The Gospel Transforms Lives — Part Four

Let’s read from verse 17 to the end of Philemon:

“So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me. If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it—to say nothing of your owing me even your own self. Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ.

“Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say. At the same time, prepare a guest room for me, for I[’m] hoping that through your prayers I will be graciously given to you.

“Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you, and so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers.

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”

Amen.

Make the Book live to me, O Lord,
Show me yourself within your Word,
Show me myself and show me my Savior,
And make the Book live to me.[1]

Amen.

Well, we’ve come to these brief studies in this book in the context of a broken world. I don’t want to go back to the beginning but just remind us of how we arrive at where we are. We began by saying, “What do all these people have in common?” Well, a desire for a world that lives in harmony and unity. And yet, of course, that is so markedly not the case. The perspective with which we come to the affairs of our world needs to be through the lens of Scripture. If we choose to do it the other way around, we will go wrong with great frequency and to our own detriment.

So in other words, instead of getting up in the morning and going immediately to whatever your source of news is, perhaps you will pay attention to a lady from California who said to my wife, Sue, on one occasion, “Remember, Sue, it’s the Word before the world.” “It’s the Word before the world.” So in other words, it is as we go to our Bibles that we then take on the truth of God himself, and that then provides the lens through which we consider everything else.

If you get up in the morning and hit your favorite news channel and neglect the Scriptures, your life will testify to it—your immediate conversations, your immediate reflections, your attitude, your mentality, your spirit, your joy, your lack of joy, whatever it might be. And I say that to you because I say it to myself. Because on my iPad I have The Daily Telegraph from Great Britain, I have The Times of London from Great Britain, and I have The New York Times from the United States. And all of these things, as icons, are saying to me, “Come along.” But I also have Truth For Life. And Truth For Life helps me, because it gives me my daily Bible readings, which, of course, have been provided for us by a Presbyterian minister from Dundee called Murray M’Cheyne, who, fascinatingly, died at the age of twenty-nine. And how could he ever have imagined that the program that he laid out for the reading of the Bible would be enjoyed by so many for so long and would help to keep me on track?

When we do that, then, our view of the world is shifted. If you tuned in to the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, you perhaps, like me, would have said, “You know, I think the Queen is preaching in her own funeral.” Well, how would she be preaching at her own funeral? Well, she had some control over certain things, and she chose each of the hymns. Each of the hymns. And when you pay attention to them, you realize that though dead, she was still speaking. Psalm 23, to the tune of Crimond:

The Lord’s my shepherd; [I shall] not want.
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green; he leadeth me
The quiet waters by.

My soul he doth restore again
And me to walk doth make
Within the paths of righteousness,
Even for his own name’s sake.[2]

Basically the national anthem of Scotland, really—the Twenty-Third Psalm to the tune of Crimond. She loved Scotland. She died in Scotland.

But that wasn’t it all. Because she chose to have “The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended,” which was sung at Queen Victoria’s funeral and was also sung when Britain gave Hong Kong back to the Chinese. (I refuse to comment on that. It’s not germane to what I’m doing now.) But:

The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended,
The darkness falls at thy behest;
To thee our morning hymns ascended;
Thy praise shall sanctify our rest.

But how does it finish? Like this:

So be it, Lord, thy throne …,
Like earth’s proud empires, [shall never] pass away.
Thy kingdom stands and grows forever,
Till all thy creatures own thy sway.[3]

So she’s saying, “The British Empire that controlled vast stretches of the world is gone—but, Father, your kingdom remains.”

And her third choice was

Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heav’n to earth come down,
Fix in us thy humble dwelling;
All thy faithful mercies crown! …

Thee we would be always blessing.

And so on. But where does it go? “Till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love, and praise.”[4] There was only one person in the world that Queen Elizabeth referred to as “Your Majesty”: Jesus.

So, let’s sing the national anthem. No! Not at all, no. No, all of that is just a—that’s just a distraction to you, perhaps. But I get to it because what I’m saying is this: just the very simple thing that… And here’s the problem with evangelical Christianity, as well, if I can just say this in passing: The preoccupation with America is a wrong preoccupation. It is rightful for us, as Christians, to honor our homeland, to be grateful for all these things. It is wrong for us to wrap an American flag around the cross of Jesus Christ. God has no favored nation status. No favored nation status. None! You say, “Well, what about the Middle East?” None. It is his kingdom. It is Christ’s throne. It is Christ’s rule. “You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a people belonging to God. He has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light in order that you might show forth his praises”[5] in a world that is a broken world.

