Philemon 4–7
Philemon’s Character, as Illustrated by His Past Actions
Introductory Matters
Having set the scene in the first three verses, Paul now draws out the character of the person who holds the cards in this drama—that is, Philemon. Establishing Philemon’s character is a crucial dimension of Paul’s strategy, making this an essential and critical section in the letter. Paul’s request in later sections of the letter gains force from what he establishes in this section. Paul offers a portrait of Philemon as a person of outstanding service to God, to other Jesus-followers, and to the gospel. It is a sterling reputation that Paul reconstructs here—a reputation that Paul hopes will carry through from the past into the present and future in terms of how Philemon chooses to handle Onesimus’s situation.
Tracing the Train of Thought
4–7. It was often Paul’s style to begin a letter with the inclusion of a thanksgiving to God on behalf of his readers (see Rom. 1:8; 1 Cor. 1:4; Eph. 1:16; Col. 1:3; 1 Thess. 1:2; 2 Thess. 1:3). The same feature appears toward the beginning of this letter, where Paul gives the following assurance to Philemon (v. 4): Remembering you in my prayers, I always give thanks to my God.
It is not wholly clear, however, what it is that Paul gives thanks to God about. In verse 5 Paul highlights two features of Philemon’s character that he has heard good reports about, but what those features are and how they are put into practice is open to some interpretation. The first feature Paul mentions is Philemon’s love, while the second can refer either to Philemon’s faith or his faithfulness. The sentence is constructed in such a way that either nuance for the Greek word pistis (faith, faithfulness) is possible.
The sentence in which pistis occurs reads “your love and pistis which you have toward the Lord Jesus and for the sake of all of Jesus’s followers” (that is, all Jesus-followers in Philemon’s local area; lit. the phrase is “all of the saints”). We might be tempted to think of Philemon’s love as being for the sake of other Jesus-followers and of his pistis as his “faith in the Lord Jesus,” as if the two are separate entities with separate referents. This is how the two ideas appear in Eph. 1:15 and Col. 1:4, with faith in Christ and love for others being distinct (although related) features of the addressees’ life (i.e., faith toward Christ and love toward others). But the construction of the phrase in Paul’s letter to Philemon is somewhat different (and is not chiastic, as some suggest). Philemon’s love and his pistis are both directed toward the Lord Jesus, and both are for the sake of other Jesus-followers. Perhaps, then, we can do justice to the sense of pistis if we take it to include not simply Philemon’s “faith” but, more holistically, his faithfulness—a faithfulness toward the Lord Jesus and, beneficially for them, toward other Jesus-followers. Philemon is one who has loved and been faithfully, reliably, and loyally devoted to both the Lord Jesus and, as an outworking of that, to other followers devoted to the same Lord Jesus.
While this might seem like a simple gesture of commendation, within the Letter to Philemon this commendation plays a poignant role in setting out the rhetorical context of the letter. It, together with Paul’s depiction of Philemon as a cherished “coworker” in verse 1, establishes Philemon’s character as one of committed fidelity to the betterment of other Jesus-followers as part of his loyalty to the Lord Jesus. With that track record to Philemon’s credit, Paul will expect him to live up to his reputation in relation to Onesimus.
The sixth verse is probably the hardest in Philemon to pin down in terms of what Paul is saying; in 1982 one scholar commented that “there is not the slightest consensus about what Paul really wants to make known to his friend Philemon in this single sentence” (Riesenfeld 1982, 251)—a comment that remains true today.
There is reason for this lack of consensus. Notice, for instance, the possible variants of the first phrase, hē koinōnia tēs pisteōs sou, as listed in table 1. In that single phrase, (1) the first word (koinōnia) has four possible connotations, (2) its relationship with the second word (pisteōs, “faith” or perhaps “faithfulness”) is ambiguous, and (3) the final word (sou, “your”) could modify either of the two nouns that it precedes (“your koinōnia,” or “your faith,” although the latter is more likely). It is possible, moreover, that Paul intended to convey more than one possible meaning. Despite the ambiguities, the one clear thing in that phrase is the personal pronoun “your” being singular and therefore referring exclusively to Philemon.
