Dear Friends,

This is the fourth message in a series on Paul’s Letter to Philemon.

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Paul said he would guarantee the repayment of Onesimus’ debt to Philemon.

So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has wronged you in any way, or owes anything, charge that to my account. I Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it. I say nothing about your owing me even your own self. Yes, brother, let me have this benefit from you in the Lord! Refresh my heart in Christ. Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say” (Phil. 17-21).

The legal concept is “surety.” One person pledges that he or she will make good the debt of another. It happens when someone co-signs a car loan or home mortgage for another person. It is a risk because the person pledging to pay is obligated to make good on a debt over which he or she has no control. If the debtor fails to pay, the creditor can proceed directly against the surety.

Wise Solomon explained the dangers of making such a pledge,

My child, if you have given your pledge to your neighbor, if you have bound yourself to another, you are snared by the utterance of your lips, caught by the words of your mouth. So do this, my child, and save yourself, for you have come into your neighbor’s power: go, hurry, and plead with your neighbor. Give your eyes no sleep and your eyelids no slumber; save yourself like a gazelle from the hunter, like a bird from the hand of the fowler” (Pr 6:1-5).

Solomon’s conclusion on the subject was terse — “It is senseless to give a pledge, to become surety for a neighbor” (Pr 17:18).

I routinely advise clients to avoid guaranteeing the debts of others. The prospect often comes up in a family context where children ask their parents or siblings to loan them money or co-sign loans. This is a bad proposition because in the event of a default on the debt the lender must write-it off or sue and the guarantor must pay-up and then sue the debtor. Business failures and lawsuits between family members tend to put a strain on  holiday gatherings.

I have watched too many huckster relatives exploit familial love, draining family members dry of their financial and emotional resources. I have come to believe in Jesus’ advice, “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you” (Mt 5:42). It is better to make a gift to a family member than to make them indebted to you and involve yourself in a collection dispute that splits the family.

But what does a pledge to guarantee another’s debt mean within the family of God?

Onesimus was the valuable property of Philemon. Not only had he run away, but he had apparently stolen from Philemon as well. Then Paul stepped up to say, “Whatever Onesimus owes, I’ll pay.”

Paul was not looking at Onesimus as an investment. Repayment wasn’t even a consideration. Paul was putting himself on the line to seal the reconciliation of Onesimus and Philemon as brothers in Christ. It is only in such action that love finds its reality and its voice and can therefore persuade others of its power.

“No one can show greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” said Jesus (John 15:13). A Roman Catholic Priest, Father Maximilian Kolbe, showed that greater love in the cruel horror of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The Nazi’s method of preventing prisoner escape was to hang six prisoners at random for every one escapee. Aware of what awaited them in the ovens, prisoners continued to escape. Six men stood on the scaffold with ropes around their necks.

Before the trapdoors could be sprung, Father Kolbe, a prisoner himself, stepped forward and asked to be heard by the commandant. Father Kolbe pled to be allowed to take the place of one of the men about to die. He pointed to the man, Franciszek Gajowniczek. Father Kolbe said, “This man is from my village. I know him. He’s a good man and he has a wife and several children. On the other hand, I am a priest. I am not married and I have no children at all. I do not have a family that needs me. Let me be hung in his place.”

The commandant agreed. Father Kolbe replaced Franciszek Gajowniczek on the gallows and was dead a few moments later.

Father Kolbe’s cell at Auschwitz always contains a vase of fresh flowers. After the war, Gajowniczek moved his family to the town of Auschwitz. He and later his children and grandchildren place the flowers each day in memory of the man who sacrificed his life for them.

The price of the slave Onesimus would be set by the market. The damages he caused Philemon could be reduced to monetary terms. But the value of a redeemed life is priceless which is why Christ himself paid it for us at the cross.

Paul drew Philemon’s attention to the price Jesus Christ had paid to ransom Philemon’s life from sin and death. Philemon owed far more than he would be asking from Paul for Onesimus. Paul asked Philemon to let go of his retail businessman’s mentality and his claims of right and to then enter into the flow of God’s cleansing, redeeming love as a participant.

Paul’s request to Philemon involved much more than a relinquishment of property and property rights. Jesus said, “Go learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice'” (Matt 9 new:13, quoting Hosea 6:6). Paul was calling Philemon to a new way of thinking and living in which Philemon, Onesimus and Paul were brothers in Christ, submitted to a greater love that made social distinctions and legal rights of no consequence.

