Golf is a difficult game. At its most basic, you're just trying to get a small, white ball into a 4-1/4 inch hole. What makes it difficult is that you start the process hundreds of yards away, sometimes up to 500+ yards from tee to green. And to get from point A to point B you have to decide which clubs to use so that you have the best shot at putting the small, white ball into the 4-1/4 inch hole in a prescribed number of strokes, what's called "par." If you look at the layout of a golf course, you'll see that the designer of the thing intended to make the task difficult. Numerous obstacles are put in the golfer's way so that getting the ball into the hole requires a bag full of different clubs, with different purposes, to make it happen. An accomplished golfer knows what each will do for him and choses the right one for the particular situation he finds himself in.
This full use of the bag by a skilled golfer is not unlike the life of the mature Christian. The apostle Peter teaches that all things that pertain to life and godliness are ours through our faith union with Christ (2 Peter 1:3-8). This is why he urges Christians to take full advantage of this reality by supplementing our faith with a list of characteristics that are ours because they are found in Christ. And, not dissimilar to a golf course designer, God will place us in situations that will force us to make use of all the clubs in our bag.
Such was the case for Philemon. Paul sent back Philemon's runaway slave, Onesimus, challenging Philemon to receive Onesimus as he would the apostle Paul. Why should Philemon do that? Because Onesimus was no longer just a slave in Philemon's household, he was a believer in Christ's church. Under the tutelage of the apostle, Onesimus had come to faith in Christ. And despite whatever he was before, he was now "a new creation," and the koinonia, the fellowship and sharing of life that Philemon readily extended to fellow church members, was now due Onesimus.
To our contemporary ears this might not seem like that big of a test. But for a 1st century man, living in a society that understood slavery to be an unquestioned, even necessary, institution, to not treat a runaway harshly would put him at odds with the culture, and, more personally, expose the yet unsanctified aspects of his character. The apostle was confident, however, that if Philemon would receive Onesimus back as a brother, with all rights and privileges, he would discover how pursuing koinonia would "become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ." (Philemon 6).
Isn't this what growing into Christian maturity is all about? In times of testing, are we not being asked by God to discover and make use of all the clubs in the bag? We possess them because Jesus possesses them. And to the extent that we seek him and rely on him to manifest them in our lives we show ourselves to be mature in him.
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