Charge It to My Account

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. I could also mention that you owe me your very self. Yes, brother, let me have some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ. Since I was confident that you would obey, I wrote to you, because I knew that you would do even more than what I am asking you to do. At the same time also, prepare a place for me to stay, for I hope that through your prayers I will be given back to you.
Philemon 18–22 (NET)

Read Philemon 18–22 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

The appeal proper has landed in verse seventeen. Accept him as you would me. The request has been made. The categories have been named. The decision now lies with Philemon. But Paul is not finished. He has one more piece of business to transact before he closes the letter, and that business is in verse eighteen. Now if he has defrauded you of anything or owes you anything, charge what he owes to me.

The conditional if is delicate. Paul does not say because he wronged you or given that he stole from you. He says if. The verb of wronging (ἠδίκησεν, “if he has done you injustice”) is set in a conditional clause. The verb of debt (ὀφείλει, “if he owes you anything”) is also conditional. Paul may well know that Onesimus did wrong Philemon. The flight from a master in the Roman world was itself a serious offense; the theft that often accompanied such flight was a further offense. But Paul does not lay the wrong on the table as a settled fact. He conditions it, and in conditioning it, he refuses to weigh Onesimus down with the precise tally of his sins before Philemon has even seen him again.

Then comes the line: charge what he owes to me, or more literally, charge it to my account. The Greek verb is ἐλλόγα: from ἐλλογέω, a commercial term, an accountant’s word. Reckon it to. Put it on the ledger as mine. The same verb appears only once more in the New Testament, in Romans 5:13, where it names how sin is reckoned in relation to the law. It is a close cousin of λογίζομαι, the verb Paul uses throughout Romans 4 for the reckoning of righteousness to the one who believes. In ordinary use, ἐλλογέω was the verb you used when transferring a debt from one account to another. Paul, the apostle, is asking Philemon to transfer Onesimus’s debt, whatever it is, onto Paul’s own account.

The verse is a picture of gospel substitution in miniature.

Confessional Lutheran readers know this language well, because it is the language of justification itself. The gospel proclaims that what was rightly charged to our account, the long ledger of sin and debt, has been transferred, in Christ, to His account. He has paid what we owed. Our debt has been reckoned to Him; His righteousness has been reckoned to us. The technical term for this is imputation. Article IV of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, among the longest articles in the Lutheran Confessions, expounds the doctrine in detail, and the Formula of Concord states it with precision: God justifies the ungodly not by infusing some quality of righteousness into them but by forgiving their sins and reckoning Christ’s righteousness to them through faith (Ap IV; FC SD III). The forensic transfer of accounts is the heart of how the gospel saves.

Paul’s offer to Philemon, on the small canvas of one runaway slave and one Christian master, is the same logic in miniature. Charge it to my account. Whatever Onesimus owes, charge to me. The wrong he has done, charge to me. The debt he has incurred, charge to me. Philemon, when he reaches for the ledger to enter Onesimus’s name with a long column of figures against it, must instead enter Paul’s name. The substitution is total. The debtor’s name has been replaced with the substitute’s.

We must keep the comparison within its proper limits. Paul’s pledge illustrates the logic of imputation, but it is not another atonement. Paul can assume a civil debt; only Christ bears sin before God and makes satisfaction for it. Paul cannot atone for Onesimus’s sin or justify him before God. The comparison illuminates the gospel without competing with the uniqueness of Christ’s saving work.

This is what the great verse of Second Corinthians names on the cosmic scale: God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God. The exchange. The debt of the guilty was charged to the innocent. The righteousness of the innocent was credited to the guilty. The whole gospel (what Luther called the fröhlicher Wechsel, the joyful exchange) is the structural pattern of which Paul’s offer to Philemon is a small living instance. Charge it to my account: in a handful of words, the apostle has pictured the gospel in the middle of a personal letter.

