V.

"For perhaps he was therefore parted from thee for a season, that

thou shouldest have him for ever; no longer as a servant, but more

than a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much

rather to thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord. If then thou

countest me a partner, receive him as myself. But if he hath wronged

thee at all, or oweth thee aught, put that to mine account; I Paul

write it with mine own hand, I will repay it: that I say not unto

thee how that thou owest to me even thine own self

besides."--PHILEM. 15-19 (Rev. Ver.).

The first words of these verses are connected with the preceding by the

"for" at the beginning; that is to say, the thought that possibly the

Divine purpose in permitting the flight of Onesimus was his restoration,

in eternal and holy relationship, to Philemon, was Paul's reason for not

carrying out his wish to keep Onesimus as his own attendant and helper.

"I did not decide, though I very much wished, to retain him without your

consent, because it is possible that he was allowed to flee from you,

though his flight was his own blamable act, in order that he might be

given back to you, a richer possession, a brother instead of a slave."

I. There is here a Divine purpose discerned as shining through a

questionable human act.

The first point to note is, with what charitable delicacy of feeling the

Apostle uses a mild word to express the fugitive's flight. He will not

employ the harsh naked word "ran away." It might irritate Philemon.

Besides, Onesimus has repented of his faults, as is plain from the fact

of his voluntary return, and therefore there is no need for dwelling on

them. The harshest, sharpest words are best when callous consciences are

to be made to wince; but words that are balm and healing are to be used

when men are heartily ashamed of their sins. So the deed for which

Philemon's forgiveness is asked is half veiled in the phrase "he was

parted."

Not only so, but the word suggests that behind the slave's mutiny and

flight there was another Will working, of which, in some sense, Onesimus

was but the instrument. He "_was_ parted"--not that he was not

responsible for his flight, but that, through his act, which in the eyes

of all concerned was wrong, Paul discerns as dimly visible a great

Divine purpose.

But he puts that as only a possibility: "_Perhaps_ he departed from

thee."----He will not be too sure of what God means by such and such a

thing, as some of us are wont to be, as if we had been sworn of God's

privy council. "Perhaps" is one of the hardest words for minds of a

certain class to say; but in regard to all such subjects, and to many

more, it is the motto of the wise man, and the shibboleth which sifts

out the patient, modest lovers of truth from rash theorists and

precipitate dogmatisers. Impatience of uncertainty is a moral fault

which mars many an intellectual process; and its evil effects are

nowhere mote visible than in the field of theology. A humble "perhaps"

often grows into a "verily, verily"--and a hasty, over-confident

"verily, verily," often dwindles to a hesitating "perhaps." Let us not

be in too great a hurry to make sure that we have the key of the

cabinet where God keeps His purposes, but content ourselves with

"perhaps" when we are interpreting the often questionable ways of His

providences, each of which has many meanings and many ends.

But however modestly he may hesitate as to the application of the

principle, Paul has no doubt as to the principle itself: namely, that

God, in the sweep of His wise providence, utilizes even men's evil, and

works it in, to the accomplishment of great purposes far beyond their

ken, as nature, in her patient chemistry, takes the rubbish and filth of

the dunghill and turns them into beauty and food. Onesimus had no high

motives in his flight; he had run away under discreditable

circumstances, and perhaps to escape deserved punishment. Laziness and

theft had been the hopeful companions of his flight, which, so far as he

was concerned, had been the outcome of low and probably criminal

impulses; and yet God had known how to use it so as to lead to his

becoming a Christian. "With the wrath of man Thou girdest Thyself,"

twisting and bending it so as to be flexible in Thy hands, and "the

remainder Thou dost restrain," How unlike were the seed and the

fruit--the flight of a good-for-nothing thief and the return of a

Christian brother! He meant it not so; but in running away from his

master, he was running straight into the arms of his Saviour. How little

Onesimus knew what was to be the end of that day's work, when he slunk

out of Philemon's house with his stolen booty hid away in his bosom! And

how little any of us know where we are going, and what strange results

may evolve themselves from our actions! Blessed they who can rest in

the confidence that, however modest we should be in our interpretation

of the events of our own or of other men's lives, the infinitely complex

web of circumstance is woven by a loving, wise Hand, and takes shape,

with all its interlacing threads, according to a pattern in His hand,

which will vindicate itself when it is finished!

