Philemon::Context, Context, Context

One of my favorite quotes (I heard it from Ben Witherington III, but it may have originated elsewhere) is; "A text without a context is a pretext for making it say whatever you want."

 

That is sooooo good. We do a deep dive in this message of the cultural and historical context of the letter to Philemon because without it we are powerless to contextualize to our present day. We need to dive deep into back then so we can make these words sink deep into today.