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Home > Reflections & Prayers > Daily Reflection
From Slave to Brother
By Gordon MacDonald
"I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers."
Philemon 4
List the three or four most obscure books in the New Testament, and the Book of Philemon will be there among them. It is not foolish to ask why it ever made it into the New Testament. And yet this letter offers deep insight into some of the issues facing a first-century Christian who probably saw himself as a generous giver.
Philemon was obviously a businessman. He represented the kind of person who had to cross a line as he acknowledged his faith in Jesus Christ. We are surprised to hear that he was a slaveholder. Inexcusable! we say to ourselves. But we must hold our opinion until we absorb the whole story and come to realize that Philemon, like all of us, had some growing to do.
Onesimus was Philemon’s slave. He had run off and had ended up in Rome, where he found Paul and soon converted to Christ. In time he had to return to Philemon and “face the music.” Onesimus undoubtedly had Paul’s letter to Philemon with him when he came back.
It is worth studying how Paul talks to a businessman who is a Christ-follower. I hear about your faith, Paul writes. I hear about your love for the saints. I am encouraged by all I hear about you. Philemon was clearly a good man, and on his way to getting better.
Note how Paul appealed to Philemon on behalf of Onesimus. “Formerly he was useless (which was apparently a play on the name Onesimus, which meant useless), but now he has become useful both to you and me.” This, we would hope, is exactly what faith does for a man: It turns him from uselessness to usefulness.
But here is the key to the letter. Paul urged Philemon to receive Onesimus back “no longer as a slave but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me, but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord” (Phlm 16).
From being a slave to being a man and a brother! Only the gospel in the hands of a generous giver can make such transformations possible. One thinks of the two key players in this tiny letter: Paul and Philemon. Between them they had the power to change a third man’s life. Not simply to set him free from a life of economic slavery, but to set him free from a life of nothing to everything: a child of God, a brother in the Lord, a servant of the gospel. This is the joy of generous giving. This is what it makes possible.
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