Have you ever had a situation where someone flat out “done you wrong”?  Yeah, me too.  Check out the story of Philemon and Onesimus in Philemon 1

In this letter Paul was asking Philemon to do a hard thing. You see, Onesimus, his slave, had stolen from him and had run away. He ended up coming in contact with Paul and becoming a believer.  So, Paul was sending him back home.  

In human terms, Philemon had every right to be harsh to Onesimus when he returned. But Paul wrote this letter to remind Philemon that he was no longer to view himself and Onesimus through the same lens.  Now that they were both believers, their relationship had changed.  They were now brothers in Christ and that was supposed to make a difference in the way Philemon related to this dishonest, wayward slave.  Talk about a tall order, huh?  Knowing this, Paul put things in perspective by the way he closed his letter to Philemon.  

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”

What makes this closing remark so powerful?  The little words “be with“.  The Greek word for that phrase is (meta), and it means “to occupy a position between”. Let that sink in.

With that understanding, this verse could read (my paraphrase) — “Let the grace of Jesus stand between what you feel about Onesimus and how you respond to him“.  

Remember the question I asked at the beginning of this blog? – Have you ever had a situation where someone flat out “done you wrong”?  Who came to your mind the moment you read that?  Take Paul’s advice to Philemon and let the grace of Jesus stand between what you feel about that person and how you respond to that person.  

If you are believer, you are to relate to people differently.  In his second letter to the Corinthian church, Paul wrote, “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.“, (2 Corinthians 5:16).  

New Creation in Christ — New Perspective on People