SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/22/2017
9:45 PM
My Worship Time Focus: 2nd
Intro to Philemon
Since we will be following the outline from John
MacArthur’s commentary on Philemon I have decided to use his introduction for
the second introduction. As you may
figure there may be some similar things in this intro that was in our first
one, but I figure that it is better to look at things two times than not
looking at them at all.
Paul’s letter to Philemon was a prison letter, and the
shortest letter found in the New Testament that was written by Paul. Philemon, Ephesians and Colossians were all written
from prison and they were all delivered to the same part of Asia Minor.
I suppose that forgiveness is one of the biggest if not
the biggest theme of the book of Colossians.
Let us look at a couple of verses from the other prison letters: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted,
forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you (Ephesians
4:32).” “Bearing with one another, and
forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave
you, so also should you (Col. 3:13).” So
the theme of forgiveness runs through all of Paul’s prison letters.
Forgiveness is a major theme in the entire Word of God,
as we read that God is a forgiving God: “6 Then the LORD passed by in front of him and
proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to
anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; 7 who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity,
transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty
unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the
grandchildren to the third and fourth generations’ (Exodus 34:6-7).”
We can look at other passages that run through the Word
of God talking about forgiveness, but perhaps the best place to look is in Luke
15:11-32, the story of the prodigal son.
I see little need to quote this story as it is one of the most well
known stories from the Word of God, and from the lips of our Savior. John MacArthur writes “That story illustrates
how God, represented in the story by the father, forgiveness: eagerly, totally,
lavishly. We could say, in a sense, that
God is never more like Himself than when He forgives.
“There are two extremely important corollaries to that
truth. If God is never more like Himself
than when He forgives, man is never more like God than when he forgives. Proverbs 19:11 says, ‘A man’s discretion
makes him slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook a transgression.’”
Next we look at the second corollary and that is that God’s
forgiveness of us is based on our forgiveness of others. James wrote, ‘Judgment will be merciless to
one who has shown no mercy’ (James 2:13).”
Let us look at Matthew 5:7 from the Sermon on the Mount: “"Blessed are the merciful, for they
shall receive mercy.” In the Lord’s
Prayer we read “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors”
(Matthew 6:12).” Matthew 6:14-15 states,
once again from the Sermon on the Mount:
“14 “For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly
Father will also forgive you. 15 “But if you do not forgive others, then your
Father will not forgive your transgressions.”
MacArthur concludes:
“The forgiveness envisioned in the above-mentioned passages is not the
complete and comprehensive forgiveness that accompanies the event of salvation,
because that already is done. It is
rather God’s relational, continual forgiveness that accompanies the process of
sanctification of believers.
Paradoxically, Christians are already fully forgiven (cf. Eph. 1:7), but
still need ongoing forgiveness (cf. 1 John 1:9). It is a sobering truth that believers will
forfeit God’s blessing and invite His chastening in their lives if they fail to
forgive others. That Christians are to
forgive each other, as God has forgiven them, is the underlying theme of
Philemon.”
6/22/2017 10:12 PM
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