The Letter to Philemon

Philemon is the shortest of Paul’s letters in the New Testament. One chapter. Twenty-five verses. About 335 words in the original Greek. You can read the whole letter in five minutes. Most Christians have heard it preached only rarely, if at all. It doesn’t contain a single famous theological pronouncement of the kind that fills Paul’s longer letters. It is, on the surface, a personal note from one church leader to another about a matter that seems very specific to its time and place.

And yet — read carefully, the letter is doing something quietly extraordinary. It’s the New Testament’s most concentrated engagement with the social institution of slavery. It’s one of the most carefully constructed pieces of moral persuasion in the entire Pauline corpus. And, for two thousand years, it’s been read in two opposite ways — both as a Christian endorsement of slavery (Paul, after all, sends the slave back) and as the seed of slavery’s eventual abolition (Paul, after all, calls the slave a brother). The history of how Philemon has been read is, in a real sense, the history of Christianity’s long, painful reckoning with one of humanity’s oldest evils.

The work of this chapter is to walk through the whole letter slowly, recovering what Paul was actually doing — and what he wasn’t. American readers especially come to this letter with heavy weight on their shoulders. The Bible was quoted, including Philemon, to defend chattel slavery in the antebellum South. That misuse needs to be acknowledged honestly. But it shouldn’t prevent us from reading the letter itself for what it is. So let’s read it.

the setting

Paul is in prison. The letter says so four times (verses 1, 9, 10, 13). Where exactly Paul is imprisoned is debated — most scholars place him under house arrest in Rome around AD 60-62, though a minority make a serious case for an earlier imprisonment in Ephesus in the mid-50s. Either way, he’s restricted but able to write, receive visitors, and have conversations. He’s not in a dungeon. He’s in some form of custody that allows ministry to continue.

The letter is addressed to Philemon, a wealthy Christian who hosts a church that meets in his home in the small city of Colossae, in what is now western Turkey. The greeting also names Apphia (probably Philemon’s wife) and Archippus (probably his son or a co-leader of the house church), along with “the church that meets in your home” (verse 2). So although the letter is largely a personal address to Philemon, it was meant to be read aloud in front of the whole gathered church. That detail matters. Paul isn’t whispering in private; he’s making a public appeal that Philemon’s neighbors and fellow Christians will witness.

The third major figure in the letter is Onesimus, a slave who belonged to Philemon. Onesimus had somehow ended up with Paul in his imprisonment. Whether Onesimus was a runaway who fled Philemon’s household and providentially encountered Paul, or whether he had been sent by Philemon to assist Paul temporarily and the situation had become complicated, is debated. The traditional reading is that Onesimus was a runaway slave — and that view remains the majority position, though a substantial minority of recent scholars argue for a more nuanced picture. The American New Testament scholar Scot McKnight, an evangelical Methodist whose 2017 NICNT commentary on this letter (The Letter to Philemon, Eerdmans) is one of the most respected recent treatments, holds the traditional runaway view while acknowledging the alternatives. Either way, what’s clear is that Onesimus has become a Christian under Paul’s ministry. That conversion is what produces the letter.

Paul writes the letter, hands it to Onesimus along with Paul’s coworker Tychicus (per Colossians 4:7-9), and sends them both back to Colossae. Onesimus is carrying the letter that asks his master to receive him in a new way. The slave, in effect, delivers his own appeal.

a note on Roman slavery

Before we go further, the chapter has to be honest about what slavery in the first-century Roman world actually was. American readers carry their own history with this word — and the temptation either to soften the ancient picture (“oh, it wasn’t really that bad”) or to flatly equate it with chattel slavery (“it was exactly like the Atlantic slave trade”) — both of those temptations get the original setting wrong.

Roman slavery was an enormous, pervasive, brutal institution. By some estimates, slaves made up about a third of the population of the city of Rome and a significant fraction of the empire as a whole. People became slaves through war (conquered peoples), through birth (slaves’ children were slaves), through poverty (selling oneself or one’s children), through piracy and kidnapping, and through punishment for crimes. Slaves were legally property. Their owners had absolute authority over their bodies, their labor, their movements, their relationships, and in some cases their lives. Punishment of slaves was often vicious. Sexual abuse was common, expected, and legally permitted. Slaves had no standing to bring legal complaints against their masters. The system held by force.

