Authority and Love #1

Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello, I'm Bill Wright. Thanks for joining us as we continue teaching God's people God's Word. Don begins a new message today, so without further delay, let's join him right now in the Truth Pulpit. We've often commented from our pulpit that it is the desire of many churches to try to make their services seem as much like the world as they possibly can so that people feel comfortable when they walk into the service and they can feel like it's not that big of a transition from where they're at to what they're trying to lead people into. I'm not going to engage in a big polemic about that here this morning.

I've done that in the past plenty of times, but I want to point something out to you that nothing could be further from the way that things ought to be. It gives an entirely wrong view of God, a wrong view of Christ, and a wrong view of the church, and a wrong view of the gospel to talk and act that way and to conduct a supposed ministry in that way. You see, the truth of the matter is that Christ has made it very plain that who he is and the way that he thinks and what he does is completely contrary to the spirit of the world, and so it is important for us to recognize the difference in the spirit of Christ, the difference in the nature of God from what the world does, and that has just massive implications for everything. It has massive implications for the way that you think about Christ. It has massive implications for the way that you respond to the gospel, for the way that you conduct the church, and it has massive implications for the way that you respond in personal relationships as we're going to see here this morning. To know Christ, beloved, is to know a spirit, is to know a disposition of character that is completely contrary to the spirit of the world, and I want to have you turn to the book of Matthew.

This is only by way of introduction. By way of Matthew chapter 20. Jesus made this very plain. He went out of his way to state that who he is and what he calls his disciples to is completely different from the way that things are done in the world, and so we should expect as we come into the church to find a different manner of life, we should expect as we live out our Christian life that true salvation reorients us and separates us from the world.

It doesn't make us like the world just with a little bit of God stuff thrown in. You see, the call to salvation is to deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow after Christ. The call of Christ is to come out of the world, to be saved from this perverse generation, not to immerse yourself deeply into it and see how much you can be like it.

You see, the call of the gospel is out of the world, out of sin, out of judgment, into a completely different realm, and that has a lot of implications for us. Look at Matthew chapter 20 verse 25. As Jesus speaks about the way that authority and love mix with one another in his realm. In verse 25, Matthew 20, Jesus called the disciples to himself and said, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave, just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

As you read that text, it helps to do a little bit of reverse engineering on it. Christ is setting himself up as the standard and the pattern by which his disciples would live. And what he's saying is that I, as the Son of Man, as the eternal Son of God, as the Savior, as the Messiah, you must understand why I am here on earth. He said I didn't come in order that lesser beings would serve me. He said I came to serve them and to give my life a ransom for many. From his status as the eternal Son of God, he set aside the prerogatives of his deity in order to come and lay down his life to be a ransom payment for sinners, to pay the price of sin on their behalf, that they might be forgiven from sin and reconciled to God. Understand that from his position of authority, no one could have demanded that from him. We had no right, as it were, to appear before Christ and say, I think it would be a good idea for you to sacrifice your life on the cross for me.

We don't have that prerogative. We're the creature and we're a sinful creature at that. Christ is the holy, uncreated Son of God.

No one could make a demand on him to do anything. And yet, from that position of unparalleled authority, of unparalleled prerogative, Christ says, I've come to earth not to be served, but to serve and to give my life a ransom for many. And he goes from there, again working the passage that I just read backwards, saying, therefore if you're going to be my disciple, then a like spirit would animate you as well. You see, Christ used his authority to serve his Father and to serve his people. He used his position of power and might and righteousness and grace in order to give his life as that ransom payment that would release sinners from their sin and to save them from judgment.

Beloved, this is really, really big. Even though the truths we're talking about here are really familiar in one sense, we're tapping into the way that Christ handled the authority that was his. And what he did was, rather than asserting his rights as king and compelling obedience, he took that position to serve with his own obedience and sacrificial death. What that means something for you and me, as we come to Christ in repentance and faith, 1 John 2 says, we ought to walk in the same manner as he himself walked. You see, what we're talking about here is a complete reversal, a complete separation from the way that the world thinks about authority. And in the midst of a presidential election season, nothing could be more obvious as people are grasping for authority and willing to pay any price of lies and misleading statements in order to grasp it, in order to exercise authority over people. By contrast, here we are under true righteous authority, the righteous true authority of Christ, finding that he doesn't deal with authority that way at all.

