Philemon: Fixing Fellowship pt 14
The Gospel is about reconciliation. God being reconciled to humanity through the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. But how often do we think about how this ‘Gospel reconciliation’ impacts our relationships with each other? The apostle Paul challenged his dear friend Philemon to be reconciled to his former slave, Onesimus, who ran away from him. In Paul’s encouragement to Philemon to forgive his former slave, we see an amazing picture of how the Gospel transforms our relationships — especially with those who have wronged us.
23 Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends you greetings.
24 And so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas and Luke, my fellow workers.
25 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
Reflection: This little letter ends with a list of greetings from Paul’s fellow workers who are with him and a call to remember the grace that has been shown. In a way, this is a wonderfully fitting end to our walk through this short letter from Paul. We are all in this together. We have people around us who have been called into the same family, and we work together for the sake of Christ. There are times when things don’t go as we would like them to, or people hurt us.* Even in these situations, we are to remember the grace that we have each been shown. May this grace work deeply in each of you, as you seek to love your community and those around you and enable you to commit to each other.
Prayer: Lord God, I thank you for the grace you have shown me. I pray that I would hold fast to this grace and show this grace to those around me. Thank you for the people you have placed in my life who point me to Jesus. Enable me to do the same for others.
*For instance, from those mentioned in these verses, Mark and Paul later have a falling out (see Acts 15:36-41) and Demas abandons Paul altogether (see 2 Timothy 4:10).
Angus is one of the pastors at Orange Presbyterian Church. He and Steph have three children, a puppy and a veggie garden.
This devotion first appeared in the Bible Society’s Daily Bible Devotions, February 2023
More Reflections.
Often, we build something up so much in our minds, that the experience we want becomes almost unattainable. We romanticise what we think it will be like and we think “If I can just do this one thing or tick this one experience off my bucket list, then I will be able to feel a sense of fulfilment that I wouldn’t necessarily have had otherwise”.