No Longer as a Slave

For perhaps it was for this reason that he was separated from you for a little while, so that you would have him back eternally, no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, as a dear brother. He is especially so to me, and even more so to you now, both humanly speaking and in the Lord. Therefore if you regard me as a partner, accept him as you would me.
Philemon 15–17 (NET)

Read Philemon 15–17 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

Perhaps This Is Why

Three verses lie before us. They are the heart of the letter. Everything Paul has done in the greeting and the thanksgiving and the appeal has been preparation for what these verses contain. We will read them slowly.

The opening word of verse fifteen is the small word perhaps, τάχα. For perhaps it was for this reason that he was separated from you for a little while, so that you would have him back eternally. The hedge is striking. Paul does not say this is certainly why or God has revealed to me that. He says perhaps. He ventures an interpretation of providence and immediately tempers it. Perhaps this is what God was doing. Perhaps Philemon’s loss of Onesimus, however painful it was at the time, was part of a divine arrangement that would yield something better than what was lost.

The hedge is theologically important. Paul, the apostle, claims a great deal of authority elsewhere in his letters: the authority to teach, to correct, to command. He does not claim, in this verse, the authority to read God’s secret counsels with certainty. He offers a tentative reading. Perhaps. This is the disposition Christians ought to have when they look at the providence of God in their own lives. We may perhaps discern what God was doing in this or that hard event. We do not, in our reading, attain certainty. We confess, with appropriate humility, what we perhaps see; we do not pretend to read the mind of God on matters He has not directly revealed.

Confessional Lutherans have a long memory on this point. The hidden God (Deus absconditus) works in ways that often look, in the present moment, like the opposite of what the gospel promises. Luther insisted that we know God savingly only in the revealed God of Word and Sacrament, in Christ crucified and risen. The hidden workings of providence are not denied; they are real; but they are not the place from which the Christian draws his certainty. The Christian draws his certainty from the gospel that has been declared. About the hidden workings he says, with Paul, perhaps.

The verb in the next clause carries its own weight. He was separated from you, ἐχωρίσθη, passive voice. Paul does not say he ran away from you. The active verb, the one that would have placed the responsibility squarely on Onesimus, would have been ἀπέδρα or ἔφυγεν, “he fled.” Paul does not use it. He uses the passive: he was separated. The passive voice in Greek often carries a divine sense, the divine passive, as it is sometimes called, by which the agent of the action is left unnamed, with God understood as the unnamed agent behind the event. Here it is a possible divine passive, not a certain one. Paul may simply have chosen the passive for diplomacy, so as not to open this part of his appeal with an accusation.

Onesimus did flee. He did run away. He may have stolen before he ran. Paul is not pretending otherwise. But the framing of verse fifteen does not foreground Onesimus’s guilt. It foregrounds, instead, the divine possibility that what looked like a man’s wrongdoing was also, in a way the man could not have seen, overruled by the providence of God for a greater good. Perhaps this is why. Perhaps Philemon’s loss was the gospel’s gain. Perhaps the painful separation of months or years was the necessary occasion for the eternal reunion that the gospel makes possible.

We must say carefully what this does and does not mean. Paul’s passive may soften Onesimus’s responsibility and may hint at providence, but it does not make God the author or approver of Onesimus’s wrongdoing. God creates and preserves all things, but the cause of sin is the will of the devil and of ungodly people turning away from God (AC XIX). As Joseph could tell his brothers in Genesis 50:20, God can permit and overrule human sin for a good outcome without Himself causing the sin.

For a While, Forever

The verse closes with a striking contrast: so that you would have him back eternally. The Greek behind for a little while is πρὸς ὥραν: “for an hour,” “for a season.” The Greek behind eternally is αἰώνιον: “eternal,” “of the age to come.” Paul has set the two together as a deliberate opposition. The temporary against the eternal. The hour against the age.

Philemon’s separation from Onesimus, however long it had felt at the time, was, in the perspective Paul is now offering, πρὸς ὥραν, for an hour. A brief season in the long unfolding of God’s purposes. The reunion Paul is now inviting Philemon to make possible is, by contrast, αἰώνιον. Not just for the years they may yet have together in this life. Forever. The eternal life that the gospel gives to those who are in Christ is the life Onesimus now shares with Philemon. They will be together in the new creation. They will be together in the resurrection. They will be together at the marriage supper of the Lamb. The brotherhood that Paul is asking Philemon to acknowledge is a brotherhood that has no end.