He doesn't deal with authority like the Gentiles do and lord it over them. All of those thoughts help prepare us for an unexpectedly important text for us as we go back to our study of the book of Philemon. The book of Philemon, which is just before the book of Hebrews in your Bible, I invite you to turn there. We took a one-week break last week for Communion, and now we return to our verse-by-verse study of Philemon here this morning, and you're going to see the Apostle Paul reflecting that spirit of using authority in a spirit of love in the text that is before us today, and we'll go through a text and draw some application for ourselves at the end. We're in a Philemon verse 8, look at verses 8-11, which will be our text for us this morning.

We'll explain some context for those that weren't with us. Verse 8, Philemon verse 8, the Apostle Paul writing to Philemon said, therefore, although I have enough confidence in Christ to order you to do what 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 Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my imprisonment, who formerly was useless to you, but now is useful both to you and to me. Now I'll be honest, I had planned to go much further in the text than that this morning, but I just needed to kind of pause and slow down a little bit for the sake of what I wanted to say here this morning.

I think if we had hurried through, we would have missed some vital things. What's happening in the letter of Philemon is this. As we've said in the past, Paul is writing a letter to a Christian man of some means named Philemon, and in that day and age, slavery was an accepted institution in society, and Philemon at one time had a slave named Onesimus, who apparently had stolen from him and then run away, and so Onesimus had wronged him, and Philemon was in a position of having been wronged and had authority to punish Onesimus, and yet his slave was gone and escaped, and for all that Philemon knew at that time, he was gone for good. Well, while Onesimus was away and had fled to Rome, somehow he met up with the Apostle Paul, and the Apostle Paul led him to saving faith in Christ, led him to repentance and faith in Christ, and one of the outworkings of true repentance, one of the outworkings of genuine faith is that repentance brings forth fruit, and one of the things that repentance does is it makes restitution where it has done wrong in the past, if that's possible to do, and so here is Onesimus physically with the Apostle Paul. He's been serving Paul for a period of time, and they have developed a close personal relationship.

Look with, if you will, at verse 12 with me. Paul, speaking about Onesimus, says, I have sent him back to you in person, that is, sending my very heart, whom I wish to keep with me, and so Paul had developed this close relationship with a man that he had led to Christ, and Onesimus was serving Paul in practical ways in his imprisonment, and so there was this wonderful relationship of affection and service that was in place, but there was a problem. Things weren't right in Onesimus' life. There was this whole matter of the way that he had wronged his prior master, Philemon, and he needed to go back and make things right. Now here's the problem.

It's kind of a complex problem in one sense. If Onesimus just went back on his own, Philemon not knowing anything about his conversion, Philemon might have treated him differently, treated him according to the standards of the way the world dealt with slaves rather than dealing with him as a Christian brother, and so as we said, what Paul did was he wrote this letter that Onesimus would take with him and would be delivered to Philemon, and it's Paul reintroducing Onesimus to his master and saying, here's the situation I ask you to do something in response that we'll look at either this week or in coming weeks. Before Paul got to the request that he wanted to make, as we've seen in the past, he expresses his love and his affirmation of Philemon. Look at verse 7 there, which is just prior to our text for this morning. Paul writing to Philemon says, I've come to have much joy and comfort in your love because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother.

And so just kind of reacquainting ourselves with the context, Paul writes to Philemon and says, I appreciate you. You are a godly man. I know your faith in Christ. You have shown love to the saints. You have shown love to me.

I am so grateful to God for who you are. That's by way of introduction before he gets to talking about the situation with Onesimus. Now with all of that in mind, go to verse 8 now as we step into the body of the letter here and see what's going on. Paul says, therefore, though I have enough confidence in Christ to order you to do what is proper, therefore being a word that builds a bridge from what has just been said into what he is going to say.

