Philemon 1:1-21 2025 Commentary

Jesus’ friends sometimes define ourselves by our relationships to other people. We naturally think of ourselves primarily as parents, children, spouses, friends, employers, employees or students. But this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson at least tacitly invites preachers to help our hearers to consider other relationships by which we ought to define ourselves.

The Paul who writes about most relationships at one time or another is in the center of Rome’s powerful empire as he pens our text. The apostle who’s in mighty Rome, however, is hardly a mighty figure. He is, after all, a “prisoner [desmios*] of Jesus” (1). By that he seems to mean that it’s not just the Holy Spirit who has captured Paul’s heart. Rome has also captured his person for boldly proclaiming the grace and peace God has shown him.

Yet in his captivity, another kind of prisoner, apparently through the Christian grapevine, connected with Paul who’s probably under house arrest. Onesimus somehow found and sought shelter with the imprisoned apostle. However, he was a runaway slave whom his contemporaries considered an escaped prisoner of sorts.

Israelite laws regarding slaves were slightly more enlightened than their contemporaries’. God expected God’s Jewish people, after all, to both release Jewish slaves after six years of service and give them food and flocks. God’s law even forbade the forced return of Israelite runaway slaves.

So the refusal of the Paul who wrote that there is “neither slave nor free” to scold Philemon for owning a slave may startle us. His friend wasn’t just, after all, what the apostle calls in verse 1 a “friend [agapeto] and fellow worker [synergo]” in Christ Jesus. Philemon was also a leader of one of Colossae’s house churches. So it’s hard for us to imagine why he’d practice the appallingly unjust institution of slavery. To us it might be a bit like a 21^st century church leader having more than one spouse.

Of course, while it’s hard for most of us to imagine how anyone could own slaves, the institution of slavery seems to be still alive and well. Fair trade advocates tell us that it’s almost impossible to buy chocolate that forced labor hasn’t tainted. Boys and young men continue to slave away in places like diamond mines and carpet factories. On this weekend on which many Americans celebrate work by taking a day off, preachers remind our hearers that any form of slavery makes the Lord weep and seethe with sadness and anger.

Yet verse 12 reports God’s servant Paul sends Philemon’s escaped slave, Onesimus, back to him. Preachers can admit that seems a bit like one of us sending a young Thai girl back into sexual slavery. Of course, in verse 18 Paul implies that Onesimus has somehow done his master “wrong” [edikesen]. After all, the slave whose name means “useful” had somehow become “useless” [achreston] to Philemon (11).

Some scholars speculate that Onesimus asked Paul for mediation between Philemon and him. The runaway slave, however, got far more than he asked for. Onesimus also received God’s grace with his faith in Jesus Christ, a possibility it seems his former master had apparently never even considered. The God, who loves to use people whom others consider useless then made Onesimus what verse 11 literally calls “useful” [euchreston] to Paul. God equipped the former slave to help the apostle.

Paul, however, believes he must now return Onesimus to his master, even though he’d prefer to keep him with him in Rome. But Onesimus’ return would create an awkward relationship between the former slave and master. Earlier, after all, Philemon seems to have strictly related to Onesimus as a “slave” [doulon] (16). Now, however, God has made the slave his former master’s “dear brother [adelphon agapeton]” in the Lord.

So in his letter to him Paul summons his brother in Christ Philemon to relate to Onesimus in a way that’s a bit like relating to an employee who has embezzled money not just as a worker, but also as a new Christian. This would almost certainly change the dynamics between even the most just employer and her employee.

However, Paul shows that he also recognizes that far more is new about this relationship between Philemon and Onesimus. The former master and slave are now both servants (literally “slaves”) of the same master, the Lord Jesus Christ. The person who was once enslaved and the person who’d enslaved him are now adopted members of the same family.

What’s more, Philemon and Onesimus now also have a similar relationship with Paul. Verse 19, after all, suggests that the Holy Spirit somehow used the apostle to bring Philemon to Christ. So both the former slave and master are now, in a sense, Paul’s spiritual “sons.”