This is a quiet but important reorientation of how Philemon is being asked to think about the present moment. The question is not only what to do about a slave who has come home. It is also what to do about a relationship that will outlast time. Onesimus, in Christ, is Philemon’s brother for the age to come. The way Philemon receives him in this temporary life will be the first chapter of a story that will continue without end. Perhaps, Paul ventures, perhaps the loss for a while was the cost of the gain forever. Perhaps the brief season of separation was the necessary path to the eternal brotherhood Christ has made possible.

The temporal contrast also belongs to the larger logic of the gospel as Lutheran theology has understood it. The Christian life is lived in the tension between now and not yet. We are justified now, in the present life, by faith in Christ; we will be glorified then, in the age to come, when faith gives way to sight. The brotherhood Philemon is being asked to recognize is the brotherhood of the age to come breaking into the present. The eternal life of the saints is being lived, in advance, in the relations among Christians here and now. To receive Onesimus as a brother is to live, in this temporary moment, what will be true of all who are in Christ forever.

Verse sixteen contains what may be the most carefully constructed sentence in the entire letter. We will need to take it phrase by phrase, because the sentence is doing more than appears at first glance.

The first phrase: no longer as a slave. The Greek is οὐκέτι ὡς δοῦλον. Three words deserve attention.

Οὐκέτι, no longer. The temporal adverb sets the past against the present. There was a time when Onesimus was to Philemon as a slave was to a master. That time is past. Onesimus has come back; the gospel has worked in him; he is to be received now in a way he was not to be received before. The adverb opens a new chapter in the relationship.

Ὡς, as. The little comparative particle is doing a great deal of work. Paul does not say not a slave. He says not as a slave. The legal category may persist; Onesimus’s civil status under Roman law may not be immediately altered by his conversion. What is being denied is not the legal category but the relational mode. He is no longer to be related to as a slave. The relation between Philemon and Onesimus is no longer in the mode of master and slave.

Δοῦλον, slave. The NET says it bluntly, and rightly. Translations vary in their handling: some modern versions prefer bondservant; older English used servant; but the New Testament’s Greek meant slave, with the full set of meanings that the word carried in the Greco-Roman world. Onesimus was a slave. The category named by δοῦλος was the category he had occupied. Paul is not denying that he had occupied it. He is naming the change in how he must now be received.

It is worth pausing here for an honest word about what Paul does and does not say in this letter, because much depends on getting it right.

Paul does not, in Philemon, call for the abolition of slavery as a social institution. He does not say to Philemon, manumit Onesimus and free him under Roman law. He does not say to the church gathered in Philemon’s house, masters, free your slaves; the gospel forbids you to own them. He does not say to Onesimus, you have been freed by Christ; you owe Philemon nothing. None of these things appears on the page. We must be honest about this. The letter does not contain a manifesto against the institution of slavery.

Neither, however, does it contain an endorsement of the institution. Paul does not tell Philemon, receive your slave back and exercise your full property rights over him. He does not say, the institution of slavery is an ordinance of God, and Onesimus must be returned to it without alteration. He does not say to slaves anywhere, be content in your bondage; it is the will of God. None of these things appears on the page either.

What Paul does is more careful and, in the long run, more revolutionary than either of the modern projections that have been pressed onto the letter. He reframes the categories. He says: no longer as a slave. The legal status, in the left-hand kingdom of social and civil structures, may continue for now. The gospel, in the right-hand kingdom of the saints’ communion in Christ, has installed a deeper category that relativizes the first one. Onesimus is, in the deepest sense, no longer Philemon’s slave. He is Philemon’s brother. The civil category remains in operation; the gospel category has overridden it as the basis of the relationship.

