Philemon: The Letter About a Slave

At a Glance

Who wrote it: Paul, from prison, with Timothy’s name beside his. Almost no one doubts that it is his.

When: Sometime between about 54 and 62, depending on where Paul was in prison when he wrote it: Ephesus, Caesarea or Rome.

Written for: Philemon, a believer in Colossae who owned a slave named Onesimus, and the church that met in his house. Paul asked him to take Onesimus back, no longer as a slave but as a brother.

What it remembers of me: Nothing I said or did. Only my name, which Paul uses to make his case.

How close it stays to me: Close in calling a slave a brother. Far in never plainly asking for his freedom.

If you only read three chapters: It has one chapter of twenty-five verses, the shortest letter Paul wrote. Read all of it. It takes two minutes.

Words to Know

Onesimus — the slave the letter is about. His name means useful, a common name for slaves.

Philemon — a believer in the town of Colossae, in what is now Turkey, who owned Onesimus. A congregation met in his house.

Bondservant — a word the World English Bible often uses for a slave, though in Philemon it says slave. The Greek word, doulos, means a person owned by another.

The Book in Brief

Paul, a prisoner, writes with Timothy to Philemon, to Apphia, to Archippus and to the church that meets in Philemon’s house. He thanks God for what he hears of Philemon’s love and faith.

Then Paul turns to his request. He could give an order, but he would rather ask, as an old man and a prisoner. He asks on behalf of Onesimus, whose father in the faith he has become while in chains. Onesimus was once useless to Philemon, Paul says, and is now useful to both of them.

Paul is sending him back, and wants Philemon to receive him as he would receive Paul. He would have liked to keep Onesimus, but would do nothing without Philemon’s consent. Perhaps Onesimus was parted from Philemon for a while so that Philemon could have him back for good, no longer as a slave but as a beloved brother. If Onesimus has wronged Philemon or owes him anything, Paul writes with his own hand that he will repay it. He is sure Philemon will do even more than he asks, and he asks him to prepare a guest room, because he hopes to visit. Five friends send greetings.

It is not a letter to a church about doctrine. It is a personal note about one man. Paul is in chains. A slave named Onesimus has come to him, and Paul has brought him to faith. Now Paul is sending him back to the man who owns him, with this letter in his hand.

Read it, and you can watch Paul trying to change a man’s mind without giving him an order.

What happened

The letter does not say exactly how Onesimus came to be with Paul. That is why people still argue about it.

The old explanation is that he ran away, perhaps after stealing something, and somehow ended up with Paul in prison. Paul hints at a wrong: if he has wronged you at all or owes you anything, put that to my account (Philemon 18).

Many scholars now think something else happened. Under Roman law, a slave in trouble with his master could go to a friend of the master and ask him to plead his case. A slave who did that was not legally a runaway. Onesimus may have gone looking for Paul on purpose, because he knew Paul was a man his master respected.¹

Either way, Onesimus was in danger. Runaway slaves in the Roman world could be beaten, branded or worse, and the law was on the master’s side.² Paul knew what he was sending this man back into.

Go deeperWhat it meant to be a slave in Rome

Slavery was everywhere in Paul’s world, and it was not one thing.

Slaves worked the fields and the mines, often in terrible conditions. In the cities they also worked as household servants, craftsmen, shop managers and secretaries, and some were teachers or doctors. A slave like Onesimus might be trusted with a great deal and still be property.³

In law the owner held nearly complete power. A slave could be sold, beaten or moved at the owner’s will. A slave’s marriage had no standing in law, and the children of a slave woman belonged to her owner.³

Yet Roman owners also freed slaves in large numbers. A slave freed by a Roman citizen usually became a citizen too, and his children were born free. A freed slave still owed his old master respect and service, and many stayed close to the household.⁴

So when Paul asks Philemon to receive Onesimus as more than a slave, a beloved brother (Philemon 16), he is asking inside a world where freeing a slave was a known path and where a freed man did not simply walk away. Which of these Paul had in mind, the letter does not say.

How Paul asks

The letter is short, and every line of it is working.

Paul begins by praising Philemon for his love and for how the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you (Philemon 7). Then he says he could simply give an order, yet for love’s sake I rather beg, being such a one as Paul, the aged, but also a prisoner of Jesus Christ (Philemon 9).

Then he names the slave. I beg you for my child, whom I have become the father of in my chains, Onesimus, who once was useless to you, but now is useful to you and to me (Philemon 10–11). It is a pun on the man’s name. Useful used to be useless. Now he is useful again.

Then the heart of the letter: For perhaps he was therefore separated from you for a while, that you would have him forever, no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother (Philemon 15–16).

