A Living Lesson on Forgiveness

You've got to treat this slave the way Christ treated you. Same principle that He put in with a surprising amount of written information. You may find yourself wading through a huge amount of technical data when all you want are the nuts and bolts directions.

You don't need more theoretical, you want the practical. Well, you may know a lot of what we call the technical information about forgiveness, the biblical commands to forgive others. But if you're looking for a real-life example of how to forgive, you've come to the right place. Stay with us today on Grace to You. As John MacArthur considers a living lesson on forgiveness, part of his current series titled, The New Testament, beginning to end.

And now here's John. Now the priority of forgiveness is not only given in Scripture in principle, it's not only given in Scripture in parable, but it is given in Scripture in personal terms. And it's in the book of Philemon.

Let's read the first three verses. Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, to Philemon our beloved brother and fellow worker, and to Apphia our sister, and to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And so it is then from Paul, along with the greetings of Timothy, to Philemon. Further, verse 2 addresses the letter to Apphia our sister.

That no doubt is his wife. I think the King James says, Apphia our beloved. The better reading is Apphia our sister, our sister in Christ. And again, this is most certainly Philemon's wife and also a friend of Paul. Then he says, and to Archippus our fellow soldier. Most likely this is their son, their son Archippus, an older son and a noble Christian who had come alongside Paul in the spiritual battle somewhere, fought valiantly in that war, and is commended for his spiritual life. Over in Colossians 4.17, Archippus is mentioned again.

Philemon is never mentioned anywhere else and neither is Apphia, but Archippus is mentioned there. As Paul writes to the Colossian church, he says to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which you have received in the Lord that you may fulfill it. So this young man was in the ministry. We don't know to what extent or in what specifics, but here was a father and a mother with a church in their house and a son who was in the ministry.

He had served no doubt in Colossae and had served also in Laodicea as the note at the end of the letter to the Colossians indicates. So this little family is very important in the life of Paul and with the issue of forgiveness at stake becomes an opportunity for Paul to make a very important point the Holy Spirit wants him to make. The end of verse 2, the church in your house. Now Paul wanted the letter read there.

It was a private letter, but he wanted it read so that the whole church would hold Philemon accountable for this and so that they would all learn the lesson of forgiveness and so they would all know how to treat the forgiven man. Now I need to note for you that when you go back in ancient times, most churches would have met in a home if they were not meeting outdoors. Church buildings didn't start until the third century. They were meeting in homes.

This was very typical. Still there are places in the world where churches even today still meet in homes. There's nothing necessarily sacred about that, but church buildings didn't really develop until about the third century.

The oldest known church has been found in eastern Syria in a place called Dura-Europos and they believe it dates around 232 A.D. That would be in the third century. So at this time, before church buildings were built as such, they were meeting in homes and here was a house church in his house. In verse 3, we find the standard greeting.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it. He says, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. There is the typical standard Christian greeting, grace, the means of salvation, peace, the result of salvation. And may I also note, I can't resist saying that when it says from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, the union of those two together would be blasphemous if Jesus were a man or an angel.

Can you understand that? This must be understood as an affirmation of the deity of Jesus Christ. If Jesus were a man, to make that kind of combination would be blasphemous.

If Jesus were an angel, to make that kind of combination would be blasphemous. For it is saying that grace which saves and peace which is the result of it comes as its source from God and the Lord Jesus Christ and therefore they must be divine both. And thus does Paul introduce his letter, the only one of his prison letters to an individual. Now there has been much written about the purpose of this letter and I don't want to spend a lot of time on it but I want to give you a little feel for how this letter has been approached. Some think the purpose of this letter is to demonstrate the nature of Christian love and certainly that is present here. Some suggest that the purpose is to reveal the working of God's providence and certainly there is that element. Some suggest that as an example of proper manners and Christian courtesy, there are no commands, there is nothing offensive, just the pleadings of love and certainly that's true. Some think its purpose is to give principles for the maintenance of good Christian relations.

Some suggest that the purpose of the letter is to reveal the effect of conversion on culture and society. Some believe and many believe this that it's an attack on the institution of slavery and the purpose of Philemon was to tear down slavery. Well certainly the principles of Philemon will have an effect upon the abuses of slavish relationships, no question about that. But it must be noted because this last one is the most popular approach, seemingly, that no place in Scripture is there any effort ever made to abolish slavery. And at no time did any prophets or preachers or teachers or apostles of the New Testament ever attack slavery.

