One of the things I have been learning recently is how quickly the Lord can humble us. One moment I can feel strong and able and in a swift moment the ability to do things for myself is taken away for a season. It is truly humbling to know and remember how frail we are as humans even though there are moments when we think we are on top of the world. One of the main things that we see in this chapter is the call James gives to the church to humble themselves. The reason they need to humble themselves is because there seems to be a lot of problems at this church. Let’s take a dive. ...
This chapter at first glance seems like it will contradict the teaching of justification in faith alone because of what James says in verses 14-26. James is not teaching something contrary to scripture, but I think what can be summed up is the commandment to “love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Taking the chapter as a whole, I think that loving your neighbor as yourself will help with both the sin of partiality and showing works that derive from our faith. Let’s dissect this....
Philemon is the third shortest book in the New Testament and being that we are covering the entire book in one shot I will write a little longer than usual. Philemon is probably a man that is wealthy, first because only wealthy people had enough room in their houses to gather multiple people, secondly because he owned a slave. I think it is important to keep in mind that slavery back then was very different to what it used to be as we know it now. According to Benjamin Gladd “In the Greco-Roman world, slaves were granted many rights, such as worshiping, marrying, and making money.” I think it is also worth noting that this book does not condone slavery as we have seen in the very early stages of this country. What we have in this book is a runaway slave and a master who have both been redeemed by the blood of Jesus and what we will see is how the gospel plays a part in that relationship. Some scholars think that Onesimus was either in charge of finances or stole something from Philemon according to (v.18). Onesimus must have done something which caused him to run away from Philemon and he fled to Rome where he came in contact with Paul providentially. It is very possible that Onesimus knew who Paul was and sought him out or Paul knew of Onesimus and called for him. It is not sure but one thing we know is that when Onesimus came to Paul somewhere down the line he got saved (v.10). It seems like once Onesimus was saved he grew immensely very quickly by the way Paul speaks of him. So, what can we glean from this book? Two things....
When we read through the Old Testament, there are often occasions when many years pass by between chapters or between events. For that reason, it can sometimes be easily overlooked just how rare it is that the Lord God actually communicates verbally with people. When we were reading through Genesis, there were seven conversations between the Lord and Abraham, but they took...
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