Introduction to Philemon (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Introduction to Philemon

• Philemon 
• 1 Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother: To Philemon our dear friend and coworker, 2 to Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church that meets in your home. 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4 I always thank my God when I mention you in my prayers, 5 because I hear of your love for all the saints and the faith that you have in the Lord Jesus. 6 I pray that your participation in the faith may become effective through knowing every good thing that is in us for the glory of Christ. 7 For I have great joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother. 8 For this reason, although I have great boldness in Christ to command you to do what is right, 9 I appeal to you, instead, on the basis of love. I, Paul, as an elderly man and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus, 10 appeal to you for my son, Onesimus. I became his father while I was in chains. 11 Once he was useless to you, but now he is useful both to you and to me. 12 I am sending him back to you—I am sending my very own heart. 13 I wanted to keep him with me, so that in my imprisonment for the gospel he might serve me in your place. 14 But I didn’t want to do anything without your consent, so that your good deed might not be out of obligation, but of your own free will. 15 For perhaps this is why he was separated from you for a brief time, so that you might get him back permanently, 16 no longer as a slave, but more than a slave—as a dearly loved brother. He is especially so to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. 17 So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would me. 18 And if he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. 19 I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it—not to mention to you that you owe me even your very self. 20 Yes, brother, may I benefit from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ. 21 Since I am confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say. 22 Meanwhile, also prepare a guest room for me, since I hope that through your prayers I will be restored to you. 23 Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends you greetings, and so do 24 Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my coworkers. 25 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
• The Unique Letter
  • In one respect, this little letter to Philemon is unique. It is the only private letter of Paul which we possess. Doubtless Paul must have written many private letters; but, of them all, only Philemon has survived. Quite apart from the grace and the charm which pervade it, this fact gives it a special significance
• Onesimus, the Runaway Slave
  • There are two possible reconstructions of what happened
  • One is quite straightforward; the other is rather more complicated and certainly more dramatic. Let’s look at the simple view first
• The Simple view
  • Onesimus was a runaway slave and very probably a thief, “If he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge it to my account” Paul writes in 18-19. Somehow the runaway had found his way to Rome, to lose himself in the crowded and busy streets of the city; somehow he had come into contact with Paul, and somehow he had become a Christian, the child to whom Paul had become a father during his imprisonment
    • The something happened. It was obviously impossible for Paul to go on harboring a runaway slave, and something brought the problem to a head
    • Perhaps it was the coming of Epaphras. It may be that Epaphras recognized Onesimus as a slave he had seen at Colossi, and at that point the whole story came out; or it may be that, with the coming of Epaphras, Onesimus’ conscience moved him to make a clean break of all his discreditable past
  • Paul sends Onesimus Back
    • In the time that he had been with him, Onesimus had mad himself very nearly indispensable to Paul; and Paul would have liked to keep him with him. “13 I wanted to keep him with me, so that in my imprisonment for the gospel he might serve me in your place.” But he will do nothing with the consent of Philemon, Onesimus’ master. So he sends Onesimus back
    • No one knew better than Paul how great a risk he was taking. A slave was not a person but a living tool. A master had absolute power over his slaves
    • “He can box their ears or condemn them to hard labor—making them, for instance, work in chains upon his lands in the country, or in a sort of prison-factory. Or he may punish them with blows of the rod, the lash, or the knot; he can brand them upon the forehead, if they are this or runaways, or if they prove irreclaimable, he can crucify them.”