But any call to righteous living, any call to holy love will eliminate the abuses that are in any social system. In fact, quite the contrary, there are throughout the New Testament many, many texts where slavery becomes a model of Christian principle. Slavery becomes a picture, as it were, of how we are related to God as His slaves and His servants. And repeatedly, whether Ephesians 6 or Colossians 4 or 1 Timothy 6, 1 and 2 or 1 Peter 2, 18, slaves are told to be obedient, submissive and loyal and faithful to their masters no matter how they act. And masters are told to treat their slaves with love and equity and kindness and fairness no matter what they might do. So while nothing attacks the institution of slavery, everything in Christian principle attacks the abuses of any social system, including slavery. Slavery was so much a part of the Roman Empire, the whole society was built on it. And by the time of Christ, slavery wasn't necessarily what we think it is today.

It had been modified. There had been some laws passed and in very many cases, slaves were treated very well. In fact, if you read any of the ancient literature around the time of Christ, you will find that most writers will say a man was better off a slave than he was a runaway slave, very often better off a slave than he was even a free man because as a slave he was assured of care and food and a place to sleep. And if he had a good and kind master, life was very prosperous for him. Slaves by the time of Christ could be fully educated in every discipline.

Many of them, in fact, went into medical professions. Slaves could take the benefit of owning their own property and developing their own economics and their own economy. Slaves could leave their estates to their own children. So by the time of Christ, slavery had moved away from many of the earlier abuses, though those abuses still in some cases did occur. And we'll see that even in the book of James where some Christians who must have been as slaves or servants were treated in a very unkind and physically abusive way. But slavery was changing and the Christian gospel coming into that world and the Christian preachers were not about to change the focus onto a social issue from a spiritual one. You can only imagine that if Jesus and the apostles had begun to attack slavery, what would have happened in the Roman Empire? Sixty million slaves revolting would have been an unbelievable situation.

Society would have been thrown into such chaos and disarray. And even you can imagine that when such a rebellion would have begun, slaves would have been crushed and massacred savagely. So there was some reason in the changing mood of the Roman Empire to see some hope for abolishing slavery and that hope would come through changed hearts. The seeds of the end of slavery were sown in the Roman Empire by the Christian gospel and eventually slavery died.

Just as everywhere in the world slavery has died when the Christian gospel came, it certainly was true in America eventually. Christianity, you see, introduces a new relationship between a man and a man, a relationship in which external differences don't matter. And we are one in Christ, you are Gentile, slave or free.

There's neither Greek nor Jew, said Paul, circumcision or uncircumcision, barbarian or Scythian, slave or free man. This does not attack the institution of slavery. In fact, it does the very opposite of that. It tells a slave to go back to his master and be the kind of slave he ought to be to a faithful and loving master. Its theme then is forgiveness. That is its message. That is its intent. The story behind the letter makes that absolutely clear. Let me read you the story.

We're going to make just a few comments on it. Verse 4, I thank my God always, always making mention of you in my prayers because I hear of your love and of the faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints. And I pray that the fellowship of your faith may become effective through the knowledge of every good thing which is in you for Christ's sake. For I have come to have much joy and comfort in your love because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother. Therefore, though I have enough confidence in Christ to order you to do that which is proper, yet for love's sake I rather appeal to you. Since I am such a person as Paul the aged and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus, I appeal to you for my child whom I have begotten in my imprisonment, Onesimus, who formerly was useless to you but now is useful both to you and to me. And I have sent him back to you in person, that is, sending my very heart, whom I wish to keep with me, that in your behalf he might minister to me in my imprisonment for the gospel. But without your consent I didn't want to do anything that your goodness should not be as it were by compulsion but of your own free will. For perhaps he was for this reason parted from you for a while that you should have him back forever, 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? If then you regard me a partner, accept him as you would me. But if he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge that to my account."

We'll stop there. This is an incredible story. Philemon was led to Christ by Paul, probably during Paul's three years in Ephesus, as I said, though he lived in Colossae, he met Paul. He had a slave and the slave's name was Onesimus. And the relationship of these two people, Philemon and Onesimus, is really the context of this call to forgiveness.

The story is fascinating. Years had passed since Philemon's conversion. Paul is now a prisoner in Rome.

Philemon is active in ministry in his church, he's got the church meeting in his house, he's busy serving, refreshing the brethren by his usefulness. His slave Onesimus, not a believer, probably felt the heat of a believing family, Apphia his wife having been converted and Archippus their son. Onesimus decided that he would be better off to run away even though his family that he was employed by was a good family and so he ran away. As the text indicates, when he ran away, took some money, he stole from his master. Now slavery was changing, but it wasn't changing so much that a slave could steal. It wasn't changing so much that a slave could run away. Some would tell us that in some places the death penalty for such activity was still in place and that slave could lose his life. Others would say the punishment was a severe imprisonment or even physical corporal punishment. Onesimus had committed by all Roman law a crime, a felony, a major crime and had left and tried to hide. Sometimes when a slave ran away and was caught, they would put an F, burn an F into his head, F for fugitivus, fugitive.

