Monthly Archives: January 2025

We’re currently studying through Paul’s tiny letter to Philemon. Most people don’t see the important issues raised in this part of Scripture.

I’ve heard many question why Christian teaching seemed to be silent about the issue of slavery. That’s what I believe this letter is all about. The Holy Spirit was using this epistle to plant the seeds of the end slavery.

But, to understand this, you need to know the story behind this book. It all started with a young man named Onesimus.
Years before Paul wrote this, Onesimus was Philemon’s slave. At some point, he robbed Philemon, escaped, and fled to Rome. In Rome, he met Paul, received salvation, and worked with the apostle in the ministry.
Now Onesimus was feeling the need to go back and make things right with Philemon. Please understand – at this point in history, the penalty for a runaway slave was crucifixion. So, Paul is writing this on behalf of Onesimus.

Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the saints.

Philemon 7 NIV

In my last posts, we saw how Paul started to introduce the subject. He pointed out that Philemon has shown a great love for others in the body of Christ. He continues this theme.

Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul — an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus — I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains.

Philemon 8-10 NIV

Paul gets right to the point. He makes it clear that as an apostle, he could command obedience from Philemon. But in this case, he wants Philemon to do what’s right as a matter of conscience.

That’s an important point. Paul wants him to do what is right and proper. Even though slavery was the common practice in the Roman Empire at that time, Paul stated that it was right for Onesimus to keep his freedom.

Also, you will notice for the second time in this short letter, Paul refers to himself as a prisoner of Christ. That’s important because we are now well into the church age. There was a large amount of Scripture being circulated.

Paul had already written about this to the Corinthian church. It was a part of his teaching.

Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you – although if you can gain your freedom, do so. For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lord’s freedman; similarly, he who was a free man when he was called is Christ’s slave. You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men.

1 Corinthians 7:21-23 NIV

It’s clear from these verses, that Paul was definitely against the institution of slavery. That was the case even though it was widely accepted in their society.

As we continue through this letter, we’ll see that it’s not just a matter of Paul’s preference. It is a spiritual truth that slavery is evil.

What does that mean to us? I believe that even though society may condone something as right and proper, God’s people are held to a higher standard.

Question: How should believer approach social issues that go against God’s will?

© 2025 Nick Zaccardi

We’re continuing our study through Paul’s epistle to Philemon. It’s our only example of the apostle’s private correspondence. At this point he’s been talking about Philemon’s relationship with others in the body of Christ.

Now, based upon his knowledge of this believer, he shares what he’s trusting God to accomplish in Philemon’s life.

I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.

Philemon 6 NIV

This is something that every Christian should be involved in. We all need to be sharing our faith with those around us.

The words that Paul uses are very interesting in this section of Scripture. The phrase, “active in sharing your faith”, literally means to energize the partnership of your faith.

That raises a couple of questions we all need to answer. First, do we recognize the partnership we have with our faith? Then, have we energized that partnership?

Whether you know it or not, we are in partnership with our faith. If we are truly trusting the Lord, then there will be an impact upon our actions. Our faith should be visible to those around us.

More than that, this operation of our faith must be energized by the Holy Spirit. That’s the only way our faith will have an effect on the lives of others.

The Apostle James puts it this way…

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?…In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

James 2:14-17 NIV

That’s the choice. We can be in partnership with a dead faith. Or, we can allow it to be energized and compelling us to action.

Paul explains this to Philemon, showing him the benefits of an energized faith. This partnership leads us to a full understanding of the good things we have in Christ.

Again, a look at the original wording gives us more insight. Paul tells us that this road will bring us to a full understanding of all the good things in us in Christ Jesus.

These are not things we have to pray for in order for us to receive them. They’re already in us if we’re in Christ. They just need to be activated by our faith.

That’s an important thing for us to know about how this grace of God works. I start to share my faith with others. Then, as I see how the Holy Spirit confirms His Word in that area, He increases my faith to trust the Lord for other things.

