"Wherefore, though I have all boldness in Christ to enjoin thee that
which is befitting, yet for love's sake I rather beseech, being such
a one as Paul the aged, and now a prisoner also of Jesus Christ; I
beseech thee for my child, whom I have begotten in my bonds,
Onesimus; who was aforetime unprofitable to thee, but now is
profitable to thee, and to me."--PHILEM. 8-11 (Rev. Ver.).
After honest and affectionate praise of Philemon, the Apostle now
approaches the main purpose of his letter. But even now he does not
blurt it out at once. He probably anticipated that his friend was justly
angry with his runaway slave, and therefore, in these verses, he touches
a kind of prelude to his request with what we should call the finest
tact, if it were not so manifestly the unconscious product of simple
good feeling. Even by the end of them he has not ventured to say what he
wishes done, though he has ventured to introduce the obnoxious name. So
much persuading and sanctified ingenuity does it sometimes take to
induce good men to do plain duties which may be unwelcome.
These verses not only present a model for efforts to lead men in right
paths, but they unveil the very spirit of Christianity in their
pleadings. Paul's persuasives to Philemon are echoes of Christ's
persuasives to Paul. He had learned his method from his Master, and had
himself experienced that gentle love was more than commandments.
Therefore he softens his voice to speak to Philemon, as Christ had
softened His to speak to Paul. We do not arbitrarily "spiritualize" the
words, but simply recognise that the Apostle moulded his conduct after
Christ's pattern, when we see here a mirror reflecting some of the
highest truths of Christian ethics.
I. Here is seen love which beseeches where it might command. The first
word, "wherefore," leads back to the preceding sentence, and makes
Philemon's past kindness to the saints the reason for his being asked to
be kind now. The Apostle's confidence in his friend's character, and in
his being amenable to the appeal of love, made Paul waive his apostolic
authority, and sue instead of commanding. There are people, like the
horse and the mule, who understand only rough imperatives, backed by
force; but they are fewer than we are apt to think, and perhaps
gentleness is never wholly thrown away. No doubt, there must be
adaptation of method to different characters, but we should try
gentleness before we make up our minds that to try it is to throw pearls
before swine.
The careful limits put to apostolic authority here deserve notice. "I
might be much bold in Christ to command." He has no authority in
himself, but he has "in Christ." His own personality gives him none, but
his relation to his Master does. It is a distinct assertion of right to
command, and an equally distinct repudiation of any such right, except
as derived from his union with Jesus.
He still further limits his authority by that noteworthy clause, "that
which is befitting." His authority does not stretch so far as to create
new obligations, or to repeal plain laws of duty. There was a standard
by which his commands were to be tried. He appeals to Philemon's own
sense of moral fitness, to his natural conscience, enlightened by
communion with Christ.
Then comes the great motive which he will urge, "for love's sake,"--not
merely his to Philemon, nor Philemon's to him, but the bond which unites
all Christian souls together, and binds them all to Christ. "That grand,
sacred principle," says Paul, "bids me put away authority, and speak in
entreaty." Love naturally beseeches, and does not order. The harsh voice
of command is simply the imposition of another's will, and it belongs to
relationships in which the heart has no share. But wherever love is the
bond, grace is poured into the lips, and "I enjoin" becomes "I pray." So
that even where the outward form of authority is still kept, as in a
parent to young children, there will ever be some endearing word to
swathe the harsh imperative in tenderness, like a sword blade wrapped
about with wool, lest it should wound. Love tends to obliterate the hard
distinction of superior and inferior, which finds its expression in
laconic imperatives and silent obedience. It seeks not for mere
compliance with commands, but for oneness of will. The lightest wish
breathed by loved lips is stronger than all stern injunctions, often,
alas! than all laws of duty. The heart is so tuned as only to vibrate to
that one tone. The rocking stones, which all the storms of winter may
howl round and not move, can be set swinging by a light touch. Una leads
the lion in a silken leash. Love controls the wildest nature. The
demoniac, whom no chains can bind, is found sitting at the feet of
incarnate gentleness. So the wish of love is all-powerful with loving
hearts, and its faintest whisper louder and more constraining than all
the trumpets of Sinai.
