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The Friendship and Fellowship

Of the Gospel, Part 2
Philemon 4-5
May 22, 2005

Introduction

Perhaps the most troubling thing about churches in

America today is – and I’ve said this too many times to
count – is individualism. We have been so overpowered
by our culture which emphasizes “me” instead of others,
that it has crept into the church, largely unnoticed.
People come to get what they want out of ‘church.’ The
parents come to get what they feel they need, and their
kids come to get what they feel they need.

We, speaking of the Christian church at large, are so far

away from that unbelievable and almost fantastic
description of the church in Acts 2. We read in verses 42
and following:

“And they devoted themselves to the

apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the
breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe
came upon every soul…And all who
believed were together and had all things in
common. And they were selling their
possessions and belongings and distributing
the proceeds to all, as any had need. And
day by day, attending the temple together
and breaking bread in their homes, they
received their food with glad and generous
hearts, praising God and having favor with
all the people. And the Lord added to their
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number day by day those who were being
saved” (vv 42-47).

Now compare what we experience today with what they

experienced then, and you will see just how much
individualism has infiltrated the church and almost
overpowered it. The church was born as a fellowship, a
group of believers who loved each other so very much
that they seemingly thought about each other all the
time, each and everyday. So great was their inability to
be apart from one another that they were meeting daily
in the temple to worship, pray, fellowship, and eat
together.

I believe this is the kind of atmosphere we find existing

in the church at Colosse. The thanksgiving which Paul
makes of them in his letter to Colossians resembles the
first church in Jerusalem. They were praying steadfastly
together (4:2), enjoying favor with outsiders (4:5,6).
They were a church of love for each other (1:4), bearing
much fruit in this area. They were a church who truly
loved one another.

And more particularly the house church of Colosse which

met in Philemon’s home experienced this atmosphere
also. He was a man who shared his faith effectively, and
helped foster such a sense of joy and comfort in that
little gathering, such that the entire body of believers
were constantly being refreshed.

Again, as I have said the last two weeks, the gospel is

the message that created this atmosphere among the
people. The gospel message that says, “Jesus Christ
came to serve you, to give His life as a ransom for you,
to die in your place, to heal your diseases, to pray for
you, to feed you, to leave heaven for you.” And when
that message enters the heart of a person, they too
cannot help but begin thinking the same way, seeking in
any and everyway possible, “How can I serve you, what
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can I do for you, how can I pray for you, can I feed you,
where can I go for you?”

That was why the first church in Jerusalem, as well as

the Colossian church, in the gathering in Philemon’s
house experienced such refreshment. It doesn’t take
a rocket scientist to figure out that the gospel had
made a deep and abiding impact on their hearts
and lives. It resulted in them thinking about
others the same way Jesus did – doing whatever
they can to serve others.

With that fresh sense of gospel-atmosphere and gospel

fellowship and friendship stirred up in your minds, turn
your attention back to Philemon and this morning we will
observe what is happening in verses 4 and 5 and apply it
to our little gathering.

2. True believers will have such an intimate and

personal relationship with God that they
automatically and spontaneously spend much time
thinking about and praying for other believers.

In verse 4, Paul always thanked his God when he

remembered Philemon in his prayers. The remembrance
of Philemon and the house church there produced
thanksgiving in his heart toward God for the work He
had done there. And it seems very clear from Paul’s
letter that the warmth he felt in his heart for Philemon
and his family and church was immense and intense. I
see in the first few words of verse four this truth: if I am
intimately personal with my God, I will be frequently
thinking about and praying for others. One
commentator has written the following very helpful
description which ought to characterize all our lives,
reflected perhaps the best in our prayer lives.

“We may judge of the reality of our affection

by the current of our thoughts. Do we find
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them tending towards some absent friends
daily? Then we have evidence that ours is
not the superficial love that can live only in
the presence of its object. With the
Christian thought turns to prayer. There on
the throne of the universe is one who can
best befriend our dearest friends” (W.M.S.,
Pulpit Commentary Vol. 21, Philemon, p.
11).

This was so true of Paul. D. A Carson has described him

as,

“a Christian so committed to the well-being

of other Christians, especially new
Christians, that he is simply burning up
inside to be with them, to help them, to
nurture them, to feed them, to stabilize
them, to establish an adequate foundation
for them. Small wonder, then, that he
devotes himself to praying for them when
he finds he cannot visit them personally” (A
Call to Spiritual Reformation, p. 81).

