Dear Friends,

Employer-employee relations have occupied a good deal of my attention during my almost thirty-seven year legal career. From the perspective of that experience, the Apostle Paul’s Letter to Philemon initially attracted my interest.

The Letter is a twenty-five verse description of the power of Christ to transform a bad working relationship into a partnership of caring support. It contains powerful insights into how the community of faith develops best in the home, workplace and even prison as opposed to a once-a-week visit to a church building.

Philemon was apparently a wealthy businessman and Christian convert who belonged to the church in Colosse in modern day south central Turkey. He owned a domestic slave named Onesimus. Estimates were that there were 60 million slaves in the Roman Empire. These slaves were men and women from peoples and places conquered by the Roman Army in its relentless drive to expand the Empire.

Onesimus’ name meant “useful.” The name was somewhat inaccurate because Onesimus stole from Philemon and ran away to Rome. There he met Paul who was in Rome under house arrest on charges of inciting riot and rebellion brought against him in Palestine. He appealed to the Emperor Nero obtaining a free trip to Rome. Paul led a growing Christian community in the capitol. Onesimus became a believer himself under Paul’s teaching.

Paul convinced Onesimus that running away from his problems wouldn’t solve them. Here was the rub. Under Roman law, the owner of a runaway slave could register his name and description with officials. The slave was placed on a fugitive list. Any free citizen who found a runaway slave could take custody and was entitled to a reward from the owner. The slave had no civil rights and could be put to death. On the other hand, the finder could intercede with the owner if he thought the slave had been mistreated.

Paul was 60 years old and in the prime of his ministry when he wrote to Philemon to ask him to be reconciled to Onesimus who was now his brother in Christ.

There are some disturbing things about this letter. Paul spoke to the spiritual issues and did not condemn the repugnant practice of slavery. In fact, he was urging Onesimus to go back to his master. In other letters he urged slaves to obey their masters (Eph. 6:5-9); Col. 3:22-4:1; 1 Tim. 6:1-2; Tit. 2:9-10). Yet, Paul encouraged Christian slaves in Corinth to obtain their freedom (1 Cor. 7:21-24).

The fact that Scripture seems to accept slavery rather than condemn it has led to substantial, documented abuses of human rights throughout the Christian era. Slaveowners in the ante-bellum South, for instance, interpreted the Letter to Philemon as one of the Biblical supports for slavery.

The plain teaching of the New Testament however, including the writings of Paul, unequivocally endorses human freedom. The judgment and destruction of human systems of commerce at the end of time includes condemnation of those who trade in human lives (Rev. 18:13).

The teachings of Christ inspired the end of slavery in the British Empire, the United States and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. No other spiritual teachings have inspired as much social and political reform in diverse cultures as have those of Christianity.

The prevailing explanation for the lack of scriptural clarity regarding slavery is that the Christian message is primarily to individuals and only secondarily to societies. This view holds that spiritual and moral sentiments of the individual are influenced for good by Christian ethics and only as a consequence of that influence are actions and institutions changed.

Paul’s views on slavery were influenced by his upbringing and his background as an upper-class Jewish male with the rights and privileges of Roman citizenship. Paul was a Pharisee, a group who typically championed the rights of the Jewish poor. But the Pharisees were unsympathetic to the social plight of marginalized Gentiles.

Paul’s pre-Christian and Christian experiences were primarily focused on theological concerns. He did not put priority on social issues and was obviously apolitical. He saw social circumstances through the filters of his class and culture as do we all. No doubt my reading of Philemon is colored by my experience as a defense attorney for employers. An attorney representing discharged employees, a social worker, or a labor leader would read it with a different mind-set.

And though he committed his life to following Jesus and being conformed to Jesus’ likeness, Paul was not Jesus! There is no more positive treatise on social ethics and promotion of equal human dignity than Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5-7). Tjhat sermon sets an impossibly high standard for human conduct unless the practitioner derives his or her power to live from the indwelling of the crucified and risen Christ.

When I discussed these thoughts with my wife, Patricia, she told me, “As a woman, I struggle with the biases of Paul. I’ve come to believe that all truth must be measured against this standard, “God loves me and the next person enough to come and die for us. How should I then live in response to that?”

Paul had once looked for a conquering military hero of a Messiah who would drive out the Roman oppressors from Israel and make Jerusalem the first city of the world. He scorned the crucified Jesus Christ and his ragamuffin followers

But Paul, himself, came to struggle with the harsh circumstances of human confinement. This accomplished scholar, theological genius, and brilliant communicator began his Letter to Philemon with these telling words: “Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus…(v. 1). Four more times in the twenty-five verses, Paul refers to his imprisonment: “my imprisonment…, “I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus…,” “my imprisonment for the gospel…,” “Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Jesus Christ.”

Not all confinement is physical. It is possible to be imprisoned and chained up by emotional dysfunction, spiritual narrowness, and intellectual biases.

Several years ago I struggled with the confinement of my professional and spiritual circumstances. I spent time fasting and praying in the woods demanding to know of God why he placed me in the work and place where I was. I felt compromised, constrained and frustrated. I was struggling with anger and internal conflict.

In those days, I was impatient and often hypercritical of myself and others hiding behind the ragged, threadbare posturing that “I’m as hard on myself as anyone else.” It seemed like God was toying with me when he called me to be an attorney and put me in the middle of disputes each day, and often in a religious context at that. I used to feel like I was a recovering alcoholic assigned to work in a distillery for penance.

I came away from that prayer experience with two lasting insights. God gives me my work to provide for the needs of my family and me. And he changes me, not my circumstances. It is as simple as that.

My struggles were God’s provision for me. He did not spare me those struggles, but instead used them to teach and refine me the way a butterfly gains strength battling to escape its cocoon and to open its wings and fly.

Our struggles give us plenty of reasons to receive the grace of God and live by it. What family does not have its dysfunctions? Economic necessity may make us “wage slaves.” Poor health may rob us of mobility. Class and culture may deny us opportunity. Yet, does a dandelion choose to grow out of the crack in the asphalt? It blooms where it is planted, despite the dry, hard, unnatural environment. Its destiny is determined internally from its seed, not dictated by the harshness of its circumstances.

By the same principle, Christ lived in Paul and Onesimus despite the oppression that accompanies slavery and imprisonment. Christ’s love transformed Paul with his prejudices and biases.

By the same principle, Onesimus, the runaway slave, received a new life and identity in Christ through Paul’s prison witness. Two thousand years later, Paul’s words are still introducing men and women to Christ.

The transformations wrought by Christ’s love are true and marvelous. Pride and guilt cause us to resist that love and can make us think we are responsible for fixing everything, but nothing changes. Hopefully, we will realize sooner than later that we aren’t equal to the tasks of fixing things and we are imprisoned in circumstances that we can’t control. In that moment of revelation, it is tempting to run away or blame God.

Relief comes to us when we learn the truth — Christ is our change. We will never master our circumstances. We are never going to find the strength or wisdom in ourselves to set ourselves free from what enslaves or imprisons us. That’s why we need a Savior.

Real change occurs when Christ lives in us, with us, and through us. The Apostle John wrote about Christ as our change agent–

See what manner of love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure (1 John  3:1-3).

Let Christ be your change and set you free. I invite you to come, “Taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him. ” (Ps 34:8).

Next week in Part Two of this series, we discuss how the slave, the prisoner, and lost souls of all description find their true home with Christ

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8).
Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.