There is a large lesson here for all human relationships. Fathers and
mothers, husbands and wives, friends and companions, teachers and guides
of all sorts, should set their conduct by this pattern, and let the law
of love sit ever upon their lips. Authority is the weapon of a weak man,
who is doubtful of his own power to get himself obeyed, or of a selfish
one, who seeks for mechanical submission rather than for the fealty of
willing hearts. Love is the weapon of a strong man who can cast aside
the trappings of superiority, and is never loftier than when he
descends, nor more absolute than when he abjures authority, and appeals
with love to love. Men are not to be dragooned into goodness. If mere
outward acts are sought, it may be enough to impose another's will in
orders as curt as a soldier's word of command; but if the joyful
inclination of the heart to the good deed is to be secured, that can
only be done when law melts into love, and is thereby transformed to a
more imperative obligation, written not on tables of stone, but on
fleshy tables of the heart.
There is a glimpse here into the very heart of Christ's rule over men.
He too does not merely impose commands, but stoops to entreat, where He
indeed might command. "Henceforth I call you not servants, but friends";
and though He does go on to say, "Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever
I command you," yet His commandment has in it so much tenderness,
condescension, and pleading love, that it sounds far liker beseeching
than enjoining. His yoke is easy, for this among other reasons, that it
is, if one may so say, padded with love. His burden is light, because it
is laid on His servant's shoulders by a loving hand; and so, as St.
Bernard says, it is _onus quod portantem portat_, a burden which carries
him who carries it.
II. There is in these verses the appeal which gives weight to the
entreaties of love. The Apostle brings personal considerations to bear
on the enforcement of impersonal duty, and therein follows the example
of his Lord. He presents his own circumstances as adding power to his
request, and as it were puts himself into the scale. He touches with
singular pathos on two things which should sway his friend. "Such a one
as Paul the aged." The alternative rendering "ambassador," while quite
possible, has not congruity in its favour, and would be a recurrence to
that very motive of official authority which he has just disclaimed. The
other rendering is every way preferable. How old was he? Probably
somewhere about sixty--not a very great age, but life was somewhat
shorter then than now, and Paul was, no doubt, aged by work, by worry,
and by the unresting spirit that "o'er-informed his tenement of clay."
Such temperaments as his soon grow old. Perhaps Philemon was not much
younger; but the prosperous Colossian gentleman had had a smoother life,
and, no doubt, carried his years more lightly.
The requests of old age should have weight. In our days, what with the
improvements in education, and the general loosening of the bonds of
reverence, the old maxim that "the utmost respect is due to children,"
receives a strange interpretation, and in many a household the Divine
order is turned upside down, and the juniors regulate all things. Other
still more sacred things will be likely to lose their due reverence when
silver hairs no longer receive theirs.
But usually the aged who are "such" aged "as Paul" was, will not fail of
obtaining honour and deference. No more beautiful picture of the bright
energy and freshness still possible to the old was ever painted than may
be gathered from the Apostle's unconscious sketch of himself. He
delighted in having young life about him--Timothy, Titus, Mark, and
others, boys in comparison with himself, whom yet he admitted to close
intimacy as some old general might the youths of his staff, warming his
age at the genial flame of their growing energies and unworn hopes. His
was a joyful old age too, notwithstanding many burdens of anxiety and
sorrow. We hear the clear song of his gladness ringing through the
epistle of joy, that to the Philippians, which, like this, dates from
his Roman captivity. A Christian old age should be joyful, and only it
will be; for the joys of the natural life burn low, when the fuel that
fed them is nearly exhausted, and withered hands are held in vain over
the dying embers. But Christ's joy "remains," and a Christian old age
may be like the polar midsummer days, when the sun shines till midnight,
and dips but for an imperceptible interval ere it rises for the unending
day of heaven.