And where will that be revealed? In our churches—in the context of Philemon. And if we were to say there is one word that encapsulates what we’ve been endeavoring to discover, perhaps the word would be reconciliation, or perhaps the word would be restoration. And in all the longings for reconciliation and restoration and reparation—whatever word you want to throw at it—the world looks on and is absolutely mystified when the people of God are not united on the basis of socioeconomic background, racial entities, interests in different things, but are unmistakably engaged with one another not because they really like each other but because they have been reconciled to God through Christ and therefore are stuck with one another.

It is rightful for us, as Christians, to honor our homeland, to be grateful for all these things. It is wrong for us to wrap an American flag around the cross of Jesus Christ.

You can’t choose your brothers and sisters. I’ve got two sisters. They wouldn’t choose me, I don’t think. Maybe. I’ve been gone for a while; they’ve forgotten what I’m like. But be careful of this kind of stuff. You know, we talk about music. I mean, Gaither—we’re so thankful for Gaither. I guess I am. But you know, we don’t really sing that song the way he sings it—you know the “Oh, I’m glad that you’re part of the family…”[6] Right? No, we don’t sing that at Parkside. No, we sing, “I’m surprised that you’re part of the family of God.”

And every one of us should understand that. Otherwise, we only stand; we don’t “stand amazed.” “He took my sins and my sorrows.”[7] When Christ died for sin, he didn’t die generically for sin. He bore, individually, my sins. “My sin—oh, the bliss of that glorious thought!—my sin, not in part but the whole.”[8] So it’s not like we got in on some big blanket deal—that because Jesus died on the cross, everybody is automatically forgiven; all you need to do is tune in on it. No! He died for you.

I am so glad that [my] Father in heaven
Tells of his love in the book he has giv’n.
Wonderful things in the Bible I see;
This is the dearest, that Jesus loves me.[9]

“Loves me.” He loves you. Hm! He loves Onesimus. He loves Philemon. Yeah!

“Okay, well, get on with it,” somebody said. Right. That’s good. I should. All right.

Now, as we come to this, perhaps we would be forgiven for suggesting to Paul that perhaps he has a lot of 2 Corinthians 5 in his mind, which would be legitimate, because he wrote 2 Corinthians. Because it is there in 2 Corinthians 5 that he unpacks, if you like, this whole notion of God not only reconciling us to himself but then committing to us a “ministry of reconciliation,”[10] so that if God has taken me as a sinner, separated from him on account of my rebellion and on account of his wrath, and he has reconciled me to himself, then it is really quite outrageous to think, then, that that ministry of reconciliation would not then be represented.

Now, it’s not only Paul who says it, you know. He says in 2 Corinthians 5 that God has done these things… “For the love of Christ controls us, because we[’ve] concluded … that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” So, he says, here’s the implication: “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.” In other words, it doesn’t matter if they’re bright or not bright, if they’re rich or not rich, if they are in our socioeconomic background or they’re not. That is not the way we view people, he says—not now that God has done this for us. “We once regarded Christ according to the flesh,” but “we regard him … no longer [like that].”[11]

Remember, when we started—those of you who’ve got a memory—we said that the great change that was brought about in Saul of Tarsus was first of all his view of Jesus. And here in 2 Corinthians 5, he says that’s exactly the case: “I once looked at Jesus and decided that he was not the person he claims to be. But I don’t do that anymore.” When John writes, he does the same thing: “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”[12]

Now, if you translate this from 2 Corinthians 5 into Philemon, it would go like this: “So from now on, Philemon, we don’t look at Onesimus the way we used to. If Onesimus is in Christ, he is a new creation.”[13]

Now, it is in that context that, in the interest of both clarity and brevity, let me try and just gather our concluding thoughts around four imperatives which I suggest make up Paul’s appeal.

“Receive Him”

“So if you consider me your partner, receive him.” “Receive him.” That’s the first imperative. Or, if you like, you can make your own headings. Perhaps you would want just to write down “Welcome Onesimus.” “If you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me.”

Now, the basis on which he makes this appeal is on the basis of that partnership, the koinōnon, the koinōnia. That is the fellowship into which we’re brought in Jesus. And so we know that. That was the difficult verse: “And I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of”[14] all the good things that we have in Jesus.

