This is the shortest and most personal of all Paul's letters. Also, there is good reason to think that he wrote it not long after arriving in Rome at the end of Acts. Thus, both as a continuation of Acts and for the sake of variety, we are going from the long book of Acts to the short book of Philemon. Today we are going to look at the letter as a whole, with particular emphasis on its main point, which is this: The gospel has consequences for everyday life. One of the biggest of those consequences is that you need to welcome your fellow Christian as if he were the apostle Paul — and really, though Paul doesn't say this explicitly, as if he were Jesus. In other words, the question is not "What would Jesus do?" but "What would I do for Jesus?"
