The Gospel Transforms Lives — Part One

If you have a Bible, please turn to Philemon, which is just before Hebrews and just after Titus. Our study over the next three studies will be Philemon. So it’s not going to be hard for you to memorize it. There’s only twenty-four verses or so, maybe twenty-five. And tonight is just going to be a long introduction to Philemon, okay? But I want to have it fixed in our minds before we launch into this. So follow along as I read:

“Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother,

“To Philemon our beloved fellow worker and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church in your house:

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

“I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and … all the saints, and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ. For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.

“Accordingly, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love’s sake I prefer to appeal to you—I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus—I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment. (Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.) I am sending him back to you, sending [you] my very heart. I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel, but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own [free will]. For this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a [slave] but more than a [slave], as a beloved brother—especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

“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.

And a brief prayer, my favorite old Anglican prayer:

Father, what we know not, teach us. What we have not, give us. What we are not, make us. For your Son’s sake. Amen.

Okay, well, let me begin with a quiz. Here’s how it goes: Apart from the fact that each of these individuals are dead, what do these individuals have in common? Winston Churchill, John Lennon, Bill Backer, and Michael Jackson. (Notetakers. Smart.) Each of them, in one way or another, was hoping, by earthly means, to create a world of harmony and of hope. Lennon:

Imagine there’s no countries;
It isn’t hard to do;
Nothing to kill or die for,
And no religion too.
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace.[1]

I was nineteen; that was 1971.

In the same year—and some of you will be familiar with this because of your vintage—in that same year, Bill Backer, an advertising executive, came up with a winner phrase for Coca-Cola:

I’d like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony;
I’d like to buy the world a Coke,[2]

and so on.

Fourteen years later, Michael Jackson and a coterie of well-known pop singers and stars gathered late at night in order to record “We Are the World,” including the lyric

[It’s] a choice we’re making;
We’re saving our own lives. …
We are the world.[3]

Forty years before, at the Yalta Conference, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt talked about what became the United Nations. Roosevelt didn’t live to be part of the establishment of the United Nations, but when the charter was written, it was written with the express desire that men and women would be able, number one, to “maintain international peace and security,” to “develop friendly relations,” to “[establish] international co-operation,” and to “be a centre for harmonizing the actions of [the] nations in the attainment of these common [goals].”[4]

Now, just allow that to settle in your mind for a little bit. All these years later, how are we doing? In fact, it’s not even humorous. Because the fact of the matter is that all human community is fragile, and it will always be fragile so long as human beings, without God, continue to try and fashion that which only God is able to do.

And the great lesson, when you read your Bible, all the way from Eden right to Babel, is that until and unless God remakes our broken world, that world cannot be healed. Until God remakes a broken world. And that, of course, is exactly what God is in the business of doing.

Some two thousand years before the establishment of the United Nations, a small Jewish man whose life had been transformed by the gospel wrote this letter to Philemon, to a church that was meeting in the house. He also wrote Galatians and Ephesians and Philippians and Colossians. And particularly in Ephesians—as we’ve just heard as the introduction to one of the songs—he is reminding the Ephesians that God has done something that could never otherwise be done: that he has broken down the wall that existed between the Jew and the gentile, because now, in Jesus, it’s not that the Jewish person has become less Jewish or the gentile has become more accommodating; it is, if you read the text in Ephesians, that he has made one new man out of the two[5]—an entirely new entity.

Until and unless God remakes our broken world, that world cannot be healed. And that, of course, is exactly what God is in the business of doing.

And it is there, in that entirely new entity (namely, the church) that the harmonization of heart and life and zeal and so on is to be expressed—not on the basis of socioeconomic backgrounds, not on the basis of intellect, not on the basis of shared interests in certain kinds of singing. Whenever any of that’s going on, it is only in Jesus that this actually takes place, that he has planned to “unite all things in [him], things in heaven and things on earth”[6]—an entirely new multicultural community of the redeemed, reconciled to God in Jesus and reconciled to one another, gathered in eternity, singing his praises, and enjoying it, and enjoying him forever.[7]

Now, where in the world is anybody supposed to see that community? In your church. Yeah. Yeah! How are you going to take a terrorist who is a monotheistic Pharisee, and put him together with a prosperous businessman, and throw into the mix a runaway slave, and have them all singing together, “To God be the glory”? Who can do that? Only Jesus does that. And that’s what Philemon is actually giving to us: this little microcosm of the transforming power of the gospel.