A confessional Lutheran reader will recognize this immediately as the structure of the two kingdoms. God governs the world in two distinct ways: through the left hand of providence, which orders the civil and social structures of human life, and through the right hand of the gospel, which calls the church into being through Word and Sacrament. The two kingdoms are not the same. They have different aims, different means, different scopes. But they belong to the same God, and the gospel-kingdom, though it does not abolish the civil-kingdom, does claim the deeper allegiance of the Christian conscience. Philemon is a citizen of both kingdoms. By his place in civil society as a householder, he stands in the left-hand kingdom. By his faith in Christ, he stands in the right-hand kingdom. When the two kingdoms speak in different registers about Onesimus, the gospel-kingdom is the one that names what Onesimus most deeply is.

Nor does the left-hand kingdom counsel passivity. The Augsburg Confession approves lawful civil ordinances and Christian participation in civil life, while insisting that we must obey God rather than men when commanded to sin (AC XVI). Two-kingdoms teaching is not social quietism. Concrete civil justice, including the freeing of a slave or the reform of unjust laws, is itself left-hand work that God blesses.

The history of the Christian church’s engagement with slavery is long and not uniformly honorable. Christians have sometimes manumitted their slaves at conversion; many have not. The early church included both slaves and masters; the medieval church both tolerated and resisted various forms of bondage; the early modern church both defended and opposed the Atlantic slave trade. Lutherans in the American 19th century did not speak with one voice on the matter. The letter to Philemon was cited by abolitionists who heard its deep logic and by defenders of the institution who heard only that Paul sent the slave home. Both, in different ways, missed what Paul is doing on this page. The letter does not abolish the institution; the letter does not endorse it; the letter relativizes it by installing a category that, when fully heard, makes the institution morally untenable wherever Christian masters and Christian slaves stand within it. The deeper logic worked itself out over centuries. We are still, in many ways, working it out.

For our purposes, the point to carry forward is what Paul actually says. No longer as a slave. The category may persist in the left-hand kingdom; the gospel has installed a deeper category in the right-hand kingdom; that deeper category is the one Philemon must use to receive Onesimus when he comes home.

A Beloved Brother

What is the deeper category? Paul names it next: but more than a slave, as a dear brother. Ὑπὲρ δοῦλον, ἀδελφὸν ἀγαπητόν. Beyond a slave. A beloved brother.

The phrase beloved brother is the keyword the letter has been building toward. The word brother (ἀδελφός) appears four times in the letter, in verses 1, 7, 16, and 20, with sister once in verse 2; the kinship language frames the whole appeal. The word beloved (ἀγαπητός, the NET’s dear) we met in verse one, where Paul addressed Philemon himself as, literally, our beloved fellow worker. The same adjective. The two men who stand at opposite poles of the household structure, the master and the slave, are now named with the same adjective. Beloved in the gospel does not discriminate by social station. Philemon is beloved to Paul; Onesimus is beloved to Paul; the slave and the master are equally beloved in the household of the gospel.

The phrase beloved brother is the title at the heart of this volume. The full Pauline phrase brother in Christ does not appear verbatim in the letter, we noted this in the Preface, but the reality the phrase names is exactly the reality of verse sixteen. No longer as a slave, but more than a slave, as a dear brother. The man who came back to Philemon’s house in chains, by the laws of the empire still subject to that house, has been named by the apostle as a brother in Christ. The category that the gospel has installed.

We should sit with the phrase for a moment. Brotherhood, in the natural order of things, is the relation among men who share a father: biological brothers, sons of the same parents. The early Christians took the word and applied it to the relations among the baptized, who shared the same heavenly Father by adoption in Christ. The metaphor became something more than metaphor. By the rebirth of baptism, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, by the union with Christ that faith effects, Christians are bound to one another not by a sentimental fellowship but by the reality of shared sonship. Brother in Paul’s vocabulary is no rhetorical flourish. It is the precise theological name of a real relation.

The early church grasped this with a clarity later Christians sometimes lost. Frater, the Latin for brother, became the standard term of address among Christians for one another. Brother and sister in the early Christian communities crossed lines that the Greco-Roman world considered uncrossable: free and slave, Jew and Gentile, citizen and barbarian, rich and poor. The bond of Christian brotherhood was the bond that gathered the early house churches and held them together. Philemon’s household, by the time this letter is read aloud in it, is being addressed as a community of brothers and sisters in which Onesimus must now take his place.