We need not be shy about drawing the connection. Paul did not, almost certainly, set out to write a treatise on imputed righteousness when he wrote verse eighteen. He set out to settle a debt. But the gospel he preached and the gospel he lived ran together at every turn, and when he reached for a way to take Onesimus’s burden off Onesimus’s shoulders, the way he reached for was the way of substitution. Charge it to me. The Christian, having received the great substitution at the cross, finds himself, in the ordinary course of his life, performing small substitutions of the same kind for his brothers and sisters. The pattern of the gospel becomes the pattern of Christian life. Paul shows us how.

I, Paul, Write This with My Own Hand

Verse nineteen begins with one of the most striking lines in the Pauline correspondence. I, Paul, have written this letter with my own hand: I will repay it.

The line tells us something about how the letter was being composed. Paul, in most of his letters, dictated to a secretary: what the ancient world called an amanuensis. He spoke; the amanuensis wrote. The amanuensis in this case is unknown to us, though Paul names the practice in Romans 16:22 when his secretary Tertius adds his own greeting to that letter. Here in Philemon, at verse nineteen, Paul either takes the pen from his secretary’s hand or, as some think, draws attention to the fact that he has written this short letter himself. Either way, the pledge is in his own hand. I, Paul, have written this letter with my own hand.

Why? Two reasons converge. First, in the ancient world a personal signature was the seal of a legal instrument. A promissory note was binding when the promiser had written it in his own hand. By taking the pen and writing I will repay it, Paul is creating a binding IOU. The line is, in legal terms, a written guarantee. Philemon can call in the debt if Onesimus’s account ever shows a balance owed.

Second, Paul is signaling that the offer in verse eighteen is not a literary flourish. He is not asking Philemon to imagine, in some metaphorical sense, that the debt has been transferred. He is, in literal terms, transferring it. The hand that writes the words I will repay is the same hand that has been chained for the sake of the gospel. The aging apostle puts his own physical signature on a paper that pledges his own physical resources to the discharge of another man’s debt.

There is something deeply moving in this. Paul is not, by any reasonable measure, wealthy. He is in custody. He depends on the gifts of his churches for his sustenance. The Philippians have sent him support; the other congregations have helped where they could; he has worked with his own hands at the tentmaker’s trade when he could. He is not in a financial position to discharge a slave’s debt easily. And yet he writes I will repay it and puts his own hand to the line. The willingness to take on the burden is more than the financial capacity to bear it. The willingness is the gospel-shape of his life. Paul has received the great substitution from Christ; he extends a small substitution to Onesimus. The pattern repeats. The pattern always repeats where the gospel has done its work.

A Lutheran reading will hear in this an echo of how Christ Himself signed the bond that secured our salvation. Christ wrote with His own hand, not on parchment but on the cross. The marks of His hands, when the resurrected Lord showed them to Thomas, were the personal signature of the great IOU that had been paid in full. Paul wrote of it in Colossians 2:14, the letter that traveled with this one: He has destroyed what was against us, a certificate of indebtedness expressed in decrees opposed to us. He has taken it away by nailing it to the cross. The legal instrument by which we were held liable was canceled, signed in the blood of the Lamb, posted at Golgotha for any creditor to see. Paul, when he takes the pen and writes I, Paul, with my own hand, is picturing in miniature what Christ has done on the cosmic scale. The substitute signs the note. The note is binding. The debt is paid.

You Owe Me Even Your Own Self

The line continues with an aside that, on first reading, sounds almost like Paul has caught himself in something he meant only to think and accidentally said aloud. I could also mention that you owe me your very self.

The Greek is more compact than the English. ἵνα μὴ λέγω σοι ὅτι καὶ σεαυτόν μοι προσοφείλεις. Literally: not to say to you that you also owe me even your own self. The construction is what classical rhetoric called paralipsis: the device by which a speaker draws attention to something by saying he will not say it. I will not mention, Paul says, in the act of mentioning. The aside both spoken and disowned.

What does Paul mean? Philemon, the wealthy householder in Colossae, came to faith through Paul’s ministry. Some part of Paul’s missionary work, most likely his long ministry in Ephesus, when all the province of Asia heard the word (Acts 19:10), was the occasion through which Philemon heard the gospel and was brought to faith. Paul, by the preaching of the Word, became Philemon’s father in the faith, just as Paul became Onesimus’s father in verse ten. The same metaphor. The same kind of spiritual paternity.

