PHILEMON, OR THE TRANSFORMING POWER

OF THE SPIRIT OF JESUS CHRIST.

BY REV. LEONIDAS H. DAVIS,

*

Pastor First Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids.

Text: The Epistle to Philemon.

The letter to Philemon holds a solitary place among the extant writings of St. Paul. It is the shortest of his epistles, and is the only strictly personal and private letter that has been preserved to us. The letters to Timothy and Titus, while addressed to individuals, deal with doctrines and questions of church government which would cause them to be read by many beside Timothy and Titus.

Paul's natural ability and acquirements, his miraculous call, his divine appointment as a chosen vessel of Jesus Christ, his missionary journeys, his founding of churches in almost all parts of the Roman Empire, made him easily the first of the Apostles, and one to whom many questions of private and public nature would be appealed. Most, if not all, of his public letters have been preserved, but it is strange to say that of all the private letters that he must have written to individ

* Leonidas Howard Davis was born at Kokomo, Ind., 1859. Graduated from Oberlin College 1884, and from Union Seminary 1887. Supplied Seventh Ave. Chapel, New York City, ten months, and on return from Europe became pastor of his present church, Feb. 1889.

uals, this letter to Philemon is the only one that has come down to us. It deals wholly with an incident in domestic life and seemingly an incident of little importance, but we shall see, as Sabatier has so beautifully said, "that it is full of grace, of salt, of serious and trustful affection, and that it gleams like a pearl of the most exquisite purity in the rich treasure of the New Testament."

It is interesting to know in passing that this letter has been variously estimated in the history of the church. In the fourth century when men were so engrossed with questions of ecclesiastical discipline, questions of theological interest, when the "Battle of the Creeds" was raging fiercely, it was asked with considerable presumption, of what interest could an insignificant slave be, a slave long since dead; forgetting the principles and teachings involved. But these men, given over to dry, scholastic, theological discussions of no importance to men, either dead or living, were so enamored of their own narrowness that they had no time for such trivialities as they thought Philemon dealt with. But Jerome and Chrysostom felt differently and they defended the epistle against its assailants. Luther and Calvin, though given much to doctrine, show a true appreciation of its beauty and its truth. And from the fourth century on it has held a high place among those who are searching for principles rather than rules, and shows in a remarkable way the tenderness and the delicacy of St. Paul's character. Dr. Davidson has written concerning the letter, "Dignity, generosity, prudence, friendship, affection, politeness, skillful address, purity, are apparent. Hence it has been called with great propriety the polite epistle. The delicacy, fine address, consummate courtesy, nice

strokes of rhetoric, render it an unique specimen of the epistolary style."

The letter to Philemon was written in Rome by the Apostle in the year 61 or 62. The letter was written to Philemon, a native or at least a resident of Colosse, a small Phrygian town in Asia Minor. He is addressed as one dearly beloved and as a fellow worker of the. Apostle. He was doubtless a convert of the Apostle and one who was known for his zeal and generous in his hospitalities. Like Nymphas in the neighboring church of Laodicea, Philemon had placed his own house at the disposal of the Christians in Colosse for their religious and social gatherings. The leading teacher of the church in Colosse was doubtless Epaphras, and he was well seconded in his work by Philemon. Take Philemon, all in all, he was a man of such worth of character as to draw forth the kind regard, even the affection of the apostle Paul. Closely connected with Philemon in his work was doubtless his wife Appia, and Archippus, who with reasonable probability is supposed to have been the son of Philemon.

But the one who is really the center of the letter, and on behalf of whom the letter was written, was Onesimus, the slave of Philemon. Onesimus was "the least respectable type of the least respectable class" in the social scale. As a slave he was simply a live chattel. According to law he had no rights whatsoever, and his master had the power of life and death over him. But however the law read and whatever society thought, did not affect Onesimus. He was after all a human soul, and as such doubtless longed for liberty, and to secure that he stole goods from his master and ran away. He fled to Rome. There Onesimus met Paul. How, we do not know, for Paul was now in prison. There have been several conjectures. It may be that Onesimus

had stolen again when he came to Rome and was incarcerated and in that way met the Apostle; or Onesimus may have met Paul in Colosse, and knowing Paul was in Rome sought him out, as such a class usually do, knowing that if men are true to their religion they will help the needy, and so he comes to Paul; or having found himself in a strange city and remembering the searching words of Paul, which he had heard him speak in Philemon's house, he decided to go to him and tell him his condition and yearning. Anyway Onesimus finds Paul and Paul finds Onesimus, and Onesimus the slave, through the influence of Paul, becomes Onesimus the free man.

The question now comes, What shall Onesimus do? What must he do? Paul tells him that he must return to Philemon his master, and to this end Paul writes this letter which we read this morning as our morning lesson. The letter is so warm, so tender, so courteous and yet withal so firm, that it could not fail to bring to Onesimus a much better condition, if not his complete liberty, even though he had been a thief and a runaway. And perhaps no letter was ever written with more consummate skill and tact. In it, after the introduction of seven verses, in which Paul speaks of their fellowship, his own remembrance of Philemon daily in his prayers, of the joy which Philemon's love and faith had given him, Paul presents the case of Onesimus in a gentle, persuasive way, one argument following another, fourteen in all. One argument follows another, sometimes in words, sometimes in sentences, but none the less arguments and none the less weighty. Paul appeals to Philemon-by what Philemon had done for others. By reason of Paul's power and position to command. By Paul's love for Philemon. By reason of the Apostle's present position. By the spiritual relation existing be

tween Onesimus and Paul. By the new interest Philemon will have in Onesimus. Again, because Paul denies himself. Because Onesimus is now changed and will abide. Because Onesimus is now Philemon's brother. Because of the communion of saints. Because Paul will pay all Onesimus owes. reception of Onesimus will give Paul joy. because of the confidence Paul bas in Philemon, "knowing that thou wilt do more than I say." These argu

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ments, their arrangement, their skill, their beauty and their power can all be studied by yourselves, but the letter itself has a higher interest for us this morning, in that it brings before us this great truth, namely, "The transforming power of the spirit of Jesus Christ." The transforming power of the spirit of Jesus Christ we see in the three men mentioned in this letter in Paul, in Onesimus, and in Philemon.

First, in Paul. Paul was transformed by the very spirit and power of Christ himself, and a more conspicuous example is not to be found in all the word of God. His birth, his nationality, his sect, his training in Tarsus, his education in Jerusalem, all tended to make his outlook narrow, his thought limited, his life self-centered.

Not that he was not a man of pre-eminent ability, trained and learned, but that the tendency of all things around him was not to largeness, fullness and richness of life, but to the opposite, and the result of all his training was, that he knew that he was a Jew and belongs to a privileged nation. He knew that he was a Pharisee and that there were publicans and harlots and sinners below him; he knew that he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and that he was exceedingly zealous of the traditions of his fathers. But there came a day and an hour when Paul was transformed, and he was trans