Some of them that we know in history were crucified, some were tortured. Running away was a serious offense. He ran where I would suppose you would think he would run. He ran to Rome because that was the biggest city. The estimate is the population was about 870,000 at this time and he thought he could hide himself in the underworld of Rome and try to survive. We talk about street people today, we talk about the homeless, he would be one of them.

He would be living in the underground, sleeping in back alleys, holes in the ground. One study of the sacred treasury of the Romans for the years 81 to 49, that would be B.C., included taxes for manumission. Manumission means the releasing of slaves. Slavery was changing so fast that people were releasing their slaves. Every time they released a slave, five percent of the value of that slave had to be paid to the government. In finding this ancient study of the years 81 to 49 and using the amount of money that is recorded in the records, the conclusion is that in that 30-year period, 500,000 slaves were freed, just in that 30-year period. The records of Augustus Caesar show that when masters died, typically slaves were freed wholesale. If a master died, all his slaves were free. This became such a problem, you've got 500,000 slaves and they all are moving toward the cities that they've been freed. You've got people dying and freeing all their slaves and the number is so great that the government made a law. And in the time of Caesar Augustus, the law was that when a man died, he could never free more than a certain percentage of his slaves. If he had five, he could free one. If he had ten, he could free two.

Why? Because there was a glut of homeless unemployed running all over the place in the Roman Empire. Even though slaves had gained most of the rights of free men, even though they could be educated on all fields, even though they had better living conditions than the free men when they stayed in the place where they were employed by their master, they had better food and better clothes, they were treated better, they were part of a family, they were used to teach the children, provide medical care for the children, they took care of the finances, they were allowed to marry, they were allowed to own property, they could develop their own life, they were allowed in every religion, still many of them ran.

The dream of freedom. And they ended up in a worse situation. Who knows what kind of mess Onesimus was in by the amazing providence of God.

Think of it. In a city of somewhere around 870,000 or nearly a million people, he ran into the Apostle Paul. Now you've got to imagine that he had some personal needs, right? And maybe he knew that Paul was preaching there and he wanted to hear this man preach. Even though Paul was a prisoner, he must have had some access, such an imprisonment. It may have taken different forms which gave Paul not only access to his friends which are shown having some relation to him, but even to unbelievers. Paul persuaded Onesimus to become a Christian and he was converted. His life was transformed. Not only that, he became a help to Paul. It tells us, as we noted in the text, that he became a very encouraging servant to Paul in his confinement. Maybe he cooked meals for him and brought them to give him proper nourishment. Maybe he provided information to him.

We don't know. But as much as Paul loved him and as much as Paul wanted to keep him, Paul knew that something had to be settled. He was a criminal, this man, and the relationship between Onesimus and Philemon was not right. And you know Philemon was still holding this bitterness against a very close friend for Onesimus, even though a slave would have been a household slave and a very close companion. Onesimus was at fault. Philemon was a good Christian master.

Philemon had been greatly wronged by Onesimus because financially he had stolen from him and also losing your employee like that would mean you'd have to hire someone else and you'd have to pay another price for another one. So Paul knew he had to go back. He had to go back with an attitude of repentance and he had to go back and ask Philemon for forgiveness. And the opportunity posed itself to send him back.

Why? Paul had finished Colossians and he had finished Ephesians and he was going to send them back to those two churches with a man named Tychicus. So it was just the perfect opportunity to send Philemon his runaway slave. In Colossians chapter 4, just a note, As to all my affairs, he says, Tychicus, our beloved brother and faithful servant and fellow bondservant in the Lord, will bring you information. Then verse 9, And with him Onesimus. So he's sending Tychicus with these two letters and with Onesimus. Now there's risk here because Philemon would have the right to punish Onesimus, but Paul decides to send him back anyway, but not without a letter.

So he sends this letter. And what it basically says is you've got to forgive this guy. You've got to be willing to be merciful. You've got to treat this slave the way Christ treated you. Same principle that he put in Ephesians 4, 32, Colossians 3, 13, Forgive as you have been forgiven. And that's basically the background of this story.

What's going to happen when he goes back? Well, the rest of the book from verse 4 on splits into three parts. I'll just mention them. It splits into three parts. The first part, verses 4 to 7, basically deals with the spiritual character of one who forgives. What kind of person is a forgiving person? We're going to see that in verses 4 to 7. Then the second part of the book is the spiritual action of one who forgives. First we look at the character of a forgiver, and then we look at the action of a forgiver, verses 8 to 18. And then from verses 19 to 25 is the spiritual motivation of one who forgives. Now by the time we're done with this book, you're going to know what a forgiving person is like in character, in action, and in motivation.