You and I may find it difficult to identify with a wealthy First Century slave-holder like Philemon. But we have to ask ourselves, “Who is my Onesimus? Who do I seek to own and control? Who do I resent for running away from me and taking what rightfully belongs to me? Who do I need to forgive and set free? Who do I need to stand for in intercession and reconciliation?” Honestly thinking about these questions and taking them before the Lord in prayer will show us we are all Philemon and we are all Onesimus, and we all have need of the spirit of Paul.

Our differences in this world are too deep and engrained to get to this place of love and equality on our own effort and thought. Christ asks each of us to trust his love enough to surrender our mind, soul and spirit, our relationships, our hopes and dreams and expectations — everything comprising our lives — to him so he may become our life. We do this by accepting the crucified and risen Christ as the end and the means of our existence.

I have labored with what it means to surrender everything to Christ my whole life. I have concluded that it is not complicated, though in my pride I would like it to be something I can master for myself.
So many things work against that surrender — things like my education, pride, ownership of possessions, status, control in relationships, my fears, and truthfully my love of sinning. The temptations to rationalize, self-justify and rely on myself are ever present.

But I have a choice to set my mind on Christ — to make Jesus my mindset, to worship him and obey his word to me. Just as athletes are urged to “Keep your head in the game,” I can and must choose to obey the great commandment to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). But I only make that choice to love and obey in recognition that he first loves me (1 John 4:19).

I will admit I often slip up and try to force results for myself with all of the failure of a gardener trying to force open a rose bud by hand. I rush, bruise, crush, maim and kill tender and growing things. Leaving things in God’s hands isn’t enough to prevent the harm I can cause to myself and others. The temptation to pick up those things is just too great and it makes the things the object of attention rather than who holds the things. No, I have to put myself in Christ’s hands and choose to remain there in dependence on him.

Here’s how Paul described what it means to put ourselves in Christ’s hands — “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you will also be revealed with him in glory” (Col 3:1-4).

When Christ is our life, we are set free to live and love as Christ lives and loves in us. This has powerful implications for our relationships.

We would likely rush to tell Philemon and Onesimus what they both should do, but Paul didn’t tell them, he asked them, seeking their willing choice rather than seeking to manipulate or force them to accept his solution.

Paul pled with Philemon, “Though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love . . . I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced” (Phil 8-9a, 14). This is the way of love, but it only authentically occurs when Christ becomes our identity and his love compels us (2 Cor 5:14). The answer to our people and relationship problems is always more Christ.

Father Maxmillian Kolbe was seeking and conceding to the love of Christ to overrule evil when he replaced Franciszek Gajownicek on the gallows. And you and I will have to seek and concede to the love of Christ in dealing with the challenges of our Philemons and Onesimuses.

God promised from the very beginning he would be our source of knowledge and discernment of good and evil (Gen 2:17). Our ancestors rebelled with the idea they could work out good and evil by their own standard. Pain and suffering, jealousy and conflict soon followed because without submission to and reliance upon the providence of the God of all grace, we inevitably will set the standards by comparison and enforce them by control and compulsion.

Sin management and the suppression of sinners become the ruling ethos when we give priority to our standards and judgments in self-righteousness over God’s mercy. It is a spiritual axiom that human anger will not produce God’s righteousness” (Js 1:20). Mercy is God’s policy and God’s process “For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment” (Js 2:13).

Paul understood Christ’s church to be a place where all members recognize they are reborn in Christ and are children of God by faith, baptized into Christ and clothed in Christ. He wrote to the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female, for all are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 2:26-28). It is not possible to be truly one in Christ without the love of Christ alive and operative between us.

Much disappointment, pain and disillusionment has been visited on the church and the world because love of Christ has been conditioned on arbitrary distinctions of ethnicity, race, gender, class, and political status. Oneness in Christ means we live together in the flesh in love as well as by the Spirit. Paul asked Philemon to accept Onesimus “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother — especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord” (Phil 16).

The little twenty-five verse Letter to Philemon is in the canon of Scripture as an illustration of how we are to love and to live in the community of faith in Christ. An honest reading in the light of our present circumstances will bring one to grief over the fragmentation in the Body and a conviction of a need for repentance. May the Lord make us one and our selfish, rebel hearts yield in surrender to his will.

In next week’s message we will discuss the importance of prayer to realizing oneness in 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.