Amelia Student Ministries - Amelia Church of Christ

Ok, so I first must apologize for the incredibly large gap between this and the last Random Thought that I have posted. Finals week and getting all wrapped up with school wreaked havoc on my life and schedule, and finding time was challenging to say the least. That said, its no excuse, so I am apologizing.

That said, I would like to share with you a couple of thoughts on Philemon. This is a really short book. In fact it is only 1 chapter and 25 verses, but there are a lot of very cool things tucked away into this. The premise of the book of Philemon is that Paul is writing this this guy named…you guessed it, Philemon. He is asking him to accept back a slave that had run away from him and joined Paul. The trick here was that Paul wanted Philemon to accept Onesimus back as a brother and not as a slave.

1:11 Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me. This is where I want to camp for a bit.  He was formerly useless.  Is Paul saying that he was pretty much the worst slave known to man? And now that he has become useful he is now suddenly a good slave? No I don’t think that this is what Paul is talking about in this verse.  Onesimus, after leaving Philemon’s house and meeting Paul, found Christ.

See before Onesimus had Christ, he was, for all practical purpose, useless.  The menial tasks that he performed were not really important  for anything. Now, because he has Christ in his life, Onesimus can serve a much greater purpose in the world.  Christ is the key to living a purpose-filled life. He is the reason that we live.

There is one small hurdle to get over, but it can easily be jumped when you understand the significant difference between useless and worthless. Never did Paul say that Onesimus was worthless. That would go against Biblical teaching because that says that he has no value whatsoever. Instead he said that Onesimus was useless, meaning that he did not have a function because he was doing nothing for the glory of God.

So today are you going to be useless, or are you going to strive for the function that God created you for?