Philemon’s Writer

Now, I say this is by way of introduction, and it is by way of introduction. Because let’s think about, for a moment or two, Saul of Tarsus. Right? What is it that changed Saul of Tarsus to be able to write as he did? You know the story. If you need to go back to it, you just turn to Acts, and in the early chapters of Acts, we see there that he was present at the stoning of Stephen. He didn’t actually throw any of the stones, apparently, but he made sure that he was the cloakroom attendant for the occasion, and he told people, “Just leave your jackets here. I’ll be glad to look after them while you go about this.”[8] If we don’t think that that registered in the psyche of Saul of Tarsus, we have to be crazy.

In fact, later on in Paul’s life, when he talks about how he was fastidious in relationship to the law, he actually says the thing that uncovered him was covetousness. He says, “When I coveted, then I realized I was a lawbreaker.”[9] Well, of course, we don’t know what he coveted, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised, if we get the chance to meet him, that when he saw Stephen being stoned and lifted his eyes and gazed up to heaven as if he saw the glory itself, do you think this little fastidious Jew said, “Now there is something I don’t have. I don’t have that. I wish I had that. All my law keeping has not given me that.” I don’t know! It’s conjecture. But he was absolutely committed to the destruction of Jesus and the destruction of the followers of Jesus. Acts chapter 9 begins—Luke tells us, “But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for [special] letters.”[10] Why? Well, so he could go and imprison these people and destroy them if he possibly could.

But now he’s writing these kinds of letters. What has happened to him? At least three things.

Number one: He had an entirely new view of Jesus. An entirely new view of Jesus. You see, when that encounter takes place as it’s recorded for us in Acts chapter 9, he has no thought whatsoever about coming face-to-face with a God who made him. And yet it is in that blinding moment his eyes are shut so that he can actually see. And, you remember, he asks, “Who are you, Lord?”[11] Now, the punctuation in these English translations always has the question mark after “Lord.” And I’m no Greek scholar, and even if I was, I shouldn’t be talking about it. But the fact is, I like to think he goes, “Who are you? Lord? Lord? Yahweh? Creator? Who are you?” And from that point, he has an entirely new view of Jesus.

Incidentally, that’s what conversion is all about. Nobody ever came to trust in Jesus and just gathered up their old crazy ideas about who Jesus was—you know, that he was a moral teacher, or he was a fine man, or he was a guru, or whatever it might be. Not if they become a Christian! No, they don’t say that stuff anymore at all. No, because they know that he is Lord—an entirely new view of Jesus.

Secondly: an entirely new view of the followers of Jesus. You don’t even have to go out of the chapter. After Ananias comes and looks after him… (And I can’t wait to meet Ananias. There’s so many people we’ve going to have to meet.) But

there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.”

(No, he said, “Here I am, Lord.”)

And the Lord said to him, “Rise and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias…

You got to love Ananias. ’Cause he’s like, “No, no, no. Wait a minute!”

“Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” So Ananias departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him he said, “Brother Saul…”[12]

How’d you get to “Brother Saul” from “I have heard that he is this”? The word of the Lord.

You see, the work of God is done by the Word of God in the lives of the people of God by the Spirit of God to the glory of God. That’s an act of faith in Ananias’s part:

“Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me [to you] that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, … he regained his sight. Then he arose … was baptized; and taking food, he was strengthened.[13]

So he was baptized before his meal. It’s interesting. Most of us: “Well, I’ll get baptized, but I’m going out for dinner first, and we’ll do it afterwards.” And then, of course, it says, “For some days he was with the disciples at Damascus”[14]—which is, of course, what he was planning on doing. But he wasn’t planning on having a prayer meeting with them.

