Philemon 1:18

If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee ought

Theft

The form only is hypothetical.

The case is put as one which is absolutely unquestionable. No doubt Onesimus robbed his master when he ran away. The consequence of this is a debt at present unpaid. He wronged Philemon once for all, and consequently is in debt. Flight and theft were instinctively associated in the minds of Romans as the kindred offences of slaves. It will be observed that St Paul’s teaching was not socialistic. Not private property, but the abstraction of it, was theft in his estimation. (Bp. W. Alexander.)

Ownership of goods

We learn from hence that the communion which is among the faithful saints doth not take away the private possession, dominion, distinction, and interest, in the things of this life. Albeit the things belonging to this temporal life be in some respect common, yet in another respect they are private. They are common touching use, they are private touching possession.

I. This truth will yet further and better appear unto us, if we enter into the considerations of the reasons that serve to strengthen it.

1. It is confirmed by the Commandments of God, and by the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer. The Eighth Commandment forbiddeth us to steal away our neighbour’s goods, and to do him the least hurt therein. The Tenth Commandment restraineth the inward lusts and motions that arise in our minds, and condemneth the coveting of his house, of his wife, of his servant, of his ox, and his ass, or of anything that belongeth unto him. If then God commandeth the preservation of every man’s goods, and forbiddeth all injuries to be offered unto them, it standeth us upon to acknowledge a right and interest that everyone hath in earthly things given unto him. Likewise our Saviour Christ teacheth us daily to ask our daily bread, so that no man ought to desire that which is another’s bread, but everyone to know his own, what God hath given him, and what he hath given to others. If then there be bread that is ours, then also there is bread that is not ours. And if somewhat be ours and somewhat not ours it followeth that everyone hath an interest in his own goods, and cannot lay hold of another man’s.

2. The invading of other men’s inheritances, and the encroaching upon their private possessions, is the fruit either of a confused anarchy, or of a loose government; and both of them are contrary to that ordinance which God establisheth, and the order that He requireth.

3. Everyone hath a proper and peculiar possession, his own servants to order, his own ground to till, his own fields to husband, his own family to govern, and his own domestical affairs to manage, that he may provide things honest in the sight of God, that he may rejoice in the labour of his own hands, and be thankful to the Father and giver of all good things. It is a rule taught by nature, approved by experience, strengthened by customs, and established by the founders of cities and kingdoms, that whatsoever is cared for of all is cared for of none as it ought to be, but is neglected of all.

II. As we have seen the reasons that confirm this doctrine, so let us see the uses that instruct us in many profitable points tending to edification.

1. This confuteth and convinceth the detestable sect who deny to men any property in anything, but would have all things common.

2. Seeing every man hath a state in his own goods, it teacheth us this duty, that we ought to be content with the portion which we have, be it more or less, be it a simple or a worthy portion, and to be by all means thankful for it; considering with ourselves that the difference of places, lands, possessions, with the properties thereof, be of God, and are to be acknowledged as His gift.

3. We learn from this doctrine to take good heed that we do not abuse our property and dominion of those gifts that God hath given us, bestowing them only to our private use, and withholding the comfort of them from others, to whom they ought of right to be imparted and employed. For albeit the possession of them be ours, yet there is a use of them belonging to the saints; the property of goods and the communion of saints standing together. Whensoever we have these outward things we must not withhold them, when they may profit the Church and refresh the saints. (W. Attersoll.)

Put that on mine account--

Taking the slave’s debt

The verb used here for “put to the account of” is a very rare word; and perhaps the singular phrase may be chosen to let another great Christian truth shine through. Was Paul’s love the only one that we know of which took the slave’s debts on itself? Did anybody else ever say, “Put that on mine account”? We have been taught to ask for the forgiveness of our sins as “debts,” and we have been taught that there is One on whom God has made to meet the iniquities of us all. Christ takes on Himself all Paul’s debt, all Philemon’s, all ours. He has paid the ransom for all, and He so identifies men with Himself that they are “received as Himself.” It is His great example that Paul is trying to copy here. Forgiven all that great debt, he dare not rise from his knees to take his brother by the throat, but goes forth to shew to his fellow the mercy he has found, and to model his life after the pattern of that miracle of love in which is his trust. It is Christ’s own voice which echoes in “put that on mine account.” (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Suretyship