Carson continues,

“This is typical of Paul. He never descends to the level

of the mere professional. Paul is a passionate man,
deeply enmeshed in the lives of real people….And that
passion shapes the prayers he utters on their behalf”
(ibid).

Based on this truth, notice two things from the text.

A. First, true friendship and fellowship with

other believers begins with true friendship and
fellowship with God. (v. 4)
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First, notice that Paul’s thanksgiving and prayer flows
naturally out of his personal relationship with his God
who saved him and called him to the ministry. A. W. Pink
has written, in his book Gleanings from Paul, that in
Paul’s prayer for Philemon, its object was, “my God.” He
writes,

“The first lesson in prayer Christ taught us

was that the special relationship which He
sustains to His children should be owned by
them: ‘Our Father which art in heaven’
(Luke 11:2). ‘I will praise thee, O Lord my
God’ (Ps. 86:12). ‘God even our own God,
shall bless us’ (Ps. 67:6)” (p. 351).

This is where true fellowship with one another begins,

too. Our relationship with the Father will produce
fellowship and friendship with one another, causing us to
thank God for each other. One commentator has written
that true fellowship, “subsists in the fellowship with the
Father, and the Son, and derives all its force therefrom”
(T.C., Pulpit Commentary, Vol. 21, Philemon, p. 16). This
is just what 1 John 1:3 teaches: “our fellowship is with
the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.”

This fellowship implies that all saints have a common

Father (Eph. 4:6), a common older Brother (Heb. 2:11), a
common inheritance (Eph. 2:19), a common grace that
binds us together (Phil. 1:7), and a common suffering we
share in together (1 Cor. 12:26; Heb. 10:33,34).
Believers are of one heart and one soul. Ephesians 4
teaches that we are all a part of one body and one Spirit,
called to one hope, belonging to one Lord, one faith, and
one baptism. We are all unified, inseparable from one
another, because of our relationship to and with the
Father.

It is for this reason that Paul refers to God as “my God.”

Perhaps it is reading too much into this verse, but in
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light of the context, it seems to me that there is a
special sense of friendship and relationship Paul intends
to point to between himself and God in the usage of this
phrase, “my God.”

Paul does not refer to God as ‘our God,’ or even ‘your

God.’ For Paul, God is “my God,” indicating intimacy,
friendship, and fellowship. It is that type of fellowship
Jesus speaks of in Revelation 3:20 where He says to one
of the churches, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come
into him and eat with him, and he with me.” Such a
statement speaks of the incredibly delights of personal
intimacy that extends beyond the borders of the normal
and natural. That is the kind of intimacy Jesus offers to
all the members of His church universal, and the kind of
intimacy Paul personally enjoyed with God.

Transition

And if there is one little phrase in this verse that proves

this point more than any other, it is the phrase, “I thank
my God…” Why?

Because, second, Paul’s intimate relationship with God

necessarily means that God is the source of all Paul’s
thanksgiving and the goal of all his praying. Paul, a
skilled, gifted and incredibly powerful preacher of the
gospel is also an apostle. But he does not thank himself
or consider his own work as contributing in any great
way to the wonderful effects of his ministry he saw at
work in Philemon’s life, household, and church. No, Paul
has only God to thank. As he wrote to the Corinthians,
“What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as
the Lord assigned to each. I planted…but God gave the
growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is
anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Cor.
3:5-7).
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Returning to A.W. Pink, he has written,

“The fact that thanks were returned to God

for those graces was an acknowledgment
that He is the Author of them: they do not
originate with man. They are the fruit of the
Spirit, evidences of His regenerating work”
(p. 351).

This kind of thinking and writing is normal for Paul in

almost all of his letters. He opens almost every letter
with a greeting, then commences to thanking God for
the work He has affected among His people. God is the
author of every good and every perfect gift that comes
down from heaven (James 1:17). He is the author and
finisher of everyone’s faith in the Colossian church,
including Philemon, and including you and I. He alone is
to be praised.

And what is normal for Paul ought to be normal for us.

And it ought to be more so within our hearts than it is on
our lips. How often do I hear of pastors and evangelists
and ministers praising God and thanking Him for the
work He has done, but in reality they take all the credit
for it, receiving the applauses and commendations of
men as if they were actually true! Paul knows better
and so ought we also. Listen to Robert Hawker, an
Anglican minister in England in from the late 18 th century
to early 19th century, on this truth.