In fact, further on in that chapter, it says, “And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did[n’t] [even] believe that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him.”[15] How many want to put up their hands and thank God for the Barnabas in their lives, or the many Barnabases, that are just—when we looked like we were absolutely in left field, someone came along and just gave us an arm around the shoulder? “But Barnabas took him.” And Misses Barnabas as well—that is, M-I-S-S-E-S, Miss Barnabas, whatever the female version of Barnabas is. You know what I mean.

A new view of Jesus; a new view of the followers of Jesus. Don’t tell me that you are a newborn Christian, but you don’t go to church. Don’t tell me that it’s a very personal, private thing for you. You’re wrong! It’s not. We were brought into a living relationship with God and into a living relationship with all of our brothers and sisters in Christ—strange people, admittedly! My church is not filled with people that I want to go on vacation with, I can guarantee you. And I know that because so many of them have told me, “We would not want to go on vacation with you.”

We were brought into a living relationship with God and into a living relationship with all of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

A new view of Jesus, a new view of the followers of Jesus, and a new view of mercy. Mercy. “His mercy is more.”[16] He would have loved that song! Maybe we get to sing it in heaven. “Hey, Paul! We got a new one for you. It’s called ‘His Mercy Is More.’ I think you’re going to like it.” Why would we say that? Well, because he was able—remember, when he writes to the Philippians, he’s able to say, “You know, as far as keeping the rules was concerned, you know, I had that stuff down. I mean, I was as good as anybody out there. My background was such. My intellect was such. My law-keeping was such.” But eventually he says, “But all those things that I used to regard as being so crucially important, I actually don’t really rate them very much anymore. Because I’ve discovered the nature of God’s goodness to me in his mercy.”[17]

I’m just searching here for a verse which I hope hasn’t left the Bible. No, this is 1 Timothy 1:12: “I thank him”—that’s God—

who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus … might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

And he can’t stop himself. He just goes into doxology: “To the King of … ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” But he hasn’t finished. He just continues in the letter from that point on.

In other words, he’s swept up by his own story. I mean, there’s something wrong… I mean, I love this singing. I mean, goodness gracious! I’ve got to have somebody come in and fix this piano after that—that banging on that piano like that that he’s been doing. But it’s good! You can tell. He’s not, like, remotely interested in one. No, he’s in. He’s into it. He’s into it.

How can people sing about Jesus and not be into it? How can you preach about the transforming power of the gospel and not be into it? I mean, there’s something wrong. The apostles were swept along by a divine afflatus. They hit the streets of Jerusalem, caught up in a great wave—that they themselves knew: Jesus is absolutely alive. “What we have seen, what we have heard, we have handled, we have touched, we now declare it to you.”[18] That’s the story. And that is the fellow who is writing the letter to Philemon.

Philemon’s Readers

Now, what about the people who are reading the letter to Philemon? Well, there are the initial readers, and there are all the readers who’ve been reading ever since—including those of you who, before you go to bed tonight, if you do your homework, are going to read Philemon through again, so that, having done your homework, you will be better prepared in the morning, which is what our teachers always told us. Whether we listened to it or not I don’t know.

So, Paul is transformed; he writes this letter. Now, let’s allow Paul, the writer of Philemon, to remind us in this introduction just exactly what it is that God is doing with every single one of us. You say, “Well, we’re all very different. He must be doing different things.” Well, of course he’s doing different things. But all those other things are supplemental to the one thing that he’s doing. What is the one thing that God is doing with every one of us?

I’ll tell you. It’s in the Bible. You should be encouraged. We’ve already been in Romans, and we can go back there. We’ve already had reference to, and most of us know, Romans 8:28: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Now, why have we been called according to his purpose? What is it that God is doing with each of us? We’re told: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” So, what is it that God is doing with me and with you and with each of us? Short answer: making us more like Jesus.

The existential experience of living the Christian life is to be increasingly conformed to the image of Jesus.

Now, that is, on the one hand, immediately encouraging and simultaneously fundamentally discouraging. Because I am not really very much like Jesus. At least that’s what my wife told me just in the last few days: “If you were a bit more like Jesus, it would be a lot easier to live with you.” True! True, true. She’s also the one who told me that I have a perfect face for the radio. So, she has just a natural gift of encouragement, as you can tell. But in order to understand what is happening, whether you’re six or sixteen or sixty-six or ninety-six, the reason that he called us to himself is in order to make us increasingly like his Son. That’s what it says there, in Romans 8:29. That is, if you like, God’s eternal plan.

