This is the Baimal Podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today,

we journey through a tiny letter from Paul with a big message to Philemon, enjoying Paul's

lighthearted encouragement to live as Jesus would have us live.

Yes, our journey through the New Testament brings us to the last of what is traditionally

considered Paul's letters. Paul writes a short little letter here to Philemon, about

a runaway slave named Onesimus. This short often underappreciated, how many sermons you

heard on Philemon, Brent? Probably more than average, I think. Oh, yeah. I think a couple.

Oh, wow. Nice. But work. That's how we roll into our circles, I guess. Yeah. This is often

an underappreciated letter. And has actually become one of my favorite letters in the New

Testament. It really helps us fill in some gaps in history. It's neat to read on, it's

kind of such a personal correspondence. I know we talk about this in our turkey trips.

We'll wear a colossi, which we already talked about with the book of Colossians, obviously.

But it's fun that you stand on this unexcavated tell, if you remember, and you read so much

biblical content about characters that lived in Worth Bayer at Colossi. So that's pretty

cool. So for a few things I love to unpack, let's start with unpacking. Let's talk about

citizenship, like Roman citizenship, because we know who happens to be a Roman citizen

relevant to this conversation. Brent Paul, Paul, which I think we take that for granted

because of our American context of citizenship. It is not easy to be a Roman citizen.

There are essentially three ways you can become a Roman citizen. You are, you are either

born a Roman citizen, which is not as simple as just being born geographically in the Roman

empire. Like if you're born in the United States, you're, you're an American citizen.

That's not how it works in the ancient Roman empire. And that empire, you actually had

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