Scot McKnight is an American New Testament scholar, historian of early Christianity, theologian, and author who has written widely on the historical Jesus, early Christianity and Christian living. He is currently Professor of New Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, IL. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of BCNN1.
One of my favorite New Testament letters is The Letter to Philemon. I was so glad when Jon Pott, then editor at Eerdmans, gave permission to write this commentary separate from Colossians.
We should read this letter carefully, especially in a day when evangelicals are discovering (again) the value of justice and working to liberate humans from oppressions of many sorts.
Why?
#1: Slavery has immediate connections to our world.
The slave Onesimus (=Handyman) has probably run away; the slavemaster, Philemon, has probably been shamed (at least in the household); Philemon probably was also financially damaged. So we are looking at a slave who has offended the honor of a slavemaster. We are looking at a slave who is willing to return.
How Philemon treats his slave Onesimus puts the Christian gospel and Christian ethics on the line.
In our world, any situation where status differentials are at work is immediately addressed by Paul’s letter to Philemon.
In our world there are millions of slaves, and this letter tells Christians in cultures where there are slaves to fight for the brothers and sisters and to establish cultures where siblingship not slavery becomes the norm. (I have a long section in the book on modern slavery; this section was researched by Justin Gill, an assistant of mine.) We may not have slavery as some cultures today but we’ve got status differentials not unlike slavery.
What is Paul’s answer to the Philemon-Onesimus differential in status and power? “No longer a slave, better than a slave, a brother or a sibling.”
That’s the Christian answer to these differentials: No longer! No longer equality, justice, eradication of status differentials by the Body of Christ in the Body of Christ and beyond!
#2: Power is perennially a problem.
This point is entailed in #1, but power itself deserves to be addressed. It is too easy to create a culture of power and authority that becomes a culture of authoritarianism and inequality and injustice and narcissism and fear. It is far harder to create a culture where power is surrendered for the good of the other. “No longer a slave, better than a slave, a sibling.” Power that is not used to create cultures of siblingship are not Christian cultures. Christian power creates siblings of one another.
Everything learned about power in our culture — well not everything but almost everything — is challenged by what the gospel teaches and announces as true in Christ:
#3: Reconciliation is the message.
The slaveowner Philemon had options: he could punish Onesimus and in that punishment implicate any other slaves connected to Onesimus. He could diminish his status in a number of ways. Philemon could “bring justice” to use the language of so many in our culture.
What was Paul’s message? Welcome him as you would welcome me, he tells Philemon. Which means Paul wanted reconciliation: he wanted Philemon to welcome, to embrace, to forgive, to restore, and to reconcile. To start all over again, but no longer as a slave and no longer as a slaveowner. To start all over again as siblings — Paul, Philemon, Onesimus. Three brothers, not three levels of power or hierarchy.
#4 Decision is the implication.
What is perhaps most amazing about this letter, and what is most needful for churches today in reading and preaching and teaching this letter is this: Philemon is put into the corner of decision by Paul.
The audience who heard this letter publicly read would have been asking all along: “What will Philemon say? What will he do?” This isn’t a theoretical letter about pre-emancipation theories about slaves. This is a pastoral letter from an apostle, who refuses to claim his authority (and so models what he wants Philemon to do), to a co-worker named Philemon who ran a household and who had slaves and who had power.
#5 The way of the empire is not the way of Christ.
A striking flash of a new way of life is found in Philemon: the way of the empire was most likely the way of punishment — from beatings and diminishment and permanent scarring and life-long shackles to capital punishment.
The way of Christ is conversion, is gospel, is advocacy for the runaway by the apostle, is sending him back to Philemon for Philemon’s decision, is confessions and forgivenesses and embraces and and reconciliations.
#6 The church is the location of kingdom realities taking form.
I am unpersuaded this was Paul’s agenda for the Roman empire. It was well beyond his scope. What he had in mind was something smaller and something deeper: No longer a slave, better than a slave, a brother.
Paul is not trying to change Roman laws — and that would take centuries of moral failure and ethical vision for the church to see through slavery to the radical reality of “no longer a slave, better than a slave, a brother.”
But Paul did see that the church could be a different place; that the church could be kingdom space embodied.
Source: Christianity Today
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