At the same time, Roman slavery was structurally different from the chattel slavery that developed in the Atlantic world. It wasn’t racial — slaves came from every ethnic group within the empire. Manumission (the formal freeing of slaves) was common, and freed slaves often became Roman citizens. Some slaves were highly educated and held positions of significant responsibility — physicians, accountants, secretaries, household managers, teachers. A skilled slave could sometimes earn money, accumulate savings, even buy other slaves and eventually buy his or her own freedom. The line between slave and free was porous in a way it never became in the American South.

But none of those differences make Roman slavery anything other than what it was: a system of forced human ownership, sustained by violence, treating people as property. McKnight in his commentary is careful about this — and draws on the work of the scholar Jennifer Glancy, whose study of slavery in early Christianity argues that Roman slavery was, at root, a system of bodily ownership and dehumanization that the Christian gospel couldn’t finally tolerate. Paul knew this. Whether he said it explicitly or not, the logic of what he wrote in this letter was incompatible with the institution he was writing inside of. We’ll see that logic working as we walk through the text.

the opening

Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Philemon our dear friend and fellow worker — also to Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier — and to the church that meets in your home: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Philemon 1-3, NIV)

The greeting is short but it does work that the rest of the letter will rely on. Paul doesn’t, as he usually does, call himself an apostle. He calls himself a prisoner. That’s a deliberate choice. Paul is about to make a request that he could, with full apostolic authority, simply command. He’s choosing not to. He’s approaching Philemon as a fellow believer in chains, not as an authority figure exercising his rights.

He names Philemon “dear friend and fellow worker.” Apphia is “sister.” Archippus is “fellow soldier.” These are warm, equal-to-equal terms. And the letter is addressed not just to Philemon but to the church that meets in your home — so the whole community will hear whatever Paul says next. Philemon will be answering not just to Paul but to his own house church.

the praise

I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your love for all his holy people and your faith in the Lord Jesus. I pray that your partnership with us in the faith may be effective in deepening your understanding of every good thing we share for the sake of Christ. Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the Lord’s people. (Philemon 4-7, NIV)

Paul opens by genuinely praising Philemon. This isn’t flattery. Philemon is, by all evidence, a generous Christian. He has refreshed the hearts of the Lord’s people. Paul isn’t setting up a manipulation. He’s naming Philemon’s actual character — love for all his holy people — and then, in the next breath, he’s going to ask Philemon to extend that same love in a direction it hasn’t yet gone. The praise is the ground from which the appeal grows. You are this kind of person. So you can do this hard thing.

the careful appeal

Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love. It is as none other than Paul — an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus — that I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. (Philemon 8-10, NIV)

Here is the moment Paul reveals his hand. I could order you. I am choosing not to. In Roman society, a person in authority making a request had the implicit power to back it up with force. A patron could command a client. An apostle could command a church member. Paul is signaling — clearly — that he has the authority to make this letter a command. And he’s just as clearly signaling that he is not going to use that authority. The appeal will rest on love, not on hierarchy.

And then comes the name. Onesimus. Paul has built up to it carefully. My son. My son while I was in chains. Paul is identifying himself as the spiritual father of Philemon’s slave. The two of them — slave-owner and slave — now share Paul as a kind of common spiritual father. Whatever else happens, that relationship is already real.

the wordplay

Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me. (Philemon 11, NIV)

Here Paul makes a pun that English translations can’t quite carry. The name Onesimus (Ὀνήσιμος, Onēsimos) is a common Greek slave name that literally means useful or beneficial. It was the kind of name owners gave to slaves — almost a generic label for the helpful one. Imagine naming a slave Handy. That’s roughly the tone.

Paul plays on this. The Greek word for useless in verse 11 is achrēstos (ἄχρηστος). The word for useful is euchrēstos (εὔχρηστος). The root in both is chrēstos — good, useful, valuable. Mr. Useful was useless to you. Now he is more-than-useful. The pun would have made the original audience smile.

But there’s a second layer. In the Greek of the first century, the word chrēstos (useful) and the word Christos (Christ) were pronounced almost identically. Scribes occasionally confused them in early manuscripts. So under Paul’s pun, there’s a deeper claim: Onesimus was useless — that is, Christ-less — and is now useful in the way Christ makes people useful. The slave whose name meant helpful has, through Christ, become the kind of help his owners’ name had never quite cashed out. The wordplay is doing theological work, not just literary.

the request

I am sending him — who is my very heart — back to you. I would have liked to keep him with me so that he could take your place in helping me while I am in chains for the gospel. But I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do would not seem forced but would be voluntary. Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever — no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord. (Philemon 12-16, NIV)

This is the heart of the letter. Read it slowly.

