Week 49 Philemon
Paul wrote this letter to a man he already knew. The man hosted church meetings in his own home. He was Philemon.
The letter to Philemon was about a runaway slave named Onesimus. While he was on the lam he had come to belief in the Lord (probably after running into Paul). The ironic thing – and the reason Paul wrote about him – was that Philemon was the man Onesimus had escaped from. Philemon owned Onesimus!
You have to figure that Paul & Onesimus had some serious what-to-do-now conversations. In the end Onesimus decided he had to return to his master.
The interesting twist that Paul puts on Onesimus’ return to Philemon is that his slave is coming back: no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother.
Technically that wasn’t entirely true because believing in the Lord didn’t alter Onesimus’ legal status as a slave.
What Paul was driving at was that even though Onesimus was formally still in a state of institutional bondage, he was also more-than-a-slave.
In the first-century political-legal Roman world Onesimus was just as much a slave after he believed in the Lord as he was before. Belief didn’t work any social-status miracles for Onesimus in the material world.
What it did do was add a whole new dimension on the non-material side. Which would have been a ticklish thing for both Philemon and Onesimus. Legally master & slave; but brothers & equals in-the-Lord.
Note: quote from Philemon 16 (NASB)