Following Jesus: A Second Chance “Be kind to one another…forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has forgiven you.” Ephesians 4:32 Philemon 21-25 How do you know when to give somebody another chance? Now I’m not talking about forgiving a person for doing you wrong. A disciple has only one option here: to forgive. But forgiving somebody is different from giving that person another chance to maybe mess you over again. We’ve been talking about relationships and reconciliation from the standpoint of what it means to be Christ’s disciple. But does being a disciple mean being an easy mark? When do you take a risk? There’s a very clear answer to that question in the book of Philemon. Paul knew Philemon was asking himself the same question. How did he know Onesimus wouldn’t really clean him out again and take off? The answer is that before Paul wrote, he had put Onesimus to the test. Paul had been with Onesimus and worked with him. He was able to tell Philemon, “I’ve got good news. Mr. Useless is now Mr. Useful again. I’ve checked him out. He’s for real. Fact is, I’d like to hang onto him myself.” Now we don’t have a record of what happened when Onesimus got back, but we can assume everything went well. One church father even said Onesimus later became bishop of Ephesus, although we can’t know for sure. But he was worth the risk Philemon had to take. There’s another fascinating example of a man who made good on a second chance: Mark (v.24), or John Mark, as he was called in Acts 15:37. He went out with Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey, but he got scared and went home to Mama (13:13). Paul said no more chances for him, but Barnabas was ready to take a risk with Mark, even if it meant splitting with Paul (15:37-40). And Mark proved himself. Later he became a valuable helper to Paul (2 timothy 4:11). Mark was with him in Rome as he wrote this letter to Philemon. There are two extremes in dealing with broken relationships. One is to skip what happened, try to ignore it. The other is to hold a grudge and ruin your spiritual life. A faithful disciple chooses forgiveness and reconciliation…the way of the Cross. If you’re afraid to give somebody a second chance, ask god for His wisdom in the situation (James 1:5). Well, that concludes our study on Discipleship. I hope everyone got something at some point out of this study…I sure did. Tomorrow we will start our new study of “Trials And Tribulations.” It is a study on the circumstances we go through in life and why we go through them. I hope you will follow along with me over the next three weeks as we discuss this topic. Until tomorrow….Peace!!!! Posted by David Coleman of The DC Ministry “Sharing The Gospel.”
Posted on: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 10:26:29 +0000