AMANDA DUVALL | GUEST

Among the cute photos of babies, puppies, and family vacations on social media— you see it. A friend from church posts a political message, and you cannot believe they vote for that person. Or support that cause. Or believe that news story. Maybe you reach for the quick “unfollow” button so you don’t have to see their posts anymore.

Now, what happens when we walk into church and run into that person? We want to do the real world equivalent of an “unfollow.” Remove that person from our lives— if not entirely, at least put some distance between us. On the outside, everything probably looks the same, but the communion once shared has shifted, maybe even broken.

This is not to downplay the real hurt we can experience in our relationships as the world becomes more politicized. It’s not just the election—there is almost no part of our society, public or private, untouched by politics.

Maybe because of this, we tend to think our divisiveness today is so uniquely difficult for the Church to navigate. But then we read the New Testament. The first Christians hailed from every walk of life, and so, it was not uncommon to find a rich and educated individual, who just last month was participating in pagan rituals, right alongside a poor Jew, who had no power or property and adhered to some very strict personal ethics.

Imagine for a second with me, then, what these relationships might have looked like— so easily laced with misunderstanding and awkwardness, offense, hurt, and downright rudeness. There was no earthly reason for these people to share anything in common.

But in telling the Colossians about their new community, Paul says this, “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all” (3:11).

He goes on to describe this community as one of compassion, kindness, forgiveness, bearing with one another, humility, patience, and meekness, and above all— love that binds us in perfect harmony (vv. 12-14).

I’m no musician, but my husband is. Harmony is the blending of distinct voices, each singing their own part to create something new and beautiful together. Paul is not trying to argue that suddenly our distinctions disappear. But instead, the love of Christ brings us together to create a beautiful new reality.

What could such a lofty vision of Christian love really look like in a real church? To read about “perfect harmony” as an ideal is one thing— but do we really believe the first Christians, with all their ethnic, cultural, and economic dividing lines, were to live like this? And perhaps more pressingly for our current times— are we?

The Bible gives us an actual, real-life example of paradigm-shifting Christian love in relationships. I am talking about the book of Philemon.

The impetus for Paul’s letter to Philemon is regarding a runaway slave named Onesimus. We don’t know everything about what happened between Onesimus and Philemon, a wealthy Roman citizen who became a believer and opened his home to the church in Colossae (v. 1), but we do know Onesimus fled, somehow met Paul, became a Christian and began caring for Paul during one of his imprisonments for the gospel (v. 13). And now Paul is sending him back to Philemon with this letter bearing an astounding request.

Paul asks Philemon to welcome Onesimus back “no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother in Christ” (v. 16).  And Paul is confident that Philemon will do even more than he asks (v. 21).

We might want to write off the situation as too culturally complicated to be of much help today. But notice the way Paul approaches Philemon on such a sensitive subject. Paul— missionary-leader, church planter, letter-sender, teacher, apostle— could pull rank and just command an action. Instead, he appeals to him, for love’s sake (v. 9). Not tolerance. Not politeness. Not even rote obedience.

Why love? If Paul had simply requested Philemon allow Onesimus back without repercussions— that would have been incredibly magnanimous for the time. Philemon had a whole set of legal options available to him in dealing with a runaway slave, including capital punishment. But the application of Christian love in community goes into totally new territory the world has never before seen.

And so, we must contend with Paul’s request “for love’s sake.” While there is much we could glean from this example, there are three practical ways we see how love is the defining marker of Christian community and what that means for how we treat each other— even today, even in the face of a contentious election, and even when relationships are fractured and broken.

Partnership

Paul first appeals to Philemon on a topic (seemingly) unrelated to the one at hand. He prays that the “sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ” (v. 6). The idea of sharing here is one of partnership or fellowship that stems from the commonality all believers have in Christ. There is no class system when it comes to Christians— a truly revolutionary idea for the time. Paul is gently reminding Philemon that participating in this sharing is to experience all the more deeply the love of Christ.

The incredible truth for us today is this— we share more in common with the believer who looks or votes nothing like us than we do with nonbelievers in our same ethnic, socio, geographic, and economic demographics! If we truly believe this idea of Christian partnership, how might that influence the way we think about our fellow believers in the middle of a disagreement?

Affection

Paul is effusive in his affection for both Onesimus and Philemon. He uses familial language constantly and calls them both beloved— referring to Onesimus as “his very heart” (v. 12). Paul loves these men, and he is not afraid to say it. What’s more, he is inviting them into their new relationship as defined by the redeemed reality of the family of God. Christian community is not something we attain— it is something we receive from Jesus.

There is not one Republican body, one Democrat, one Suburban, or one Rural. There is one body, and Jesus has already called us into it (Col. 3:15). Our joy is to actually operate like that is true.

Reconciliation

Now the rubber meets the road. Sometimes our relational brokenness goes far deeper than a misunderstanding or awkward conversation. It means bearing real hurt caused by another believer. Reconciliation will cost us something. If we think otherwise, we reduce the idea of Christian love to a kind of outward niceness but inside, the substance is shallow and unconvincing.

Paul understands this and offers to pay the debt Onesimus owes Philemon, saying “charge that to my account” (v. 18). Paul is modeling Jesus’ own sacrifice on our behalf! Jesus bore our debts, so that we might be reconciled to God.

Love required much more from Philemon than simply excusing Onesimus’ behavior. Love rewrote the relationship between master and slave to one of beloved brotherhood. When we look at it that way, Christian love, not political power, is the most powerful change agent on the planet.

How would we apply this to our relationships today? How does Paul’s model of partnership, affection and reconciliation guide us through the temptations to allow political factions to divide the Body? Importantly, love does not ignore hurt and brokenness and certainly does not allow for unsafe, divisive people or false teachers to infiltrate the body of Christ unchecked (see Rom. 16:17-18; 1 Tim. 6:3-5 among other examples). But how does love allow for us to move toward one another in the Colossians 3 picture of harmony?

Photo by Andrew Moca on Unsplash