No Longer a Slave, But a Brother – Philemon 1:8-16

This history of slavery is a sordid one, and even now there are more people enslaved by others than ever before.  Does the Bible endorse slavery?  The letter to Philemon suggests otherwise.

Accordingly, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love’s sake I prefer to appeal to you—I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus—I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment. (Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.) I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart. I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel, but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own accord. For this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother—especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.  (Philemon 1:8-16 ESV)

Onesimus means ‘profitable’ and this man has become an old man’s child in the faith as Paul has led him to faith in Christ.  Paul has tremendous fondness for Onesimus and would have preferred to keep him with him in Rome to minister to him in his time of need, but he knows he must return to his master, Philemon, to face what has been done and square things away.  Paul is suggesting that Onesimus’ parting from Philemon by fleeing from him to Rome was perhaps God’s way of getting him saved and returning him to his household no longer a slave but a brother in Christ.

Paul says he could command Philemon to do what is required.  What is required?  Onesimus could be beaten or worse as one who likely stole something from Philemon, or at least stole himself from Philemon.  But he must be received as a brother in Christ now, whether he is a slave or not.  Must he be given his freedom?  Paul does not go so far as to say so, but how do you receive a slave as a beloved brother and keep him a slave?  For Christians this new reality between slave and master would make it difficult to retain ownership one of another.  In Israel a fellow Israelite could not remain a slave because he was a brother.  He had to be remanded after 6 years if he so chose.

Paul is not trying to dismantle slavery, though it is the Christian movement that has always been at the forefront of such dismantling.