There is a Lutheran reading of brotherhood that locates it firmly in the doctrine of the church. The communio sanctorum of the Creed names this. The communion of saints is the brotherhood of all those who have been made one by faith in Christ. The bond is not natural; it is supernatural. The bond is not sentiment; it is sacrament. The Christian master and the Christian slave are brothers in the communio sanctorum because they have been baptized into the same death and raised to the same new life. The brotherhood is real because the new life is real. Onesimus is Philemon’s brother in the most exact theological sense the New Testament knows.

In the Flesh and in the Lord

Paul completes verse sixteen with a phrase that requires our slow attention: He is especially so to me, and even more so to you now, both humanly speaking and in the Lord.

The first part of the phrase (especially so to me, and even more so to you) is a comparison. Onesimus is especially a beloved brother to Paul, because Paul fathered him by the preaching of the gospel. But Onesimus must be how much more a beloved brother to Philemon. Why? Because Philemon, unlike Paul, lives with him. Philemon, unlike Paul, is in the same household. Philemon’s daily relation with Onesimus is the relation that must now bear the weight of the new category. Paul has loved Onesimus from a distance, in chains, for a season. Philemon will love Onesimus up close, under one roof, for the rest of his life. How much more.

The second part of the phrase (both humanly speaking and in the Lord, literally both in the flesh and in the Lord) is the structural foundation Paul is laying down. Both: the two registers must be acknowledged together. In the flesh, ἐν σαρκί. In the Lord, ἐν Κυρίῳ. Two prepositional phrases, each beginning with ἐν, each naming a sphere within which the brotherhood operates.

In the flesh names the social and civil order of this present life. The household structure of master and slave is in the flesh. The legal categories of Roman law are in the flesh. The visible relations of social life (who owes whom, who serves whom, who lives in which part of the house) are in the flesh. Paul is not pretending that this register has ceased to exist. The flesh continues to operate. The household continues to have its structure. Roman law continues to define the legal relation between Philemon and Onesimus.

In the Lord names the gospel order. The communion of saints is in the Lord. The brotherhood of those who have been baptized into Christ is in the Lord. The relations of love that the Holy Spirit creates among believers are in the Lord. This register, too, operates in Philemon’s household. The church meets in his house. The Lord’s Supper would have been celebrated there. The Word of God is preached there. Philemon and Onesimus, when they return to one roof, will share both registers: both in the flesh and in the Lord.

Paul’s distinction between in the flesh and in the Lord is fruitfully illuminated by Luther’s later distinction between the two kingdoms, though the phrases should not be treated as exact equivalents. Paul is contrasting two registers of relationship, earthly and spiritual; he is not presenting the two-kingdoms doctrine in its developed form. But the insight is the same at root. The two are not opposed; they are distinguished. The gospel does not erase the flesh; it does not abolish the social structures of the world. But the gospel does install a deeper relation underneath the social structures, and the deeper relation reshapes how the social structures are inhabited.

Philemon and Onesimus, when they meet again, will meet in both registers. In the flesh, Philemon holds the legal claims that Roman law gives him over Onesimus’s labor and Onesimus’s body, claims no Christian conscience can simply take for granted. In the Lord, Philemon is the brother of a man for whom Christ died. The two registers cannot be collapsed into each other. The fleshly register cannot be allowed to override the gospel register, nor can the gospel register pretend that the fleshly register does not exist. The Christian master lives in both registers at once. He must conduct himself, in the flesh, in a way that does not contradict what he is, in the Lord.

The letter does not tell Philemon exactly how to manage this. It does not provide a legal formula. It does not say, manumit him on Tuesday and write the papers in the proper form. The letter leaves the working-out to Philemon, in the freedom of the inner man, in the new life he has been given by faith. But the letter is clear about the principle. The brother-in-the-Lord cannot be treated, in the flesh, as if he were not a brother. The deeper category must be allowed to shape the practical handling of the household.