From this offer that Paul maketh, which is, to satisfy another man’s debt, we learn that it is a lawful thing for one man to become surety for another, and to engage himself for his sure and faithful friend, of whom he is well persuaded. Howsoever suretyship be to some very hurtful, and to all dangerous, yet it is to none in itself, and of its own nature, unlawful or sinful, when the merciless creditor shall take his debtor by the throat and say, “pay me that thou owest.”

I. And if we require better grounds to satisfy us in this truth, let us enter into the strength of reason to assure us, without any wavering herein.

1. Weigh with me the example of Christ, an excellent pattern and president of the practice of this, an example far beyond all exception, an example that overshadoweth, and dazzleth, and darkeneth, all that cloud of witnesses produced by the apostle in the Epistle to the Hebrews; He became surety for His Church unto His Father, to pay the debt of our sins, and to satisfy His justice.

2. It is a fruit of love and brotherly kindness, even this way to relieve and help such as are like to suffer damage and detriment by want of outward things. There is no man so rich but may become poor; no man so high but may be brought low; as there is no full sea but hath his ebbing. Now humane society and Christian piety requireth that one should sustain and succour another in their necessity. We are commanded to help up our enemy’s ox that is fallen, or his ass that is sunk down under his burden; how much more ought we to show pity and compassion to our brother himself, vexed with the creditor, terrified with the prison, oppressed with the debt, and dismayed and discouraged with the payment at hand that is to be made? So then, whether we do consider that Christ Jesus is made our surety, and that suretyship is a fruit of Christian love one toward another, in both respects we see that in itself it is not to be disallowed or condemned.

II. The uses of this doctrine are diligently to be considered of us.

1. If it be lawful to become surety one for another, it convinceth and confuteth those that hold it to be evil and unlawful, to give their word, or offer their hand, or tender their promise, for their brethren. Love is a debt that we owe to all men, as the apostle testifieth (Romans 13:8), and therefore we ought not to fail in the performance thereof.

2. Seeing we have showed it to be lawful to enter into suretyship (for if it had been simply and altogether forbidden Paul would never have proffered himself to be surety unto Philemon for Onesimus), this serveth divers ways for our instruction. For hereby we are directed to be careful to use it lawfully. It is good and lawful if a man use it well and lawfully. But if we use it and enter into it rashly, not rightly, ordinarily, not warily, foolishly, not wisely, desperately, not discreetly; if we entangle ourselves with it without much deliberation, without good circumspection, and without due consideration, it becometh unlawful unto us. Wherefore that this giving of assurance to others, and for others, either by our word or hand, may be performed lawfully to the good of others, and not the hurt of ourselves, we must mark and practise two points:--

(1) Consider the persons of others for whom it is done.

(2) Our own persons that do it; and these two are caveats for all sureties.

Touching those persons for whom we become sureties, we must know that we are not to engage ourselves and our credit, for everyone that will crave it at our hands, and enter into bands for them, and promise us fair to see us discharged; but in such men, who oftentimes have a greater feeling of their own wants and necessities than of freeing them out of woe that have pledged themselves for them, we are to observe three things.

(a) That they be well known.

(b) That they be honest and godly.

(c) That they be sufficient to pay that which they would have us bound unto another, to assure him that they will pay.

3. Touching our own persons, before we are to enter into band or suretyship for others we must mark and meditate upon two things.

(1) What is the sum for which we shall be obliged.