And so he says—having mentioned back in 13 that Onesimus fulfilled the role of Philemon to Paul while he was in the jail, and now he fulfills the role of Paul to Philemon. “I can’t get there to greet you in the flesh, but what I want you to do is to welcome Onesimus in the way that you would welcome me.” Well, of course, it would be a lot easier to welcome Paul. After all, Philemon had been led to Christ by Paul, it would seem. That wouldn’t be such a hard exhortation. But he’s not saying, “Welcome me.” He’s saying, “Welcome Onesimus. Welcome the fellow who left you—Mr. Useful.”

And I think it’s very important—and some of this has come across in these questions—that these things are not easy to do. It’s not as if we just press the button and it happens. When we think about our relationships with one another, we disappoint one another. Why would we be surprised? We disappoint ourselves. We let ourselves down. We let other people down. The reality of interpersonal relationships bears testimony to all of this. You don’t have to go and look for it. It’s there.

And perhaps you will have one of the little pictures in your mind—what I mentioned yesterday about those young people standing face-to-face with each other and singing, “I love you with the love of the Lord.”[15] They used to also sing… They all started seated, and then they would sing a song that began, “It was on a Monday, somebody touched me, and I know it was the hand of the Lord.” And if they’d become a Christian on a Monday, then they would stand up. And then it went through Tuesday and everything else. It was just quite a remarkable experience as people were popping up from all over the place. And then, if you didn’t know what day it was, then you were allowed to stand up on Sunday. That’s what he said. So if you don’t know, if you don’t remember the day, just stand up on Sunday. So by the time we got to Sunday, it was just glorious.

“So,” he says, “if I’m your partner—if you love me in Jesus as I love you—then if I’m your partner, Onesimus is your partner. If you get me, you get him as well. So welcome him.”

“Charge Me”

Secondly: “Charge [everything] to my account.” “Welcome him, and charge it to me. I, Paul, write this to you. I will repay you, but I’m not here to do it right now, but you can go ahead and charge it to my account. I’m giving you my Visa card, and you can run it.” Okay?

Now, notice the “ifs.” The first “if” assumes a positive response: “If you consider me your partner…” (“Yes, I’m sure you do.”) “If he has wronged you at all…” “If he has cheated you—and I’m pretty sure that he has—then charge it to my account.”

One of the benefits I enjoyed in an elementary education in Scotland was Bible memorization in a secular school. My teacher at a particular point, her name was Miss Bone—B-o-n-e. And she would write up on the blackboard, when we arrived in the class, Scriptures. And we all had Bibles. And then we would go to the Bibles. This wasn’t Christian school. This is secular school in Scotland in the ’50s. And so a lot of my Bible memorization I learned not in my Sunday school class, but I learned it in my actual school class.

You say, “Why do you mention that?” I say: because one of the passages that we learned and she wanted us to learn was a passage that clearly comes to mind when you think of “Charge it to my account.” Which story do you think of that Jesus told about “Charge it to my account”? It’s the good Samaritan, right? Yeah. “And by chance, the priest was going down the road.”[16] But it was—first of all, it starts, “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment … and departed, leaving him half dead.” And then it says, fascinatingly—and this is back to the little “perhaps” thing of yesterday—“And by chance…”[17] “By chance.” From a human perspective, it was just a happenstance. From God’s perspective…

[And] by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. [And] likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, [he] passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion [on him].[18]

And he “bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine,” he “[put] him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn,” and he “took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed,”[19] he said to the innkeeper, “Hey, let me leave you a couple of dollars here.” Actually, it was two denarii. A denarii was a worker’s wages for one day. So he said, “I’m going to cover him for a couple of days here, but if there’s any extension to this, just make sure that it is charged to me.”[20]

And remember what Jesus says as he tells that parable? He says… Because the Pharisees say, “Who is my friend?”[21] “Who is my friend?” Because the Pharisees always want to only—it’s like “Us four, no more, shut the door. We want to know who our gang is. And once we get our little gang, we don’t be bothered with anybody else’s gang.” So Jesus says, “I’ll show you who the friend is.” And then he tells the story, and he says, “So which one was the friend?”[22] Was it the religious establishment? No, not for a moment.