And Philemon, then, owes Paul a debt that is incalculable. The debt is not financial, and it is not an enforceable balance Paul could ever collect. It is a relational and spiritual debt of gratitude, the debt of his very life, σεαυτόν, his own self, given over to Christ through the gospel that Paul preached. Strictly speaking, what Philemon received he received from Christ; Paul was the messenger. The aside reminds Philemon of this in a way that is at once playful and absolutely serious. Paul is willing to take on whatever debt Onesimus owes. But Philemon should remember, while considering this, that Philemon’s own debt to Paul is on another scale entirely.

The rhetorical move is breathtaking. Paul has just placed himself, in verse eighteen, in the position of the substitute who will absorb Onesimus’s debt. He now places Philemon, in verse nineteen, in the position of the debtor who owes a far greater debt to the substitute. Onesimus owes Philemon a small debt. Philemon owes Paul a vast one. If Philemon were to insist on strict accounting with Onesimus, he would have to reckon with a debt of his own that no accounting could ever settle.

But the whole point of the letter is that this kind of arithmetic is not how the gospel works. Paul does not demand from Philemon the discharge of his enormous debt. He merely notes, in passing, that the debt exists. He notes it to invite Philemon into the same logic that the gospel has already invited him into. Philemon has been forgiven a debt he could not pay. The forgiveness has come to him through the gospel that Paul preached. The right response to having been forgiven a vast debt is to forgive small debts that others owe. The right response to having received the great substitution is to extend small substitutions to one’s brothers.

This is also the logic of the Lord’s Prayer. And forgive us our debts, as we ourselves have forgiven our debtors (Matthew 6:12). Of all the petitions, this is the one that joins our asking to our own dealings with others. Our forgiving does not earn God’s forgiveness; the Small Catechism confesses that we are worthy of none of the things for which we pray, and that God gives them all by grace. But the forgiven sinner is to forgive the small debts of others as he has been forgiven his great debt by God. The same logic, on the small scale and on the cosmic scale. Paul is asking Philemon to apply that logic, here, to a particular brother named Onesimus.

The aside, in other words, is not really an aside. It is a hinge on which the whole appeal turns. Paul will pay Onesimus’s debt; Philemon owes Paul a debt he could never pay; the appropriate response is for Philemon to forgive Onesimus the debt as Philemon has been forgiven the greater debt by God. The economy of grace replaces the economy of strict accounting. The ledger is closed.

Refresh My Heart in Christ

Verse twenty contains the climax of the appeal’s emotional movement. Yes, brother, let me have some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ.

Several things happen in this short verse.

The vocative is back: brother, ἀδελφέ. Paul has used the word for Timothy in verse one, for Philemon in verse seven, for Onesimus in verse sixteen. Now, at the close of the appeal, he addresses Philemon as brother one final time. The keyword that has carried the letter is sounded once more, in the climactic position, just before the petition.

The petition itself: let me have some benefit from you in the Lord. The Greek is ἐγώ σου ὀναίμην ἐν Κυρίῳ. The verb ὀναίμην is from ὀνίνημι, “to have benefit from,” “to derive profit from.” The mood is the optative, a rare mood in New Testament Greek, used for wishes. May I have benefit from you. The wish is gently phrased.

And here, in this verb, the pun on Onesimus’s name returns one last time. Ὀνήσιμος (Onesimus) is built from the same verbal root as ὀναίμην. The name Onesimus means one from whom benefit is derived: a useful one, a profitable one. Paul is now, in the optative mood, asking Philemon to be ὀνήσιμος-like to him. May I have Onesimus-benefit from you in the Lord. The pun that opened in verse eleven, when Paul played on Onesimus’s name as useless / useful, has come full circle. Paul is asking Philemon to live up to the name of the slave whose welcome he is being asked to extend.