And what he's saying is this. He says, because you are the kind of man that you are, Philemon, because of your character of love, your proven Christian sanctification, I'm going to deal with you differently than what I might be able to do as an apostle. Paul, remember his writing, as an apostle of Christ. That means that he had a unique role of authority in the church. In fact, if you look over at 1 Corinthians chapter 14, Paul was not afraid to assert his authority when the occasion warranted it. And in 1 Corinthians 14 verse 37, I just want to remind you of the authority that Paul held in his hand as the appointed representative of Christ to the church. In 1 Corinthians 14 verse 37, Paul says, if anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things which I write to you are the Lord's commandment. He says, I write to you with the authority of Christ when I speak.

And in the messed up situation at the church in Corinth, he needed to assert his authority, and he did so unashamedly. But when he's talking to Philemon, it's a different situation, a different matter. He's dealing with a different kind of man. He's dealing with a man of proven love and character. And so what does Paul do?

Notice this. This is really crucial to the whole spirit of the letter. Paul says, I have enough confidence in Christ to order you to do what is proper. I can give you a command as an apostle of Christ and compel your obedience in what I'm about to say.

I have that confidence. I have open, candid, bold authority, and I could do this if I wished, and that would just take care of the matter based on a command. And yet, Paul says, I'm not going to do that. He restrains himself as he uses his authority. As he has authority, he restrains it. He doesn't assert himself. He doesn't compel simply because he can. He does something different. Instead, recognizing the proven Christian character of the man that he's writing to, he says, I'm going to ask you instead. I'm going to appeal to you instead. And so look at what he says in verse 8 and 9 there.

He says, therefore, though I have enough confidence in Christ to order you to do what is proper, I can lay out for you exactly what the right and fitting thing is for you to do here, Philemon, and tell you to do it, but I'm not going to deal with you that way. Why? Because you're my brother.

Why? Because I respect you. Because I appreciate you.

Because I love you. And when it comes to Christian love, we don't deal with each other that way in the context of these loving, trusting relationships that are healthy in Christ. And so he says in verse 9, I'm going to deal with it differently. 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. Paul says, I'm going to appeal to you. Remember who I am.

Remember who it is that's writing to you. I'm an old man. Paul was probably maybe 60 by this time, which doesn't sound too old by our standards, but his body was bearing the weight of the years of suffering for Christ in ministry. Shipwreck. Five times beaten with stripes.

All manner of suffering in addition to the pressure that was on him from the oversight of the churches. And so Paul writes to him and says, I'm an old man that's writing to you here. And I'm in prison. Remember that I'm in prison for Christ.

And so from this position, while I have authority, I write from this position of human weakness, and I'm going to appeal to you based on the love that I know is present in your heart. Now, beloved, let's stop and just pause for a moment and think about ourselves, about our own lives, and the way that we deal with each other in the context of the body of Christ. Let's do that, okay? Sure. We'll do that. You're just like me in that you bristle if somebody comes and just tries to arbitrarily, directly command you to do something without any consideration for what your thoughts or feelings are about it, don't you?

You're like that. You like to be approached, especially within the church, with a measure of sympathy, that there's a spirit of love and concern and recognition that goes on. Paul understood that the human heart was like that, that in the context of friendship, friends don't just go and start compelling and commanding each other to do things. That's contrary to trust.

That's contrary to love. That's not consistent with the nature of the relationship that we say and that we have as brothers and sisters in Christ. We're brothers and sisters. We're family. We share a common bond.

