Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Philemon 1:5

Philemon 1:5. Hearing of thy love. This was the cause of the thankfulness. The seed sown was bringing forth fruit. How the apostle had heard of the love shown to the congregation at Colossæ, we can only speculate. In the Epistle to that church (Colossians 4:12), Epaphras, who was a Colossian, is spoken of as sending his greetings to the Christians in his own city, and it may have been through him that the news of Philemon's good deeds reached St. Paul. Or it may be that the runaway slave himself, when brought to a proper sense by the apostle's teaching, may have borne testimony to the Christian graces of his deserted master.

and of the faith. The love was the outward manifest token of the faith within the heart. But neither is complete without the other, as the apostle testifies in many a place. And so here he adds, which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus and toward all saints. The love was displayed towards the Christian congregation, the faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ, But they are so knit together where they truly exist, that St. Paul speaks of them as both exhibited alike toward Christ and toward His people. This was his sense of true religious life from the first. With a ‘Who art thou, Lord?' he acknowledges Jesus for his Master, and promptly follows his faith with the question, ‘Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?'

toward all saints. And so he feels that the son whom St. Paul has begotten in his bonds, and who now has a right to the Christian title, ‘a brother beloved,' will be made a partaker of this love, and be forgiven what he has offended.

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Philemon 1:5

Old Testament

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