On Hebrew Poetry

There is a really cool article on the poetic craft by Justin Taylor.  The passage he uses, Psalm 19, is one of my favorites from a gospel perspective.  I'd highly recommend the article for this reason, and because it will certainly help improve your reading.

Philemon

I was pleasantly surprised last night that we were in Philemon in church—not going every Wednesday gives you that added bit of uncertainty, I guess.  While the sermon itself tended far more to law than grace, I wanted to pick up a few bullet-points of interest to me:

• About the time of the writing (probably 60–62 AD), Lucius Pedanius Secundus was murdered by a slave.  Roman law at the time required that all of his slaves be executed, and Nero carried out the sentence on 400.  That Onesimus was also under a death sentence for running away from his master adds a certain sense of urgency to this letter.
  
• One wonders what sort of jailer Christ is (v1).  Paul is his prisoner; do we suppose that Jesus Christ is so poor a jailer as to let him go?  Rome does not hold Paul captive:  Jesus does.
  
• There are marks of grace all over the letter.  Paul's plea in vv17ff is so highly reminiscent of the pleas that Christ must make for us:  "Put it on my account" he writes.
  
• How much, incidentally, is this like the Good Samaritan, who provides coin for the recovery of the man near death, but also promises to pay any other debt he incurs when he returns.  A comforting thought, this, that Christ resurrects us and promises to pay the debts our sin nature continues to incur.
  
• The mention of Mark in verse 24 fits with Colossians 4:10, where he is admitted to fellowship despite the argument between Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15:39).  There is grace here:  Mark's errors are not reviewed or open—he is simply admitted to fellowship.
  
• Contra Mark is Demas, who at the time of this writing is in good standing but appears by the end of Paul's life (perhaps 63 AD if we accept Pauline authorship of 2d Timothy) to have forsaken him (2Ti 4:10).
  
• Onesimus' name means "useful," and so there is a lot of wordplay here in v11 and v20 also.

Lots of stuff going on in this short letter.  Really enjoy it from many different perspectives.

Self-portraits

Simon of Cyrene is a bit of a self-portrait in the Scriptures; evidently his sons were figures in the early church (cf Mk 15.21).  There is no indication in the Bible that he had any other interaction with Jesus other than to carry his cross on the road to Calvary.  But this brief walk down the road seems to have completely transformed his life—so much so that it lived on in his sons, Alexander and Rufus.

As we would expect, the focus is not on Simon, as though he is to be admired, but on Jesus Christ, the one who suffered and died.  All we know about Simon is that he carried the cross a ways and that he had two sons.

In a way, this ambiguity about the life of Simon provides us an opportunity to paint our face over his, to see ourselves in his encounter.  I think the Scriptures do this for us on purpose, though most explicitly in the life of Paul.

Paul writes of his conversion—being struck down on the road to Damascus—that he was a prototype for all future believers (1Ti 1.16).  There is a Damascus road for all of us.  While we are enemies, blasphemers, and persecutors, Jesus strikes us down and pulls us to himself.  It is a hostile invasion of sorts, but one, I think, that is in retrospect always welcome, and always tinged with the experience of the Savior suffering on his road to Calvary.