Authority and Commitment
Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love.Philemon 1:8-9a NIV
Order you– The letter to Philemon is the shortest of the Pauline material in Scripture. That’s why it comes last in Paul’s work. It is also unique because it involves Paul’s personal request to Philemon to accept a runaway slave as a brother. Paul makes no ethical pronouncement on slavery. Why would he? Slavery was a ubiquitous state in the Roman world. Paul is not telling Philemon, “Now you must stop having slaves.” When Paul suggests that he could order Philemon to take back Onesimus, it isn’t on the basis of the ethics of slavery. Paul could order Philemon to accept Onesimus simply because Paul was the spiritual father of Philemon, and Philemon was in his debt. But Paul doesn’t appeal to this fact, even though he does mention it. Instead, he appeals to Philemon’s sense of love. Whether we recognize how odd this really is depends on our understanding of slavery in the first century.
“Slavery, that is complete mastery (dominium) of one individual over another, was so imbedded in Roman culture that slaves became almost invisible and there was certainly no feeling of injustice in this situation on the part of the rulers. Inequality in power, freedom and the control of resources was an accepted part of life and went right back to the mythology of Jupiter overthrowing Saturn. As K. Bradley eloquently puts it, ‘freedom…was not a general right but a select privilege’ (Potter, 627). Further, it was believed that the freedom of some was only possible because others were enslaved. Slavery, was, therefore, not considered an evil but a necessity by Roman citizens. The fact that slaves were taken from the losers in battle (and their subsequent offspring) was also a helpful justification and confirmation of Rome’s (perceived) cultural superiority and divine right to rule over others and exploit those persons for absolutely any purpose whatsoever.”[1]
Slavery was also practiced in Israel, although the conditions and treatment of slaves were significantly modified by the Tanakh. Nevertheless, slavery was not a moral issue. Paul doesn’t expect Philemon to renounce slavery. He expects Philemon to treat others with the love of the Messiah.
But he isn’t going to command him to do so. What would that accomplish? The true nature of the Kingdom must be voluntary. It must arise from a change in heart, not a new set of rules. What Paul could rightfully demand would, in fact, destroy the ethical principle of the Kingdom. Just as love for God cannot be decreed, so love for another human being cannot be demanded. The expectation can be set before us, but in the end, we must choose to love, and when we do, relationships with others are changed.
Paul uses the Greek epitasso. The addition of the suffix (epi) is like putting an exclamation mark after the word tasso, a word that means “command” or “set in proper order.” It’s a word we find often in Paul since he was quite concerned with doing things in the proper way. But notice that here he refuses to employ the idea. Love cannot be enjoined. Perhaps we need to meditate on this. How often have we made the mistake of insisting that someone else express behavior or attitude that meets our ethical standards? How often have we realized that no real change can occur without voluntary choice? How frequently do our religious communities operate as if they have the authority to demand certain ethical behavior? How many times have your spiritual fathers and mothers deferred to love rather than power?
Onesimus went back to Philemon as a slave. We don’t know what happened after that. What we know is that Paul appealed to the love of the Messiah for a change of heart. Maybe that’s the best remedy of all.
Topical Index: slavery, authority, command, love, Philemon 1:8-9a
[1]https://www.ancient.eu/article/629/slavery-in-the-roman-world/
“Only by love is love awakened” (Ellen White, Desire of Ages, p. 22). Skip has been writing about what words mean, and that you cannot separate their meaning from their context (application). Words express something in reality, but to carry their meaning across, they have to be able to be taken out of the package of speech or writing at the other end and re-applied the same way for them to be truly understood. I think actions, however, are a unique class of words. You cannot ‘own’ or possess an action on a shelf (including the shelf of the mind): neither are actions casings, or, ideal forms, in which you can fit reality or yourself. I think actions can only be ‘understood’ by either being reproduced on the other side of transmission or (even better) CONTINUED across that transmission, like a bucket brigade or a game of hot potato or six steel balls hanging in a row, waiting for someone to pull the first one back and swing it into the other five balls which then, in turn, pass the action along to the next one in line. This creates a unique challenge when we talk about God, for all of Him is action: there is no way to get the meaning of God across without acting it at the same time.
I think love is like the steel balls: you can talk about balls flinging themselves around, or each other around, but unless or until an outside force comes along and starts the first one flying, the balls continue to hang still next to each other. Balls can ‘hear’ about hitting the ball next to them, but unless or until they are hit themselves, they cannot actually do it. Love, too, is not something generated (fathered) by us: we cannot just hear about it and then go do it. Love is something that we can only pass along by means of it being done to us. (This is why my personal theory is that the best sermons – about love, anyway – are the ones acted out: preferably TO the listener(s).)
I heard about love in church. At home, I do not remember the word used in our very conservative house much at all: I remember being loved by my mama, and what that was like, but because there weren’t a whole lot of sermons I heard that got the word down off the shelf and used in an illustration of my mama’s love (which was the love I had experienced) I didn’t know that the words were talking about the same thing. Therefore, try as I might, as a child I could not ever hear the word in a sermon and imagine what it was like in reality. It was all theoretical words that I mentally assented to, but the words didn’t transmit well. My meager faith was strained to the utmost as I tried to ‘believe’ the words – tried to believe and follow them, too – but I had a problem: because I heard the word “love” used in the abstract, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how and when and where to apply it! I thought I was weak in the faith. I didn’t know that if the person on the other end said the word but was not applying it (by actually loving me at the time) the word had no meaning in reality: the meaning did not transmit: I had no way to reproduce it on the other end.