“Let the reader observe, to whom Paul gives

all the glory. Every good thing in Philemon
is ascribed wholly to the Lord Jesus. And
though Paul was now writing this man on a
subject of favor, he would not compliment
him at the expence of truth, and in the
fashion of modern times, extol the creature,
and bolster him up in fancied worth, when
both his ability to refresh the bowel of the
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saints, and an heart to do it, were from the
Lord. Oh! How much to be wished it were,
that such faithfulness was in all ministers,
and people, professing godliness. What
volumes, on the contrary, have been printed
and published, of thanks to men, where no
mention hath been made of God!” (The
Poor Man’s Commentary, Volume 3,
Philippians to Revelation, p. 198).

Let all our thanksgivings about God’s work, whether in

our parenting or marriage or job or ministry, be given to
God. Say with Paul in your heart as well as with your
tongue, “I thank my God always when I remember
you…”

Matthew Henry has marvelously summed up these two

truths here in the following statement:

“It is the privilege of good men that their

praises and prayers they come to God as
their God: Our God, we thank thee, said
David; and I thank my God, said Paul.”

Application

There is much to ponder here concerning friendships

between believers. At the very root of all application is
this truth that unless believers have personal and
intimate friendship and fellowship with their heavenly
Father, such friendship and fellowship with other
believers will be difficult if not impossible to enjoy. The
relationship with the Father is what fuels the relationship
with each other. When our heart for Him is developed
and when we are captured and enraptured by His heart
for us, then our hearts will naturally stretch out to reach
and embrace one another.
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B. Second, true friendship and fellowship with

other believers will reflect itself in frequently
thinking about and praying for them (vv. 4-5)

Isn’t this what we see from Paul in verse 4? He writes, “I

thank my God always when I remember you in my
prayers because I hear of your love and of the faith that
you have toward the Lord Jesus and all the saints.”

First, we will know if we are frequently enjoying intimate

communion with God when we are frequently
remembering other believers. Paul’s personal and
intimate relationship with God flowed out into a personal
relationship and intimacy with the believers in Colosse
such that he could say that he “always” remembered
them in his prayers.

The Greek word adialeptos, from which we get our word

“always,” means just that – regularly, frequently,
consistently, etc. They weren’t just a passing thought in
his mind, people he thought about from time to time, or
whenever something he saw or thought about just
happened to recall them all to his mind. They were not
peripheral to him, but central to him. This is because,
again, his relationship with God reflected itself in his
relationship with believers such that their concerns and
issues were more important than his own (see
Philippians 2:3-4).

Second, our frequent remembrances of other believers

will take some sort of definite form and function. Paul’s
frequent remembrances of Philemon and the Colossian
believers took a definite form and function as well. It
wasn’t just a, “thanks God for so and so” type of
remembrance. No, his remembrance of them took on
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the form of spontaneous and joyous thanksgiving, as
well as faithful prayers for them. Perhaps he had a
‘prayer list,’ and then again, perhaps he didn’t. Either
way, the focus here is clearly that he was so in love with
God, and therefore so in love with these people, that
they were constantly on his mind. His remembrance of
other believers took on the form of prayer and
functioned in thanksgiving for them in his prayers.

Third, a heart of intimate and personal relationship with

other believers will be on the lookout for spiritual growth
of any and all kind. Notice that Paul remembered them
frequently because he heard about their Christlikeness.
For me personally, this seems to imply that his eyes and
heart were opened constantly, his ears always to the
ground, so to speak, ready to hear about any good
reports coming from the people in the Colossian church.
Again, his ministry was not about himself, but about
others.

Hence, he was always on the lookout for how God was

growing His work among His church. That’s why he
wrote about his thanksgiving for “your love and of the
faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and all the
saints.” These categories of love and faith toward Jesus
and the saints is broad enough that it would have to
include everything Paul had heard about concerning
these believers, everything from the smallest deed gone
unnoticed to the greatest deed one could possibly do.
Paul loved them so much that he wanted to hear about
every single gospel effect God was working among
them, no matter the size or shape of it.