Paul is sending Onesimus back. He’s not keeping him. He’s not asking Philemon to drop the legal arrangement from a safe distance. He’s sending the man himself. Onesimus, now a believer, walks back into the household he had left.

But Paul is asking that Philemon receive him no longer as a slave. That phrase is doing work. No longer. The implication is that whatever Onesimus was before — legally, socially, in the household economy of Philemon’s home — that arrangement has been overtaken by something else. Onesimus is now a dear brother. Two things to notice. First, brother in Paul’s letters is a covenant word — it names Christians as members of one family, sharing the same Father, sharing the same Lord, equally heirs of the same kingdom. Second, as a brother in the Lord is paired with as a fellow man. Paul is saying both/and. In the kingdom of God Onesimus is your brother in Christ. In the everyday world he’s also a fellow human being. Both of those identities ought to reshape how you see him.

The careful question, asked by every generation of readers: is Paul asking Philemon to free Onesimus, or only to treat him better while keeping him enslaved? The text is genuinely ambiguous on this point. Paul doesn’t use the technical Greek word for manumission (apeleutherōsis). He doesn’t write: “set him free.” He writes: “no longer as a slave.” Some scholars read that phrase as a request for legal manumission. Others read it as a request for an internal change in how Philemon regards Onesimus, with the legal status left open. McKnight, writing about the closest Paul comes to the question elsewhere — his counsel in 1 Corinthians 7:21 that enslaved believers gain their freedom if they can — judges it “as close to abolitionism as Paul gets — but abolitionism it is not.” The same is true of Philemon, and it’s probably the most honest reading. Paul stops short of an explicit command to free Onesimus. But what he asks is more than mere kindness inside a continuing slavery, and the logic of his appeal — no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother — is a logic that, taken seriously, undermines the institution from inside.

This is why generations of abolitionists returned to this letter. Not because Paul said abolish slavery, but because once you take seriously what Paul did say — receive him as a brother — the institution of one Christian owning another becomes, over time, impossible to sustain. Frederick Douglass, the formerly enslaved abolitionist orator, made this point sharply in his speeches and writings: the Christianity of Christ, including the logic of this letter, stood against the Christianity of the slaveholding land that tried to twist Paul into a defender of bondage. The argument isn’t that Paul issued an abolition decree. The argument is that the theology he wrote into Philemon couldn’t, when read honestly, coexist with the institution.

the guarantee

So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me. I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand. I will pay it back — not to mention that you owe me your very self. (Philemon 17-19, NIV)

Paul puts his own money on the line. If Onesimus took anything from you when he left, send the bill to me. And then, in a small but pointed aside: not to mention that you owe me your very self. That is, I am the one who led you to faith, Philemon. The debt you owe me is much larger than any debt Onesimus could possibly owe you. It’s a gentle reminder of accounts that ought to be remembered.

The phrase “I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand” is also significant. Most of Paul’s letters were dictated to a secretary, with Paul adding a closing line in his own handwriting (see, for example, Galatians 6:11). Here Paul wants Philemon to know that this specific promise — I will pay it back — is in Paul’s own hand. It’s a legally binding IOU, in writing, signed.

the closing surprise

I do wish, brother, that I may have some benefit from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ. Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I ask. And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers. (Philemon 20-22, NIV)

Two things in the close. First, “refresh my heart in Christ.” This is the same verb Paul used in verse 7 to describe what Philemon does for others — he refreshes the hearts of the Lord’s people. Paul is asking Philemon to do for him what Philemon already does for everyone else. In context, this is asking Philemon to do what Paul has just spent the letter outlining: receive Onesimus.

Second — and this is the surprise — prepare a guest room for me. Paul is coming. Paul is hoping to be released and to visit Philemon’s house. Which means: whatever Philemon decides to do about Onesimus, Paul is going to walk through that door at some point and see it for himself. The whole letter has been built on appeal rather than command, on love rather than authority. But this closing line quietly reminds Philemon that the conversation isn’t finished. Paul is going to be in that room. There will be no hiding what was done.

There’s also the matter of verse 21 — “I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I ask.” What is the even more Paul has in mind? He doesn’t specify. But the question hangs over the whole letter. If Paul has only asked Philemon to receive Onesimus as a brother, what would more than that be? Many readers across the centuries have heard, in this single phrase, a quiet hint that Paul is hoping for manumission — that he’s asking Philemon to do what Paul stopped short of explicitly commanding. He’s leaving room for Philemon’s own conscience and the Spirit’s work to push him further.

the misuse

This letter hasn’t always been read for what it is. In the United States especially, in the centuries of African chattel slavery, pro-slavery Christians cited Philemon as biblical evidence that Paul endorsed the institution of slavery. The argument was simple: Paul sent the slave back. Paul didn’t demand abolition. Therefore — they argued — Christians could in good conscience own slaves.