(2) The means how we maybe discharged. It standeth us greatly upon to bethink ourselves both what is the quantity, and what is our ability to answer it. It is a moral precept and wise saying, worthy to be written in our hearts, “be not surety above thy power; for if thou be surety, think to pay it.” Let every man therefore well weigh his own strength. It were foolish pity for the saving of another man’s life to lose our own. It were a merciless kind of mercy to leap into the water and drown ourselves while we seek to deliver another. We are commanded to bear the burden one of another, but it were more than foolish pity to break our own shoulders, by sustaining the weight and hearing the burden of another man. Again, as we are to mark our own strength, so we are to consider our own discharge, how we may be secured and set at liberty. For, before we pass our word, or give our band and hand for the payment of other men’s debts and duties, we must know how we shall be assured to be delivered from that burthen and bondage that we have undertaken. We ought indeed to bear good will to all men, but our good will should not be a loser. It is no charity to receive a blow upon our own heads to keep the stroke from another. Know what kind of man he is for whom thou becomest a surety. If he be a stranger to thee meddle not with him; if he have broken his credit with any before, suspect him; if he be a shifting companion, discard him; if he be unsufficient to pay his own debt, deny him; if the sum be great and thy ability little so that it may hinder thee and thy calling, if thou be driven to pay it, enter not into it; and if thou cannot see which way thou mayest be freed from the peril and danger that hangeth over thy head, fly away from it as from a serpent that will sting thee, as from a canker that will consume thee, as from a gulf that is ready to swallow thee.

4. Seeing it is not unlawful or forbidden to bind a man’s self by band or otherwise to another, it ought to teach all creditors and lenders not to be rough and rigorous over a surety. No cruelty toward any is lawful. (W. Attersoll.)

