Book of Philemon
A personal appeal for forgiveness and reconciliation.
About the Book of Philemon
Philemon is the shortest of Paul's letters — just 25 verses — and the most personal. It is addressed to Philemon, a wealthy Christian in Colossae, concerning his runaway slave Onesimus, who had somehow encountered Paul in prison and had become a Christian. Paul is sending Onesimus back to his master, but with this extraordinary letter.
The letter is a masterpiece of pastoral tact. Paul does not command Philemon, though he has the apostolic authority to do so. Instead, he appeals on the basis of love, asking Philemon to receive Onesimus back "no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother." Paul even offers to repay any debt Onesimus owes, signing the note in his own hand — before reminding Philemon that he owes Paul his own soul.
Philemon does not directly attack the institution of slavery, but it plants within it a seed that would eventually abolish it: the declaration that in Christ, master and slave share a common brotherhood. When the logic of this is fully worked out — as it eventually was by William Wilberforce and others who appealed explicitly to Christian theology — slavery cannot survive. Philemon is a case study in how the gospel works: not through coercive power, but through the transformation of relationships from the inside out.