And this is essential. You are never more like God than when you forgive. And you have been forgiven, and therefore because of the forgiveness of God in Christ, you ought to forgive one another. And if you don't forgive one another, then God relationally is going to keep His distance from you and put His hand of chastening on you rather than His hand of blessing. You ask yourself the question, of all of the subjects that Paul could have written about, why in the world did he pick the subject of forgiveness? This is just this little isolated kind of odd, out of sync, obtuse, tangential little letter stuck in the middle of these great sweeping epistles to talk to one guy about forgiving one slave.

Why all this fuss? Again I say, because never is a believer more like God, more like Christ, than when he or she forgives. Because that's the nature of God and the nature of Christ, which is most wonderfully applied to us in salvation. We read throughout the New Testament, don't we? Be like Christ, be like Christ, walk like He walked, remember Jesus Christ, be ye followers of me as I am of Christ, let this mind be in you which was also in Christ.

Well what does that mean? We're to be like Christ. Well what does it mean to be like Christ?

Well for sure it means to be what? Forgiving. Because that's how we know Him, as the one who forgave us all our sins. The character of God's forgiveness is seen in the parable of the prodigal son. Eager, lavish, loving forgiveness and the severity of chastening for one who doesn't forgive is seen in the parable of the king and the servant.

This is a central theme in all of Scripture. Father, we thank You that we've just been able to introduce this wonderful little book and we do believe that You're going to transform us so that we become more like Jesus Christ who forgave us all our sins and who set the pattern for us to forgive each other. Lord, I'm sure that even as we are in this moment of prayer looking into our own hearts, we can identify someone that we need to forgive, someone who has wronged us, someone who has been unkind, unfair, someone who has made life difficult, painful, someone who has cheated us, stolen from us, something precious, tangible or intangible, someone who has misrepresented us, but Lord we need to forgive. Father, make us to be forgiving. As we go through this little book, may we develop the character, the action, the motivation of those who forgive. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur. Thanks for being with us. Today's lesson is part of a series that highlights influential sermons from John's decades of pulpit ministry.

The series is titled The New Testament Beginning to End. John, you've said before that a Christian is never more like God than when he or she practices what you talked about today, forgiveness. Still, to that man or woman who's listening now, I'm sure that it's not always clear how to forgive someone who's offended them, especially if the person in the wrong is not even asking for forgiveness.

Look, let's make it simple. When a relationship is destroyed, I don't care what relationship it is, I don't care what the reason is. When a relationship is destroyed, it is always at the end because of an inability to forgive.

That's what ends relationships, any kind of relationship. Where there is forgiveness, there is reconciliation, restoration. There's nothing more devastating in the life of a person than a lack of forgiveness, not only because that relationship where that unforgiveness exists is permanently violated, but because that lack of forgiveness creates bitterness and resentment that eats away at the person who won't forgive. I wrote a book some years ago called The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness.

That's exactly right. Forgiveness is freeing, lack of forgiveness is bondage. Forgiveness is powerful.

It's not weak. You're not weak when you forgive. Forgiveness is a powerful, powerful agent. It creates goodwill. It demonstrates love.

It produces reconciliation, restoration, well-being, peace, joy. I would love to get a copy of this book to every listener of Grace To You. It should be a manual for your life and the relationships that you're going to experience. It's available, reasonably priced, The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness. And by the way, this is a full-length book. You're going to work through what the Bible says about forgiveness at every level.

And there's even a section on the atonement of Christ and one on the unpardonable sin. So call us, contact us, and get a copy of The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness. Do it today.

Yes, do. Friend, whether you are struggling with a strained relationship yourself or you're looking for encouraging counsel to offer a friend, this book can help. It's a great book. Order The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness when you contact us today. To pick up your copy, call toll-free 800-55-GRACE, or you can shop online at gty.org.

The title of the book, again, The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness. And like many of John's books, it's also available in Spanish. To order a copy for yourself or one to give a friend, go to gty.org, or call us at 800-55-GRACE. And when you visit gty.org, take advantage of the various opportunities to listen to John's verse-by-verse teaching. You can download more than 3,500 sermons free of charge in audio or transcript format. Just search by topic or specific verse or book of the Bible. And if you're not sure where to start, you can log on to GRACE stream. That's a continual broadcast of John's teaching. We begin in Matthew and go all the way through the book of Revelation, and then we start the cycle again. So whether you have a few minutes or a couple of hours, you'll find encouragement from God's Word.

All of that and much more is available for free at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire staff, I'm Phil Johnson with a question for you. What is faith? MacArthur considers that critical subject tomorrow with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.