Receive him as you would receive me (Philemon 17).

And then Paul makes sure Philemon cannot easily say no. He offers to pay any debt himself, writing it with my own hand, and then adds, not to mention to you that you owe to me even your own self besides (Philemon 19). He says he is confident Philemon will do even beyond what I say (Philemon 21). He asks Philemon to get a guest room ready, because he hopes to visit soon (Philemon 22). He will be coming to see what Philemon decided.

And notice who the letter is addressed to. Not only Philemon, but also Apphia, Archippus and the assembly in your house (Philemon 2). This letter was going to be read out loud, in Philemon’s own house, in front of the whole congregation that met there. Every eye in the room would be on Philemon when it ended.

What Paul did not say

Here is the hard part.

Paul never says that slavery is wrong. He never tells Philemon in so many words to set Onesimus free. Beyond what I say may mean freedom. No longer as a slave may mean freedom. Or it may mean only that Philemon should treat Onesimus as a brother while he went on owning him. Readers have argued over that sentence for centuries.

In another letter, Paul told slaves, Don’t let that bother you, but if you get an opportunity to become free, use it (1 Corinthians 7:21). Even that verse is argued over. The Greek can be read as use your freedom, or as make the most of your slavery.⁵

Paul expected the world to end soon. He told people to stay in the situation they were in when they were called. He did not set out to change the laws of Rome. He set out to change what happened inside a house where people called each other brother.

What my scriptures said

My scriptures had something to say about a man like Onesimus.

You shall not deliver to his master a servant who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you, among you, in the place which he shall choose … You shall not oppress him (Deuteronomy 23:15–16).

The Law of Moses told my people not to send an escaped slave back. Whether or not Onesimus was a runaway in the legal sense, Paul did send him back. He sent him with a letter that made it as hard as he could for his master to treat him as property. But he sent him.

The long argument

The letter was written to help one slave. It ended up being used against millions.

In the United States, in 1850, Congress passed a law requiring people in the free states to help return escaped slaves to their owners. Ministers who supported the law pointed to this letter. Paul sent the slave back to his master, they said, so a Christian should do the same.⁶ Defenders of slavery quoted Philemon alongside the letters that told slaves to obey their masters.

The abolitionists answered with verse 16. No longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother. They said that once you call a man your brother, you cannot go on owning him. If Philemon had really heard that sentence, he would have set Onesimus free.

Both sides had the same twenty-five verses. One side read what Paul did. The other side read what Paul said. I think the second side read it better. A brother is not property. Paul planted that sentence in the middle of a household that owned a human being, and it took the church eighteen centuries to let it grow.

How it turned out

Nobody knows what Philemon did. But there is one possible clue.

About fifty years later, a bishop named Ignatius, on his way to Rome to be executed, wrote a letter to the church at Ephesus. He praised their bishop, a man named Onesimus.⁷

It was a common name, and it may be a different man. But some scholars have wondered whether the slave in this letter became the bishop of Ephesus. If he did, it might explain why such a small, private letter was kept at all. Perhaps it was kept by the man it set free.

That cannot be proved. But it would be a good ending.

Go deeperHow the shortest letter survived

Some Christians asked why this letter was in the Bible at all.

In the late 300s the preacher John Chrysostom began his sermons on Philemon by answering them. Some people, he says, held that it was needless to have added the letter, since it makes a request about a small matter for one man. He thought it was worth having, and spent his sermons showing why.⁸

Its size had helped it before that. In the early 200s the North African writer Tertullian accused Marcion of cutting and altering the letters of Paul that he collected. This one, Tertullian said, escaped Marcion’s hands because it was so short.⁹

The oldest surviving copy of any part of it is a papyrus scrap now in the University of Cologne, known as Papyrus 87. It holds only Philemon 13–15 and 24–25. Its handwriting dates it to the early 200s, or perhaps the late 100s.¹⁰ It is a small piece of a small letter, copied by someone who thought it worth the papyrus.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Deuteronomy 23:15–16, then Philemon 12.

You will find: the Law of Moses forbidding anyone to send an escaped slave back, and Paul writing I am sending him back.

Then read the whole letter. It is twenty-five verses. Count the ways Paul makes it hard for Philemon to say no.

The Short Version

• Philemon is Paul’s shortest letter, about a slave named Onesimus, whom Paul sends back to his master.
• Paul asks Philemon to receive him “no longer as a slave, but … a beloved brother,” and has the letter read aloud to the whole house church.
• Paul never says slavery is wrong, and never clearly asks for Onesimus’s freedom.
• The Law of Moses said not to return an escaped slave.
• In America, defenders of slavery quoted this letter to return runaways. Abolitionists answered with “a beloved brother.”