The Request
Paul, writing from prison, says he could order Philemon to act but prefers to ask for love's sake. He reports that Onesimus has become useful to him and like a son, playing on the fact that the name Onesimus means useful.
A short private letter about a runaway or estranged enslaved man.
Philemon is a single-chapter personal letter from Paul to a Christian slaveholder, sent back with Onesimus, an enslaved man who had left Philemon and become close to Paul. Paul asks Philemon to receive him differently.
Paul, writing from prison, says he could order Philemon to act but prefers to ask for love's sake. He reports that Onesimus has become useful to him and like a son, playing on the fact that the name Onesimus means useful.
Paul requests that Philemon welcome Onesimus as you would welcome me and no longer as a slave but as a beloved brother, and offers to repay any debt Onesimus owes, while pointedly noting that Philemon owes Paul his own faith.
The letter gives no explicit order to free Onesimus, and it was later cited on both sides of arguments about slavery. Its preservation shows how a private note could carry weight because of who wrote it and what it implied.