A Picture of Faith in Action

Sermon Transcript

According to a Pew Research study released in 2023, 22% of Americans identify as spiritual, but not religious. Gallup had the number higher, at 33%. One characteristic of such people is that they typically engage in some form of spiritual practice—e.g., meditation, prayer, listening to spiritually-oriented podcasts, reading spiritual books, but they aren’t committed to a community united by that spirituality, like a church or synagogue or mosque. Just this past week I talked with a man who identified as Muslim but who doesn’t attend services at the mosque and said that each person’s religion is up to them, a private and personal thing between them and God. Some today would describe their Christian faith similarly: Yes they’re Christians, but they aren’t part of a church, and their religion is something very personal and private to them. Maybe you’re here today and you’d describe yourself similarly.

 

Is Christianity that kind of faith, though? Can you practice it just privately and personally? Certainly authentic Christianity is personal—nobody is a Christian because they were born to Christian parents, because they attended church gatherings as a kid, because they received a sacrament, because their uncle is a priest, or for any reason other than they have personally repented of their sins and personally trusted in Jesus for salvation. That’s very personal, and it is something that happens inside you, privately we could say, in the heart—“For with the heart one believes and is justified” Romans 10:10 says. The Bible is clear on this, and it is equally clear that if that faith is true faith in Jesus Christ, it will not remain merely private and personal.

 

Today we’re starting a very short sermons series—in fact, it ends next week—on one of the shortest books of the Bible: Philemon. Philemon was written by the apostle Paul, one of the first leaders of the Christian church, to a man, Philemon, who was a Christian in the region of Colossae, an ancient city of the Roman Empire, the Christians in which the letter to the Colossians, on which we preached earlier this summer, was addressed. This letter was likely sent by Paul at the same time, and in it we learn that Paul both observed and expected that Philemon’s faith as an individual Christian would have public implications. His faith was active, and Paul is going to call him to new activity in this letter, to share that faith with others in his Christian community, so that it has a positive effect on them. So share your faith effectively, and in this first passage of the letter on which we are focusing today, we’ll see how to do so: Embrace your identity in Christ, and love your people in Christ.

 

Embrace your identity in Christ

 

Paul’s letter to Philemon begins in much the same way his letters typically do: He introduces himself, he addresses his hearers, and he expresses his desire that the grace and peace of God come to them through the Lord Jesus Christ. But in each of his letters, he also gives this typical greeting a distinctive flavor. Though he speaks of his imprisonment in other letters, this is the only letter in which he introduces himself as a prisoner for Christ Jesus, for example. We don’t know exactly which of Paul’s imprisonments he’s referring to here, but it’s clear from this introduction of himself that he’s in prison for his proclamation of Christ when writing this letter, and he wants Philemon to know that.

 

Then when he addresses Philemon, he calls him our beloved fellow worker. When he addresses Apphia, he calls her their sister. When he addresses Archippus, he calls him their fellow soldier. From these titles, we can learn something of our identity as Christians. First, Philemon is called beloved. No doubt this is because Paul had a personal relationship with Philemon that produced such a love for him, and we don’t have that personal relationship with the apostle Paul. But the love Paul had for Philemon was the product of the love of God working in them, and part of every Christian’s identity is beloved—loved by God, and loved by his people. We’ll talk in just a moment about how Philemon was a fellow worker, but he’s not only a worker, and neither are you.

 

You probably know what it’s like to work for someone who doesn’t love you—that’s typical of an employment relationship in our world. But before you are a worker for God, you are simply loved by God. God created the first humans, and before he gave them a job to do, he blessed them (Gen 1:28). And before we did a single good work for God, while we were still sinners, he loved us. He loved us before the foundation of the world when he chose us in Christ, he loved us when he sent his son to die for us, and he loved us when he sent his Spirit to lead us to faith in Christ. He loves us still as he continues the good work he began in us, as he is with us and in us by his Spirit, as he works all things together for our good, and he will love us forever. He tells us in Jeremiah 31:3, “I have loved you with an everlasting love—therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” If you are in Christ today, you are beloved.

 

If you are here today and you are not a Christian, however, I don’t want you to be deceived about this. Many non-Christians assume that if God exists, he must be a basically nice guy who surely loves them and will be ok with their various shortcomings, regardless of whether they personally turn from their sins and put all their hopes on Jesus Christ. That’s not true. God is better than you could ever have imagined, God is more loving than you ever could have imagined, and God is more just than you could ever imagined, and you and I are more sinful than you ever could have imagined. So the only way to know that you will receive his love and not the condemnation that his justice calls for against your sin is to turn from your sins and trust in Jesus Christ’s sin-bearing death. Then and only then can you know that you are loved by God.