Paul the aged was full of interest in the things of the day; no mere
"praiser of time gone by," but a strenuous worker, cherishing a quick
sympathy and an eager interest which kept him young to the end. Witness
that last chapter of the second Epistle to Timothy, where he is seen, in
the immediate expectation of death, entering heartily into passing
trifles, and thinking it worth while to give little pieces of
information about the movements of his friends, and wishful to get his
books and parchments, that he might do some more work while waiting for
the headsman's sword. And over his cheery, sympathetic, busy old age
there is thrown the light of a great hope, which kindles desire and
onward looks in his dim eyes, and parts "such a one as Paul the aged" by
a whole universe from the old whose future is dark and their past
dreary, whose hope is a phantom and their memory a pang.
The Apostle adds yet another personal characteristic as a motive with
Philemon to grant his request: "Now a prisoner also of Christ Jesus." He
has already spoken of himself in these terms in _v._ 1. His sufferings
were imposed by and endured for Christ. He holds up his fettered wrist,
and in effect says, "Surely you will not refuse anything that you can do
to wrap a silken softness round the cold, hard iron, especially when you
remember for Whose sake and by Whose will I am bound with this chain."
He thus brings personal motives to reinforce duty which is binding from
other and higher considerations. He does not merely tell Philemon that
he ought to take back Onesimus as a piece of self-sacrificing Christian
duty. He does imply that highest motive throughout his pleadings, and
urges that such action is "fitting" or in consonance with the position
and obligations of a Christian man. But he backs up this highest reason
with these others: "If you hesitate to take him back because you ought,
will you do it because I ask you? and, before you answer that question,
will you remember my age, and what I am bearing for the Master?" If he
can get his friend to do the right thing by the help of these subsidiary
motives, still, it is the right thing; and the appeal to these motives
will do Philemon no harm, and, if successful, will do both him and
Onesimus a great deal of good.
Does not this action of Paul remind us of the highest example of a
similar use of motives of personal attachment as aids to duty? Christ
does thus with His servants. He does not simply hold up before us a cold
law of duty, but warms it by introducing our personal relation to Him as
the main motive for keeping it. Apart from Him, Morality can only point
to the tables of stone and say: "There! that is what you ought to do. Do
it, or face the consequences." But Christ says: "I have given Myself for
you. My will is your law. Will you do it for My sake?" Instead of the
chilling, statuesque ideal, as pure as marble and as cold, a Brother
stands before us with a heart that beats, a smile on His face, a hand
outstretched to help; and His word is, "If ye love Me, keep My
commandments." The specific difference of Christian morality lies not in
its precepts, but in its motive, and in its gift of power to obey. Paul
could only urge regard to him as a subsidiary inducement. Christ puts it
as the chief, nay, as the sole motive for obedience.
III. The last point suggested by these verses is the gradual opening up
of the main subject matter of the Apostle's request. Very noteworthy is
the tenderness of the description of the fugitive as "my child, whom I
have begotten in my bonds." Paul does not venture to name him at once,
but prepares the way by the warmth of this affectionate reference. The
position of the name in the sentence is most unusual, and suggests a
kind of hesitation to take the plunge, while the hurried passing on to
meet the objection which he knew would spring immediately to Philemon's
mind is almost as if Paul laid his hand on his friend's lips to stop his
words,--"Onesimus then is it? that good-for-nothing!" Paul admits the
indictment, will say no word to mitigate the condemnation due to his
past worthlessness, but, with a playful allusion to the slave's name,
which conceals his deep earnestness, assures Philemon that he will find
the formerly inappropriate name, Onesimus--_i.e._ profitable--true yet,
for all that is past. He is sure of this, because he, Paul, has proved
his value. Surely never were the natural feelings of indignation and
suspicion more skilfully soothed, and never did repentant
good-for-nothing get sent back to regain the confidence which he had
forfeited, with such a certificate of character in his hand!
