Philemon 1–3 (ESV) – 1 Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Philemon our beloved fellow worker 2 and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church in your house: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today, I want to begin a short study of the book of Philemon. I believe it is a somewhat neglected book in our churches today. When was the last time you heard a sermon or had a Bible study from Philemon? Yet it is an important book that deals with some important issues.
The book concerns a runaway slave and his master. Both the slave and the master are believers and Paul writes to the master to instruct him on how this relationship should look. As you can imagine, this book was a focal point during the debates over slavery in the United States. I believe that there is still much we can learn here, even today. I hope you will follow along each day and feel free to comment as we go. God bless!
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Would you reconsider whether or not that characterization of the letter is justified with overt information in the scripture text? Or is it someone’s inference? Consider Ahmaud Arberry, perhaps, seen running down the road and then profiled as “running away”. If we hold to a high view of scripture, we can’t let our (often biased) inferences become God’s message.
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We’ll look at different understandings as we go. The summary statement I gave follows the traditional view. There are at least four views to consider.
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