You see, that’s the transforming power that Jesus is pointing to in the gospel. And, of course, the Good Samaritan is not an end in itself as a story, because the Good Samaritan points us to the Lord Jesus, who has borne our debt of sin, who has credited us with his righteousness, who has said, “Father, charge it to my account—and whatever else! Charge the whole thing to my account.” Yeah! “A debtor to mercy alone, of [sovereign] mercy I sing.”[23]

And so Paul is being Christlike now. He wrote, “If anyone is in Christ, he[’s] a new creation.”[24] Well, he used to be part of the Pharisee gang, but he’s not part of that anymore. So he says, “Here’s my IOU. And I’ll pay you back anything that Onesimus owes you.”

And then the little kicker: “I’m not, of course, going to mention the fact that any debt he may have incurred pales in light of your debt to me, because you owe me your very self, in the sense that I led you to Christ. Here’s your chance to repay me.”

“Refresh My Heart”

“Welcome him.” “Charge it to me.” Verse 20: “Refresh my heart.” “Refresh my heart.” “Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord.”

Again, notice the endearment: “Yes, brother.” “Yes, brother.” As boys in Scotland, sometimes—very seldom, but memorably—we would have affection for one another. One of my Jewish friends, Ian Brody—we used to avail ourselves of fruit from various people’s gardens. We felt that they had a lot, and it would be okay if we took some—particularly rhubarb. Rhubarb. And he had a shed at the bottom of his garden. We would sit on the top of the shed, eat the rhubarb, give ourselves some of the worst stomachaches you’ve ever had in your life. But we were bonded. On one occasion, we wanted to make sure that each of us really believed that. I took a pen knife and did my thumb, and he did his thumb, and then we rubbed our thumbs together and said, “That’s how close we are.” His mom used to send me away on Friday afternoons because it was the Sabbath. He used to go to Hebrew school two of the days in the week. But we were close, and I still remember that.

It’s the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that has united us. And what Paul is saying in a very straightforward way is that… “You will refresh my heart,” he says, “when you by your actions, Philemon, to Onesimus, the one who has wronged you, display the love of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Because the fact is that we are blood brothers and sisters. Revelation: “You were slain, and by your blood you ransomed [a] people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.”[25]

Every lasting benefit that we enjoy in our Christian lives comes to us in Christ.

You see, the only way that our world in its brokenness gets even a microcosmic picture of what it really means that God, the Creator, is choosing to do in a new heaven and in a new earth is, staggeringly, challengingly—in some senses horribly, disturbingly—in our churches. In our churches! Therefore, when we smack of anything other than that, whether it’s our status or our numbers or our background or our intellect or—put anything in that place that a person comes in and says, “Oh, but I don’t fit this thing.” Why is it that people who are broken people find it so difficult to fit into many of our places? Because we’re not honest enough and tell people we’re broken as well. And so they think, “Well, wait a minute. I got to get cleaned up, unbroken, so that I can be part of this.” No, we need to say, “We’re all bust. We’re all broken. Jesus fixed us. He fixed us! And he fixes people! That’s what he came to do.”

And that’s the fixing that is taking place in this tiny little letter. “Philemon, I want you to do for me what you do so wonderfully well.” Because, remember, in verse 7 he said that: “I[’ve] derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.” “I know you’re a refresher. Now do for me what you’ve been doing for other people, and do it in Christ, and grant that the benefit I enjoy will be in the Lord.”

It’s only, for Philemon and for all of us, in the Lord that we are enabled to show such grace to one another, and particularly to those who may have wronged us. Every lasting benefit that we enjoy in our Christian lives comes to us in Christ.

O Christ, in you my soul has found,
And found in you alone,
The peace, the joy I sought so long,
The bliss till now unknown.

Now none but Christ can satisfy,
None other name for me!
There’s life and love and lasting joy,
Lord Jesus, found in thee.[26]

As precious as our relationships are within marriage and within family, it’s salutary but necessary for me to remind myself: I will stand alone before Christ. The relationship that I have with Christ is with Christ. It is a relationship that extends to other relationships, but unless my true joy is found in Jesus, then I’m finding it somewhere else or in someone else. And that, ultimately, is idolatry.

“Prepare a Room”

So, “Welcome him,” or “Receive him.” “Charge it to me.” “Refresh my heart.” And finally, “Prepare a room.” “Prepare a room.” “At the same time, prepare a guest room for me.”

Now, perhaps you’ve thought along these lines, as I have: Is there any kind of gentle sense in which he’s actually saying, “And just so you know, I am planning on coming to check up on whether you’ve actually done this. When I get out of here, I am showing up. So prepare a room for me.”

