Send Him Back as a Brother

The letter Onesimus carried was the shortest Paul ever sent. It was not about a town, or a quarrel, or a wrong teaching that had got in somewhere. It was about him.

In Colossae, in the house where the gathering met on the first day of the week, there was a man named Philemon. He was well off — well enough off to have a room in his house big enough for everybody to sit in. His wife Apphia is in the letter, and a man called Archippus, the same one Paul told to finish the work he had been given. Paul had never been to Colossae, but he knew Philemon. Somewhere, probably down in Ephesus, Philemon had heard him, and had gone home a different man, and had opened his door.

There were slaves in that house. Nearly every house that size had them. A slave was not a servant who could give notice and walk out. A slave was property. He had been bought, or born to a woman who had been bought, or taken in a war, and he belonged to the man who owned him in the same way the table and the mule belonged to him. He could be sold. He could be lent out. What he made with his hands was not his.

They were everywhere, and they did everything. They carried the water and cooked the food and swept the floors. They minded the children and walked them to school. Some of them kept their master’s accounts, and some of them were doctors, and some of them taught his sons Greek. In some cities something like one person in three was owned by somebody else. It is how that world was built, from the bottom up.

One of Philemon’s slaves was named Onesimus. The name means Useful, which is the sort of name people gave a slave, the way you might name a dog. And then one day Onesimus was not there. Something had gone with him, too, or something was owed. Paul only says that if there was a wrong, and if there was a debt, they were to be sent somewhere else.

Running was the most dangerous thing a slave could do. There was nowhere in the world for him to go and be free. Descriptions of runaways went out along the roads, and there were men who did nothing else for a living but hunt them and bring them back for the money. Anybody who took a runaway in could be made to pay his owner for every day he had kept him. And when a runaway was caught, what happened next was up to the man who owned him. He could be beaten. He could be kept in irons and worked in them. He could be sold off to the mines, where men did not last long. He could be killed, and no court anywhere in the empire would have asked a single question about it.

Onesimus got a long way. He went where a person can disappear. There were perhaps a million people in Rome, packed up the hills in tall wooden houses, and a man could stand in that crowd all day and nobody would know his name or where he had come from. That is where he went.

There were other people from his own valley in Rome that year — Epaphras, who had taught Colossae, was there, and locked up along with Paul. Onesimus came to the door of the one man alive whose letter could get him home in one piece. Paul was in a rented room with a chain on his wrist and a soldier beside him, and people came and went all day. Onesimus came, and then he did not go away again.

He listened, and he believed, and the old man grew very fond of him. Paul calls him his child, the one he became father to in his chains. And he was useful, which Paul thought was funny and says so. He fetched and carried and looked after a prisoner, and Paul wanted to keep him.

But Onesimus belonged to somebody. And Paul would not keep another man’s slave without that man saying so. So he did the hard thing. He sent him back. Six or seven weeks of it — the road down to the sea, the crossing, the coast, and then the long climb inland up the valley to the house he had run out of. Tychicus went with him for company, carrying the letter for the church. And Onesimus carried a second letter, a short one, for Philemon, with the last of it written out in Paul’s own hand. It was the only thing standing between him and whatever Philemon decided to do with him.

It is addressed to Philemon. But it is also addressed to Apphia, and to Archippus, and to the whole gathering that met in that house — so whatever Philemon decided, he would be deciding it in front of everybody he knew. Paul never once tells him what to do. He asks him for one thing, and the one thing is a word.

“Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy the brother, to Philemon, whom we love and work beside, and to Apphia our sister, and to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the gathering in your house. Favor to you and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“I thank my God every time I mention you in my prayers. I keep hearing about your love, and about the trust you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all the holy ones. I had a great deal of joy out of your love, and a great deal of comfort, because you have given God’s people rest, brother, right down inside them.”

“So. I have boldness enough in Christ to order you to do the right thing here. Instead of that I am going to ask you, because of love. It is only Paul asking — an old man, and now a prisoner of Christ Jesus as well.” “I am asking you about my child. I became his father here, in my chains. His name is Onesimus.”

“Once he was no use to you. Now he is useful, to you and to me both. I am sending him back to you — and when I send him I am sending my own heart out on the road with him.” “I would have liked to keep him here with me, so that he could look after me in these chains on your behalf, while I am here for the good news. But I did not want to do one single thing without you. I did not want any kindness of yours squeezed out of you. I wanted it to be yours.”

“Perhaps this is why he was away from you for a little while: so that you could have him back for good. Not as a slave now. More than a slave — as a brother you love. He is that to me. He will be far more than that to you, both as a man in your house and in the Lord.”

“So if you count me a partner of yours, take him in the way you would take me in. And if he has wronged you in anything, or if he owes you anything, put it on my account. I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will pay it back myself. I will not mention that you owe me your own self on top of it.” “Yes, brother. Let me have some good of you, in the Lord. Give my heart a rest, in Christ.”

“I am writing to you certain that you will do it, and knowing that you will do more than I am asking.” “And one more thing: get a room ready for me. I am hoping that your prayers are going to give me back to you.”

“Epaphras, who is in prison with me for Christ Jesus, says hello. So do Mark, and Aristarchus, and Demas, and Luke, who all work with me.” “The favor of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”