    • The Roman lawyer and satirist Juvenal draws the picture of the mistress who will beat her maid servant at her whim and of the master who delights in the sound of a cruel flogging, deeming it sweeter than any siren’s song, who is never happy until he has summoned a torturer and he can brand someone with a hot iron for stealing a couple of towels, who revels in clanking chains
    • Slaves were continually at the mercy of the whims of a master or a mistress
    • What made it worse was that the sales were deliberately repressed. There were 60,000,000 slaves in the Roman Empire, and the danger of revolt was constantly to be guarded against. A rebellious slave was promptly eliminated. And if a slave ran away, at best he would be branded with a. Red-hot iron on the forehead, with the letter F—standing for fugitivus, runaway—and at the worst he would be put to death by crucifixion. Paul was well aware of all this and that slavery was so ingrained into the ancient world that even to send Onesimus back to the Christian Philemon was a considerable risk
  • Paul’s Appeal
    • So Paul gave Onesimus this letter. He makes a pun on his name. Onesimus in Greek literally means profitable. Once Onesimus was a useless fellow, but now he is useful. Now he is not only Onesimus by name, but also by nature
    • Maybe Philemon lost him for a time in order to have him forever. He must take him back, not as a slave but as a Christian brother. He is now Paul’s son in the faith, and Philemon must receive him as he would receive Paul himself
  • Emancipation
    • Such was Paul’s appeal. Many people have wondered why Paul says nothing in this letter about the whole matter of slavery. He does not condemn it; he does not even tell Philemon to set Onesimus free; it is still as a slave that he would have him taken back
    • There are those who have criticized Paul for not seizing the opportunity to condemn the slavery on which the ancient world was built. The NT scholar J. B. Lightfoot says: “The word emancipation seems to tremble on his lip, but he never utters it.” But there are reasons for his silence
      • Slavery was an integral part of the ancient world; the whole of society was built on it. Aristotle held that it was in the nature of things that certain men should be slaves to serve the higher classes. It may well be that Paul accepted the institution of slavery because it was almost impossible to imagine society without it
      • Further, if Christianity had given the slaves any encouragement to revolt or to leave their masters, nothing but tragedy could have followed. Any such revolt would have been savagely crushed; slaves who took their freedom would have been mercilessly punished; and Christianity would itself been branded as revolutionary and subversive. Given the Christian faith, liberation was bound to come—but the time was not ripe; and to have encouraged slaves to hope for it and seize it would have done infinitely more harm than good
      • There are some things which cannot be achieved suddenly, and for which the world must wait, until the leaven works
  • The New Relationship
    • What Christianity did was to introduce a new relationship between individuals in which all external differences were abolished. Christians are one body whether Jews or Gentiles, slaves or free. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female. In Christ there is neither Greek no Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free
    • It was as a slave that Onesimus ran away, and it was as a slave that he was coming back; but now he was not only a slave, he was a beloved brother in the Lord. When a relationship like that enters into life, social grades and classes cease to matter
    • The very names of master and slave become irrelevant. If masters treat slaves as Christ would have treated them, and slaves serve the masters as they would serve Christ, then the terms master and slave do not matter; their relationship does no depend on any human classification, for they are both in Christ
    • In the early days, Christianity did not attack slavery; to have done so would have been disastrous. But it introduced a new relationship in which the human divisions in society ceased to matter
    • It is to be noted that this new relationship never gave slaves the right to take advantage of it; rather it made them better slaves and more efficient servants, for now they had to do things in such a way that they could offer them to Christ
    • Nor did it mean that the master must be soft and easy-going, willing to accept bad work and inferior service; but it did mean that he no longer treated any servant as a thing, but as a person and a brother or sister in Christ
    • There are two passage in which Paul sets out the duties of slaves and masters—Ephesians 6:5-9 and Colossians 3:22-4:1. Both were written when Paul was in prison in Rome, and most likely when Onesimus was with him; and it is difficult not to think that they owe much to long talks that Paul had with the runaway slave who had become a Christian
    • On this view, Philemon is a private letter, sent by Paul to Philemon, when he sent back his runaway slave; and it was written to urge Philemon to receive Onesimus, not as a master who was not a Christian would, but as a Christian receives a brother
• The Other View of this Letter
  • We may begin with a consideration of the place of Archippus. He appears in both Colossians and Philemon. In Philemon, greetings are sent to Archippus, our fellow soldier; and such a description might well mean that Archippus is the minister of the Christian community in question
  • He is also mentioned in Colossians 4:17; “And tell Archippus, ‘Pay attention to the ministry you have received in the Lord, so that you can accomplish it.’”