 

If you are in Christ, you are beloved, and if you are in Christ, you are a fellow worker. The ancient Christian commentator Ambrosiaster points out in his commentary on Philemon that Philemon was not set apart as a pastor or deacon. He was what we might call an “ordinary Christian.” And yet here he is called a “fellow worker” of Paul and Timothy. Why? Perhaps there was a time in his life when he was actively engaged in ministry with them, but we don’t know that. All we know about his ministry activity is that it seems there was a church that met in his house, as the end of verse 2 implies, though it’s not entirely clear whose house is being referred to there. In any case, the safer bet is that Philemon is called a fellow worker because as a Christian, he was active in ministry, as is the Bible’s expectation for every Christian. When you become a Christian, you are called into a love relationship with God, and you are given a job to do. You are beloved, and you are a beloved fellow worker.

 

So Ephesians 2 speaks of how we are saved by grace apart from works, and then goes on to say that we have been saved for good works, good works God has prepared in advance for us to do. For Philemon, it seems one of those good works was using the house God had given him to provide the church of which he was a member a space in which to gather. Some of you use your homes to host Citygroup meetings—when you do that, you’re acting out of your identity as a fellow worker for the gospel. One day you may use your home to host the meetings of a new church plant. Others of you use your homes to provide a place for someone in need to stay, or simply to host people for a meal and learn how to pray for them. When you do such things, you’re acting out of your identity as a fellow worker for the gospel. Every member of this church with an income commits to give out of that income regularly, joyously, and sacrificially to pay for us to rent this building in which we meet, to pay me to preach the word and equip the saints for the work of ministry, and to send more fellow workers to plant churches and take the gospel to other parts of the world with less access to it. When you do that, when you go to work and do your job as unto the Lord, when you pray for God’s kingdom to come, and his will to be done, on earth as it is in heaven, when you set up chairs for these services, when you share the good news of Jesus with your neighbors and co-workers, when you bring up your children in the discipline and instruction of Christ, when you ask someone else’s kid what they learned from the sermon today, and in so many more ways, you live out of your identity as a fellow worker in the advance of the gospel. One of my great joys in pastoring this church is the way in which you all do this. You don’t view yourself as mere consumers or recipients of my, Mark, or Gareth’s work—you view yourself as fellow workers, and that is who you are.

 

Next we see Apphia addressed in verse 2 as “our sister.” We don’t know anything else about Apphia. She may be Philemon’s wife, she may be a deacon in the church that meets in Philemon’s house—we simply don’t know. But we do know that as a Christian, she was a sister to Paul and Timothy. This is another aspect of our identity as Christians: We are part of a family. When you become a Christian, you are adopted by God, and that means you gain him as your Father, as Paul says in verse 3 that grace and peace come from God our Father. But you aren’t an only child in his family. When you gain him as a father, you also gain new brothers and sisters—everyone else who has God as their father is now your brother or sister, and you are theirs. Do you relate to other Christians as your brothers and sisters?

 

And finally, Archippus is addressed as a fellow soldier. Archippus may have been the preaching pastor of the church that met in Philemon’s house—again, we can’t say with certainty. In the last chapter of the book of Colossians that we looked at earlier this year, Paul tells the Colossians to tell Archippus to fulfill the ministry that he received from the Lord, which seems to imply some special calling like that of a pastor. But again, we don’t know—what we do learn from this address to him is that the work of Christian ministry is not only work—it’s a battle. If you are in Christ, you are loved by God, you have a job to do, you are part of a family, and you have been enlisted in the army of king Jesus. But the way his soldiers wage war is very different from the ways the soldiers of the world wage war. We fight not against flesh and blood, but against the sin that remains in us, and the devil who wants to spread lies and murder. We fight against the spirit of the world that wants to silence our proclamation of Christ, and that wants to allure us into its offers of money, pleasure, and power, but even when we fight against the world, we don’t do so by executing violence on the world. We do so through prayer, the proclamation of the word, and deeds of love and mercy. Remember that Paul, who we might think of as a general in the Lord’s army, is writing this letter from prison, which means he proclaimed Christ boldly enough that others noticed and took offense, but which also means he isn’t trying to kill the people who imprisoned him. He proclaimed the word enough to be persecuted, and then he refused to take vengeance on those who persecuted him.

