Paul and Philemon

Now I’m going to go out on a limb on this one because I know that some who have studied this subject don’t reach the conclusions that I have reached and am persuaded are true. But my reading is that in Paul’s little letter to Philemon (which incidentally reads as Colossians chapter 5), Paul is expecting Philemon to implement the most revolutionary social change in his household now that his runaway slave Onesimus has become a Christian and is returning home.

Paul both prays and expects Philemon to extend the radical revolutionary social change right there in his own household.

Go on, Philemon, receive your slave back ‘no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother’. ‘Welcome him as you would welcome me’, Philemon 17.

How would Philemon welcome Paul? By sending him into the slaves’ quarters? By punishing him?

Absolutely not.

By treating him as a brother. By being reconciled to him as a dear brother for all eternity. By taking their relationship to a completely new stage, the implication is that this could well mean giving Onesimus his complete freedom.

Paul then writes that he is confident that Philemon will do more than Paul asks and ends the letter saying that he is planning to come and visit as soon as he is released from prison.

Paul the apostle of the gospel to the Gentiles is pressing his mentee, Philemon, ‘my fellow worker’, v1, ‘partner’ v17, to consider, work out, and live out the full implications of the radical social changes that the gospel brings; ‘Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and in all’, Colossians 3:11.

So we see there is a right place for challenge and strong exhortation in mentoring and discipling. Yes, this must always be done prayerfully, carefully and responsibly, but there is a right place for it.

And the very fact that the letter to Philemon is in our Bibles is a strong indication that Philemon did exactly what Paul asked.

In his book, ‘The Rise of Christianity’, Rodney Stark writes that one of the reasons that Christianity grew so strongly throughout the Roman Empire was because so many slaves converted and became Christians.

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