Table 1. Interpretive Possibilities for the First Clause of Philemon 6
| Sense of Koinōnia | Sense of Pistis | Sense of the Phrase | Possible Translations (in Order of Probability) | |
| 1 | fellowship with others | faith is held in common or is the source of fellowship | Philemon has enjoyed fellowship of faith with others | a. “the fellowship of your faith”
b. “your fellowship of faith” |
| 2 | financial support for others | his faith is the source of his giving | Philemon’s faith has led him to share resources with others | a. “the assistance that springs from your faith”
b. “your assistance that springs from faith” |
| 3 | sharing with others | faith is what he shares with others | Philemon has shared faith or “the faith” | a. “the sharing of your faith”
b. “your sharing of the faith” |
| 4 | participation | faith is what he participates in | Philemon is a participant in faith | a. “your participation in faith”
b. “participation in your faith” |
In order to understand how to make our way through the sixth verse, it is helpful initially to frame what Paul says in verse 7 in order then to work backward into verse 6. The Greek link word gar (“for”), which is often omitted in translations, connects the two verses, so that what Paul begins in verse 6 flows organically into verse 7. Knowing how Paul ends the flow of thought will help to make interpretive decisions about the more difficult verse 6.
In verse 7 Paul praises Philemon, featuring as the showcase of his praise what Philemon has already done for Jesus-followers. Paul derives much joy and encouragement from Philemon’s love in the Lord—as demonstrated by Philemon’s support for others as a brother in Christ. Because of his initiatives, the hearts of Jesus’s followers (lit. “of the saints”) have been refreshed. The word “hearts” is not the Greek word kardia, which occurs fifty-two times in the Pauline corpus, but the word splanchnon, which occurs only eight times in the Pauline corpus, three of which are in Philemon (2 Cor. 6:12; 7:15; Phil. 1:8; 2:1; Col. 3:12; Philem. 7, 12, 20). In those occurrences, it usually connotes affection or compassion, referring to the seat of emotions.
If this is where Paul’s train of thought ends up in verse 7, we can work back and consider how verse 6 might flow most naturally into verse 7. The key is to pin down the relationship of the words koinōnia and “faith.” Referring to the table of possible interpretations (table 1), the fourth possibility (where koinōnia is understood as “participation”) is unlikely, since the personal pronoun “your” likely refers to “faith” and the notion “participation in your faith” is not very Pauline. The third possibility (where koinōnia is understood as evangelistic sharing of the gospel) is a Pauline notion but does not fit the context quite as well as the other two options.
Instead, and in view of the emotional dimension of Paul’s comments in verse 7, the most likely option is one of the first two, or perhaps a combination of both of them. Probably in verse 6 Paul’s prayer regarding Philemon (mentioned in v. 4) highlights what he calls the fellowship of your faith, understood as the corporate allegiance that arises within Jesus-groups because of faith—in this case, specifically because of Philemon’s faith (or perhaps his “faithfulness”; this connotation of the word has merit to the extent that it was already in play in verse 5 and overspills into verse 6, especially if the definite article tēn in verse 6 has an “anaphoric” function, making a gesture to the previous occurrence of the word).
This sense easily bleeds into the second option, since the conceptual membrane between them is thin. That is, Philemon’s faith enhances the corporate fellowship with local Jesus-groups precisely because he, as evidently a somewhat wealthier Jesus-follower, supported local Jesus-groups through financial assistance, thereby enhancing their well-being. In verse 7 Paul identifies this as occasioning his own joy and encouragement because Philemon’s initiatives have refreshed other Jesus-followers. The fact that Philemon has already enhanced the fellowship of Jesus-followers and willingly absorbed financial loss for greater good is precisely the scenario that Paul hopes to capitalize on later in the letter.
