(Deuteronomy 23:15-16; Galatians 3:26-29, Philemon)
This morning, we’re starting a sermon series on Colossians; we’ll be working our way through the letter to the Colossians over the course of the fall. Now, as I say that, some of you might be wondering what I’m talking about, since we didn’t read Colossians this morning; wasn’t I listening as Dr. Kavanaugh read Philemon? Well, yes, I was listening, and I didn’t make any mistake in what I asked him to read; we’re starting a series on Colossians by looking at the book of Philemon. I’ll grant, it’s not the usual way to do things, but I do have reasons for putting things together this way. Some are just reasons of scheduling, minor practical matters; of greater importance is the fact that this letter is part of Scripture, which means that while it’s usually ignored because of its size, we ought to stop and consider what God wants to say to us through it. If we’re going to do that, then, the logical time is to put it together with Colossians, because these two letters are related. In fact, they’re quite closely related, as you can see if you flip over to Colossians 4:9, where Onesimus is mentioned along with Tychicus as one of the people carrying that letter; you’ll note there that Paul explicitly says, “he’s one of you.”
We don’t know a lot of Onesimus’ story, but we do know that he was a slave. That’s a loaded word, and rightly so, but it’s important to realize that slavery in the Roman world was very different from American slavery; and while it could still be a terrible thing, on the whole it was far better. Yes, slaves were owned by another human being and under that person’s absolute authority, and yes, some masters were cruel and exploited their slaves; but most, it seems, treated them at least decently. There was certainly societal pressure to do so, partly on moral grounds (for they knew full well that slaves were human) but more on practical grounds: it was unwise to provoke slaves by ill-treating them, for one thing, and for another, it was uneconomical, because it reduced both their ability and their motivation to work. Indeed, unlike in America, it was quite common to teach slaves and train them so as to increase their productivity, and some slaves became quite important people in their own right. Slaves were allowed to work on their own, though their owners took much of the money they received, and to own property—some even owned other slaves. In a society which was rigidly structured by class (which was rigidly determined by money), slaves who belonged to an owner of social standing who took good care of them were better off than many who were free but poor. There were even people who voluntarily sold themselves into slavery in order to improve their lives, usually because they were too deeply in debt to get themselves out of it.
Still, even given that Roman slavery was generally a far better thing than American slavery, especially in the context of unjust Roman society, the fact remains that it’s intrinsically a bad thing; people shouldn’t own other people. As such, Paul’s response to slavery is obviously a central concern for us as we read this letter; and to understand the response he offers here, we need to get the details straight, as far as we can. We know that Onesimus belonged to Philemon, a man of some importance in the city of Colossae who was one of the leaders of the church there. As we’ll talk about later on, the church in that time period met in the homes of members, and each house church was under the direction of overseers (we would call them elders). Philemon was rich enough to have a house big enough for the church to use—no surprise, since he was rich enough to own slaves—and as such was probably one of the overseers of that particular congregation.
We also know that at some point, Onesimus escaped from his master and fled the city. He was almost certainly still young enough to be unmarried, so he had no one but himself to worry about; that made escape easier. He may have taken some of his master’s money or valuables with him; that’s not clear, but it might well be part of the financial harm done by Onesimus which Paul has in view in verse 18. You can understand why Onesimus would have stolen as much as he could carry on his way out the door, since he had a long journey ahead of him. A slave who had run away could never feel completely safe as a fugitive; it wasn’t like in America, where there was a safe place to run to. The best chance of safety lay in fleeing to one of the great port cities of the empire; the nearest of those was Ephesus, down the Lycus valley a ways from Colossae, but that would be far too close for comfort. Instead, Onesimus made for the greatest city of all, and the one that offered the greatest hope for a better life: the capital city of Rome.