 

As citizens of a kingdom not of this world, we are engaged in a different kind of battle, but make no mistake about it: We are engaged in a battle. When you get baptized and publicly profess your faith in Christ, you are enlisting in Jesus’ army; you are signing up for active duty in war, and this is why many don’t do it. It’s just easier to act on your sinful desires than to make war on them, to believe the lies of Satan instead of fighting them with the truth, and to go along with the flow of what’s popular in the world. But if you are in Christ, you are a fellow soldier with all his people, you are a brother or sister in his family, you are a fellow worker, and you are beloved. And finally, you ought to be a member of a local church.

 

I’ve alluded to it already, but verse 2 ends the address to Philemon by also addressing the church in his house. When the Bible uses the word church, it sometimes refers to the body of all those who are united to Christ by faith throughout time and space. In that sense, there is one church, and Christians confess in our creeds our faith in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, where the word “catholic” means universal. That’s why Paul and Timothy, though they aren’t members of the church in Philemon’s house, can still call Philemon their fellow worker, Apphia their sister, and Archippus their fellow soldier. But the word “church” is the translation of a Greek word that meant “assembly,” and so it is also used to refer to local assemblies of believers, and that’s what we see here. The one universal church didn’t all meet in Philemon’s house, and yet there was a church in his house, a local, visible gathering on earth of a subset of those who are members of the one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.

 

Now we’re going to see in this short letter that Paul is really addressing Philemon directly throughout, and there is something he wants Philemon in particular to do. Yet here in the introduction he addresses not only Philemon, but Apphia, Archippus, and then Philemon’s whole local church. He’s writing to Philemon about what he wants Philemon to do, but he addresses his whole church as well: Why? Because Paul recognized that Philemon was accountable to his local church. Philemon’s obedience was his church’s business, and so Paul informs not only Philemon, but his whole church, of what he wants Philemon to do. And doesn’t it make sense that if Philemon is a fellow worker, if Christians are brothers and sisters, and fellow soldiers, that they would be visibly identified with and accountable to other Christians? A worker at a company doesn’t just do whatever he or she pleases; they are accountable to the company for whom they work. A brother or sister doesn’t just do whatever they please; they are accountable to their family. A soldier doesn’t fight battles on his own; he is accountable to his fellow soldiers.

 

So part of embracing your identity in Christ is joining a local church. When you join a local church, you are saying, “Yes, I am a fellow worker with other believers in Christ, yes, I am part of this family, yes, I am a fellow soldier with these people, and yes, I commit to love them and accept their love for me, and I am willing to be held accountable to this.” For someone to say they are a Christian, then, but that they aren’t a member of a local church with which they gather regularly, should sound as strange to us as someone saying they are an NBA basketball player, but they aren’t on any particular NBA roster.

 

So embrace your identity in Christ. If you are in Christ by faith, you are beloved, you are a fellow worker, you are a brother or sister, you are a fellow soldier, and you ought to be a member of a local church with whom you regularly assemble. Can you see how without this identity intact, it would be very hard to share your faith effectively? If you think of yourself as just a solo individual in relationship with God, it makes sense that your faith would also be something you keep between you and him, something entirely private and personal. But if you are a beloved fellow worker, member of the family, and fellow soldier, you have a responsibility to share your faith effectively. So share your faith effectively first by embracing your identity in Christ. Then we see next that we share our faith effectively by loving our people in Christ.

 

Love your people in Christ

 

As is again common in Paul’s letters, the next thing he does beginning in verse 4 is he tells Philemon how he’s giving thanks for him in his prayers, and he says the reason, according to verse 5, is because he hears of Philemon’s love and of the faith that he has toward the Lord Jesus and for all the saints. His faith is toward the Lord Jesus, not the saints, but his faith is for the saints—it benefits the saints. And his faith is not just for the benefit of some of the saints; verse 5 says it is for all the saints. It’s not just for the saints who share his culture, the saints he naturally gets along with, the saints with whom he shares the same hobbies, the saints who help him feel cool, the saints who have wealth—it’s for all the saints. And Paul is able to hear of it evidently because this love was not just a feeling or disposition in Philemon, but one that compelled him to action, the kind of actions that could be seen and told to Paul.

 

This is what faith in Christ Jesus does: It compels us to love all the saints, those who are also united to him by faith. Of course, we can’t love every individual saint in the world and throughout history at the same time and in the same way, so God gives us local churches like the one in Philemon’s house to get started with those saints. Those are the saints Philemon could primarily do acts of love toward, though his love was for all saints indiscriminately. There used to be a popular bumper sticker that said, “Think globally, act locally,” and while that’s not quoting a Bible verse, it does represent some biblical wisdom. If you want to love all the saints, start with the saints in your local church. And it makes sense that faith in Christ Jesus would compel love for the saints, given what we’ve seen about the identity of those who believe in Jesus: If we are truly beloved fellow workers, fellow soldiers, and a family, it makes sense that we’d then love one another.