For now, however, he roots Philemon’s initiatives in a deeper theological principle. Paul’s prayer for Philemon is that “the fellowship of your faith” may become effective in the realization of every good work that is active among you all, to the glory of Christ. (Some manuscripts have a first-person plural “us” [hēmin] in this phrase, whereas others have the second-person plural “you” [hymin]. Although a case can be made for either reading, the better manuscripts favor the second-person plural, translated here as “you all” to differentiate it from Paul’s common second-person singulars throughout the letter.)
Theological Issues
In this section, verse 6 provides notable theological resources, particularly with its focus on the “good work” of Jesus-followers (cf. Wright 1988, 168: “the driving force of the whole letter is the prayer of verse 6,” although Wright reads the verse differently than I do).
Although Paul does not specifically mention the word “work” in this verse (he simply speaks of “doing the good”), the notion or related concepts would have been supplied to the ancient ear (some Greek manuscripts [F, G] make the point by adding the word explicitly). It is not at all unlike Paul to speak of “good work” being the result of one’s faith—as in Gal. 5:6, where he speaks of “faith working practically [energoumenē] in love.” In Romans Paul speaks twice of “the obedience of faith” (1:5; 16:26), which probably connotes “obedience in life that faith transpires.” And in Ephesians Jesus-followers are expected to be doing “good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (2:10 NRSV)—a way of life that does not result from doing good works (ironically) but from the gift of God’s grace in the lives of Jesus-followers (Eph. 2:8). These examples (and there are more) illustrate that Paul was not averse to thinking that good would flow from Jesus-followers; it was, in fact, a central feature of his theology.
Consequently, when Paul speaks in verse 6 of “every good work” being “in” or “among you” (en hymin), he does not mean that Jesus-followers conjure those works up from their own resources. Any good work that is produced “in” or “among” Jesus-followers is not a good work until it is “out of” and “among” them (“faith working practically”), and that happens as divine enablement becomes active in the lives of Jesus-followers, so that they become vehicles for God’s initiative.
This explains the phrase “to the glory of Christ” (v. 6), which is an amplification of a more simple Greek phrase eis Christon. Some translations understand this to mean “in Christ”—that is, being “in Christ” is the basis for the good work that emerges from the lives of Jesus-followers (KJV, RSV, NET). But while that might be true, the phrase probably does not refer here to the context out of which good work arises in the lives of Jesus-followers. The phrase eis Christon refers to the result of that divinely enabled work (with eis having a telic sense). That is to say, the result of a benevolent Christian lifestyle is ultimately “for Christ” (NRSV), “for the sake of Christ” (NIV), or (as translated here) “to the glory of Christ” (and is, then, comparable to the eis-clause of Rom. 15:7, eis doxan tou theou, “to the glory of God”). The phrase eis Christon, then, does not suggest that Christian lifestyle leads us “into the Messiah” (contra Wright 2013, 16; 2011, 480). Instead, as Jesus-followers live lives that enhance “the good” through divine enablement, that divinely initiated living is to Christ’s own glory (whose grace is upon them; cf. vv. 3, 25), not the glory of Jesus-followers themselves (cf. Eph. 2:9: “so that no one can boast”).
This rich theology of working “the good” is probably the primary theological lens through which Paul perceives Philemon’s situation. It sets up one of Paul’s strongest warrants for Philemon doing “even more” than Paul was explicitly asking in relation to Onesimus. Establishing Philemon’s character in verses 4–7 by means of an overview of his efforts for others in the past, Paul will go on in later sections to ask Philemon to continue to live out the character of love that has so characterized his discipleship thus far. In this way, the letter to Philemon is not about slavery, or Onesimus, or Philemon, or anything other than what might be deemed “Christian character.” Being a man whose character has shone through repeatedly in the past, Philemon will give consideration to Onesimus’s situation in a manner informed (Paul hopes) by his character—a character already shaped by divinely inspired deeds of generous love for others.
For these reasons, these verses not only offer us a glimpse into the heart of Paul’s theology in general but also lay out the rich theological soils from which Paul’s discourse in this letter draws its essential nutrients.