Lesson 24 – Serving with Accountability, part 4 (Philemon 1:1-25)
Read Philemon 1 - www.bible.com/bible/59/phm.1.esv
This short letter is included in this study because it was written to a man from the church at Colossae. In this lesson, let’s tell the story behind this letter, and in the next lesson we’ll look at the lessons God wants us to learn from this story.
Philemon was apparently a successful businessman from the city who had accepted Jesus as his Savior when Paul had come to a nearby city. Paul had not, at the time of writing this letter, ever been to Colossae – a city west of Ephesus and on the trade route from Ephesus to the wealthy cities on the Euphrates River. Colossae is in modern-day Turkey, and the trade route ended in the southern part of modern-day Iraq.
The church in Colossae was apparently begun by Epaphras, the man they had sent to Paul with gifts while Paul was in Rome in prison. But the church was held in the home of Philemon and his wife Apphia.
One of the servants living in Philemon’s home was a young man named Onesimus. This young man apparently stole money or objects of value from Philemon and used them to run away to Rome. The penalty at this time for a servant stealing and running away was death.
But when Onesimus reached Rome, he found his way to Paul. Whether this was because of Epaphras we are not told, but that assumption is surely reasonable. Onesimus not only became a Christian, he gave himself to serve Paul in his imprisonment.
Now Paul sends Onesimus back to his former master, Philemon, to make good what he had done wrong. Surely Onesimus must have feared his former master’s anger and justified judgment for what he had done.
In the next lesson we’ll see how this story is important to our lives today.