Yet Paul and Philemon are more than spiritual father and son. The apostle also calls the Colossian church leader “a fellow worker” and “partner” [koinonon] in spreading the gospel. In other words, Paul suggests in verse 13 that Onesimus and Philemon have now also become partners in the work of the gospel.

We’re not sure whether Paul is asking Philemon to release Onesimus from slavery. The apostle, after all, simply begs his friend to take Onesimus back as if he were Paul himself. Paul begs him, in other words, to receive his slave not with punishment, but with welcome, not with a closed fist, but with an open hand.

Yet that means that Philemon may have to choose between being Onesimus’ master and being his Christian brother. If, after all, he chooses to keep him as a slave, he may negatively impact his relationship with not just with Onesimus, but also with Paul. However, Philemon may also endanger his relationship with both the church he leads and his God.

After all, even Paul himself, writing in I Corinthians 7:21, suggests that freedom from slavery is a good thing. There he writes, “Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you – although if you can, gain your freedom.” The apostle whom the Lord himself called and sent certainly has the authority to command Philemon to do free Onesimus from slavery. Yet instead of demanding that Philemon obey, Paul points to his own self-sacrifice as being a prisoner for the gospel and returning Onesimus to Philemon. He basically begs his friend to imitate him in giving something up for the gospel’s sake.

In doing so Paul repeatedly refers to Philemon’s Christlikeness. The apostle finds a way to compliment his friend, even as he tries to correct his behavior. So Paul doesn’t tear down Philemon, as he might deserve for owning slaves. Instead the apostle appeals to his friend’s sanctification and the advancement of God’s kingdom.

Preachers might note how Paul includes self-sacrifice in the Spirit’s ongoing work of transforming God’s people. In that he can appeal to our Lord himself who’s a wonderful model of self-sacrifice. God, after all, has the power and authority to demand our obedience. Yet the Lord approaches us chiefly through the weakness of Jesus Christ.

What’s more, God’s Son willingly sacrificed his divine power to become our servant. Jesus even displayed God’s glory most clearly through the weak ugliness of the cross. While we were still actively rebelling against God’s authority, Christ died for us. So God is not a cosmic bully who demands our obedience to divine commands. No, God risks unconditional love, grace, in perfect freedom, knowing that we may not return it. God leaves God’s dearly beloved people as free as Philemon to refuse to do what we ought to do for Christ.

One of those things God equips Christians to do is to view our fellow Christians in new ways. Of course, right from the start the whole Bible shows us how to view all people in a different way than we naturally do. Before virtually anything else, after all, Genesis insists God creates people in God’s image. So even people who aren’t Christians still somehow resemble, sometimes blurrily, the God who somehow created each of us.

Hostility, even among some Christians, toward Muslims seems to be growing in the West. This week’s American anniversary of 9/11 may serve to only ratchet up that anger. But God doesn’t let Jesus’ friends treat Muslims, Jewish people or anyone else the way we might choose to treat them. God graciously summons us to treat everyone as fellow image-bearers of God, whether they realize it or not.

Preachers might choose to let the Spirit help us explore how this impacts various other relationships as well. It certainly affects the way labor and management view each other in the workplace. God’s transforming work also impacts the way people who are materially comfortable and view people who are materially poor.

No friend of Jesus is just a spouse, parent, child, employer, employee, neighbor, co-worker or friend. God’s grace has, after all, transformed our Christian family members, friends and neighbors into our dear Christian brothers and sisters. So God’s adopted children let ourselves die daily to the world’s perspective on people and things and rise to God’s perspective on all created things.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

Labels like “slave,” “master,” “immigrant,” “Muslim,” or “Jew” matter. They can, after all, have an outsized impact on the way we treat those to whom we attach those similar labels. In his book, Hitler’s People, Richard Evans examines the impact Nazis’ labels had on the ways they treated what they called “undesirables.”

“By denying the humanity of the Jews from the beginning, by forcing them out of society and reducing to a minimum their contact with the non-Jewish majority in Germany, the Third Reich opened the door to treating them as what Hitler repeatedly said they were: ‘vermin,’ ‘lice,’ or ‘bacilli’.”