We have a common Savior, common word, common faith. Paul says, I could command you, but in light of everything that I know about you, in light of the way that Christians deal with one another, I don't want to go that route. And so instead, he asks where he could command. And as he mentions his conditions there in verse 9 of the person of Paul the aged, now also a prisoner of Christ, he's recognizing that Philemon's natural love, his sanctified Christian character, and his sympathy for Paul as one who led Philemon to Christ and who is suffering for the gospel, he knows that the inclination of Philemon's heart is going to be to do whatever Paul asks him to do anyway. And so rather than just stepping in like a bull in a china shop and saying this is what you must do, Paul steps back from his authority, doesn't lord it over Philemon, but rather deals with him on a horizontal relationship as a peer almost in what he asks rather than giving him a command as a superior. So look at verse 10 here.

We're just kind of walking through the text together. Paul says, I appeal to you for my child Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my imprisonment. Notice twice, he says I appeal to you, I'm asking you. Here in verse 9 he says, for love's sake I rather appeal to you. Verse 10, I appeal to you. And so he's writing with this spirit of deference and with kindness that is in perfect keeping with what our Lord said in the passage that we looked at in Matthew 20. Our Lord said, we're not like the Gentiles who lord it over people.

We step into a role of service. Paul here is not lording his position over Philemon, but rather appealing to him as a brother in love. He's affirmed Philemon, and now he's going to advocate on behalf of Onesimus. Look at verse 10, and notice how he identifies with Onesimus.

The sweetness of the love that he has for this fugitive slave. Look at verse 10 with me. He says, I appeal to you for my child Onesimus.

My child, it's a term of endearment. Paul speaks this way about his converts. He spoke this way about the church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 4. He spoke of Timothy this way. He spoke of Titus this way. There is this affection that Paul had toward those that had come to Christ under his ministry. And now he says, I have the same affection for Onesimus. Do you see the love that is wound up in Paul's character? Do you see the tender sympathy, the kindness, the gentleness in this man who has authority to command? This kindness toward Philemon? Brother, I love you and I appreciate you. This kindness toward Onesimus? Oh, this is my child.

I gave birth to him in prison. You start to see a practical illustration. You see the blinds, the drapes pulled back, and see a window into what tender Christian pastoral affection looks like.

You see an outworking of it. Christ said, in principle, this is how you shall be. You shall not lord it over. Paul here has obviously imbibed that, embraced it.

It's now woven in his character and it just bleeds out in his dealings with everyone. Well beloved, this isn't just in the church. This is you and your family. This is you as a man and your family. Considering how these principles of authority and love interplay as you deal with your wife, as you deal with your children, as you deal with people in the workplace that are under your authority.

We've talked about this so many times. And I'll say it again. God gives authority to men, not so that they can lord it over and get things for themselves and grab things for themselves. You are given authority, whether in a political realm, in a spiritual realm, in an economic realm, you are given authority so that your skill and your talent and your ability and your control over a situation might be exercised for the good and blessing of those that are under you. This is a completely, radically different, counter-cultural way of thinking about the way that you hold your position that you have in life. And so for you men who have roles in your family or roles in business or roles in other area, roles in the church, this shapes the way that we handle all of that.

For you young people that are coming up in life and thinking about what you want to be, this needs to be the north star of what you aim for in your character. That it's in your mind that if God ever gives me a position of ability, of authority, of being able to direct others, I'm going to handle this in the way that Christ calls me to do. I'm not going to make this a matter of proud establishment of my person so that people bow down and kiss the ground that I walk on. My position is going to be given to me that I might be able to reflect the character of Christ and use what's given to me in a manner of serving others rather than having them serve me. How that works out in your personal practical situation, I won't try to speak into that. But the idea here that what you have to see is that God gives authority not to be used in the way that you have seen it operated in the world. Maybe some of you have come out of families where your dad ruled with an iron fist and he just spoke and whatever he said was done. Well, look, whatever else we might say about that, what you have to do as a Christian man is you have to look at that and say, okay, that may be what my dad did, but that's not the law, that's not the realm under which I live now. It is different for me as a Christian, and I will take my cues and my understanding of what I do with my position from Christ, who from his position of great authority said, I did not come to be served, but to serve and to give my life a ransom for many. It's a whole mindset.

It's a whole way of viewing life, position, and relationships that fundamentally changes the way that you deal with life and the way that you approach people and the way that you exercise your authority over them. Market men. It seems like we're just kind of dealing with men directly here today.

