, so you better do it. The Lord is pleased when someone is actually willingly and voluntarily saying, I want to do it because Jesus is amazing, and I want to serve Him.

I want to give. I want to do this. And that's what Paul's wanting to achieve here. He wants Philemon to voluntarily do this difficult thing he's going to ask. Verse 15, for this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, Philemon, that you might have Onesimus back forever, no longer as a bondservant, it's the Greek word doulos, which we'll talk about in a moment, but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother.

Alright. So Paul's got the doctrine of providence in his mind. That's the doctrine or the teaching that God guides all things towards His good ends. We don't believe in a God who is distant to the world, who has kind of wound up like a clock and just set it off to go as it pleases. God is intimately involved.

Even sometimes in the mundane, God is ordering things towards His good ends. Even the evil things that happen to us, God doesn't call those things good, but He's working them together with everything for ultimate good. And so he's saying, maybe that's why Onesimus fled away from you. Philemon, that hurt you. Maybe it hurt your business.

Maybe you felt angry about it. Maybe you felt wronged, but maybe God's hand was in that. Because Onesimus has become a brother now, and you get to receive him back forever, not in this temporary human institution called servanthood or slavery, but he's become a brother in Christ. That's a big thing to say to someone in the Greco-Roman world. That's radical to say, this slave has actually become your brother, an equal in the church.

And then he says, especially to me, but how much more to you, Philemon, both in the flesh and in the Lord. And that's an odd way of speaking, in the flesh and in the Lord. There is no sphere of existence outside of Paul's mind that is not in the Lord, that is not under Christ's authority and reign. But what I think Paul's trying to press home here is saying that Onesimus has become your brother in the Lord, in Christ, and in the flesh, that's in your earthly, human, temporary way of living, I want you to apply this principle to the way that you're relating to him in the human here and now. So that's what Paul does.

He shows that the gospel transforms social structures. You know, you might be really wealthy coming here, or you might be really poor. You might be really educated. You might be super qualified. But when we all enter this room, we enter as equals, as brothers and sisters in Christ.

The gospel transforms social structures. And this has implications for how we deal with awkward situations like the one in the letter of Philemon. So let's finish by looking at that under the heading, the gospel demands a new benchmark. The gospel demands a new benchmark. Alright.

Paul's done all this groundwork, and he's finally going to come out with the request. And just remember, in the first century context, the people that were hearing this might have thought it was generous for Philemon simply not to punish Onesimus, but Paul goes way further than that. Look at what he says to Philemon in verse 17. He says to him, so if you consider me your partner, your koinos, it's related to the Greek word koinonia, if you consider me your koinos, your partner, Philemon, receive Onesimus as you would receive me.

Think about that for a moment. If Philemon was going to receive an apostle of Jesus Christ into his home, what would he do? Philemon was known as a generous, hospitable man. He would probably open up a room for him, put out the silverware, you know, the Royal Doulton plates and all that sort of thing, and serve him up a beautiful meal. And Paul's saying, I want you to receive Onesimus like you'd receive me.

A runaway slave who's wronged you, receive him as if he's the apostle of Jesus Christ. Honour him. I don't understand how the institution of slavery can continue to exist if Philemon's going to really obey what Paul's saying here. This is what I mean about how he doesn't outright come out and say abolish slavery, but he enunciates principles that are fatal to the institution itself, that will destroy it eventually. So Paul comes out with a big request, and then he says, verse 18, 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. Paul is coming out and saying, I'll pay it. And that was actually a big deal for Paul to say because in today's terms, Philemon may have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars of employment income, of business income because of Onesimus fleeing. And so Paul's saying, I'll pay it.

So Paul's not just saying, you put your neck on the line, Philemon. He's putting his own neck on the line, saying, I'm willing to pay the cost of this koinonia reality that is happening in Christ. But then Paul gets a little bit cheeky and a little bit bold. He says in the rest of verse 19, to say nothing of you owing me even your own self. See, Philemon became a Christian through Paul.

Philemon's soul was saved through the gospel. And so Paul's saying, you actually owe me your soul, just by the way, but let's not go there. You know, he kind of just reminds him of it. And again, he just keeps working on Philemon. He wants him to do what he's saying, but he's trying not to compel him, and he's toeing this difficult line.

And then he says, yes, verse 20, 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. So evidently, Paul still doesn't even enunciate the full request that he actually wants. He said, receive him as you would receive me, but he's hoping that Philemon will do even more.