The contrast is emphatic between the short absence and the eternity of

the new relationship: "for a season"--literally an hour--and "for ever."

There is but one point of view which gives importance to this material

world, with all its fleeting joys and fallacious possessions. Life is

not worth living, unless it be the vestibule to a life beyond. Why all

its discipline, whether of sorrow or joy, unless there be another,

ampler life, where we can use to nobler ends the powers acquired and

greatened by use here? What an inconsequent piece of work is man, if the

few years of earth are his all! Surely, if nothing is to come of all

this life here, men are made in vain, and had better not have been at

all. Here is a narrow sound, with a mere ribbon of sea in it, shut in

between grim, echoing rocks. How small and meaningless it looks as long

as the fog hides the great ocean beyond! But when the mist lifts, and we

see that the narrow strait leads out into a boundless sea that lies

flashing in the sunshine to the horizon, then we find out the worth of

that little driblet of water at our feet. It connects with the open sea,

and that swathes the world. So is it with "the hour" of life; it opens

out and debouches into the "for ever," and therefore it is great and

solemn. This moment is one of the moments of that hour. We are the sport

of our own generalisations, and ready to admit all these fine and

solemn things about life, but we are less willing to apply them to the

single moments as they fly. We should not rest content with recognising

the general truth, but ever make conscious effort to feel that _this_

passing instant has something to do with our eternal character and with

our eternal destiny.

That is an exquisitely beautiful and tender thought which the Apostle

puts here, and one which is susceptible of many applications. The

temporary loss may be eternal gain. The dropping away of the earthly

form of a relationship may, in God's great mercy, be a step towards its

renewal in higher fashion and for evermore. All our blessings need to be

past before reflection can be brought to bear upon them, to make us

conscious how blessed we were. The blossoms have to perish before the

rich perfume, which can be kept in undiminished fragrance for years, can

be distilled from them. When death takes away dear ones, we first learn

that we were entertaining angels unawares; and as they float away from

us into the light, they look back with faces already beginning to

brighten into the likeness of Christ, and take leave of us with His

valediction, "It is expedient for you that I go away." Memory teaches us

the true character of life. We can best estimate the height of the

mountain peaks when we have left them behind. The softening and

hallowing influence of death reveals the nobleness and sweetness of

those who are gone. Fair country never looks so fair as when it has a

curving river for a foreground; and fair lives look fairer than before,

when seen across the Jordan of death.

To us who believe that life and love are not killed by death, the end of

their earthly form is but the beginning of a higher heavenly. Love which

is "in Christ" is eternal. Because Philemon and Onesimus were two

Christians, therefore their relationship was eternal. Is it not yet more

true, if that were possible, that the sweet bonds which unite Christian

souls here on earth are in their essence indestructible, and are

affected by death only as the body is? Sown in weakness, will they not

be raised in power? Nothing of them shall die but the encompassing

death. Their mortal part shall put on immortality. As the farmer gathers

the green flax with its blue bells blooming on it, and throws it into a

tank to rot, in order to get the firm fibre which cannot rot, and spin

it into a strong cable, so God does with our earthly loves. He causes

all about them that is perishable to perish, that the central fibre,

which is eternal, may stand clear and disengaged from all that was less

Divine than itself. Wherefore mourning hearts may stay themselves on

this assurance, that they will never lose the dear ones whom they have

loved in Christ, and that death itself but changes the manner of the

communion, and refines the tie. They were as for a moment dead, but they

are alive again. To our bewildered sight they departed and were lost for

a season, but they are found, and we can fold them in our heart of

hearts for ever.

But there is also set forth here a change, not only in the duration but

in the quality of the relation between the Christian master and his

former slave, who continues a slave indeed, but is also a brother. "No

longer as a servant, but more than a servant, a brother beloved,

specially to me, but how much rather to thee, both in the flesh and in

the Lord." It is clear from these words that Paul did not anticipate the

manumission of Onesimus. What he asks is, that he should not be received

_as_ a slave. Evidently then he is to be still a slave in so far as the

outward fact goes--but a new spirit is to be breathed into the

relationship. "Specially to me"; he is more than a slave to me. I have

not looked on him as such, but have taken him to my heart as a brother,

as a son indeed, for he is especially dear to me as my convert. But

however dear he is to me, he should be more so to thee, to whom his

relation is permanent, while to me it is temporary. And this Brotherhood

of the slave is to be felt and made visible "both in the flesh"--that

is, in the earthly and personal relations of common life, "and in the

Lord"--that is, in the spiritual and religious relationships of worship

and the Church.

As has been well said, "In the flesh, Philemon has the brother for his

slave; in the Lord, Philemon has the slave for his brother." He is to

treat him as his brother therefore both in the common relationships of

every-day life and in the acts of religious worship.

That is a pregnant word. True, there is no gulf between Christian people

now-a-days like that which in the old times parted owner and slave; but,

as society becomes more and more differentiated, as the diversities of

wealth become more extreme in our commercial communities, as education

comes to make the educated man's whole way of looking at life differ

more and more from that of the less cultured classes, the injunction

implied in our text encounters enemies quite as formidable as slavery

ever was. The highly educated man is apt to be very oblivious of the

brotherhood of the ignorant Christian, and he, on his part, finds the

recognition just as hard. The rich mill-owner has not much sympathy with

the poor brother who works at his spinning-jennies. It is often

difficult for the Christian mistress to remember that her cook is her

sister in Christ. There is quite as much sin against fraternity on the

side of the poor Christians who are servants and illiterate, as on the

side of the rich who are masters or cultured. But the principle that

Christian brotherhood is to reach across the wall of class distinctions

is as binding to-day as it was on these two good people, Philemon the

master and Onesimus the slave.

That brotherhood is not to be confined to acts and times of Christian

communion, but is to be shown and to shape conduct in common life. "Both

in the flesh and in the Lord" may be put into plain English thus: A rich

man and a poor one belong to the same church; they unite in the same

worship, they are "partakers of the one bread," and therefore, Paul

thinks, "are one bread." They go outside the church door. Do they ever

dream of speaking to one another outside? "A brother beloved in the

Lord"--on Sundays, and during worship and in Church matters--is often a

stranger "in the flesh" on Mondays, in the street and in common life.

Some good people seem to keep their brotherly love in the same wardrobe

with their Sunday clothes. Philemon was bid, and all are bid, to wear it

all the week, at market as well as church.

II. In the next verse, the essential purpose for which the whole letter

was written is put at last in an articulate request, based upon a very

tender motive. "If then thou countest me as a partner, receive him as

myself," Paul now at last completes the sentence which he began in _v_.

12, and from which he was hurried away by the other thoughts that came

crowding in upon him. This plea for the kindly welcome to be accorded to

Onesimus has been knocking at the door of his lips for utterance from

the beginning of the letter; but only now, so near the end, after so

much conciliation, he ventures to put it into plain words; and even now

he does not dwell on it, but goes quickly on to another point. He puts

his requests on a modest and yet a strong ground, appealing to

Philemon's sense of comradeship--"if thou countest me a partner"--a

comrade or a sharer in Christian blessings. He sinks all reference to

apostolic authority, and only points to their common possession of

faith, hope, and joy in Christ. "Receive him as myself." That request

was sufficiently illustrated in the preceding chapter, so that I need

only refer to what was then said on this instance of interceding love

identifying itself with its object, and on the enunciation in it of

great Christian truth.

III. The course of thought next shows--Love taking the slave's debts on

itself.

"If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee aught." Paul makes an "if" of

what he knew well enough to be the fact; for no doubt Onesimus had told

him all his faults, and the whole context shows that there was no

uncertainty in Paul's mind, but that he puts the wrong hypothetically

for the same reason for which he chooses to say, "was parted" instead

of "ran away," namely, to keep some thin veil over the crimes of a

penitent, and not to rasp him with rough words. For the same reason,

too, he falls back upon the gentler expressions, "wronged" and "oweth,"

instead of blurting out the ugly word "stolen." And then, with a

half-playful assumption of lawyer-like phraseology, he bids Philemon put

that to his account. Here is my autograph--"I Paul write it with mine

own hand"--I make this letter into a bond. Witness my hand; "I will

repay it." The formal tone of the promise, rendered more formal by the

insertion of the name--and perhaps by that sentence only being in his

own handwriting--seems to warrant the explanation that it is half

playful; for he could never have supposed that Philemon would exact the

fulfilment of the bond, and we have no reason to suppose that, if he

had, Paul could really have paid the amount. But beneath the playfulness

there lies the implied exhortation to forgive the money wrong as well as

the others which Onesimus had done him.

The verb used here for _put to the account of_ is, according to the

commentators, a very rare word; and perhaps the singular phrase may be

chosen to let another great Christian truth shine through. Was Paul's

love the only one that we know of which took the slave's debts on

itself? Did anybody else ever say, "Put that on mine account"? We have

been taught to ask for the forgiveness of our sins as "debts," and we

have been taught that there is One on whom God has made to meet the

iniquities of us all. Christ takes on Himself all Paul's debt, all

Philemon's, all ours. He has paid the ransom for all, and He so

identifies Himself with men that He takes all their sins upon Him, and

so identifies men with Himself that they are "received as Himself." It

is His great example that Paul is trying to copy here. Forgiven all that

great debt, he dare not rise from his knees to take his brother by the

throat, but goes forth to show to his fellow the mercy which he has

found, and to model his life after the pattern of that miracle of love

in which is his trust. It is Christ's own voice which echoes in "put

that on mine account."

IV. Finally, these verses pass to a gentle reminder of a greater debt:

"That I say not unto thee how that thou owest to me even thine own self

besides."

As his child in the Gospel, Philemon owed to Paul much more than the

trifle of money of which Onesimus had robbed him; namely his spiritual

life, which he had received through the Apostle's ministry. But he will

not insist on that. True love never presses its claims, nor recounts its

services. Claims which need to be urged are not worth urging. A true,

generous heart will never say, "You ought to do so much for me, because

I have done so much for you." To come down to that low level of

chaffering and barter is a dreadful descent from the heights where the

love which delights in giving should ever dwell.

Does not Christ speak to us in the same language? We owe ourselves to

Him, as Lazarus did, for He raises us from the death of sin to a share

in His own new, undying life. As a sick man owes his life to the doctor

who has cured him, as a drowning man owes his to his rescuer, who

dragged him from the water and breathed into his lungs till they began

to work of themselves, as a child owes its life to its parent--so we owe

ourselves to Christ. But He does not insist upon the debt; He gently

reminds us of it, as making His commandment sweeter and easier to obey.

Every heart that is really touched with gratitude will feel, that the

less the giver insists upon his gifts, the more do they impel to

affectionate service. To be perpetually reminded of them weakens their

force as motives to obedience, for it then appears as if they had not

been gifts of love at all, but bribes given by self-interest; and the

frequent reference to them sounds like complaint. But Christ does not

insist on His claims, and therefore the remembrance of them ought to

underlie all our lives and to lead to constant glad devotion.

One more thought may be drawn from the words. The great debt which can

never be discharged does not prevent the debtor from receiving reward

for the obedience of love. "I will repay it," even though thou owest me

thyself. Christ has bought us for His servants by giving Himself and

ourselves to us. No work, no devotion, no love can ever repay our debt

to Him. From His love alone comes the desire to serve Him; from His

grace comes the power. The best works are stained and incomplete, and

could only be acceptable to a Love that was glad to welcome even

unworthy offerings, and to forgive their imperfections. Nevertheless He

treats them as worthy of reward, and crowns His own grace in men with an

exuberance of recompense far beyond their deserts. He will suffer no man

to work for Him for nothing; but to each He gives even here great

reward _in_ keeping His commandments, and hereafter "an exceeding great

reward," of which the inward joys and outward blessings that now flow

from obedience are but the earnest His merciful allowance of

imperfections treats even our poor deeds as rewardable; and though

eternal life must ever be the _gift_ of God, and no claim of merit can

be sustained before His judgment seat, yet the measure of that life

which is possessed here or hereafter is accurately proportioned to and

is, in a very real sense, the consequence of obedience and service, "If

any man's work abide, he shall receive a reward," and Christ's own

tender voice speaks the promise, "I will repay, albeit I say not unto

thee how thou owest to Me even thine own self besides." Men do not

really possess themselves unless they yield themselves to Jesus Christ.

He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth himself, in

glad surrender of himself to his Saviour, he and only he is truly lord

and owner of his own soul. And to such an one shall be given rewards

beyond hope and beyond measure--and, as the crown of all, the blessed

possession of Christ, and in it the full, true, eternal possession of

himself, glorified and changed into the image of the Lord who loved him

and gave Himself for him.