  • Now that instruction comes after a whole series of very definite references, not to Colossi, but to Laodicea. might not the fact that he appears among the messages sent to Laodicea imply that Archippus must be at Laodicea too? Why in any even should he get this personal message? If he was at Colossi, he would hear the letter read, as everyone else would. Why has this verbal order to be sent to him? It was surely possible that the answer is that he is not in Colossi at all, but in Laodicea
  • If that is so, it means that Philemon’s house is in Laodicea and that Onesimus was a runaway Laodicean slave. This must mean that the letter to Philemon was, in fact, written to Laodicea. And, if so, the missing letter to Laodicea mentioned in Colossians 4:16 is none other than the letter to Philemon
  • Let us remember that in ancient society, with its view of slavery, Paul took a considerable risk in sending Onesimus back at all. So it can be argued that Philemon is not really only a personal letter. It is indeed written to Philemon and to the church in his house
  • Furthermore, it has also to be read at Colossi. What is Paul doing? Knowing the risk that he takes in sending Onesimus back, he is mobilizing church opinion both in Laodicea and Colossi in his favor. The decision about Onesimus is not to be left to Philemon; it is to be the decision of the whole Christian community
  • It so happens that there is one little, but important, linguistic point, which is very much in favor of this view. In verse 12 Paul writes that he is sending him back. The verb is the regular verb—more common in this sense than in any other—for officially referring a case to someone for decision. Verse 12 should most probably be translated; “I am referring his case to you’—that is, not only to Philemon but also to the church in his home
  • There is a lot to be said for this view. There is only one difficulty. In Colossians 4:9, Onesimus is referred to as one of you, which certainly looks as if he is a Colossian. But E. J. Goodspeed, who states this view with such scholarship and persuasiveness, argues that Hierapolis, Laodicea, and Colossi were so close together, and so much a single church, that they could well be regarded as one community, and that, on of you need not mean that Onesimus came from Colossi, but simply that he came from that closely connected group. If we are prepared to accept this, the last obstacle to the theory is removed
• The Continuation of the Story
  • Goodspeed does not stop there. He goes on to reconstruct the history of Onesimus in a most moving way
    • 13-14, Paul makes it quite clear that he would very much have liked to keep Onesimus with him. He reminds Philemon that he owes him his very soul. Is it possible that Philemon could have resisted this appeal? Spoken to in such a way, could he do anything other than send Onesimus back to Paul with his blessing. Goodspeed regards it as certain that Paul got Onesimus back and that he became Paul’s helper in the work of the gospel
• The Bishop of Ephesus
  • Let us move on about fifty years. Ignatius, one of the great Christian martyrs, is being taken to execution from Antioch to Rome. As he goes, he writes letters—which still survive—to the churches of Asia Minor. He stops at Smyrna and writes to the church at Ephesus, and in the first chapter of that letter he has much to say about their wonderful bishop. And what is the bishop’s name? Onesimus; and Ignatius makes exactly the same pun as Paul made—he is Onesimus by name and by nature, the one who is profitable to Christ. It may well be that, with the passing years, the runaway slave had become the great Bishop of Ephesus
• What Christ did for Me
  • If all this is true, we has still another explanation. Why did this little slip of a letter, this single papyrus sheet, survive; and how did it ever get itself into the collection of Pauline letters? It deals with no great doctrine; it attacks no great heresy; it is the only one of the letters universally accepted as having been written by Paul that is addressed to an individual
  • It is practically certain that the first collection of Paul’s letters was made at Ephesus, about the turn of the century. It was just then that Onesimus was Bishop of Ephesus; and it may well be that it was he who insisted that this letter be included in the collection, short and personal as it was, in order that all might know what the grace of God had done for him
  • Through it, the bishop tells the world that once he was a runaway slave and that he owed his life to Paul and to Jesus
  • Did Onesimus come back to Paul with Philemon’s blessing? Did the young man who had been the runaway slave become the great Bishop of Ephesus? Did he insist that this little letter be included in the Pauline collection to tell what Christ, through Paul, had done for him? We can never tell for certain; but it is a lovely story of God’s grace in Christ—and we hope that it’s true!