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NOTES for Pmn 1:7

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7 For we have great joy and consolation in thy love, because the bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother.
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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.

Other notes

 
For Pmn 1:1-20
1 Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and Timothy our brother, unto Philemon our dearly beloved, and fellowlabourer,
2 And to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellowsoldier, and to the church in thy house:
3 Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
4 I thank my God, making mention of thee always in my prayers,
5 Hearing of thy love and faith, which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus, and toward all saints;
6 That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.
7 For we have great joy and consolation in thy love, because the bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother.
8 Wherefore, though I might be much bold in Christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient,
9 Yet for love's sake I rather beseech thee, being such an one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ.
10 I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds:
11 Which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me:
12 Whom I have sent again: thou therefore receive him, that is, mine own bowels:
13 Whom I would have retained with me, that in thy stead he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of the gospel:
14 But without thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly.
15 For perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldest receive him for ever;
16 Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord?
17 If thou count me therefore a partner, receive him as myself.
18 If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on mine account;
19 I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it: albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides.
20 Yea, brother, let me have joy of thee in the Lord: refresh my bowels in the Lord.
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The form Paul chose for speaking with Philemon is very interesting. Let us look: Paul is an elder, as he himself...  Read more

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.

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For Pmn 1:1-16
1 Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and Timothy our brother, unto Philemon our dearly beloved, and fellowlabourer,
2 And to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellowsoldier, and to the church in thy house:
3 Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
4 I thank my God, making mention of thee always in my prayers,
5 Hearing of thy love and faith, which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus, and toward all saints;
6 That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.
7 For we have great joy and consolation in thy love, because the bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother.
8 Wherefore, though I might be much bold in Christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient,
9 Yet for love's sake I rather beseech thee, being such an one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ.
10 I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds:
11 Which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me:
12 Whom I have sent again: thou therefore receive him, that is, mine own bowels:
13 Whom I would have retained with me, that in thy stead he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of the gospel:
14 But without thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly.
15 For perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldest receive him for ever;
16 Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord?
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Judging by the context, Onesimus, whose name Paul mentions at the beginning of the letter, was Philemon's slave, apparently converted to Christ together with his master. Later he became Paul's companion and helper...  Read more

Judging by the context, Onesimus, whose name Paul mentions at the beginning of the letter, was Philemon's slave, apparently converted to Christ together with his master. Later he became Paul's companion and helper, and now, being imprisoned in a Roman prison, Paul returns Onesimus to Philemon, in his own words no longer as a slave, but as a brother in Christ.

One may think that the spiritual formation of the newly converted Onesimus took place under the apostle's direct influence; it could not have been otherwise if Onesimus really accompanied Paul for a sufficiently long time. And when his spiritual formation in Christ was completed, he ceased to be a slave, if not legally, since there is no clarity about the formal status of Onesimus and it is unclear whether Philemon freed him as a freedman or not, then in fact.

After the baptism of the master himself and all his household, Philemon's house in fact became a space of the Church, where slaves in the traditional Greco-Roman sense could not exist, and Christian slaves could not exist by definition, whatever legal status the people living there had. Thus the Kingdom entered the world, transfiguring it first of all at the level of relationships, which constitute the spiritual foundation of the Kingdom.

But to cease being a slave in fact meant to walk the path that makes a person an inhabitant of the Kingdom. That means a person inwardly absolutely free and fully responsible. A person for whom there are no longer forced or unconscious relationships with anyone. And who, accordingly, can no longer be anyone's slave, but can be a helper to anyone whom God entrusts him to help. Regardless of status, which now becomes a matter sometimes important, but secondary, determining neither the spiritual life of the former slave nor his relationships with his former masters.

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