Philemon 1:1,10-21  

Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Philemon our beloved friend and fellow laborer… 

¹⁰ I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten while in my chains,  ¹¹ who once was unprofitable to you, but now is profitable to you and to me… 

At some point in your life you may have heard the term CBA—Cost Benefit Analysis.  The term was coined by a French economist in the mid-1800s, was later adopted by a British economist near the end of the 1800s, and was put into use chiefly by the United States Army Corps of Engineers in its construction projects.  It was a term used for mathematically figuring out whether or not a project would actually be worth the cost.  It’s a pretty good way to plan, but the trouble comes when a project has a lot of hidden costs that the engineers and economists didn’t think about. 

A Cost-Benefit Analysis is kind of like what Jesus was talking about in our Gospel lesson for today when he spoke of “counting the cost” of being His disciple.  Check the costs over and against the benefits.  What does it cost me to follow Jesus?  And what benefit or blessing do I receive from believing in Jesus as my Lord?  The trouble, though, is that some of those costs of being a believer are hidden.  We don’t think about them that much until all of a sudden we’re faced with them.  Like the hidden cost of forgiving those who have sinned against us. 

In this short, personal letter from the apostle Paul to a man named Philemon, we find ourselves counting the cost of forgiveness.    

I.The costs of forgiveness are steeper than we thought.

Paul’s letter to Philemon was all about a man named Onesimus.  Onesimus was a slave—a slave who had run away from his master, Philemon.  In our culture and society where the institution of slavery itself—of one human being owning another—is understood to be immoral, we can have a hard time understanding the evil in what Onesimus did.  Suffice it to say, slavery was different at that time than it is now; slavery was in many ways a lot more like indentured servitude, where a slave could work long enough to eventually purchase his own freedom.  But to runaway as a slave?  That was against the law, a violation of the standards of Roman society, where even the smallest slave served with honor, not abandoning his obligations to his master. 

So Onesimus was a slave who had run away from his master, fleeing to the city of Rome, the heart of the empire.  By the grace of God Onesimus met the apostle Paul, who was living under house arrest, waiting for trial.  Paul converted Onesimus to faith in Jesus through the preaching of the gospel; and in terms of their relationship with each other, Onesimus became like a son to St. Paul, that’s how close the two had grown. 

But now the time had come for Onesimus to be reunited with his master, Philemon.  So Paul sent this letter along with Onesimus to Philemon to persuade him to take Onesimus back into his household and forgive him for running away. 

By the loving care with which the apostle Paul crafts the words of this letter, it becomes plain that he understood some of the steep costs involved with Philemon forgiving his runaway slave, Onesimus.  There were financial costs associated with Onesimus being gone; perhaps even debts to be paid.  After all, Philemon also had rights under the law as a slaveowner:  the right to demand that Paul return Onesimus to him at once; Philemon even had the right to kill his own slave for running away.  Philemon would be forfeiting those rights if he made peace with his former slave.  So what does Paul do?  He appeals to Philemon’s heart of love in asking him to take back Onesimus in spite of the costs, even volunteering to pay some of those financial costs with his own money.

You and I face some of those same costs anytime we face the prospect of forgiving someone who has wronged us in the past.  It may cost you financially or economically.  And it may cost you the right to demand justice for what that person has done to you.  You can’t say to someone, “I forgive you,” on the one hand, and then continue to demand their hide on the other.  You can’t say to someone, “I forgive you,” and then serve them with a lawsuit or demand that the book be thrown at them.  To forgive is to forgive—to completely let go of what was done.

Those costs are steep enough, but there’s an even greater cost:  the cost to our hearts.  When you forgive someone who has sinned against you, you forfeit the right to hold a grudge.  And that is a steep cost, isn’t it?  When someone hurts us, runs out on us, leaves us high and dry, we make a deposit into the grudge bank.  And we continue to make regular deposits into the grudge bank every time we think about what that person did to us, and how they’re just awful people for what they did, and boy am I never going to make the same mistake with that person ever again.  Anger starts to consume us.  Days, weeks, months, even years go by, and before you know it, we’re carrying quite a balance there in the grudge bank, aren’t we? 

But then one day out of the blue the person who hurt us shows up on our doorstep waving the white flag of surrender and saying, “I’m sorry.”  To be able to look that person in the eye and say, “I forgive you”?  It means emptying out your entire account at First Grudge National Bank.  You have to let it all go.  The problem is that there’s a part of us that just doesn’t want to let go, that wants to hold onto the grudge.  When we count the cost of forgiveness, the costs are steeper than we thought.             

II.The benefits of forgiveness far outweigh the costs.

It’s true:  forgiveness has some hidden costs.  And yet you have to look past the raw numbers.  Look past all that you lose when you forgive someone—and think about all the costs that have already been paid!

When it came to the way that Paul was so willing to pay for Onesimus and return him to Philemon, the reformer Martin Luther once said something interesting: “We are all Christ’s Onesimi.”  We are all runaways from our true Master.  Filled with sinful pride and rebellion we all can safely confess with the Psalmist in Psalm 119:  “I have strayed like a lost sheep…” (Ps 119:176).  Yet just as Paul rescued Onesimus the runaway slave, so also has Jesus Christ rescued us, standing between the Father and us.  Hasn’t Christ Jesus Himself willingly paid all those costs—and even more—so that we could be forgiven?  He not only offered to pay for us, He actually did!  He paid for the debt of our sins on the cross to satisfy the Father’s holy justice.  In the blood of Jesus God “has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14). 

And the benefits of His forgiveness far outweigh the costs.  We are now permanent members of God’s family through faith; we are His children, with eternal mansions waiting for us in heaven!  Even now Jesus still stands between the Father and us whenever we sin, reminding Him of what He did to pay for them.  The Father can’t help but listen to His Son; He can’t help but to forgive us who by faith are Christ’s brothers and sisters.  He can’t hold any grudge against us at all!

The benefits outweigh the cost for us too when we welcome repentant sinners back into our lives as dearly loved brothers and sisters in Christ.  Philemon, when he forgave Onesimus, got someone back into his life who was “better than a slave”!  Their relationship would transcend and rise above the master/slave relationship they once had.  Our relationships are different too with forgiveness.  When we “forgive those who trespass against us,” then we are truly living as family members in Christ, able to share all of life’s joys and sorrows together, able to encourage each other with God’s Word as we seek to live our faith in Christ. 

The other benefit of having forgiveness in our lives:  when our broken relationships are restored in the forgiveness of Christ, they last forever.  The bonds of friendship in Christ crack even the bounds of space and time when we are reunited in life eternal with people we love.  And even with people that we’ve forgiven. 

We all have an Onesimus in our lives—somebody who hurt us, somebody who abandoned us when we needed them the most, somebody who stole from us, somebody who violated the trust we placed in them.  So how are you going to react when that person comes back into your life five, ten, twenty, or forty years later and says, “I’m sorry; I was wrong.  I know now that God has forgiven me; can you forgive me?” 

Look past the raw data of what it would cost you to forgive.  Let go of your grudges.  Look past the numbers, remembering that God has done the same thing for you in Christ.   

Sometimes it’s hard to look past the numbers.  But just remember that when it comes to forgiving people who have done wrong, the Cost Benefit Analysis is overruled by the heart—by the heart of God, which forgives you all your sins.  That same forgiving heart of God also dwells in your heart through faith in Christ Jesus, beating with love and compassion, causing forgiveness to live and thrive where there was formerly just anger and hate.  God’s heart of mercy give you the strength and courage to be merciful, in spite of the costs.  Amen.