Now, I say that given the fact that he’s already very clear that he is confident of Philemon’s obedience. He’s not relying, if you like, on his nudging. “I’m confident of your obedience, and I actually believe that you’ll do more even than I’m asking you to do.” He’s been praying for Philemon and for the church in Philemon’s home. And this is one of the places where it goes back to the plural: “Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus,” and so on. It’s a wonderful thing for him to be able to say, “I[’m] hoping that through your prayers I will be graciously given to you.” Remember, he has also said that he’s prayerful, and he’s thankful, and he’s joyful—that he’s remembering him in his prayers.[27]

One of the things that happens when people are older—they say, “You know, I can’t do what I used to do.” Fine! Fine. But what can we do? Well, we’ve got a lot of time to run through our list—whether we’re doing it alphabetically, or Monday through Sunday, or whatever way we’re doing it—and bringing the people before our heavenly Father. It’s an immense privilege to pray. And that’s why I think it’s one of the hardest things to do. I think prayer is the hardest part of spiritual discipline, certainly in my own life—both public prayer, which is hard to do (close your eyes and speak extemporaneously before a congregation of people Sunday after Sunday after Sunday after Sunday without just entirely repeating yourself), and the same is true in our own private lives, isn’t it?

I had a friend who’s gone on to glory who was a little man, an Irishman. He was a bank manager in Londonderry. He led a boys’ Bible class for fifty years or so. And he had in his home—he was single—he had in his home what he called his “rogues’ gallery.” And it was pictures of people that had been boys in his class throughout the years. Some of them were doctors. Some of them were teachers, lawyers, carpenters. But they were all there. And he met me along the journey of life. And it was one of the great accolades for me when he decided to include me as one of his rogues. And he put me as a rogue. And so I said, “You know, I might not mean much to you, but I am one of T. S. Mooney’s rogues.”

And he was a memorable guy for all kinds of reasons. On one occasion I asked him—he died in his eighties—“Why did you never marry, T. S.? Why did you never marry?” And he said, “Well, in my case, the desirable was always unattainable, and the attainable was always undesirable.” And I said, “I’m beginning to understand why you weren’t married.” But he wasn’t finished. Then he followed up and he said, “You see, it’s like this: I’d rather go through my life wanting what I don’t have than having what I don’t want.” So I said, “Okay, I got it clear. I got it clear.”

But he would write to me. His concern for the boys over fifty years was threefold: one, that they would have a Bible in their hand, that they would have a Savior in their heart, and that they would have a purpose in their life. And he always closed his letters to me, writing across the ocean, “I remember you daily at the best place.”

When he died, his housekeeper found him early in the morning. He was already dressed. He was an old-fashioned man. He had a suit on. He had a tie on. And they found him on his knees over his bed. And when they moved his body back off the bed, underneath was his Bible and his prayer list.

You see, we can never know—maybe in eternity we get to know—but we can never know the inestimable value of those who pray for us. Who pray for us! Alec Motyer, another of my great mentor-heroes—Old Testament scholar from England, an Irishman, but phenomenal. If you find anything by Motyer—M-o-t-y-e-r—just buy it. It will do your soul good.

I met Motyer speaking in Ireland, oh, a hundred years ago, and I was in awe of meeting him because he’s so good. And he did Hebrews that week. I never took as many notes in my life. I just scribbled the whole time. But he asked me if I’d like to walk with him in the afternoons, after lunch. I said, “Sure,” you know; it would be a privilege to be in his company. And that’s what we did. He would ask me—he said, “I’ll go for a nap, then I want you to come wake me up.” He was old, about the age of some of you. No, he was actually about the age of some of me by that time.

And so I go knock on his door. First time I went, he never even answered. So I opened the door, and he was lying in his bed like this, like a bishop lying in state. I thought, “Goodness gracious! He’s dead! Now we won’t be able to go for a walk.” Anyway, I woke him up. I woke him up, and we would walk. And every day the same routine: wake him up, and we go for a walk.

