Tag Archives: dear brother

DEAR BROTHERS

Bible Study, ,

DEAR BROTHERS

Be wise in the way you act towards outsiders; make the use of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

Tychicus will tell you all the news about me. He is a dear brother, a faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. I am sending him to you for the express purpose that you may know about our circumstances and that he may encourage your hearts. He is coming with Onesimus, our faithful and dear brother who is one of you. They will tell you everything that is happening here (Col. 4: 5-9).

Who are the outsiders, and how must we treat them?

There is a tendency to regard people who are not yet believers in Jesus as outsiders and therefore, enemies. They are ‘outside’ and we are ‘inside’, therefore we regard ourselves as better than they, We are going to heaven and they are going to hell, so it does not matter if we treat them badly!

Who said so? This is not how Jesus treated people who had not yet come to faith in Him. To Him, they were lost sons and potential brothers, and He used every opportunity to invite them to come home. He said that His mission was to seek and save the lost.

Paul said, ‘Make the most of every opportunity.’ He did not tell us to dangle them over the fires of hell and bash them with the Bible. He said that we are to use every opportunity. Every opportunity to do what? I think he meant every opportunity to be kind and generous towards them so that they will have glimpses of Jesus in the way we treat them. Then we can share the good news with them that they can also become part of God’s forever family.

Paul’s generous love encircled everyone, especially the members of God’s family, regardless of who or what they were as far as the world was concerned. Take, for instance, Onesimus whom he included in his closing greeting as a ‘faithful and dear brother’.

Onesimus was immortalised in Paul’s letter to Philemon as a runaway slave who came home to the Father through Paul’s influence. He wanted to remain in Rome and serve Paul, but Paul knew that he had an obligation to send him back to Philemon to whom he rightfully belonged. It was up to his owner, not Paul, to decide his fate. It was his right to have him put to death, but Paul pleaded with Philemon on his behalf, to treat him with mercy, especially since he had become a faithful and dear brother.

Without hesitation, Paul put Tychicus and Onesimus on the same level. After all, had he not previously stated that there was no difference between slave and free in God’s kingdom? Social status no longer applied because people of every colour and culture had become brothers and one in Christ. Onesimus was the acid test and Paul accepted him as one of God’s people because he had also become a new person in Christ.

Paul would not allow the churches to forget him simply because he was shut up in prison. Through those who came and went, he kept contact with the family of God so that they would not forget to pray for him. Apostle though he was, he was not above the need for prayer. Through the love and prayers of his fellow believers all over the Roman Empire, he would not succumb to the pressures of persecution and torture and deny his faith in Christ or his hope in the gospel.

Paul was not only a believer in his own right. He was also aware of his responsibility to model Jesus to those who looked up to him as an example. He needed God’s grace in his human weakness as much as everyone else did. He was not above admitting his need and asking for prayer for himself and his ministry. It was important to him to keep his fellow believers informed about his circumstances and even his anxieties and fears so that they would know how to intercede for him.

How important it is for us to pray for our spiritual leaders too! They are not above temptation, and have to face pressures that the man in the pew will never experience. Criticism and judgment come easily to those who do not walk in their shoes. How do they react to those who are never satisfied with what their spiritual leaders do and how they perform, and tell the world about their gripes? They must answer to the Lord, not to their critics.

Paul’s counsel to us is to pray for them. Every pastor needs prayer far more than he needs public condemnation. They are ‘dear brothers’ just like Onesimus, the runaway slave.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

CLOSE CONNECTIONS

Bible Study, ,

CLOSE CONNECTIONS

Tychicus, the dear brother and faithful servant of the Lord, will tell you everything so that you also may know how I am and what I am doing. I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage you.

Peace to the brothers and sisters, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love (Eph. 6:21-24).

I wonder whether technology with its ease of communication would have killed real communication in Paul’s day as it has in ours. Have you noticed how much of our social skills we have lost since the advent of email and cell phones? How much easier it is to send an email, a Facebook, Whatsapp or text message than to talk to someone face to face! A group of kids (by that I mean teenagers!) can sit together in the same room and talk to each other via cell phone messages rather than sit and chat.

Families don’t know how to resolve their conflicts any longer because each member retreats to his or her room to sit behind the computer screen or to “talk” on their cell phones without uttering a word.

How different it was for Paul and his colleagues in their lives together as believers in Jesus. In two short paragraphs, he gives us an insight into the way the church across the Roman Empire did life together. It was not trouble for Tychicus to travel hundreds of miles, taking many months to carry a letter from Paul to the church at Ephesus. Paul was incarcerated in a Roman prison, or perhaps still under house arrest but he needed to communicate with his beloved churches in other cities.

There was no postal service and certainly no electronic mail or wireless communication. People were his messengers, people to people carrying information, love and encouragement from one group to another, from one individual to another. Just imagine what it cost Tychicus to go for Paul since Paul could not go himself.

People mattered. Paul was their spiritual “father”. He has risked a great deal to take the good news of Jesus to Ephesus which was the hotbed of witchcraft and Diana worship. The silversmiths were doing a roaring trade selling their images of the goddess Diana to the superstitious citizens of Ephesus. Paul’s message turned the city upside down, bringing the wrath of the business sector down on him. His life was in danger because of the response to the gospel.

Every new believer was precious to him. He loved and nurtured them like a father for three years and never forgot them when he moved on. Evangelism for Paul was much more than holding campaigns in city after city and then leaving the converts to be “followed up” by the churches in those cities. There were no churches. It was Paul’s job to care for them together with his fellow workers in the gospel. And care for them he did!

It was also important to the believers in Ephesus (and in the other cities to which the letter was sent) to get news of Paul in Rome. Did they know that he was once again a prisoner for his faith? Just as he has written to other churches to let them know what was happening to them and to encourage them to persevere in spite of persecution, so he also wanted the Ephesian believers to know his latest situation.

The gospel message was much more than an insurance policy for heaven. It was a way of life they lived together. Paul made sure that the people of God knew and cared about each other across the miles. They needed each other because the whole world was against them. He wrote to instruct and sent Tychicus to encourage so that they would remain steadfast in their faith and not waver because of the hardships they were enduring for their faith.

Paul also reminded them that they were eternally linked to a Father who loved them and a Saviour who died for them. Through Jesus, they had access to God’s grace which He freely gave to all and which enabled them to endure the trials and suffering of this life, and the peace which would keep them in whatever they were called to bear.

Nothing can ever take the place of these gifts which come from the Father through the Son. To be sustained by God’s grace and supported by His peace means far more than any outward so-called “peaceful” circumstances which are temporary and transient. God’s love would never fail them, no matter what. In that, they could rest as they loved Him in response.

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,  eB978-4828-0511-6

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My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.