NOTES for Pmn 1:1-16

Paul places a very high value on brotherly love, even when the matter concerns each individual member of the Church. Today such a view would seem a little strange to us. We are more used to thinking that we need the love of the Church, not that the Church needs ours. For Paul, as we can see, this is a mutual process. And that is not surprising. Indeed, if the Church were an organization, even a religious organization, then as a whole it would always and in every way surpass any of its members, even the most outstanding one. But the Church is not a religious organization; it is a community of people living in the Kingdom. Here there are deep and personal relationships among people, but not the kind of wholeness or aggregate that would automatically prove more important than any individual person. The Kingdom does not know a mass, a collective, or an aggregate. It knows only the individual person. And the Church, the real Church with a capital C, also does not know the crowd or the collective; it knows only the individual person and the community as a fellowship of such people in all the depth and uniqueness of their relationships with one another. And here every person truly matters. The love of each person can truly support the whole Church; following the custom of the first Christian Church, the apostle calls the members of the Church "saints." It turns out that not only does each person depend on the Church, but the Church also depends on each person. Of course, it does not depend in the way we depend on one another in the untransformed world, unable to do without one another and at the same time unable to live with one another. It depends as people depend on one another in the Kingdom, being bound by relationships that certainly cannot be considered obligatory in the sense in which the untransformed world understands obligations, but which nevertheless prove absolutely necessary for us, just as necessary as the people with whom these relationships bind us and without whom we would have no one with whom to share the fullness of the life of the Kingdom that we receive by becoming part of it. And this readiness to share is what distinguishes the Kingdom from the untransformed world. Here people relate in order to give; there, in order to receive. And every giver, everyone ready to share what he has, becomes a noticeable figure in the Kingdom. So noticeable that the whole Church knows about him.

Looking at the life of fallen humanity, a thought sometimes involuntarily enters the mind: what if God, either Himself or through people specially appointed by Him, immediately rewarded and encouraged good deeds, and just as immediately stopped evil deeds and punished them? Would we not then find ourselves in a world that, if not ideal, was at least much better than the one that now exists? At first glance it may appear that this is exactly how it would be. Who, indeed, would want to do anything bad knowing that he would be punished immediately? Except that people themselves would hardly become better because of it. After all, a person's spiritual life is determined above all by the choice he has made. And that choice must be voluntary. A choice made only out of fear of coming punishment cannot in any way be called voluntary. Strictly speaking, it is not a choice at all, because only a decision made freely, without any external pressure, can be considered a choice. Of course, pressure does not always lead to the desired results. Inner freedom often overcomes external influence, and a choice is made despite the situation, which does not in the least encourage a free decision. But in our hypothetical world, lack of freedom guaranteeing correct behavior would be the very source of goodness. And then it would turn out that people in such a world had not become better at all; they only seemed good, being forced to play the appropriate role. But in the Kingdom one must not play a role, but live. And God refuses to force people to do good. Paul, as a man of God, cannot fail to understand this, and he too does not want to make anyone do good deeds under compulsion, even if that compulsion were not by force but, for example, by authority or the pressure of public opinion. After all, his goal is not to force his addressee to behave well, but to point out to him the way into the Kingdom. A way that can be traveled only freely.

The form Paul chose for speaking with Philemon is very interesting. Let us look: Paul is an elder, as he himself says, that is, a respected person; an apostle, that is, a person who occupies a high position in the Church; a very authoritative person. Thus, occupying the position of a senior, he would seem to be able to command.

Paul does not want to command. First, he does not even put forward the claim that he could use his authority: he says that he "has great boldness in Christ to command." Not by his own merits, but in Christ, and not a right, but boldness. Moreover, he does not want to use even this boldness, but prefers to ask for love's sake.