This is also the place where Christian readers across the centuries have found the seed of much that grew later. Again and again, where the gospel has been taken seriously by Christian masters, slaves have been freed. Where the brotherhood of believers has been confessed as a deeper reality than the social structures of the world, those social structures have been called into question. The history is uneven. The history has often been shameful. But the seed has been here, in verse sixteen, the whole time. No longer as a slave, but more than a slave, as a dear brother … both humanly speaking and in the Lord. The gospel has put a category into the world that the social institutions of the world cannot, in the long run, accommodate without being changed.

Receive Him as You Would Receive Me

Verse seventeen is the climax of the letter. After seventeen verses of careful preparation, Paul finally names what he is asking. Therefore if you regard me as a partner, accept him as you would me.

The conditional clause (if you regard me as a partner) invokes a relation Philemon already accepts. The Greek word translated partner is κοινωνός. The reader will recognize it. We met its cognate in verse six: the sharing of your faith, ἡ κοινωνία τῆς πίστεως. The κοινωνία-language is back. Paul prayed in verse six that the κοινωνία of Philemon’s faith would become effective. He now names himself, in verse seventeen, as Philemon’s κοινωνός: his partner, his fellow in the κοινωνία of faith and gospel-ministry.

The conditional is not really conditional. It is a rhetorical device. Paul knows Philemon considers him a partner; the question is settled. The conditional form simply lets Paul deploy the relation as the basis for the request. Since you and I are partners in the fellowship of the gospel, that is the force of the if, receive Onesimus as you would receive me.

And then the climax: accept him as you would me. Προσλαβοῦ αὐτὸν ὡς ἐμέ. The verb προσλαμβάνω means to take to oneself, to receive into one’s company, to welcome. It is a strong verb. It implies more than a tolerant acknowledgment; it implies a genuine taking-in. Paul is asking Philemon to receive Onesimus as a member of the household, as a participant in the community, as one whose place at the table is not in question. As you would me. As you would welcome the apostle who brought you the gospel. As you would welcome your beloved father in Christ. Receive Onesimus that way.

The identification Paul made in verse twelve has now been fully deployed. Onesimus is Paul’s heart; Onesimus is Paul’s beloved brother; Onesimus is the one whose welcome is the welcome of the apostle himself. To receive Onesimus is to receive Paul. To refuse Onesimus is to refuse Paul. The apostle has bound his own honor and his own welcome to the welcome of a runaway slave. Philemon cannot now receive Paul without receiving Onesimus, and he cannot refuse Onesimus without refusing Paul.

This is, of course, an echo of something even larger. The Lord Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, said to His disciples: Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. The pattern is the same. The receiving of the lesser party is the receiving of the greater. Paul has put himself in the position of the one whose welcome flows through the welcome of another. The pattern is apostolic; the pattern is also, in a deeper sense, the pattern of Christ’s own identification with the least of His brothers. Just as you did it for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did it for me. The Lord’s identification with His disciples and Paul’s identification with Onesimus stand in the same logic.

For Philemon, sitting in his house in Colossae, listening to this letter read aloud in the gathered church, the moment of decision has arrived. The apostle has appealed; the apostle has named what he asks; the apostle has identified himself with the slave whose welcome is now in Philemon’s hands. The next move belongs to Philemon. He can receive Onesimus as he would receive Paul, or he can refuse him. The letter has been written so carefully that the choice is now sharply before him.

We are not told, in Scripture, what Philemon did. The letter ends. The story of the men in the letter does not. Later tradition has it that Onesimus went on to serve the church in significant ways. Ignatius of Antioch, writing early in the second century, names an Onesimus as bishop of Ephesus, perhaps the same man, perhaps not. We cannot be certain. What we can say is that the letter was preserved. The early church kept it and read it as Scripture. That preservation is consistent with the likelihood that Onesimus was received favorably, but it cannot by itself prove Philemon’s response; the letter would carry apostolic authority and theological weight even if Philemon had refused. We are not told how the story ended. We are told what the gospel asked, and it asks the same of us.

Gathering the Threads

Three verses. We have spent a chapter on them, and they have given us a great deal to carry forward.

First, Paul reads the providence of God with the appropriate humility. Perhaps this is why Onesimus was separated from Philemon. The Christian does not claim certainty about the hidden workings of God; he ventures, in faith, a tentative reading of what perhaps God has been doing.