 

If you profess, then, to be a believer in Jesus, but you don’t love other Christians in ways that benefit them, you don’t feel like you have work to do or a battle to fight, other believers in Jesus don’t feel like brothers or sisters to you, it may very well be that you have not yet become a Christian. Jesus and the rest of the Bible warn us repeatedly of those who profess faith in him with their words, but who do not actually believe in him with their heart, and one of the tests it gives throughout is your love specifically for other Christians. Jesus tells us to love everyone, even our enemies, but unbelievers can easily volunteer at the rescue mission without any love for Christ. One of the distinctive marks of a Christian, though, is they feel a unique attachment to other Christians. They want to gather with them, they want to be around them, they join themselves to them, and as we see here, they love them–their faith benefits all the saints.

 

And I also give thanks to God for you all, because I do see your faith in Christ Jesus benefiting the saints. Recently I think of how Gareth and Jess have given Iris a place to say in their home while she waited on the Lord’s leading for her future plans, or how Phil has given Josh a place to stay in his home while he continues to search for a job. I think of the people who brought meals, prayed for, and attended the funeral of Mark’s mom who recently passed. I think of the sisters who spent every other Tuesday night this summer studying the book of Jonah together and encouraging one another in its application to their lives. I think of the ways you all honored Zach and Meghan, Peter and Anita, Shannon, and Dave and Renata as we prepared to send them from here to other churches and places. I think of Jared’s hard work to prepare to preach at tonight’s prayer service so we all can be encouraged and built up by the word from Exodus 34. I think of the countless ways you all work to make these services happen each week beyond simply attending them.

 

These are just some examples of what faith in action looks like, and faith was clearly active in Philemon’s life. Yet in verse 6 we read that Paul is still praying for something more for Philemon. He prays that the sharing of his faith would be effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ. Again, the wording here is kind of challenging, so bear with me. First, he prays for the sharing of Philemon’s faith. When you hear someone talk about sharing their faith, what do you think of? Most people think of evangelism, sharing the good news of Jesus with others and calling them to repent and believe. That’s not what this is talking about. In evangelism we don’t share “our faith”—we share the gospel (1 Thess 2:8). The word translated sharing here is also translated elsewhere in scripture as “fellowship.” So when Paul prays that the sharing of Philemon’s faith would be effective, he’s praying that Philemon’s faith would have a positive effect, an outworking, an action, a benefit, in the lives of those with whom he shares that faith already—other believers, the saints.

 

I find when we talk about faith in action, many Christians tend to think first about getting outside the church to put their faith into action: Serving at the rescue mission, helping the local school, working with addicts in Kensington, sending relief to third world countries. Those are all fine examples of good works; we are currently trying to provide 50 backpacks to our local K-8 school here and are working on a number of service projects for the fall. But don’t miss the opportunities right in front of you in your local church to put your faith into action for the benefit of the saints in that local church. That’s what Paul’s praying for in verse 6: That Philemon’s faith would be effective in the lives of those who share it. And there are ways in which it can actually be harder to love those within the fellowship of the faith than to volunteer with a local organization every so often.

 

When you really seek to share your faith effectively by putting it into action in the fellowship of a local church, you have to actually get involved in one another’s lives, and that gets messy. This letter was written to Philemon at a messy time. The thing Paul is going to tell Philemon he wants him to do in this letter is forgive his runaway slave, Onesimus. We’ll learn later in the letter that this also cost Philemon money, and we’ll talk more next week about ways this sort of slavery was different from American chattel slavery, but for now just imagine you own a small business and one of your employees no-call, no-shows, and it really starts to cut into your livelihood. Might you not rather go volunteer at a local charity and serve complete strangers who had never hurt you than forgive that person? Sharing your faith effectively means making it effective for the benefit of others with whom you share that faith in the fellowship of the saints.

