Redemptive relationships
Redemptive Relationships
Philemon
[Personal Greeting]
[Introduction]
Friendships are important. When I think back on my life, what I remember most are the friendships that I held. Sure, I may remember certain times and places, but most of all I remember the people who shared those moments with me. When I look through the photo album in my mind that stores the snapshots of my life, I see people because all we truly have in this life are our relationships.
Now if I call myself a Christian, the Bible challenges me to make all my relationships redemptive ones. What is a redemptive relationship? It's a relationship that always has eternity in view. Jesus was a man who lived his life on earth in this way. When Jesus talked to someone or touched someone he made an eternal impact on their lives. Sometimes it was for the better (those who accepted his message and believed), but other times it was for the worse (those who rejected his message). Either way, people left Jesus changed.
Proposition: Redemptive relationships have eternal impact.
Paul also knew the importance of always keeping eternity in view. He made sure all his relationships were redemptive ones. So today, we’re going to be looking at the book of Philemon and the importance of being intentional about making all our relationships redemptive ones and the impact these redemptive relationships can have.
Do you long for those who are dear to you, for those in your heart, to also be dear brothers and sisters in the Lord? I know I do. But, I also know that I need to be intentional about making all my relationships redemptive ones. It's a conscious choice that I must make everyday with every person in my life, including those whom I may only encounter for a moment.
[Prayer for Illumination]
Scripture Background
In this personal letter, Paul writes to Philemon, a slave owner, on behalf of Onesimus, a runaway slave who had wronged Philemon. While on the road, Onesimus runs into Paul, is converted, ends up working in ministry with Paul and is now being sent back to Philemon in hopes of reconciliation.
In this letter of love, Paul desires that Onesimus be welcomed back not as a slave, but as a Christian brother which can be taken as Paul asking Philemon to in effect free Onesimus. What actually happened, we may never know. But, since this book is included in the Canon of Scripture, the Bible, we can confidently assume that a happy outcome did happen and Paul’s wishes were most likely fulfilled. This letter has redemption written all over it.
To us today, the book of Philemon is a reminder of what the redemptive love of Christ can do when believers are intentional about being redemptive in their relationships.
Angie’s going to come up and read through the whole book since it’s only 25 verses. So we all have it in fresh in our minds. And then I’m going to focus in on two sections of the book which will shed some light on three foundational elements of a redemptive relationship and three impacts a redemptive relationship can make in a person’s life.
[Read the book of Philemon 1-25]
MAIN 1
First, we’re going to focus on Paul’s friendship with Philemon which really shines in vv.4-7 and shows us three foundational elements that are essential to a redemptive relationship.
[Read Philemon 4-7]
The 1st Foundational Element
A redemptive relationship involves both our faith in Christ alongside our love for other believers (Philemon 4-5).
We live in an “It’s all about me world.” And if we admit it or not, this has infiltrated the way we approach our faith in God. It’s real easy to get so focused on our relationship with God that we can forget about our relationships with other believers.
Now I’m not saying that having a deep personal relationship with God is bad, what I am saying is that if a person truly starts drawing closer to the heart of God, what they’re going to find there are people because people are precious to God. Faith in Jesus and love for others goes hand in hand which includes those believers who you may not quite agree with.
When we begin to isolate ourselves or segregate ourselves from others or begin to be harsh with others because they don’t agree with us or think like we do or worship the way we do, than I think we have to rethink our motivations and repent for being spiritually snobby.
When believers act redemptively, what we are really doing is imitating Jesus. Everything Jesus did was redemptive. So being in a redemptive relationship means being Jesus to people which can only stem from a faith in Jesus. I would even go so far as to say that being redemptive can only happen when someone has faith in Jesus because it is only through Him that true redemption occurs.
All through the Gospels we read about Jesus entering into people’s lives. This brings us into:
The 2nd Foundational Element
A redemptive relationship means prayerfully sharing our faith (Philemon 6).