But there is something of more importance than Paul's inborn delicacy
and tact to notice here. Onesimus had been a bad specimen of a bad
class. Slavery must needs corrupt both the owner and the chattel; and,
as a matter of fact, we have classical allusions enough to show that the
slaves of Paul's period were deeply tainted with the characteristic
vices of their condition. Liars, thieves, idle, treacherous, nourishing
a hatred of their masters all the more deadly that it was smothered, but
ready to flame out, if opportunity served, in blood-curdling
cruelties--they constituted an ever-present danger, and needed an
ever-wakeful watchfulness. Onesimus had been known to Philemon only as
one of the idlers who were more of a nuisance than a benefit, and cost
more than they earned; and he apparently ended his career by theft. And
this degraded creature, with scars on his soul deeper and worse than the
marks of fetters on his limbs, had somehow found his way to the great
jungle of a city, where all foul vermin could crawl and hiss and sting
with comparative safety. There he had somehow come across the Apostle,
and had received into his heart, filled with ugly desires and lusts, the
message of Christ's love, which had swept it clean, and made him over
again. The Apostle has had but short experience of his convert, but he
is quite sure that he is a Christian; and, that being the case, he is as
sure that all the bad black past is buried, and that the new leaf now
turned over will be covered with fair writing, not in the least like the
blots that were on the former page, and have now been dissolved from off
it, by the touch of Christ's blood.
It is a typical instance of the miracles which the gospel wrought as
every-day events in its transforming career. Christianity knows nothing
of hopeless cases. It professes its ability to take the most crooked
stick and bring it straight, to flash a new power into the blackest
carbon, which will turn it into a diamond. Every duty will be done
better by a man if he have the love and grace of Jesus Christ in his
heart. New motives are brought into play, new powers are given, new
standards of duty are set up. The small tasks become great, and the
unwelcome sweet, and the difficult easy, when done for and through
Christ. Old vices are crushed in their deepest source; old habits driven
out by the force of a new affection, as the young leaf-buds push the
withered foliage from the tree. Christ can make any man over again, and
does so re-create every heart that trusts to him. Such miracles of
transformation are wrought to-day as truly as of old. Many professing
Christians experience little of that quickening and revolutionising
energy; many observers see little of it, and some begin to croak, as if
the old power had ebbed away. But wherever men give the gospel fair play
in their lives, and open their spirits, in truth and not merely in
profession, to its influence, it vindicates its undiminished possession
of all its former energy; and if ever it seems to fail, it is not that
the medicine is ineffectual, but that the sick man has not really taken
it. The low tone of much modern Christianity and its dim exhibition of
the transforming power of the gospel is easily and sadly accounted for
without charging decrepitude on that which was once so mighty, by the
patent fact that much modern Christianity is little better than lip
acknowledgment, and that much more of it is wofully unfamiliar with the
truth which it in some fashion believes, and is sinfully negligent of
the spiritual gifts which it professes to treasure. If a Christian man
does not show that his religion is changing him into the fair likeness
of his Master, and fitting him for all relations of life, the reason is
simply that he has so little of it, and that little so mechanical and
tepid.
Paul pleads with Philemon to take back his worthless servant, and
assures him that he will find Onesimus helpful now. Christ does not
need to be besought to welcome His runaway good-for-nothings, however
unprofitable they have been. That Divine charity of His forgives all
things, and "hopes all things" of the worst, and can fulfil its own hope
in the most degraded. With bright, unfaltering confidence in His own
power He fronts the most evil, sure that He can cleanse; and that, no
matter what the past has been, His power can overcome all defects of
character, education, or surroundings, can set free from all moral
disadvantages adhering to men's station, class, or calling, can break
the entail of sin. The worst needs no intercessor to sway that tender
heart of our great Master whom we may dimly see shadowed in the very
name of "Philemon," which means one who is loving or kindly. Whoever
confesses to him that he has "been an unprofitable servant," will be
welcomed to His heart, made pure and good by the Divine Spirit breathing
new life into him, will be trained by Christ for all joyful toil as His
slave, and yet His freedman and friend; and at last each once fugitive
and unprofitable Onesimus will hear the "Well done, good and faithful
servant!"