Fellow Prisoners of Christ

Philemon 1:23-25 

23 Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, greets you, 24 as do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, Luke, my fellow laborers.  25 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.

Paul passed greetings to Philemon at the conclusion of the appeal for the fellow bondslave in Christ from others who were not willing prisoners of man in jail with him.  The contrast with the freed slave in Christ, Onesimus, and the free in Christ who were bound with Paul in prison chains of man shows the difference spiritual freedom makes.  It also points to setting men free as Wilberforce and Lincoln set out to do when seeing that forced servitude did not echo the freedom we are called to.  We who have been set free from sin by sheer mercy and imputed justification in place of deserved justice yearn to see all free, both in this world and the next.  The freedom in Christ makes us owned by God, not each other, and that drove Paul’s appeal to set the servant free to serve the only true Master.  We are fellow prisoners of Christ, freed from bondage to sin to willingly and joyfully serve Him!  This grace of Jesus Christ our Omnipotent Lord is a reminder to close this letter and appeal to Philemon and to us (Micah 6:8) in how we should humbly serve our God.