This was always a misreading, and a willful one. It ignored that Paul didn’t address slavery in the abstract; he addressed one specific situation. It ignored that Paul reframed the relationship from master-slave to brother-brother in a way that, if generalized, would dissolve the institution. It ignored that what Paul was not doing — issuing a public political call for abolition under Nero — was something he had neither the platform nor the safety to do, and that an apostle writing one letter to one believer in one Roman colony can’t be expected to operate as a modern abolitionist movement. And it ignored that black Christian readers, including enslaved Christians in the American South, often read this very letter as a witness against their captivity rather than for it — hearing in Paul’s brother in the Lord the dignity that their owners’ theology was trying to deny them.

McKnight, in his commentary, refuses to skip over this history. He devotes an entire section to what he calls Philemon in the Crucible of New World Slavery and Slavery Today — naming the misuse, owning the pain of it, and arguing that any honest twenty-first century reading of this letter has to begin by acknowledging that the text was weaponized for centuries against the very people Paul’s logic was meant to set free. That acknowledgment isn’t optional. It’s the price of admission to reading the letter rightly today.

the trajectory

The reading of Philemon that has gained the most ground in recent scholarship is what is sometimes called a trajectory reading. It goes like this: Paul, writing inside a society where slavery was simply assumed, didn’t issue an explicit command to abolish the institution. But the trajectory of his thought — no longer as a slave, but as a dear brother; neither slave nor free… you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28) — pointed unmistakably toward an end of slavery, even if Paul himself couldn’t see all the way to that end. The seed was planted in the first century. It took eighteen centuries to grow into the abolitionist movements of the nineteenth.

This isn’t to say that Christianity is the only force that ever opposed slavery, or that the path of abolition was a clean Christian story. The historical record is more complicated than that. But it is to say that this letter — small, occasional, addressed to one slave-owner about one slave — contains, in compressed form, the logic that eventually made it impossible for serious Christians to continue holding human beings as property. Receive him as a brother. Once you have to say those words about your slave, the institution has lost its theological footing. It’ll take centuries for the rest of the church to fully reckon with that. But the reckoning starts here, in twenty-five verses.

Reading this yourself

Read the whole letter in one sitting. It’ll take you five minutes. Notice how carefully Paul speaks. Notice that he could command and chooses not to. Notice the warmth of the praise that opens the letter and how it sets up the appeal. Notice the pun on useful and useless. Notice the phrase no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother — and stay there for a moment. Notice how Paul puts his own money on the line. Notice the closing line: Prepare a guest room for me.

Then ask the questions the letter is still asking us. Where in your own life is there a relationship — workplace, family, church, community — that has the shape of one person in power and another person not in power, and where the gospel asks you to redraw that relationship as brother and sister rather than boss and worker, strong and weak, insider and outsider? Where might Paul, if he were writing you a letter, be quietly placing the phrase no longer as a… but as a dear brother? The institution Paul was writing inside is gone in most of the modern world. But the dynamic the letter addresses — power, hierarchy, the human tendency to treat other people as useful tools rather than as family — is alive everywhere.

What Paul did, in this shortest of all his letters, was something quietly seismic. He took the most ordinary social arrangement of the first-century Roman world — one Christian owning another — and refused to leave it alone. He couldn’t, given his position, have abolished slavery by command. He didn’t try. What he did instead was to insert into a slave-owner’s household, by way of a returning convert, a new framework: this man is your brother. He carries the same Spirit you carry. He sits at the same table you sit at. He inherits the same kingdom you inherit. Whatever the legal paperwork still says, the truth in the room is that the two of you are now equals at a level that the paperwork can’t reach. Generations of pro-slavery interpreters worked hard to read this letter without hearing what was actually in it. They sent the slave back; they kept the slave a slave; they ignored what Paul had said the slave now was. But the text was always saying it. No longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. That sentence doesn’t require an army or a revolution to dismantle slavery. It dismantles it from inside the household, one relationship at a time, by simply refusing to call the brother a thing anymore. The letter is short. The work it set in motion has taken two thousand years and isn’t finished. But the work began here, with one apostle in chains, one slave he had come to love, one slave-owner he was about to ask the hardest question of his life, and twenty-five verses that quietly changed what it would, eventually, be possible to defend.