That’s because the Greek word for understanding in this verse means the application of knowledge. I see how God works through me in one area, and I can apply that same action of faith in another area.

This is how we grow in our faith and knowledge of the Lord. It brings us more and more into the maturity God has for us in Christ.

Question: How have you seen this partnership of faith working in you?

© 2025 Nick Zaccardi

In my last post, I started talking about the little book of Philemon. Not many teach from it, but it has an important place in the body of Scripture. But, I’ll get into that in later posts.

For now, we need to understand this as a letter dealing with relationships. Paul starts by talking about Philemon’s relationship with the church.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints.

Philemon 3-5 NIV

Paul’s desire is for this young man to walk in the fullness of God’s grace and peace. That’s important to hear. It’s the two aspects of our walk with God.

First there’s grace – the vertical part. Grace is from God the Father to us. It’s the enabling power and presence of God transforming our lives to be what the Lord desires.

Then there’s divine peace. Our problem is that we limit this peace by thinking that it only applies to the relationship between us and God. Yes, we have peace with God in that we were once enemies, but now we’ve been adopted into His family.

However, in his writings Paul makes it clear that this peace affects all of our relationships. It brings all people together in Christ. On the cross, Jesus Christ broke down all the walls that separate us (Ephesians 2:14-18).

Now, in Christ, there’s no room for hatred or prejudice. We’re all a part of one body. The labels of the past are gone. There’s no longer any Jew or Gentile, rich or poor, slave or free. Ethnicity, education, or social status should not be an issue between us as believers because of the cross.

Philemon was commended not only for his faith, but because he had a love for all the saints. That’s the agape-love of God. To remind you, it’s not an emotion. It goes way beyond just having good feelings for others. It’s a decision to actively, positively participate in the lives of others.

This is a way that we need to check ourselves. It’s a point of self-examination. Do I demonstrate a love for all believers? Too often we want to white wash it with the unthinking response, “Of course I love everyone in the body of Christ.”

But, wait a minute. Can you use the biblical definition? Are you willing to positively participate in the lives of all believers? Even those with a different political viewpoint than yours (Yes, I will go there!)? How about those who look different than you or are less educated?

It should be clear that loving others can be very difficult without the grace of God being active in your life. We have no excuse for excluding others from our circle of friends.

Actually, a refusal to participate in the lives of others is a form of hatred. Yes, hatred is not just a decision to be mean to someone. It’s also a refusal to participate with them.

Now that brings up a new question for consideration. Is there anyone I am demonstrating hatred to by refusing to participate in their life?

Showing a love for all the saints is a big job. It requires a deep faith in the Lord and a dependence upon Him for His abundant grace. We all need to prioritize this part of our walk with God.

Question: How well do you demonstrate a love for all of God’s people?

©2025 Nick Zaccardi

In my last post before I took time off to care for my mom, I finished my series on Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians. I’ve been systematically going through the New Testament in the order that the Holy Spirit revealed it to the church.

I started a few years ago, with the four foundational books – James, First Thessalonians, Galatians and Mark. The next thing on the Holy Spirit’s agenda was to inspire books that dealt with our personal walk with the Lord. These books include Second Thessalonians, First and Second Corinthians, Romans, and Luke.

After that, the Lord gave us books dealing with our corporate walk. We need to understand life as a church. These epistles are Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon.

The end of the book of Acts found the Apostle Paul standing trial at Rome. This was his first Roman imprisonment. It seems that he had his own apartment while under house arrest.

It was during this time that these last books were written. They are also called the prison epistles. It probably gave Paul a lot of time reflect on what it means for the body of Christ to be a living organism. We’re not just a social organization.

In this post I’ll start the book of Philemon.

Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, to Philemon our dear friend and fellow worker, to Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow soldier and to the church that meets in your home:

Philemon 1-2 NIV

This short letter was written from Rome with the others. It was addressed to a Christian in Colossi named Philemon. Apphia and Archippus were probably his wife and son.
This letter concerned a young man named Onesimus. Paul met him and led him to Christ on one of his mission trips. Now, Onesimus was working with Paul in the ministry. I’ll wait until later to explain the rest of the details.