Just as faith in Jesus and love for people go hand in hand, prayer and sharing our faith should as well. Now the exact meaning of active in sharing your faith is unstated, a few noted theologians suggest:
Ø “The communication of your faith”
Ø “The kindly deeds of charity which spring from faith”
Ø “Communion (with Christ) by faith”
Ø Or “The participation of other Christians in your faith”
Putting these together, this outwardly expression of faith exhibits itself in a combination of both words and deeds. James 2:18 sums this up well when he says, “I will show you my faith by what I do.” It is this active sharing that will be effective in helping Philemon experience a fuller understanding of the blessedness of being in Christ.
For us, living out our faith means doing life together with fellow brothers and sisters, like Philemon, we can do ministry together by being an active Christian presence in the community or we can open up our homes for fellowship possibly hosting a bible study or an Alpha group or even just to hangout. Maybe joining an LTG and having it at your house or inviting people over from church that you don’t know to share a meal together or inviting out to lunch someone new. All of these things are wonderful expressions of our faith that builds community.
But for these things to happen, we need to be thinking redemptively which shouldn’t be a switch that we turn on and off; it needs to be part of who we are and not something that we do just on Sundays or on mission trips or in an LTG. We need to push past this compartmentalized thinking and begin being more fully rounded redemptive people.
Being redemptive needs to be infused into who we are; it needs to be part of our DNA, so that no matter where we are, we are living as God has called each of us, which is to first and foremost love Him but also to love one another. When we are living out our faith, we will be caring for one another in genuine community as a family, uplifting the Body of Christ. And we as God’s people will experience a deeper understanding of Christ’s love for us.
When this happens, we will begin to see the deep need to be actively living redemptively in all our relationships because when we are, we will begin to touch people’s hearts with the love of Christ which brings us into:
The 3rd Foundational Element
A redemptive relationship refreshes the heart (Philemon 7).
What does it mean to refresh someone’s heart?
When I hear the word refreshed a whole slew of other words comes to mind; rejuvenated, renewed, revived, restored, relaxed, regenerated, recuperated. What other words comes to mind for you? I imagine they are also words related to renewal.
Now, if we are to be thinking redemptively, we have to remember that it’s our faith in Christ that activates love and empowers us through the Holy Spirit to be grace and truth to people. And when we are this way, people’s hearts will be refreshed which will not only bring renewal, but will also inevitably impact their lives with the transforming power of God’s love which will deepen their understanding of who God is and His love for all of us. This is what it means to be redemptive.
I want to encourage everyone here to get into some meaningful fellowship with other believers whose faith will minister and refresh your heart while your faith in turn will minister and refresh their heart in redemptive ways.
I want to pause here and say that, there’s a difference between counseling someone’s flesh and refreshing someone’s heart by encouraging their spirit. Encouraging someone’s spirit means washing them with God’s Word. But, that means not spiritualizing everything by giving Bible verses like aspirin.
Sometimes being God’s word to a person is what shows greater love. Romans 12:15 comes to mind, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” Sometimes a person just needs you to sit, weep and mourn with them. Just your presence speaks volumes to them about who is at center of your life, Jesus, and your love for Him.
Being intentionally redemptive in a relationship also means you’re are not just dealing with a person’s behavioral or heart sins or life burdens or pains or fears, but also a person’s heart longings and desires. The deep longings and yearnings that each and every one of us has, but oftentimes they go unspoken or unnoticed because we can get so caught up in telling people how we think they should act instead taking the time to draw out who God has called and redeemed them to be.
Here are a couple insights to help us start thinking redemptively in a relationship.
ILLUSTRATION 1
First, I want to talk a little bit about fear this morning. We all have fears; sometimes they can really dominate the way we live. I know I am constantly struggling to continually be an overcomer. Someone who trusts more and more in the security and perfect love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, so that I may walk in the freedom to be who God has called and redeemed me to be.
Now, on my journey with Jesus, He has taken me through the depths of my heart, where I’ve had to be brutally honest with myself. Spiritual self-awareness is a blessing and whenever I’ve taken an honest look at my life, both in my heart and in my behavior that’s when change began to happened; that’s when redemption was able to take hold. But, facing our fears can be totally terrifying because on the flipside of our fears are the desires of our hearts.