Illustrated

I’d like to illustrate these three characteristics through

Paul’s heart by turning your attention toward the other
epistles he wrote. Turn with me to each of the following
texts and read along with me.
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• Romans 1:8. “First, I thank my God through Jesus

Christ for all of you, because your faith is
proclaimed in all the world.”
• 1 Corinthians 1:4. “I give thanks to my God always
for you because of the grace of God that was
given you in Christ Jesus…”
• Philippians 1:3. “I thank my God in all my
remembrance of you, always in every prayer of
mine for you all making my prayer with joy,
because of your partnership in the gospel from
the first day until now.”
• Colossians 1:3. “We always thank God, the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you,
since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of
the love you have for all the saints…”
• 1 Thessalonians 1:2. “We give thanks to God
always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in
our prayers, remembering before our God and
Father your work of faith and labor of love and
steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
• 2 Thessalonians 1:3. “We ought always to give
thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right,
because your faith is growing abundantly, and the
love of every one of you for one another is
increasing.”
• 2 Timothy 1:3 ff. “I thank God…as I remember you
constantly in my prayers night and day…As I
remember your tears…I am reminded of your
sincere faith…”
• Philemon 4. “I thank my God always when I
remember you in my prayers, because I hear of
your love and the faith that you have toward the
Lord Jesus and all the saints.”

Among all these passages, notice first that for Paul,

there is always something for which to thank God
in the lives of other believers. This is indicative by
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the preposition “because” which Paul uses almost every
time. And where he does not use the preposition, he
almost always lists the reason or reasons as to why he is
thanking God for them.

And while these statements of thanksgiving may have

been very broad and general sweeping descriptions
about their lives, we can be very sure that Paul had in
mind detail after story after example of how his
description had been lived out among the people of the
particular church to which he was writing.

Notice second that his knowledge of them

personally and of their spiritual growth meant
that he prayed very specific things for them. In
each passage Paul prays something different for each
particular church, something that was fitting for their
needs at that time he was writing them. This would also
include the one passage not included in the others we
just read, Ephesians 1:16.

“I do not cease to give thanks for you,

remembering you in my prayers, that the
God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and
of revelation in the knowledge of him…”

This particular text, as well as most of the others, go on

to describe some very specific things he is praying for
each church. This isn’t just “God bless the missionaries”
type of praying here. The grammar he uses reflects an
extremely well thought out theology and application of
the gospel to these peoples’ lives.

Application
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That said, how much time do others take up in your
prayer lives? How much time do you spend thinking of
others when you do pray?

And beyond that, how much time in your prayer life is

spent thanking God for others? Or how much time do
you spend telling God about your problems with others?
Which one seems to occupy more space in your prayer
life and heart: thanksgiving or complaining?

What level of detail do you notice in your prayer lives?

Are you general, thanking God for the big things others
have done? Do you thank God in broad and vague terms
(e.g. ‘Thank you God for the missionaries’)? Or is your
prayer life for others more detailed, thanking God even
for the slightest and seemingly insignificant things that
person has done? Is there an eye in your prayer life for
any kind of maturity and growth and fruit, regardless of
the shape and size of it?

Summary

The bottom line in all of this is just what it was last week,
isn’t it? It is all about being so consumed with the
amazing sacrifice with which the Trinity served me, that I
am consumed with sacrifice and service to others. As
D.A. Carson has written, “The issue is service, the
service of real people.”

So is church really all about you? Is the purpose of

fellowship to meet your needs, or for you to meet others’
needs? The question is, “How can I be most useful to
others?” It is not, “How can I feel most useful.”

The goal is, “How can I best glorify God by serving His
people?” It is not, “How can I feel most comfortable and
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appreciated while engaging in some acceptable form of
Christian ministry?”

The assumption is, “How shall the Christian service to

which God calls me be enhanced by my daily death, by
my principled commitment to take up my cross daily and
die?” It is not, “How shall the form of service I am
considering enhance my career?”

(Adapted from D. A. Carson, p. 83)

Paul was a man “whose deep affection for…believers…

ensures that they will not serve to feed his ego or give
him a sense of importance or satisfy his longing for
fulfillment” (ibid). But this is just how church operates in
America today, doesn’t it? If we’re all honest, this is
very much how we have operated here in our little
fellowship, isn’t it?

But the gospel demands that we think, feel and live

otherwise. Jesus did what He did for our good, not for
His own. He chose the path of self-denial and crucifixion
for our good, not for His own. He chose shame,
reproach, degradation for us, not for Himself. And such
is the pathway we must take with others, just as Jesus
did for us. We live and breathe for the good of others,
praying for them nonstop, just as Christ lives and
breathes to make intercession for us, as we read of in
John and Hebrews. We live to please God, to glorify God,
and to love God by loving and serving one another.