The atonement--an illustration

Suppose, then, that Philemon had demanded the repayment of what he had lost to the uttermost farthing; suppose that for many months St. Paul had had to work very hard, and to live very sparely, in order to earn the required sum, and that at last he had actually paid it to the rich Philemon, in order that Onesimus might be got out of his debt: would that have been wrong and base? wrong of St. Paul, I mean. Would you, would any man, have blamed him for it? Would you not, rather, have been moved to an enthusiastic admiration of the man who was capable of so singular and so signal an act of self-forgetting generosity and compassion? And what would you have thought of Philemon if he had taken the money? Surely you would have been as quick to condemn him as to admire Paul. “Which things may be allegorised.” Let us, then, for our instruction in righteousness, turn this story into an allegory or parable. Let Philemon, the just and kind master, stand for God, our Father and Lord. Let St. Paul, the generous debt-assuming apostle, stand for Christ, our Saviour. Let Onesimus, the fraudulent and runaway slave, stand for man, the sinner. And then, sinful man, fleeing from the God he has wronged, falls into the hands of Christ, and comes to know and hate his sins. Christ goes to the Father saying, “If he [i.e., man] hath wronged Thee, or oweth Thee ought, put that to My account; I will repay it.” And, according to one theory of the Atonement at least, God takes the money; He demands that Christ should exhaust Himself with toil and suffering in order that man’s debt may be paid, and then blots out the debt from his account. Assuming for a moment this theory of the Atonement to be a true theory, what are we to think of Christ? Was it wrong, was it blameworthy of Him, to take the sinner’s place, to pay the sinner’s debt, to atone the sinner’s offence? If we hold to our parallel, so far from thinking it wrong, we can only pronounce it an unparalleled act of generous and self-forgetting love: so far from blaming Him for it, we can but honour and admire Him for it with all our hearts. But if God took the money--if He would not release man from his debt till some one, no matter who, had paid the debt--what are we to think of Him? Had Philemon taken St. Paul’s money, we agreed that in him it would have been an action almost incredibly mean and base; we agreed that we should have felt nothing for him but contempt. Are we to lower our standard, and alter our verdict, because it is God, and not man, who is called in question--God, from whom we expect, and have a right to expect, so much more than from man? No, we cannot, we dare not, either lower our standard or alter our verdict. What would have been wrong in man would have been at least equally wrong in God. And as God can do no wrong, either our parallel does not hold good, or this theory of the Atonement must be radically misleading and incomplete. Is the parallel at fault, then? Look at it again. Philemon was a just and kind master. And does not God Himself claim to hold a similar relation to us? Onesinms was an “unprofitable” servant--running away from a master he had robbed. And have not we again and again robbed God of His due, and left His service to walk after our own lusts? St. Paul loved Onesimus “as his own heart,” “as himself” (Philemon 1:12; Philemon 1:17); and, in his love, he even put himself in the place of Onesimus, assumed his debt, interceded for him with his justly offended master, and raised him from the status of a slave to that of a “brother beloved.” Are there any words, even in the Bible itself, which more accurately and happily describe Christ’s relation to us? The parallel holds good then. We may take Philemon as setting forth God’s relation to us, Onesimus as setting forth our relation to God, and St. Paul as setting forth Christ’s relation both to God and man. But as the parallel does hold good, must not that theory of the Atonement to which I have referred be radically misleading and incomplete? No doubt any theory of the Atonement must be incomplete, for the Atonement is the reconciliation of man to God; and which of us fully comprehends either God or man? How, then, can we comprehend and express that Divine act or process, “that miracle of time,” by which the relations of God with man and of man with God were or are being drawn into an eternal concord? No theory of the Atonement conceived by the human mind, and expressed in human words, can possibly be perfect and entire, lacking nothing. The great “mystery of godliness” must ever remain a deep “in which all our thoughts are drowned.” And any man who assumes that he can comprehend it, and crush it into some narrow and portable formula, does but prove that he pertains to that well-known category or class which presumes to “rush in where angels fear to tread.” Still we may refuse to hold any theory of the Atonement which is obviously untenable. We may know, we may learn from Scripture at least enough of the Atonement for faith to grasp, and for the salvation that comes by faith. And, surely, it is impossible to deny that in sundry places Scripture does teach what is known as the vicarious or substitutionary theory of the Atonement; that it speaks of Christ as taking our place, paying our debt, suffering in our stead. Whether we like it or not, there it is: the writings of St. Paul are full of it. Whatever the moral effect of it were, candour would compel us to confess that this aspect of Christ’s work and ministry of reconciliation is set forth in the Scriptures of the apostles--not as the only aspect, only, indeed, as one of three or four, but still as a true aspect, as demanding our acceptance. Nevertheless, I confess that I for one should hesitate to accept it, were I unable to see and to show that the proper moral effect of it is not evil, but good; that it does not tend to weaken our hatred of sin, or to relax our struggle against it, but tends rather to strengthen our hatred of it, and to brace us for new endeavours to overcome it. And I value this story of Onesimus very highly because it suggests a reasonable and a complete answer to this common difficulty and objection. For, consider: Was St. Paul’s offer to pay the debt of Onesimus in the very least degree likely to confirm Onesimus in his knavery? Suppose the offer accepted; suppose he had seen the busy and weary apostle toiling night and day, suffering many additional hardships, in order to clear him of his debt--would