Ø If you have a fear of being judged, your desire maybe to be known, to be heard, to be real, to be loved.
Ø If you have a fear of rejection, your desire maybe to be accepted, to belong, to be included, to be appreciated.
Ø If you have a fear of failure, your desire maybe to be recognized, to be valued, to be validate, to be a blessing.
What this means within the context of a redemptive relationship is that you not only address the person’s fears, but you also draw out their desires. You nurture them, so that their desires become greater than the fears. Now I’m talking about healthy and godly desires. Not sinful ones. All of us have desires that God has put into our hearts and when we act redemptively in a relationship, we help draw out these desires.
Proverbs 20:5 (TNIV) says, “The purposes of the human heart are deep waters, but those who have insight draw them out.”
Learning to listen plays a big part in this drawing out and is crucial to what it means to be able to act redemptively in a relationship. It takes learning to listen to God. If you haven’t been through Freedom Prayer yet, I highly suggest that you do because it involves listening to God and what that looks like in the context of drawing out a person’s true identity in Christ.
I just went through it this past Friday and it really helped bring some clarity to what God’s has placed on my plate right now as well as His calling for my life. It is so important to be a good God listener because God delights in good God listener.
ILLUSTRATION 2
Secondly, learning to listen is a skill, meaning, it takes real work and commitment to be able to be fully present with someone, in order to grasp what they are saying both with their mouths and with their hearts.
Listening involves taking the time to understand a person and their perspective and what is going on with them by drawing that person out instead of shutting them down with our advice or our opinions. This means completely focusing on that person and showing them real empathy.
Listening means giving the person your full attention which also means not thinking about your response while the other person is talking, but processing their every word and fully tracking along with them.
Listening also means letting the other person know that they’ve been heard by validating their reality. This doesn’t mean that you agree with their reality, but it does mean that you acknowledge and validate their experience.
When you invalidate someone’s experience, they end up feeling unheard and not understood. When this happens, a person will usually begin to close their heart off to you.
Validating someone’s experience and empathizing with them will help draw them out into redemption and God’s healing love.
Ø So instead of saying: “Oh, you didn’t really feel that way.
Ø Say: “I see that you feel awful about this.”
Ø Instead of saying: “Don’t say that, God loves you.”
Ø Say: “Sounds like you really feel forsaken by God.”
Ø Instead of saying: “That isn’t that bad.”
Ø Say: “It must feel terrible for you.”
APPLICATION
I’ve got a listening exercise that you can all do: It involves listening to someone talk to you for 30 minutes. But during that time, you can’t have any judgmental thoughts or opinions or thoughts that don’t relate to what the person is talking to you about. Also, can’t have any kind of affirming response like nodding your head or clearing your throat or grunting. All I want you to do is listen for 30 minutes.
Now you need to tell the other person that you are trying to listen better because if you don’t that person may think you’re just plain rude. Also, know that that everyone fails at this the first time. Most people have the hardest time with not having any judgmental thoughts or opinions. Some people who nod a lot or grunt like I do makes it even more difficult. But, it can happen if you work at it.
The goal of this is to help you be fully present with someone because when you are fully committed to the conversation, to the moment, to understanding what is truly going on with that person, then you will be able to hear what is behind their words, you’ll begin to hear their feelings by the slight way they may emphasize a word or repeat words. Listening involves getting yourself out of the way.
Now, I want to emphasize here that these insights are by no means an end in themselves, but only tools to help us to begin to see past ourselves. They are tools to help us work alongside the Holy Spirit. Only God truly knows the secrets of the human heart (Ps 44:21), but God has given all believers the Holy Spirit who searches all things, even the deep things of God (1 Cor 2:10). And I believe that because of this every believer has some capacity of a prophetic voice. But, it is only through the Holy Spirit who empowers us to think eternally and act redemptively.
Without the Holy Spirit there is a futility and vainness to everything that we do.