For now, I want to look at the way Paul opens this epistle. He calls himself a prisoner of Christ. This is an interesting way for Paul to refer to himself. Not an apostle or an elder, but a prisoner of Christ. Why would he use this terminology?

There was a reason that he considered himself a prisoner of Christ. Prisoners of Christ have a purpose. He tells us about this purpose in the letter to the Ephesian church.

…I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles…

Ephesians 3:1 NIV

It was for the sake of the Gentiles. The word, prisoner, means to be bound or captive by someone. In this case, he’s a captive of Christ Jesus.

That’s why Paul is a prisoner. It wasn’t by his will, but the will of the Lord. If it were up to Paul – the Pharisee – he would go to the Jews. Many times, Paul had an argument with the Lord over this issue. Listen to his own testimony.

“When I returned to Jerusalem and was praying at the temple, I fell into a trance and saw the Lord speaking. ‘Quick!’ he said to me. ‘Leave Jerusalem immediately, because they will not accept your testimony about me.’”

Acts 22:17-18 NIV

What was Paul’s response?

“‘Lord,’ I replied, ‘these men know that I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you. And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.’”

Acts 22:19-20 NIV

Really? Did he just tell Jesus that He was wrong? That’s how we get sometimes when we’re too focused on what we think we should be doing for God. We need to listen to what the Spirit speaks to us.

“Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.'”

Acts 22:21 NIV

Sometimes my will and God’s will don’t line up. That’s when I have to remember I chose to be His prisoner. I need to bow my knee to His desire for my life, even when it’s not convenient.

This is how Paul viewed himself. He saw no life other than the calling of God. We need to walk in that same view. We’re captive to the plan of God for our lives.

Question: Were there times when your will and God’s will were at odds?

© 2025 Nick Zaccardi

In my last post I looked at one of the reasons people have left the faith. Today’s topic is one that happens regularly if our young people are not properly prepared.

The person in the article I was reading went off to college and took a class on mythology. There’s nothing wrong with that on the surface. However, as this person started studying the different creation and flood myths, they decided that Christianity was simply one of the many religious myths.

I found that interesting, because I enjoyed studying these ancient myths. I also took a college course on world religions. (At that time I was going for my engineering degree, not ministry.)

As I studied these myths and legends, I also noticed the similarities. A god creating the world and mankind. There were also flood stories just like Noah’s ark. What does all this mean to the Christian?

I have to preface this by saying that I had a foundation of really good teaching from the church I grew up in. So these things didn’t shake my faith. Instead, they caused me to study deeper.

What I ended up with is two conclusions about mythology and world religions.

1. Most myths are based upon true events recorded in Scripture, but have been corrupted over time.

There is a God who created all things. There was a world-wide flood. There were fallen angels who caused problems on earth for a while.

The trouble is that these stories were passed down verbally. Generation to generation started to change them to suit their desires. Think about it like the “telephone game”, where the message changes even with only five people.

That’s not the case with the Bible. Moses received the truth from God Himself. Then, the ancient Jewish people preserved the writings meticulously. Not just word for word, but letter by letter.

Please forgive me for bragging a little…but as a matter of fact, in one of my courses I had to write a paper. In that paper I proved that the flood account in the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh was a corruption of the experience of Noah’s flood in the Bible. That non-Christian, secular, professor gave me an A for my work.

2. Christianity is a world religion unlike any other…in the best possible way.

Another thing that I found in studying mythology and world religions is that Christianity is unique – in a class all by itself. All other religions are man-centric. They’re all about me trying to be good enough.

If I can just summon up enough will-power or self-control, I can qualify for paradise, enlightenment, Nirvana, or any of a multitude other goals. Christianity cuts through all of that and makes one thing abundantly clear…

As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”

Romans 3:10-12 NIV

I cannot do anything that would give me right standing before God. I am absolutely powerless to achieve entry into Heaven. That’s the bad news of the Bible. But there is some really Good News.