Now, we don’t know anything about his journey, or what might have happened along the way; but we know that somehow, he fell in with Paul, who was under house arrest in Rome at this time. He may well have known of Paul as one of his master’s friends and someone Philemon held in high honor—indeed, he may actually have known Paul already—or maybe not, we can’t really say; but however it happened, he became part of Paul’s unorthodox little household, and Paul led him to Christ. This was a critically important thing for Onesimus, not just for his spiritual destiny but for his daily life, because under Roman law there were only a couple ways for a fugitive slave to regain some sort of legal status. One was to go to a temple that could offer asylum to fugitives and appeal to the priests; they would then contact the owner and try to broker a safe return for the slave. The other was to go to a friend of the master, an amicus domini, and appeal to them for asylum and assistance. If that person was willing to intercede on the slave’s behalf, and if they were willing to write a letter to that effect in the slave’s defense, then under Roman law the slave was no longer a fugitive.
This gave Paul an opening. He gets bashed sometimes by modern Western types for not denouncing slavery and trying to launch an abolitionist crusade; but if he’d tried, he would only have made things worse. He would have suddenly been taken far more seriously by the Romans as a troublemaker (and most likely executed as a result), Christians throughout the empire would have abruptly been treated with far greater suspicion and hostility, people who already didn’t like Christians would probably have been roused to defend slavery . . . and all in all, the gradual drift of Roman society away from slavery would probably have been reversed somewhat, not speeded up. He’s simply too outnumbered and outgunned for a frontal assault to work. Instead, he does what he can to undermine slavery in and through the church, beginning with this letter.
You see, Paul writes this letter to Philemon as the amicus domini for Onesimus; and in it, he does several things. We’ll look at a few of them next week, but now, I want to focus your attention on the most important one. Look at verses 15-16. Paul writes, “Perhaps Onesimus was separated from you for a little while.” Note that. He doesn’t say, “Perhaps Onesimus separated himself from you”; he says, “perhaps he was separated.” That’s what we call the “divine passive,” and you’ll find it all over the Old Testament. The Jews were so careful about not taking God’s name in vain that they avoided using it whenever possible; and so if they wanted to say God did something, they would often write, “It happened.” That’s the divine passive, and that’s what we have here: Paul is gently suggesting to Philemon that it wasn’t Onesimus who did this—it was God.
To what purpose? Onesimus’ salvation, for one; more than that, a major change in his relationship with Philemon as a result. We cannot know how Philemon treated his slaves, though given his position in the church one would hope he treated them well; but it seems likely that he treated them, and thought of them, as slaves—people, yes, but definitely second-class, second-tier. Now Paul is saying, perhaps God was at work here so that Onesimus might be saved and Philemon might have him back “no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother” in Christ, a fellow Christian. This is the keynote to everything Paul says in this letter, to his appeal to Philemon to welcome Onesimus back rather than punishing him and all the rest of it: Philemon, this man isn’t just your slave anymore, he’s your brother in Christ; I led him to Christ just as I led you to Christ, and you can’t look at him the same way as you used to. In the world, you own him and he’s your inferior; in the church, Jesus owns both of you and he’s your equal.
This is how the church gradually ended slavery in the ancient world; slaves became members of the church alongside freemen and citizens, and they became elders, and they became pastors, and some even became bishops. About forty years after this letter was written, one Onesimus became bishop of Ephesus; we don’t know if it was the same one or not, but personally, I think it was. And the more people saw slaves as their equals, and sometimes even their betters, the less supportable slavery became, until eventually the Emperor Justinian ended it altogether.
And everywhere this dynamic has been allowed to work, everywhere that Christians have learned to see one another first and foremost as people whom God loves, for whom Jesus died, all the distinctions that we use to say this person is better or more important or more valuable than that one have tended to fade away. That’s why Paul could tell the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”; and we could add, there is neither rich nor poor, black nor white nor Hispanic nor Asian nor American Indian, Republican nor Democrat nor independent, American nor foreigner, not because these divisions don’t exist but because they aren’t what really matters. Christ Jesus is for everyone, and loves everyone equally—that’s what matters. Everything else is just details. Everything else. We are God’s people—that’s the bottom line.