God uses those believers who are actively listening and obeying Him to appoint tasks for them in which He empowers with gifts to accomplish these specific tasks.
So, what happens when believers are intentionally redemptive in their relationships? I’m glad you asked.
MAIN 2
Paul’s friendship with Onesimus really shines in vv.10-16 and show us three impacts a redemptive relationship can make in a person’s life.
These next three impacts are going to go by pretty quickly, I wanted to spent most of our time on the three foundational elements because if they’re not in place then these three impacts have that much harder of a time becoming reality, if they ever do become a reality.
[Read Philemon 10-16]
IMPACT 1
A redemptive relationship builds and equips (Philemon 10-11).
To give you a little background of myself, I was addicted to the drug lifestyle for 17 years. During that time I’ve done every drug ever made, from smoking pot to snorting and freebasing coke to shooting coke and heroin to popping ecstasy pills like vitamins to smoking speed and Special K. You name it, I abused it.
I sold drugs, spent time in jail, in emergency rooms at funerals. Me and the company I kept we’re those who the world would consider useless. Jesus would include these people with the least of these in Matthew 25:31-46, in the parable about the Sheep and Goats.
Drug addicts, prostitutes, criminals and homeless people (a lot of drug addicts are homeless too) are hard to love people. I remember the people who made the biggest and most significant impact in my life were the ones that took the time to enter into my mess in order to pull me from my mess. They were redemptive minded people who were Jesus to me.
When believers act redemptively, they help people move from a state of uselessness to a state of usefulness.
IMPACT 2
A redemptive relationship creates intimacy and respect (Philemon 12-14).
The intimacy between Paul and Onesimus was so great that Paul says that Onesimus is his very heart. When believers are acting redemptively in their relationships a deep intimacy will happen.
Paul not only stresses intimacy, but respect. Paul understood that Onesimus had other relationships in his life that would be affected by Paul’s redemptive impact in his life, so Paul takes the time to address those people involved. In this case, it was Philemon. I understand this to mean loving people on their own terms by respecting the circumstances of their life.
I was confronted earlier this week about loving my family on my terms. Maybe you can relate. Meaning, in order for me to love them, they needed to change. So, I have spent a lot of time explaining to them how they should be and what they should do, instead of meeting them where they’re at and understanding that God will move in their lives in ways that will utilize their gifting and talents. But, I was projecting my gifting and talents onto them and expecting them to act in them, instead of drawing them out, I was shutting them down. I wasn’t respecting them.
You see, when believers are acting redemptively, there’s a deep sense of intimacy and respect that happens.
IMPACT 3
A redemptive relationship is eternally significant (Philemon 15-16).
Are you in tune to the salvific heartbeat of those around you, to the redemptive work God is doing?
As I said earlier, a redemptive relationship always has one eye looking forward towards eternity, to the hope that we have in Jesus. Not only have believers been crucified with Christ, but they also been raised with Him and even now reign with Him.
Eph 2:6 says: “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.”
Paul was able to see the salvific nature of the situation and understood the redemptive role he would play in Onesimus' life because He always had eternity in view. He held fast to the truth of being crucified, raised and now reigning with Christ in heaven. He held fast to this hope, to this certainty which helped him to be more intentional about making his relationship with Onesimus a redemptive one.
When we begin to understand that God has all of us in process, we will begin to see just how crucial it is for us to be acting redemptively in all our relationships. We will see just how crucial it is for us to be listening to God both for ourselves and others as we care and love them in eternally redemptive way.
APPEAL
I really want to encourage everyone here to be intentional about thinking and living redemptively. Now that may look differently for each person here, but the foundational elements need to be in place.
1) faith in Jesus and love for people
2) prayerfully and actively sharing your faith
3) refreshing people’s hearts
These elements need to be in place, if we are going to be intentionally redemptive in all our relationships. When they are an intimacy and respect will happen where people will be built up, equipped and impacted in significant and eternal ways.
CONCLUSION
So let me close with this word of encouragement from Paul from Philippians 3:12-14.