The wordplay is subtle, but most interpreters hear it in the Greek. Paul is asking Philemon to be, toward Paul, what Onesimus has been toward Paul. To be useful. To be profitable. To be the source of benefit in the Lord. The two men, the master and the slave, are being placed by the apostle in the same vocational frame. They are both to be ὀνήσιμος-like, useful in Christ, beneficial to the apostle in the gospel-work. The slave has already lived into the name. The master is now asked to do the same.

And then the line that completes the rhetorical arc of the entire letter: Refresh my heart in Christ. Ἀνάπαυσόν μου τὰ σπλάγχνα ἐν Χριστῷ. The verb is ἀνάπαυσον, aorist imperative of ἀναπαύω, the same verb Paul used in verse seven when he described Philemon as the one through whom the hearts of the saints have been refreshed. The noun is σπλάγχνα, the visceral inward parts. The two seedwords that were planted in the thanksgiving have now sprouted at full flower.

We can lay the three verses side by side and see the arc.

Verse seven: the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you. The saints’ σπλάγχνα, refreshed by Philemon.

Verse twelve: I have sent him (who is my very heart) back to you. Onesimus is Paul’s σπλάγχνα.

Verse twenty: Refresh my heart in Christ. Paul’s σπλάγχνα, to be refreshed by Philemon.

The line is straight. The vocabulary is consistent. The plea is now fully formed. Philemon, who has refreshed many hearts, is asked to refresh Paul’s heart by welcoming the man who is Paul’s heart. The seedwords of the thanksgiving have made the appeal’s climax inevitable. Paul has not had to repeat himself. He has simply allowed the words he planted at the beginning to do their work as the letter unfolded.

The phrase in Christ at the close of verse twenty is also worth noting. It is the same prepositional phrase that ran through the first volume of this series, where we studied Ephesians under the title In Christ. The phrase is one of Paul’s signature locutions. To be in Christ is to be incorporated into Him by faith, to live in His resurrection life, to have all the relations of one’s life, including this relation between master and slave, placed under the canopy of His Lordship. Paul asks Philemon to refresh his heart not in any general sense but in Christ. The refreshment is to happen in the realm where Christ is Lord. The welcome of Onesimus is to be a transaction conducted in that realm.

We have now traversed the four phrases that bind the four volumes of The Pauline Captivity Letters together. In Christ (Ephesians). To live is Christ (Philippians). Christ in you (Colossians). And now, in the letter to Philemon, the phrase brother in Christ finds its anchor: in the request that Philemon refresh Paul’s heart in Christ by receiving Onesimus as a beloved brother. The four phrases name four facets of the same reality. The reality, in this letter, has come down to the question of whether one Christian master will welcome one Christian slave on the gospel’s terms.

Confident of Your Obedience

Verse twenty-one shifts to the question of Paul’s confidence about what Philemon will do. Since I was confident that you would obey, I wrote to you, because I knew that you would do even more than what I am asking you to do.

Two things deserve our attention.

First, the word obedience, ὑπακοή. Paul has spent the whole appeal refusing to command. He has insisted that Philemon’s goodness be of his own accord, not by compulsion. And yet here, at the close, he speaks of his confidence in Philemon’s obedience. How can there be obedience where there has been no command?

The answer is that the obedience Paul speaks of is the obedience of faith. The same kind of obedience the New Testament has in view in Romans 1:5, where Paul names the goal of his apostolate as the obedience of faith. The faith that justifies the believer is also a faith that obeys; not in the sense that it earns its standing before God by works, but in the sense that it freely responds, in love, to what the gospel calls for. Philemon, hearing this letter read aloud, will be confronted with what the gospel calls for in his particular case. His response will be, if he is moved by faith, an act of obedience to the gospel’s claim on his life. The obedience is voluntary in the sense that no human authority has compelled it; it is obedient in the sense that the Christian conscience, formed by the gospel, recognizes what must be done and does it. And the obedience has an object: the apostolic word itself. Paul has not commanded, but he has spoken as Christ’s apostle, and to heed that word is obedience.

