Philemon 1:9

Philemon 1:9. Yet for love's sake. This might mean Philemon's love towards Paul, which from what is said in this letter may well be supposed to have been great, and such as the apostle could appeal to, but it seems more consonant with the tone of the whole Epistle to understand it of Paul's love to Philemon, as if he would say, ‘For the love I bear you I lay aside all authority, and beg you to be moved by that love alone.'

I rather beseech. The character of the Gospel spirit, in meekness to forego a right rather than to insist on it.

being such an one as Paul an ambassador. The apostle now sets forth some grounds for his appeal. The rendering of the A. V., ‘Paul the aged,' seems hardly a fitting reason to bring forward to Philemon, who himself, from his position, may be supposed to have been not much younger. Nor can St. Paul have been so old as to justify the use of such words. At the death of Stephen, not thirty years before, he is spoken of as ‘young' (Acts 7:58), so that he must have been most likely between fifty and sixty when he was first imprisoned at Rome. The word usually rendered ‘aged' differs but by one letter from that meaning ‘ambassador,' and there seems to be evidence to warrant us in believing that in a dialect of Greek one form would stand for the other. But the most weighty reason for the rendering given above is St. Paul's own language, Ephesians 6:20, an Epistle written at the same time as this letter to Philemon, in which he speaks (using the verb from which our noun is derived) of himself as ‘an ambassador in bonds.' Thus the connection of ideas is the same as in the verse before us, and as Christ's ambassador St. Paul could plead with much more force than by any allusion to his own age. The same verb, joined with the word here used for beseech, is found in 2 Corinthians 5:20, ‘We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us.'

and now also. St. Paul was under all circumstances Christ's officer, but there is now an additional ground why his entreaty should be granted, a prisoner of Christ Jesus. See on Philemon 1:1.