At the end of the week, he said to me… He called me “my boy.” He said, “Now, my boy, I will pray for you.” I said, “Okay. Thank you.” I come back to America. It’s who knows when—a year past. I don’t know. It’s Easter. It’s Good Friday. The Good Friday service is on me, and I got nothing! Right. I can’t settle on anything at all for the Good Friday service. And so I said to myself, “Well, I’ll go to Motyer and get his Isaiah commentary, and I’ll see. I’ll just find something here to get me just a phrase—something to send me in the right direction.” And so I did that. And I can’t remember what it was—nothing earth-shattering, but it was enough to jumpstart the engine. And we’re running out of time here, because it’s now about four o’clock in the afternoon on Friday. The service starts at seven o’clock. But I said, “You know, I’m so thankful for Alec Motyer that I’m going to just phone him up right now.” I have never spoken to him on the phone ever since the time—we’ve not been in each other’s company since the day that we parted and he said, “My boy, I will pray for you.”

So I pick up the phone, and he answered the phone. I said, “Alec, this is Alistair Begg.” He said, “My dear boy!” And then he said, “Before you say anything, I just need to tell you…” Now, it’s nine o’clock at night in England at this point. It’s nine o’clock. He said, “Beryl”—that’s his wife—“Beryl and I were just having a cup of tea, and we prayed for you.” But that wasn’t all. He said, “And we prayed for you, and Susan, and Cameron, and Michelle, and Emily.” Sometimes I can’t even remember my own kids’ names!

We will never know. We will never know. Please don’t go to anybody, to your pastor, and say, “I’m sorry. All I can basically do now is pray.” Let me tell you something: Prayer is the work, and preaching is simply gathering up the results. But prayer is the work. And that’s why he says what he says.

And so, we need to stop. When do we stop, incidentally? Where’s that Bill fellow? Beg your pardon? Ten after! Okay. Perfect. Okay. So I have eleven minutes. Yeah. Okay.

Final Greetings

Final greetings: “Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you, … so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers.”

Notice the warning that is there in one name: Demas. For this is the same person who later deserted Paul.[28] If one of Paul’s assistants became weary and discouraged and was afterwards drawn away by the vanity of the world, none of us ought to rely too much on whatever present sense of zeal we enjoy—especially in a little mountaintop experience. We rely not on how good it’s going, how well we’re feeling, how efficient we are in doing what we’re doing. The journey that is before us, whether short or long, we will continue to the end—as we were reminded from Philippians 1:6—because he who began the work in us will bring it to completion.

So, when he says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit,” that is plural there. That’s one of the plural references. He’s not just greeting Philemon when he says that; he’s greeting them all. And he has charged Philemon with a superhuman task of heartfelt reconciliation and forgiveness. And it’s all in the one word: “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.” “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.” “Now help me, Lord, to live a life that’s dependent on your grace.”[29] “All the way…”

All the way my Savior leads me;
What have I to ask beside?
Can I doubt his tender mercy
Who through life has been my guide?
Heav’nly peace, divinest comfort,
Here by faith in him to dwell!
For I know whate’er befall[s] me,
Jesus doeth all things well;
For I know whate’er befall[s] me,
Jesus doeth all things well.[30]

How Different Will We Be?

Now, let me use my closing moments to pick up from where I began—and, indeed, from where the whole thing began. If I remember correctly, in the introductory comments, Bill or somebody said, “Our hope and prayer is that we will leave here different from how we arrived”— that we will leave here in a different mentality, or whatever it is, from how we arrived. Well, how different is that going to be? How different would it be?

Well, it would be very different if somebody has sat through all of these talks and said to herself or said to himself, “You know, I get the terminology, and I would like to apply it to myself, but I’m not sure—I’m not sure—that I actually belong in the way that we’re talking about here. I’m big on the idea that we live in a broken world, but I’m not necessarily buying the idea that I am a broken person.” So it’s relatively easy to say, “Fix the world, God.” But we never really can pray that prayer until we’ve first said, “Fix me, God.”

The man who was taken by his friends on the bed went to Jesus on that occasion, taken by his friends. His friends and himself—if we’d encountered them on the way to that house and we’d said, “What are you doing?” they would have said, “We’re taking this man to have his needs met.” Okay. They then must have been absolutely staggered when Jesus looks at the man and says, “Your sins are forgiven.”[31] They said, “No, no, no, no! No! We didn’t come for an invisible forgiveness. We came for a physical transformation. He doesn’t walk, Jesus!”