This is also why Paul can be confident. Paul knows Philemon. He has prayed for Philemon, given thanks for Philemon, heard reports of Philemon’s love. He has every reason to believe that the same Spirit who has been working in Philemon to produce love for the saints will work, in this matter, to produce love for Onesimus. The confidence is not in Philemon’s natural goodness; it is in the Spirit’s work in Philemon. Paul is confident because the gospel is at work. Where the gospel is at work, this kind of response is what tends to follow.

Second, the phrase you would do even more than what I am asking. The verse contains a small, deliberate ambiguity. What is the more that Paul has in mind?

A common reading (and, I think, a likely one) is that Paul is hinting at the possibility of manumission. He has not asked for it. He has asked only that Onesimus be received as a beloved brother. But the gospel-logic of the request, when followed to its end, points further than the receiving alone. To receive a man as a brother while keeping him legally as a slave is to live in a tension that the gospel cannot, in the long run, sustain. Paul leaves the working-out to Philemon. He does not specify what more would look like. He simply hints that he expects Philemon to go further than the bare letter of the request.

This is, in its own quiet way, one of the most Pauline moments in the letter. Paul does not need to spell out every consequence of the gospel. He plants the seed; he trusts the Spirit to work it out in the believer; he is content for Philemon to discover, in his own freedom, what the gospel-logic finally requires. The apostle has done his work. The Spirit will do the rest.

Prepare a Guest Room

The closing line of verse twenty-two is a sentence whose tone shifts back to the practical. At the same time also, prepare a place for me to stay, for I hope that through your prayers I will be given back to you.

The request is concrete. Prepare a place for me to stay, ἑτοίμαζέ μοι ξενίαν, literally prepare hospitality for me, a guest room. Ξενία is the room set apart in the household for the entertainment of guests. Philemon’s house, large enough to host a congregation, presumably has such a room. Paul anticipates needing it. He hopes to be released from his Roman imprisonment, to travel again, and to visit the saints in Colossae in person.

The request may also carry some rhetorical weight. Many readers have heard in it a gentle reminder that Paul hopes to see for himself how Onesimus has been received. Paul does not say this, and we should not make the guest room chiefly an instrument of inspection; the plainest sense of the request is the hope of a reunion among friends. But Philemon, hearing it, could hardly miss that the apostle who has written to him hopes before long to sit at his table.

But the verse also contains a quiet word about how Paul views his own future. I hope that through your prayers I will be given back to you. The verb translated given back is χαρισθήσομαι, passive of χαρίζομαι, “to be given as a gift of grace.” Paul views his possible release from prison not as something he will earn or arrange but as a gift that God might give. And he views the gift as being mediated through your prayers. Philemon’s prayers, and the prayers of the church gathered in Philemon’s house, are the means through which God might grant the gift.

This is a small but important Lutheran note. Lutheran theology has always insisted that prayer is the believer’s response to a God who first speaks; prayer does not coerce God or earn anything from God; but God, in His ordering of providence, has chosen to attend to the prayers of His saints. The gift of Paul’s release would come from God; it would also come through the prayers of those who love Paul. Both things are true. The two are not in tension. The God who gives gives freely, by grace, in His own time and on His own terms; and He gives, often, in response to the petitions of those who ask. Paul, in chains, asks the saints in Colossae to pray. He hopes their prayers may be the channel through which his release comes. The hope is appropriate. The prayers are appropriate. The release, if it comes, will be gift.

A confessional Lutheran reader will hear in this the theology of the Small Catechism’s exposition of the Lord’s Prayer. God’s name is hallowed of itself; we pray that it may be hallowed among us. God’s kingdom comes of itself; we pray that it may come to us. God gives daily bread of Himself; we pray that we may receive it with thanksgiving. The pattern of every petition is the same. The gift is God’s; the prayer is ours; the gift comes, by grace, through the prayer. Paul’s hope of release fits the same pattern. His freedom, if it comes, will be the gift of God answering the prayers of God’s people.

This is the last line before the closing greetings. The letter has reached its end. The appeal has been made; the substitution has been pledged; the climax of the rhetorical arc has been sounded; the practical request for hospitality has been added; the hope of future visit has been laid out. Only the greetings remain.