Onesimus, after having thus seen what his crime had cost, have been the more likely to rob Philemon again? Would that have been the natural and proper effect on his mind of the apostle’s generous and self-sacrificing love for him? We know very well that it would not. We know very well that Onesimus, touched and melted by the love St. Paul had shown him, would rather have starved than show himself wholly unworthy of it. Why, then, if we believe that Christ Jesus, in the greatness of His love, took our place, paid our debt, toiled and suffered for our sins, and so reconciled us to the God we had wronged--why should that have a bad moral effect upon us? If Christ so loved us as to give Himself for us, the just for the unjust; if we clearly and honestly believe that, surely its proper moral effect on us will be that we shall love Him who so loved us: and how can we love Him, and yet not hate the evil that caused Him so much pain? But here we come back to a still graver difficulty. As St. Paul, to Philemon, for Onesimus, so Christ says, to God, for us, “If they have wronged Thee, or owe Thee ought, put that to My account; I will repay it.” Let it be granted, as I have tried to show, that this assumption of our place and debt by Christ Jesus was an act most noble and generous and Divine. Let it be granted, as I have also tried to show, that by our faith in His great love we are incited to more strenuous efforts after moral purity and righteousness, instead of being degraded and demoralised by it. Grant both these points: and, then, what are we to think of God if He took from Christ the money which paid our debt? All that series of Scriptural figures which represents our sins as debts, and the Father Almighty as keeping a book in which they are entered, and as blotting them from that book when they are paid, may be necessary, and may once have been still more necessary than it is now, to set forth certain aspects of spiritual truth. But we need not conceive of God’s book as though it were a ledger, nor of God Himself as a keen, hard-eyed merchant, still less as a peddling huckster, indifferent where his money comes from so that he gets it, and gets enough of it. All this is not in the Bible, though it may be in certain creeds and systems of divinity which, although they “have had their day,” have not even yet altogether “ceased to be.” And even the mercantile and forensic metaphors which are in the Bible are but metaphors after all; i.e., they are but human forms of Divine truth adapted to the weakness and grossness of our perceptions. Nor do they stand alone. Lest we should misinterpret them, they stand side by side with figures and words which set forth other aspects of the self-same truth in forms we cannot easily mistake. Recall and consider, for example, such sayings as these:--“God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him might have eternal life”; and again, “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself”; and again, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Are not these words sufficiently simple and clear and direct? Are they not instinct--charged and surcharged--with a Divine tenderness? But if these sacred and tender words be true; if God was in Christ, if He against whom we had sinned Himself took our debt upon Him that He might frankly forgive us all, is there any lack of love and kindness in Him then? “It was noble in St. Paul,” you admit, “to take the debt of Onesimus upon him; but it would have been ignoble of Philemon to let the apostle pay it.” Granted. But suppose--for even impossibilities are supposable--that St. Paul had been both himself and Philemon. Suppose that when, in the form of Philemon, he had been robbed at Colosse, he forthwith posted to Rome in order that, in the form of St. Paul, he might bring Onesimus to repentance, in order that, at any cost of toil and suffering to himself, he might wipe out his debt and atone his wrong. Would not that have been nobler still? And if God, the very God whom we had defrauded, from whom we have fled, Himself came down into our low and miserable estate, to toil and suffer with us and for us, in order that He might bring us back to our better selves and to Him, in order that He might wipe out the debt we had contracted, convince us that He had remitted it, and raise us to a new life of service and favour and peace--what was that but a love so pure, so generous, so Divine, that the mere thought of it should melt and purify our hearts? We are to think of God, then, not simply as taking the money offered Him by Christ on our behalf, but also as paying it; not as exacting His due to the uttermost farthing, but rather as Himself discharging a debt we could never have paid. In the terms of our parable, He is Paul as well as Philemon--not only the Master we have wronged, but also the Friend who takes the wrong upon Himself. And we owe to Him both whatever service and duty the forgiven Onesimus owed to Philemon, and whatever gratitude and love he felt for St. Paul. (S. Cox, D. D.)

Reparation to God

And what a light is shed on the gospel idea of making reparation to God by means of a substitute, according to this earthly analogy! How finely the apostle here follows in the footsteps of Him who, on a higher plane, offered Himself as pledge or pawn for us who had failed to render the service that was due! Sin is no doubt much more than debt, but it is debt in so far as human defalcations stand in the account with God. Through melancholy faithlessness and dereliction and apostasy toward Him, what debts have been accumulating beyond all human power to liquidate! Neither regrets nor promises can here avail. Debts must be paid, if they would creditably be written off. The grace of the Lord Jesus admits of Him being debited. To the trusting soul He says: “I am your written and covenant surety”; and so far as sin is a load of debt to God, it is His alone to say: “Put this down to My account. I will repay.” Not as if there were any transference of moral qualities, or confusion of merit. Human guilt or blameworthiness can never be transferred to Christ, only imputed or reckoned to His account. What is actually transferred is the liability. And so must Christ’s merit be ever His own--its benefits only can be transferred, when it itself is imputed or put to any human account. In this sense Christ is ever holding Himself forth as able and ready to bear away the burden of human debt, and cancel sin, in the account of any soul with God. (A. H. Drysdale, M. A.)