Freedom Christ has set me free!

My Very Heart – Philemon 12-14

[12] I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart.

Paul was sending Onesimus back to Philemon, because he wanted the right result accomplished in the right way. He had come to love the young man who had run away from his Christian master, Philemon, only to find the love of an even better Master, Jesus Christ. Paul sent him back home as one whom he called “my very heart.”

What if he would be imprisoned or mistreated as a runaway slave? What if were tried and convicted for theft? Paul needed to trust the Lord. He needed the perfect love that casts out fear, not only for himself, but for this new convert.

[13] I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel,

Paul's own desire as Paul would have been to keep Onesimus with him. This man might served him very well during his imprisonment, or beyond his captivity, as a servant of Jesus and His life-giving gospel . Onesimus would have been like a gift from Philemon, better still, like a gift of Jesus the King to His ambassador.

Paul was confined under the terms of some imprisonment for the gospel. He needed someone like Onesimus in order to do what he, Paul, could not do. He was not a free man. But even when he was released from the chains of men, Paul was not free.

A man on a cross is not a free man. But what if he is on the cross as a matter of the freedom of holy sincerity? What if He stays on the cross as an act of the highest worship? Then He is God's free servant, and the Lord's faithful Son. This is the Man we follow.

[14] but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own accord.

Because of the only-begotten Son of the Most High God, we have gained the right, through faith in His Name, to be free sons of God. We do not desire to force others into worship and obedience by some force or compulsion. We have come to see the beauty of a willing sacrifice.

That is why Paul not only wrote a letter to Philemon, but sent the young man back with that letter, a man who had become his very heart.

Do you know that Jesus Christ looks at you as His very heart? Won't you willingly put away all fear, and trust in Him? If you will, even if you end up homeless or in chains, you will be free. You will be free to love even your enemies with the love of Jesus.