It would be true of moms as well in a slightly different realm. And for those men of you that like to just speak and get things done and just, you know, it doesn't matter how you feel about it, this is what must be, notice how Paul did it. It would have been so simple for Paul to just come in and say, Philemon, leave this man back, I'm an apostle, I command you, do it! And from a position of greater spiritual authority than any of us have, Paul says, I'm not going to deal with you that way. That's not how a brother deals with a brother.

That's not why God gives authority to men. And so he steps back and where he could command, instead he says, I ask. Philemon, would you consider this? And what he's saying is, he goes on and he helps Philemon think through it. He instructs him, sure. He leads him with his authority.

He doesn't simply back away and not do anything. He gives Philemon information, he instructs him and he leads him in what the right thing is to do, but he doesn't command him to do it. And look at the explanation that he gives as this runaway slave is in front of Philemon as he reads this letter.

Verse 10, put yourself in Philemon's shoes as he reads this. He's got this letter from the apostle whom he loves and respects and is suffering. He looks up from his letter, looks under his bifocals.

If he had bifocals back then, I know he didn't, but you know, you get the point. He looks up and sees Onesimus, fugitive, runaway slave, thief. God has this letter and he's looking back at the letter and up at Onesimus and down and back again. Processing what Paul is saying.

And what does Paul say to him there in verse 11? He says, I'm appealing to you for this man that's now in front of you, Onesimus. He formerly was useless to you, but now he is useful both to you and to me. Now Onesimus was a common name for slaves and the meaning of the name was useful. Paul builds on that, takes on that, but by running away, Onesimus had become the very opposite of what his name implied. Rather than being useful to his master, he was useless.

Perhaps he was lazy while he was there. He was certainly insubordinate and so he steals and he runs away and he was an utterly useless slave despite his name indicating that he would be useful. Paul says, by Lehman, remember, he used to be useless to you. He wasn't even here and now he's back and he's changed. He's now useful. There's a play on words in the original language and useless and useful that isn't quite as obvious in English, but it's simply saying he was not useful, now he is well useful.

The words parallel each other, just a different prefix that is attached to it. And so Onesimus had been an absent, thieving fugitive. Notice the contrast. Formally but now, useless but now, useful. Now, Paul says to Philemon, understand that this man who once was of no value to you is back. He has capacity for service that he didn't have before and therefore, Philemon, I'm appealing to you to consider what you should do in light of that.

Here I have given you a child who is my very heart. He's come back to you now to serve and while you could punish him, while you could do things to him as a consequence for the crimes that he had committed to you, I ask you to waive all of that and consider the situation that's now in front of you. This man who was wrong, had wronged you, is now in front of you. Where's Paul going with this? In verse 17, you'll see that he says, if then you regard me as a partner, accept him as you would me.

There's the request that he's leading up to. O Philemon, accept him, bring him in, receive him without punishing him, receive him as a brother in Christ, based on his changed relationship to Christ. Well, my friend, thank you for joining us for yet another podcast from The Truth Pulpit. And we wanted to let you know that in addition to these audio resources that you are enjoying, that there are also written resources from my ministry. The Lord has given us opportunity to put some of the things that I've taught over the years in print.

And I have one book in particular that I would want to call your attention to. It's the most popular book that I've published so far called Trusting God in Trying Times. It's a book born out of deep personal sorrow and is brought into context, you might say, through the Word of God. How to trust God when you are going through the deepest valleys and the most sorrowful things in life. How do you trust God through those times when you can't see your way forward?

I've been there, my friend. And the book Trusting God in Trying Times speaks to that spiritual experience in the life of the believer. You can find all of my books at thetruthpulpit.com. That's thetruthpulpit.com. Just click on the link there.

You'll find links to different books and you will find that they take you to an easy place to purchase them for your reading enjoyment. So thank you once again for joining us on The Truth Pulpit. We'll see you next time as we continue to study God's Word together. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.