Gathering the Threads

Five verses. We have walked through them slowly. They have given us the gospel in miniature and the close of the appeal in one piece.

First, charge it to my account. The accounting language of imputation. Paul offers to absorb Onesimus’s debt onto his own ledger. The pattern is the great substitution of the cross writ small in a personal letter. What Christ did for sinners before God, Paul pictures on a far smaller and merely human scale for Onesimus before Philemon.

Second, I, Paul, write this with my own hand. The personal signature. The IOU. The willingness to put his own resources on the line. The substitute signs the note in his own hand, on his own pledge, as Christ signed ours in His own blood.

Third, I could also mention that you owe me your very self. The reminder, gently delivered, that Philemon’s own debt to Paul is on a different scale. The economy of grace replaces the economy of accounting. The forgiven sinner is to forgive the small debts of others as he has been forgiven his great debt by God.

Fourth, refresh my heart in Christ. The climax of the appeal. The seedwords from the thanksgiving, σπλάγχνα and ἀναπαύω, sprout at full flower. Philemon, who has refreshed many hearts, is asked to refresh Paul’s heart by welcoming the man who is Paul’s heart. The pun on Onesimus’s name returns one last time in the verb ὀναίμην.

Fifth, confident that you would obey. Paul’s confidence rests on the work of the Spirit in Philemon. The obedience is the obedience of faith: voluntary, free, the response of a heart remade by the gospel. The even more of verse twenty-one leaves room for the gospel-logic to be followed to its end.

Sixth, prepare a place for me to stay. Paul anticipates visiting. The pastoral oversight will be exercised in person before long. The release, if it comes, will be the gift of God through the prayers of the saints.

The appeal is now complete. The substantive work of the letter has been done. Only the closing greetings remain, and to them we will turn in the final session.

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.

Charge it to my account (NET: charge what he owes to me). The verb ἐλλόγα is an accountant’s term for transferring a debt. How does this language reflect the doctrine of imputation? In what sense does verse eighteen picture the gospel in miniature, and where does the comparison reach its limit?
Paul takes the pen and writes with his own hand. Why does the personal signature matter? What does it tell us about Paul’s seriousness in pledging to repay Onesimus’s debt?
I could also mention that you owe me your very self. How does this aside change the way Philemon hears the appeal? How does the logic of debt forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer apply here?
Refresh my heart in Christ. Verse twenty completes the arc of the seedwords σπλάγχνα and ἀναπαύω that began in verse seven. What does it suggest about how Paul wrote this letter that the closing petition uses the exact vocabulary of the opening thanksgiving?
Paul speaks of his confidence in Philemon’s obedience even though he has refused to command. What kind of obedience does the gospel produce? How does it differ from the obedience that the law could only have compelled?
I hope that through your prayers I will be given back to you. How does Paul view his possible release? What does this verse teach us about how God’s gifts come through the prayers of His saints?

Looking Ahead

In the next session we will reach the closing greetings of the letter. Verses twenty-three through twenty-five are three short verses, but they are not empty. They name the wider apostolic company gathered around Paul in his imprisonment (Epaphras, Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, Luke), five men whose names appear together also in the closing of Colossians, the sister letter that traveled with Philemon to Colossae. The greetings tell us something about the body of Christ as it actually existed in the first generation. And the letter closes with grace, as it began with grace: may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

Read Philemon 23–25 before our next session. The five named companions are worth lingering over. Each carries his own small history with him into these greetings. We will trace them as we close the letter.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, who took our debt upon Yourself and paid what we could never pay: thank You for the gospel preached in miniature in this small letter, and for the apostle who would take a brother’s debt onto his own account, because You first took ours onto Yours. Make us willing substitutes for one another in the small economies of our common life. When a brother has wronged us, give us hearts to forgive as we have been forgiven; when a sister owes us, give us hands to release as we have been released. Refresh us in Christ by the brothers and sisters You send us, and let us be such refreshment to others. And when, by Your grace, we are given as gift to one another, let us receive the gift in thanksgiving, that Your name may be hallowed among us. Amen.