Second, the temporary loss has yielded an eternal gain. For a while against forever. The separation of an hour has prepared for the brotherhood of the age to come. The Christian life is lived in the tension between now and not yet, and the receiving of Onesimus as a brother is the eternal age breaking into the present.

Third, Paul does not abolish the institution of slavery, and Paul does not endorse it. He reframes the categories. No longer as a slave. The legal status may persist in the left-hand kingdom; the gospel has installed a deeper category in the right-hand kingdom; that deeper category is the one that must now govern the relationship.

Fourth, the deeper category is beloved brother. The same adjective Paul used for Philemon in verse one is now used for Onesimus. Beloved in the gospel does not discriminate by social station. The brotherhood of the communio sanctorum binds the master and the slave by a tie deeper than the social structures of the world.

Fifth, the brotherhood operates in two registers: both in the flesh and in the Lord. The two kingdoms are not collapsed into each other; the gospel does not erase the social structures. But the gospel does install a category that, when fully heard, makes Christian masters and Christian slaves unable to live their relation as if the gospel had not changed it.

Sixth, the climax: accept him as you would me. Paul has identified himself with Onesimus so completely that the welcome of one is the welcome of the other. The conditional if you consider me your partner invokes a κοινωνία already established. Philemon, given the dignity of free choice, must now decide. The preservation of the letter suggests, though it cannot prove, what he decided.

The letter is not yet finished. Two more units lie before us. Verses eighteen through twenty-two contain Paul’s pledge to repay any debt Onesimus has incurred, the verses in which the logic of imputed righteousness is pictured in miniature. Verses twenty-three through twenty-five contain the closing greetings. But the heart of the letter is now behind us. What follows is the working-out of what verse seventeen has named.

For Discussion

Six questions for individual reflection or for use in a group study. Take your time. The questions are not pretexts for an answer the author has in mind; they are doors into the text.

Paul says perhaps this is why Onesimus was parted from Philemon. Why does the apostle use a tentative word when reading providence? What does it teach us about how Christians should interpret the difficult events of their own lives?
Verse fifteen contrasts for a little while with eternally. How does the eternal perspective change the way Philemon is being asked to think about his loss and his reunion? How might that same contrast change how we think about our own losses?
Paul says no longer as a slave but does not call for the abolition of slavery as a social institution. What is the relation between what Paul says and what he does not say? How does the doctrine of the two kingdoms help us understand the difference?
A beloved brother is the title at the heart of this volume. What does it mean for a master and a slave to be brothers in Christ while remaining, in the flesh, master and slave? How is that even possible without contradiction?
Both in the flesh and in the Lord. How do the two registers operate in Christian life today? Where do we live in both at once? Where is the gospel reshaping how we live in the flesh?
Accept him as you would me. Paul has bound his own honor to Onesimus’s welcome. Why does the apostle make this identification so total? In what way does this echo Christ’s identification with the least of His brothers?

Looking Ahead

In the next session we will turn to verses eighteen through twenty-two. The center of these five verses is one of the most beautiful sentences in the New Testament. Now if he has defrauded you of anything or owes you anything, charge what he owes to me. I, Paul, have written this letter with my own hand: I will repay it. The verses contain a miniature picture of the gospel itself. Onesimus has incurred a debt. Paul offers to pay it. The substitution is gospel substitution in miniature. The doctrine of imputed righteousness, which Lutheran theology has always treated as the heart of justification by faith, is pictured on the page in plain words, though Paul’s pledge is an illustration of the gospel, not a second atonement.

Read Philemon 18–22 before our next session. Notice the moment when Paul writes in his own hand. Notice what he writes. Notice what he does not say. The verses are short. They are not small.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, who in the gospel has made us brothers and sisters across every line the world thought it could draw: receive us as You have received Onesimus, and make us such brothers as Paul, who in chains held the runaway slave as his own heart. Teach us to read providence with humility, to see Your hidden hand in what we did not choose. Set Your gospel as a deeper category beneath all our worldly categories, that the flesh may not have the last word but the Lord may have it. And when we are called to receive one whom the world has thought beneath us, give us hearts to receive him as we would receive You, who made Yourself the brother of the least. In whose name we pray. Amen.