complications

Week 49 Philemon

The story of Onesimus is pretty interesting because it talks about what happens when a person believes. The basic thing here in Philemon is that both nothing and something happens.
Onesimus was a slave before he heard the gospel story. And then after he heard & believed he was still a slave. So that didn’t change.
What did change was that after he believed – even though he was still a slave – he was also now more than a slave (in the sense that a whole new department or division had been added onto his life). His expanded life had a bunch of brand-new elements…but it still included his old-life. So it was an inclusionary brand-new life…brand-new by addition…not brand-new by subtraction.
Onesimus was a slave in the first-century Roman political-legal system both before and after he met the Lord. But he’d become a free man in-Christ – a special reclassification outside of the local political-legal regime.
Anyway to further complicate things Onesimus was owned by Philemon. Philemon was a believer. After Onesimus believed Philemon was still his owner. The ticklish thing was that Onesimus’ reclassification gave him an added status – he was now Philemon’s brother.
So this letter from Paul to Philemon is a kind of case-study on fitting Onesimus’ official legal status with his newly-acquired status as a member of the faith. It was perplexing and potentially conflictual. And so it had to be finessed & worked through & developed & thought-out & negotiated.