God took it upon Himself to do the work that we had no ability to accomplish. He reached down through Christ and opened up the way to eternal life.

…if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

Romans 10:9b-11 NIV

The teaching of Christianity is that the way to eternal life is simply believing in the work that Christ has done and confessing Jesus as Lord. No struggling. No crawling. No endless reincarnations. By faith in Christ we’re saved and have the gift of eternal life.

If you haven’t yet done so, trust in Jesus Christ today as your Lord and Savior.

Question: If you have trusted in Christ, how has it changed your life?

© 2025 Nick Zaccardi

With this article, I’m starting a series about why some people have stopped following Christ. In our generation there’s a growing number of people who have become turned off by modern Christianity. They’re either leaving the church or turning away from Christ altogether.

I believe that this is a serious matter. So I’m taking a couple of posts to deal with these issues. The first subject I want to tackle is about hell.

I read an article where a former Christian talked about what he heard preached in his church. It was taught that everyone, everywhere, who was not a Christian was going to hell.

This included native peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Americas before the Gospel ever reached their regions. The person being interviewed said that he couldn’t believe in a God who would sentence someone to hell purely based upon where they were born.

First, let me start by saying that if someone is presented with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then they must respond. Scripturally, those who reject or ignore this Gospel are destined for hell. That is the absolute teaching of the Bible.

However, this brings me to a very misunderstood truth in Scripture. Jesus laid the foundation for it while teaching His disciples.

I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.

John 10:16 NIV

Many teachers have a hard time with this verse. Is Jesus talking about Gentiles or another group? He was obviously talking about people who were not a part of the group who were following His teaching. I believe that the Apostle Paul can help us to understand this.

For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.

(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) This will take place on the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.

Romans 2:13-16 NIV

Do you see what Paul is saying here? Hearing is NOT a prerequisite for being declared righteous. There are some circumstances where a person’s conscience will defend them at the Judgment Day.

That’s something you don’t hear taught very often. There is a case where someone could be saved by the good works that they’ve done.

Actually, Jesus Himself taught this in very clear terms. Look at what the Lord told His disciples concerning the Judgment.

“All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”

Matthew 25:32 NIV

Christ is not talking about believers in this parable. Our judgment takes place at a different time (Revelation, chapter 20). He is clearly talking about the nations at His return.

Yet in this parable, some are allowed into the Kingdom. Why is that?

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’”

Matthew 25:34-36 NIV

These are people who, according to Paul’s teaching in Romans, followed the law of God written in their hearts. Again, I have to remind you that this is a special case. It should become clear in the next few verses.

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’”

Matthew 25:37-40 NIV

Their answer shows that they don’t even know who Christ is. Yet, even though they didn’t know the Lord or His law, they were saved and given entrance into His kingdom.

I believe this applies only to those people groups who have never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God is just. He will only judge us according to our level of understanding.

This Good News of Christ needs to be preached so that all people can experience the riches of His grace in their lives right now.

Question: How important to you is the spreading of the Gospel of Christ?

© 2025 Nick Zaccardi

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 NIV

If you’ve been following this blog, then you know that I took some time off to care for my mom. Her health was declining along with progressing dementia.

I want to thank all of you who were praying for my wife and I during this difficult season in our lives. It made a real difference.

My mother passed into the presence of the Lord in May. Then, my family and I took a long-needed vacation. Now that I’m back, I feel an increased desire to minister the truth of God’s Word.

As I start writing again, there’s an important issue that God has placed on my heart. While I was taking the time off, I read an article about some people who recently left the faith and why they did so.

I’m going to post a couple of articles dealing with this subject. There seems to be an epidemic right now of those who are turning away from Christ. It’s a serious issue and I want to treat it as such.

I believe that many of the reasons can be explained by the modern foolishness that goes on in some of our churches. We need to once again make Christ the center of our focus.

That’s one of the things I’ll be dealing in some of these posts. I hope that you’ll continue to join with me in this journey.

© 2025 Nick Zaccardi