In 2 Corinthians—and we’re still allowing Paul to be our pastor here—in 2 Corinthians and in chapter 3, this is what he says: “Since we have such a hope, we[’re] very bold”—2 Corinthians 3:12—“not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end,” and so on. “To this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts.” How many of us have got really good Jewish friends? Yeah. They know less about the Old Testament than you do. And when they read it, there is a veil over their hearts. It’s not that they can’t read the words. It’s quite a thought as we pray for them. “But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.” Who’s writing this? Saul of Tarsus. “There was a veil over my eyes,” he says. “I didn’t understand this. God’s mercy was established in my life due to my ignorance. I was ignorant of these things. But when I turned to the Lord, the veil was removed.” And “now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” So Kris Kristofferson is not correct—nor is Janice Joplin when she sings it—that “freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,” that “[freedom] ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free.”[19] No! “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all”—no exceptions—“with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being” what? “Transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

So, the eternal plan of God is there to make us like Jesus. The existential experience of living the Christian life is to be increasingly conformed to the image of Jesus. We’re actually supposed to be more like him. We sang it as children; we didn’t know what we were singing:

To be like Jesus, to be like Jesus,
All I ask is to be like him;
Through all earth’s journey from here to glory,
All I ask is to be like him.

We sing it:

May the mind of Christ my Savior
Live in me from day to day ….

May the love of Jesus fill me
As the waters fill the sea ….

May his beauty rest upon me.[20]

Let me ask you a question: Do you think that in our broken world, in our disrupted culture, how many people would you need to go to in the street—choose your city—and ask them, “What is it about Christians that is so beautiful?” And then they might say, “Well, I don’t know about beautiful, but I know about political. I’m not sure about beautiful. I’m not sure about loving. I’m not sure… In fact, I haven’t really met anybody that reminds me of Jesus of Nazareth once in my life.” And yet that’s the plan of God from eternity. His eternal plan: to make you like Jesus.

And what is he doing tonight? Why have we even come here? So that as we sing to God’s praise, our broken-heartedness or our wandering spirit is galvanized, not by the style of music but by the content of what is sung—singing about Christ, singing about his work. And suddenly you say to yourself, “Yeah, this is good! I’m glad I came here. I needed to sing that song. I needed the reminder of that song.”

You say, “Well, it’s a painful process, isn’t it?” Yeah! C. S. Lewis had it right, didn’t he? He says, you know, imagine your life as being a house, and that your Christian life is like a house, and you have come now to trust in Jesus, and it seems pretty nice, fairly tranquil. And then, all of a sudden, workmen start showing up and start bashing the place around, knocking things off and chiseling and making the—like, what the world is going on here? Don’t, he says, for a minute, assume that something has gone wrong. Everything has gone right. Because he’s not content to leave us the way we are. The Spirit of God comes in order to transform our cabin into the palace in which he plans to continue living.[21] How amazing that God is willing to do this!

The question, though, is: Are we going to be able to finish? Of course, Paul says in Philippians 1 that he’s confident that he will bring to completion the good work that he’s begun in us.[22] We know that. None of us doubt that, I’m sure.

But listen: “Little children…” We have to include John in this. I’m sorry. I said it was Paul was our pastor, but John has just been slipped in. Okay. This is John now. This is 1 John 2:

Now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason … the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know…[23]

Not “we hope.” We’re not Catholics. (Maybe you are. You’d better go see Joe.) My Catholic friends that I have met… And I have tons of them. I have more Catholic friends than I have Jewish friends. If I ask them at this point, “But we know,” they say, “No, we don’t know, and we can’t know.” That’s the difference. That is a huge difference. Now we are the children of God, by grace, through faith, plus nothing. And now “we know”—not because we’re doing well, not because we’re anything—but “we know” that “what we will be has[n’t] yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, [for] we [will] see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”[24]

You know, I think we were talking earlier about certain aspects of theology and eschatology. Incidentally, if Romans 8:29 is God’s eternal purpose and if 2 Corinthians 3 is the existential, ongoing purpose of God in the here and now, then 1 John 3 is his eschatological design—that when we see him, we will be like him. It’s an amazing thought.