 

The Bible tells us that the righteous shall live by faith, but I once heard Pastor Ray Ortlund say that the righteous must also love by faith. That’s what Paul is praying for in Philemon, that his faith in Christ would issue in action that benefits those who share that faith with him, and in this case it will be the action of forgiveness, releasing Onesimus from legal penalties and the debt he owed Philemon, and perhaps even releasing him from any obligation to Philemon at all so that he can work with Paul in the advance of the gospel. We’ll get to that appeal next week, but for now consider this: Who in the fellowship of your church could your faith benefit? The opportunity in front of Philemon was the runaway slave he could forgive; what opportunities are in front of you, in your local church, to benefit the people of that church? It doesn’t have to be something that would make newspaper headlines; for Philemon it was something as seemingly insignificant to the world as forgiveness. Maybe it’s forgiveness for you. Maybe it’s simply inviting another member into your home and praying for them. Maybe it’s meeting regularly with someone who doesn’t seem to know many people and reading a book of the Bible together. If you’re struggling to come up with something, that’d be a great thing to talk about over lunch after the service today, and in your Citygroup this week. “Could you help me come up with ideas of ways my faith could benefit others in this church?”

 

If you notice that you fall short in this area, welcome to the club. Paul prayed for this for Philemon because he hadn’t already done it, he hadn’t already arrived. As long as we are still on this earth, there will be good works God has prepared in advance for us to do that we have not yet done, and we will not be able to just go do them by our own strength. That’s why Paul doesn’t begin with command in the letter; he begins with prayer. When you notice ways your faith could be more effective in the lives of others, begin with prayer. Even in the ways Philemon was already loving the saints, Paul gave thanks to God, not to Philemon, because he recognized that only God could empower sincere love for all the saints. Pray that the sharing of your faith would be effective, and pray that for one another.

 

Even in the prayer we see that the sharing of Philemon’s faith was closely related to a growing knowledge of every good thing that is in us. In James we read that faith without works is dead, but we could add that works without faith, works without a deepening knowledge of all that is ours in Christ Jesus, is unsustainable. Jesus once told a story of two women, two friends of his, one of whom, Martha, was busy with much serving, and another, Mary, who sat at his feet and listened to his word, and of the two, he said it was Mary who chose the good portion (Luke 10:38-42). Alluding to this passage, the great theologian Herman Bavinck once wrote: “Religion is not merely a doing. Christian works, however good and necessary, cannot by themselves satisfy the human heart, or give peace and rest to the conscience…Love cannot supplant faith. Martha will not be able to deprive Mary of the praise of her Lord. The righteous shall live by faith alone.”

 

In other words, if you want your faith to be effective, you shouldn’t just go work harder. Instead, you should prayerfully seek to deepen your faith as you grow in the knowledge of all that is ours in Christ. Because Jesus became human, lived a life of perfect righteousness, paid the penalty on the cross for all our sins, and rose from the dead, consider all the good things that are in us. We have a perfect record of righteousness in God’s sight, because God has credited Christ’s perfect record of righteousness to our account. The demand of God’s justice against every last one of our sins has been satisfied by Christ’s death on the cross in our place, and there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We have eternal life now alive in us spiritually, and we have the firm and certain hope that one day we will rise with Christ bodily and live with him forever in a new heaven and new earth. We have the Spirit of Christ living in us, bringing us into real friendship with God and transforming us from one degree of glory to another. We have a new Father in heaven who will never leave us or forsake us, and we have a new family made up of all who come to him through Christ. All the promises of God are now promised to us in Christ. We have an embarrassment of riches, brothers and sisters.

 

As that deepens down into your heart, as you really grow in the knowledge of all that is in us through Christ, what does it make you want to do? It makes you want to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. But here’s the deal: He doesn’t need anything from you. You can’t directly benefit him. So you know who you can benefit? His people. That’s why verse 6 ends with the words: “For the sake of Christ.” Paul prays that Philemon’s faith would be effective in the lives of Jesus’ people for Jesus’ sake! That’s why we love all the saints—because it’s not the worth of any particular saint that draws out our love; it’s the worth of Christ! So if you notice that love for the saints is lacking, a question to consider is, “What am I missing about the worth of Christ? What do we have in him that I’m not seeing?” Exercise faith upon him, then put that faith into action.

 

And the effect of that on the saints we see at the end of verse 7: The hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you. When you share your faith effectively, this is the impact it has: The hearts of the saints are refreshed through you. When Philemon sacrificed the private use of his home for church gatherings, the saints went away from those gatherings with refreshed hearts. If he forgives his slave, it will refresh the heart not only of his slave, but of Paul, and of many more of the saints. When we complain, gossip, criticize, and spread a spirit of suspicion, that may feel good to us in the moment, but such things do not refresh the hearts of the saints. The hearts of the saints are refreshed through us when we serve joyfully, pray fervently, love affectionately, sing loudly, and proclaim boldly that God is good, and has done great things for us. So as a beloved fellow worker, a brother or sister, and a fellow soldier, may the sharing of your faith become effective in the lives of those who share that faith with you, all for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ.