This letter, an appendix to the Pastoral Epistles, has a character of its own; so much so, that those whose mania it has been to doubt its genuineness as an inspired communication of the apostle have without difficulty put together some slight appearances on which to build their destructive argument. Indeed Dr. Ellicott, I see, does not include the letter to Philemon, but gives those only to Timothy and Titus as the Pastoral Epistles; and in this he does not differ from others. Nevertheless, allowing a marked difference, it is their beautiful complement and follows them so naturally that we may without violence class them together, rather than leave this letter absolutely isolated.
But peculiarities there could not but be in a document so distinct from the governing instructions given to Paul’s fellow-laborers in their general work of superintendence. For the subject-matter before us is the opposite side of gracious care, in a matter of domestic life. Divine love actively applies itself, in a manner essentially its own, to the case of a runaway slave from Colossi who had been brought to God through the apostle daring his first imprisonment in Rome. For the date of this Epistle is at least as certain as that of the Second to Timothy, which was the latest of the apostle’s writings, just before his imminent death that closed his second imprisonment in the great metropolis: a date, as all know, far more defined than that of the First Epistle to Timothy or of the letter to Titus. It was written, generally speaking, about the same time as those to the Ephesians and to the Colossians, as well as to the Philippians.
It is clear too from a comparison of the apostolic statements that Colossi in Phrygia was the city wherein lived Philemon, Archippus (it would seem) being an inmate of his house. Nor was this all that characterized it. As there was one assembly in the house of Nymphas the Laodicean, though we hear of the assembly of Laodiceans, so we read of the assembly in Philemon’s house, though there was the assembly of the Colossians besides. All the saints composed the assembly in that locality; yet this in no way forbade, but well consisted with, the assembly in this house or in that.
The simple believer may wonder that it should be necessary to insist on what is so plain an inference from Col. 4:9, 17 compared with our Epistle, that Philemon, and Onesimus of course, as well as Archippus, resided in Colossi. Yet Grotius (Annott. in V. et N. Test. in loco) will have it that Philemon was not only an inhabitant of Ephesus, but an elder or bishop of the church there. And of late Wieseler contends that Philemon and the others belonged to Laodicea! Is it worth while to expose the feeble and false reasoning put forth in support of such strange suppositions? It is probable indeed, as the apostle had not visited Colossi or Laodicea before he wrote his Epistle to the former (ch. 2:1), that Philemon may have heard and received the truth at Ephesus (Acts 19:10); he was certainly indebted to the apostle for his conversion (Philem. 1:19). But “fellow-worker” is much too general a word to bear the construction that Philemon was set apart to the charge either of presbyter or of deacon. He labored in the truth, he cared for the saints; and the apostle owned him as his joint-workman, just as later still the apostle John acknowledged Gains (3rd Epistle 5-8) on grounds at least as broad. Whatever the character of his work, it is undefined in an Epistle which from its nature does not set forth official distinction for the apostle himself, nor for Archippus, though we know from Col. 4:17 that the latter had a distinct ministry in the Lord which he was exhorted to fulfill. In our Epistle however the Holy Spirit for the wisest and best reasons would have all to be on the footing of grace.
This then is the key-note. The apostle acts in a practical way on the incomparable grace of Christ. It is not merely that God despises not any, or that human compassion flows out toward the misery of one’s fellow, even if a slave, or so much the more because he was. There is the finest and liveliest field for the affections; but the spring is from above, and the power is in the Holy Spirit, that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, Whose is the glory and the dominion unto the ages of the ages. The title of the master is frankly admitted not only by Peal in word but also by the returning slave in deed. There is no glossing over the wrong done. Whatever was due positively or negatively, Paul will have set to his account and becomes absolutely responsible for all. For true grace never enfeebles law nor shirks righteousness, but on the contrary establishes it, while it rises far above and flows out freely and immeasurably beyond.
The great reality of Christ fills the apostle’s heart, as it habitually did. The providence of God directed the feet of the fugitive to Rome, where detection was hardest for one so insignificant in the midst of a vast population with extremes of grandeur and degradation, wealth and penury, yet even the lowest not without mortification lavished on them from the lords of the world, sinking to utter ruin through sinful pleasures and systematic selfishness which enervated all far more than they satisfied any. There through whatever motive led, or possibly without one, the grace of God gave Onesimus to hear Paul and to believe the gospel. It became his joy to serve the apostle, specially in his sufferings for Christ and the gospel’s sake; but a single eye to Christ lays on his heart the earthly master he had wronged. He feels bound, and the gospel beyond all fortified his sense of the obligation, to return to his master at all cost, and be the consequences what they might. And the apostle, whatever his love to his son in the gospel, whatever his value for the services of love then rendered and acceptable, whatever his pity for one whose misconduct had exposed him to severe punishment for his own wrong and as an example to others, was led of the Spirit to write this Epistle instinct with the grace of the gospel from the first line to the last, as may be shown more clearly in weighing its every word.
It has been termed “the polite Epistle,” I cannot say with great propriety, though it be quite true that those who pique themselves most on their nice sense of honor and courtesy, of tact and courage, prudence and friendship, purity and tenderness, must feel themselves in the presence of what exceeds not their experience only but their ideal. It is not “the gentleman” that stands revealed in the Epistle, but “the Christian”; and this not in theory or exhortation only but in living reality; that we, having the same Christ and the same Spirit, may by grace make the same divine word good ourselves, and so commend this scripture all the more to others. It is in all round the exercise of divine life, which the Holy Spirit promotes, growing out of a mere domestic question calculated without Christ to provoke anger, or to be condoned in condescending good nature and self-complacency.
Doddridge seems to have been the first to suggest the comparison of Pliny the younger’s letter to Sabinianus (9:21), not merely the brief sequel of thanks which Alford cites (9:24): models, both of them, of fine natural sentiments expressed with beauty, terseness and force, as became a refined Roman of ability and rank writing to conciliate an intimate friend with his freedman who had offended and been discarded. In the heathen, as we might expect, nothing rises above self; in the Christian it is the love of Christ drawn out on behalf of one brought to God from the depths of sin and wretchedness, whose conscience prompted a return to his master armed with authority to punish his delinquency; but that master a Christian dear to the apostle not only for other things but for his habitually gracious bearing to the saints. Him Paul therefore would not only guard from the impulses of nature and from the jealous exercise of legal rights as a man of the world, but would lead into the communion of Christ’s love in a case where it was readily liable to be overlooked. He would have him show “the kindness of God,” like the man after God’s heart in the O. T. to the family of his enemy, where a ground of love and truth presented itself. And was there not a better ground here, where by sovereign grace Onesimus was in Christ as truly as Philemon? And did not Philemon rejoice to have the opportunity of being “an imitator of God”; as the apostle was about that time inculcating on the Ephesian faithful to walk in love, even as Christ also loved and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell? How he pleads like Christ our Advocate in the face of sin on our part will appear in the details of the Epistle.
Notice now with what address the apostle brings in the sister wife, and the service of Archippus, as well as the assembly in Philemon’s house; that love might be the more strengthened severally and together, and the head of the house be led in the way of grace, not by constraint from without or within, but of a ready mind, according to God.