And the evidence of somebody who says, “I’m looking forward to that day,” the evidence of the person who says, “I have been born again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”[25]—that’s Peter. So we got Paul, John; now we got Peter. We’ll try to get somebody else in before I finish. But the person who has that hope within him does what? “Purifies himself.” Lives a holy life.

The girl that I’ve been mentioning, to whom I will be married, if God spares us both—although it’s questionable in light of everything that’s going on at the moment—but till the sixteenth August, it’ll be fifty years. Right. Now, she lived a long way from me—three hours away, for sure, maybe more—and then she lived an ocean away from me. And on the rare occasions when I ever got to see her, the one thing that I was most concerned about as a teenage boy: zits. Zits! And the closer it got to seeing her, the bigger those things became! And I’d say to myself, “I can’t see her like this. If she sees me like this, she’ll run away and marry one of those American guys with muscles.”

But I was shown mercy. I was! I was shown mercy. When I came here in ’72, chasing her down—hadn’t seen her for fourteen months—and all those American guys… I looked like an anti-Vietnam War protester, without any question. I had long hair, tight jeans. These guys were all just musclebound creatures. Just, I wish I could have been one of them, but… So, if she didn’t love me in a strange way, this would never have happened. And if Jesus didn’t love us in a strange way, none of us would even be in the room. We wouldn’t have any interest in any of this stuff. We wouldn’t want to sing songs about his mercy and his glory and so on.

I come to my garden alone in the morning. I always go out the front door. Sue’s still in bed. I go out the front door, just—I’m just pleased I’m alive. That’s the first thing. I’m not getting too excited about anything, right? You get up, you go, “Wow! I’m still here. This is good.” I get coffee; I walk out the front door. There’s not a lot there. There’s nothing much in front of me. But I can hear birds, and I can see things.

And people tell me that they don’t like these kind of songs, ’cause they’re sentimental songs. And they are sentimental, but they’re true. And you’ve sung this, haven’t you?

I come to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses,
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.

And he walks with me,
And he talks with me,
And he tells me I am his own;
And the joy we share
As we tarry there
None other has ever known.[26]

Why? Because, like Saul, we have a new view of Jesus, we have a new view of the followers of Jesus, and we have a new view of God’s mercy. And it is that shared reality that brings the resolution, which is then present in our little study, to which we’ll come—those of you who come back tomorrow.

Lord, “take your truth; plant it deep in us; shape and fashion us in your likeness.”[27] We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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[1] Yoko Ono and John Lennon, “Imagine” (1971).

[2] Bill Backer, Billy Davis, Roger Cook, Roger Greenaway, “Buy the World a Coke” (1971).

[3] Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, “We Are the World” (1985).

[4] United Nations Charter, art. 1.

[5] See Ephesians 2:15.

[6] Ephesians 1:10 (ESV).

[7] The Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 1.

[8] See Acts 7:58; 8:1.

[9] Romans 7:7–8 (paraphrased).

[10] Acts 9:1–2 (ESV).

[11] Acts 9:5 (ESV).

[12] Acts 9:10–17 (ESV).

[13] Acts 9:17–19 (ESV).

[14] Acts 9:19 (ESV).

[15] Acts 9:26–27 (ESV).

[16] Matt Boswell and Matt Papa, “His Mercy Is More” (2016).

[17] Philippians 3:4–8 (paraphrased).

[18] 1 John 1:1, 3 (paraphrased).

[19] Fred Foster and Kris Kristofferson, “Me and Bobby McGee” (1969).

[20] Kate Barclay Wilkinson, “May the Mind of Christ, My Savior” (1925).

[21] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952), bk. 4, chap. 11.

[22] See Philippians 1:6.

[23] 1 John 2:28–3:2 (ESV).

[24] 1 John 3:2–3 (ESV).

[25] 1 Peter 1:3 (paraphrased).

[26] Charles Austin Miles, “In the Garden” (1912).

[27] Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, “Speak, O Lord” (2005).