We're not 100% sure on what that is. Maybe it's that he would send Onesimus back to Paul because he said he was such a blessing to me in my imprisonment for the gospel. Maybe it's actually setting Onesimus free and sending him back to Paul. We're not exactly sure, but Paul is hoping that he'll do even more. Now why would Philemon do this?

Someone who's wronged him, someone who's cost him money, why would he not just forgive someone, but receive him back, honour him, and do even more than what Paul is saying? Why would Paul himself offer to repay such a massive debt? Why would they do any of this? Well, it's because the gospel demands a new benchmark. The gospel, the good news about Jesus, it tells us that Jesus, the Lord of all, the master of masters, the King of heaven, the one who had all spiritual wealth, He chose to become a slave to serve Paul, to serve Philemon, to serve Onesimus, to serve you and to serve me.

Jesus became what they called in Greek a doulos. And we see where Paul uses this word in Philippians 2. He talks about Jesus and says that He, though Jesus was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. He wasn't going to exploit His divinity for His own selfish interests, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a doulos, a servant, a slave. That's what Jesus chose to do, being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, which was the most humiliating and shameful form of death in the Roman Empire. It was designed for ultimate public humiliation. That's what the master of heaven chose to do for Paul and for Philemon, and this is why Paul can say the gospel sets a new benchmark. You will never give away more than Jesus has given to you. You will never forgive as much as you have been forgiven by Jesus.

You will never out-serve Jesus. He has become a slave to serve you, to serve your eternal life, to serve your soul. He submitted to all that on the cross. He died in ignominy and shame and distress because He was taking your sins upon Himself. He was paying for the punishment that you owed to God.

You owed a debt to God. But Jesus put His hand up and said, I'll pay it. I'll pay it all. I write this with my own hand, and He went to the cross, and He did it for you and for me. This is why Paul can make such bold demands of Philemon. This is why Paul is willing even to enter into the debt arrangements himself, because Jesus has done far more than we could ever ask or imagine.

The gospel creates a new family that transforms the way we relate to one another. It completely orients our obligations, what we think we should do or are supposed to do. It sets the benchmark so much higher. The good news about Jesus, it is powerful. It creates new human communities that we don't even think could be possible.

And I want to show you a story about just such a one on the screen in just a moment. This is a story from the Alpha Course. It's a course that explains Christianity, and there's a man that became a Christian through the course, and it totally changed the way that he related to people he might not have had anything to do with from that point on. So please turn your eyes to the screen as we hear this story. My name is Barti Emmanuel, and I participated in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

I murdered many Tutsi under the order of bad leadership and have spent six years in prison and four years in community service. While in prison, fellow prisoners invited me to try Alpha. I went but struggled to engage. I realised I needed to tell the truth about what I had done and wrote a letter asking for forgiveness of the relatives of those I had murdered. Life was so hard after being released from prison.

I found my wife with two children that were not mine, and I faced many heartbreaking situations. I didn't know how I was going to live with the genocide survivors after what I had done. My heart was filled with agony, loneliness, and fear. Encouraged by Alpha in prison, I decided to do Alpha again. I learned that Jesus forgives and experienced love in a way I had never known before.

With the help of a local pastor, I went to find Vincent, whose mother and grandmother I had killed, to ask for forgiveness. I now live in a village built for genocide survivors and perpetrators. Vincent lives in the same village. We have formed a friendship and I now experience peace like I haven't experienced it before. Day to day life continues to be a challenge, but I have found forgiveness and healing for the things that I've done.

The gospel creates a new family that transforms the way we relate to one another. That story just almost moved me to tears. That man had murdered people, and one of the Tutsi brothers had forgiven him, and they're living in the same village now because of Jesus. The gospel is powerful. Let's give thanks to God together.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for Jesus. He's not just a theoretical concept. He's a real person. Thank you for coming two thousand years ago, Jesus, to do what we couldn't do.

To deal with our rage and division and bitterness and hatred and violence and to make peace between us and God through the cross, and to bring peace between enemies, reconciling people into communities of brothers and sisters in Christ. We thank you for this wonderful thing that you are doing all throughout the earth in places like Rwanda, and we thank you that we have access to the same Spirit, to the same gospel here on the Gold Coast. We pray that we would have our own stories to share of how the gospel has transformed our own community. We ask you to do a wonderful work in us to be willing to forgive, to repay debts, to do whatever it takes to live into this reality you've created, Jesus. We pray this in your name. Amen.