Was what Jesus said irrelevant? No! What was he doing? He was putting his finger on that man’s and every man and every woman’s greatest need—the need of forgiveness. If we could bring that man back to the Cove and have the testimony time, he would stand up and say, “When I went, I thought what the real deal was, was my legs. But by the time I got home to my wife, I said, ‘It’s fun that we can walk and go to the park, but the amazing thing is that this Jesus really is the Savior. And he’s not just the Savior or a Savior. Listen, wife: He’s my Savior. He forgave my sins.”

It’s relatively easy to say, ‘Fix the world, God.’ But we never really can pray that prayer until we’ve first said, ‘Fix me, God.’

Now, to those of you for whom this is relevant, let me conclude in this way. You remember C. S. Lewis in Surprised by Joy. C. S. Lewis grows up in an Anglican home—born in Dublin, goes to the Church of Ireland, decides in his teen ages, “Forget this stuff; it’s bogus,” goes off to university, and you know the rest of the story. He is moved by his friends that he’s talking with and doing various things with. He moves from agnosticism to theism, right? So he said, “Okay, I’m not saying I don’t know if there is; I’m saying there is. I do believe there is a God.” Right? But in his little book Surprised by Joy, he describes the scene where he’s riding in the sidecar with his brother in Oxfordshire to the Whipsnade Zoo. Okay? This is what he says:

I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion. “Emotional” is perhaps the last word we can apply to some of the most important events. It was more like when a man, after a long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake.[32]

And the unrecognized Christ becomes recognized, and the assurance of faith is ours only by personal contact.

With all these anniversaries—this analogy—we can close. Becoming a Christian is in one sense a bit like getting married. When you get married, you come to the front of the church in normal circumstances, and questions are presented to you: “Alistair, do you take this woman to be your wedded wife?” “I do.” “Susan, do you take this man?” “I do.” We’ve mentioned earlier: How did you feel when you came? I don’t care how you felt when you came. You came single, and you’re about to leave: “We two are one.” You’ll never be the same again as a result of this. On the basis of what? On the basis of an “I do.”

So Jesus stands at the front, and you stand at the front beside Jesus, and the Father says, “Son, do you receive this sinner?” And Jesus says, “I do. I died for her. I died for him.” And then he says, “And sinner, do you receive this Savior?” That is the question. And that is the transformation that is effected by God’s grace, through God’s Son, via God’s Word, by God’s Spirit. Don’t worry about how you’re feeling. Respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. And if you are already on that journey, as I assume the vast majority of us are, then let us with confidence keep looking to Jesus, because he’s both the author and the finisher of our faith.[33]

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[1] R. Hudson Pope, “Make the Book Live to Me.” Language modernized.

[2] Francis Rous, “The Lord’s My Shepherd” (1650).

[3] John Ellerton, “The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended” (1870).

[4] Charles Wesley, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” (1747).

[5] 1 Peter 2:9 (paraphrased).

[6] Gloria Gaither and William J. Gaither, “The Family of God” (1970). Lyrics lightly altered.

[7] Charles Hutchinson Gabriel, “My Savior’s Love” (1905).

[8] Horatio Gates Spafford, “It Is Well with My Soul” (1873).

[9] Philip Paul Bliss, “Jesus Loves Even Me” (1870).

[10] 2 Corinthians 5:18 (ESV).

[11] 2 Corinthians 5:14–16 (ESV).

[12] 1 John 4:11 (NIV).

[13] See 2 Corinthians 5:17.

[14] Philemon 6 (ESV).

[15] Jim Gilbert, “I Love You with the Love of the Lord” (1977).

[16] Luke 10:31 (paraphrased).

[17] Luke 10:30–31 (KJV).

[18] Luke 10:31–33 (ESV).

[19] Luke 10:34–35 (KJV).

[20] Luke 10:35 (paraphrased).

[21] Luke 10:29 (paraphrased).

[22] Luke 10:36 (paraphrased).s

[23] Augustus Montague Toplady, “A Debtor to Mercy Alone” (1771).

[24] 2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV).

[25] Revelation 5:9 (ESV).

[26] [Emma Frances Bevan?], “None but Christ Can Satisfy.” Lyrics lightly altered.

[27] See Philemon 4–7.

[28] See 2 Timothy 4:10.

[29] Bob Kauflin, “O Great God” (2006). Lyrics lightly altered.

[30] Fanny Jane Crosby, “All the Way My Savior Leads Me” (1875).

[31] Matthew 9:2; Mark 2:5; Luke 5:20 (ESV).

[32] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (1955), chap. 15.

[33] See Hebrews 12:2.