I think Paul’s “authority” (“father”, or, source) over Philemon consisted of Paul’s previous and ongoing actions of his love for Philemon. Philemon knew Paul loved him because he experienced (or was the recipient, or the “beloved”, or “son” of) that love. But I think because love, by it’s nature, never forces it’s transmission of meaning (the meaning of love is a mutual endeavor: both sides contribute part of that meaning) the truth about love can only be found IN BETWEEN its mutual appliers. This was no one-sided love: Philemon loved Paul too. Paul was counting on the sure action of that ball already in motion to continue the trajectory it was already on to include Onesimus. Paul had faith in the love he and Philemon were already practicing: faith that, because Philemon loved him back, Philemon would want what pleased Paul and would follow through. This is “faith that works by love” (Gal. 5:6).
Faith. There’s another abstract word – at least without the action of love transmitting the meaning across. All God’s words, in fact, have no meaning without both ends participating mutually in the applying (doing) of them, for all the words of God must be transmitted by means of the substrate of mutually shared love – by action- for all God’s meanings (because they are all actions) are to be found only in the function of application: of shared transmission. When God loves the world, He sends His Son to live that love out in that world. By means of that action the world is challenged to accept that transmission, but at the same time is also judged by it for there is no such thing as one-sided love: love changes both ends: “constrains” both ends by its very nature. If a ball is hit, it must either hit the next one by its very design, or ‘choose’ to resist. (Wait: that would be free will.) That choice – to accept the forgiveness of God and so therefore clear up the (mutual) transmission of His love again (or not) – is what “judges” us, for either we accept His forgiveness (as shown by our subsequent transmission of that forgiveness and love on down the line, like Paul challenged Philemon to do) or refuse it, as evidenced by our refusal to also transmit forgiveness and love to those around us. This is why we don’t get forgiven unless we forgive, for forgiveness, like all the actions of God, only happens in transmission ON DOWN THE LINE. I am not the object of God’s love: I am the conduit – the “image” – of His action in the world: His object is the next person or situation down the line from me. I choose to participate, but when I do, I get His love (and forgiveness), too.
In John 8, I think we can see a classic example of words coming out of the mouth of Yeshua but not getting across: not transmitting. He finally, in exasperation, explained why they weren’t being understood: He told His recalcitrant listeners it was because they were being generated (“father”(ed)) from different sources: powered by different motivations: servants to different masters. He was loving them, but they weren’t loving Him back because they were not being plugged into (fathered by) the same love Source together. They weren’t loving Him back, so, therefore, no ‘meaning’ about God was getting across that day!
Love happens!
As people of faith, we know God’s love
works through us. Just as this love changed us,
we can watch His love in us help to change others!
Excellent word. Excellent reminder.
As I have become totally entrenched in your book, “The Hidden Beast”, I am realizing to a greater and greater degree the power of love, the necessity of love, the foundation of love. I am becoming more and more aware that the lack has been in a relationship with God. Instead of trying to earn the right of relationship I am seeking to enter into what is already given. Doing as you mention on page 73… we operate from the premise of “as if”. When we don’t know love, don’t feel love, we move ahead anyhow into the love that is promised to us. It is really a sense of faith in the love of God. This is probably one of the most difficult parts of being free. We operate and move ahead in contradiction to our feelings or circumstances ! One of the hardest things that addicts can do is to move in opposition to feelings!
To actually believe in the love that God has for us.
“.Just as love for God cannot be decreed” Skip, Is not the commandment that we must love God with all of our heart a decree from God himself. Can you help me see where I must be missing the point here.
Okay. Yes, the commandment appears to be a decree, but the point is that you cannot demand or command love. Love MUST be voluntary. So our reading of the text as a command means that this “commandment” is actually self-contradictory AS WE READ IT. There is a lot more involved than simply forcing us to “Love” or else. You don’t do that to your children because you know it doesn’t work. So why would we think God can do that to us?
If love is predication of the truth or fact of God’s love…more an action compelled by that which we know experientially of God demonstrated toward us (rather than an action motivated out of some type of personal emotional response to someone), why couldn’t it be decreed as the proper conduct in response to one another. I will give you that ultimately love must be voluntary, yet I believe it can be decreed as well.
The following is just my personal take: take what you like and leave the rest if it doesn’t help.
Define “decree”; “command”. In an autocratic environment (which all SIN operates in) some sort of force is necessary for compliance – some outside motivation to compel us – because interior motivation is lacking for whatever is not actually good for us. We don’t, according to our design, LIKE death and destruction, so it has to come disguised in lies to look like something we were created to want: some sort of goody: but with sin, the good stuff will always be on the end of a stick. With sin, you don’t get the carrot without the stick (force). With sin, you always pay for more than you get, too. All lies are force of some sort: something that pushes us (by means of deception) where we would not have gone otherwise (deficit). Now, go back and think about the fact that, from the paradigm of sin we all are currently operating under, our view of God is coming from within that paradigm. When we think “command” we think “force” because that force is the source of motivation (power) for us sinners. But God does not employ force, like Skip says. So, from within the paradigm of sin, we have no way to understand what a “command” of God is if it does not come reinforced(!) with force: some sort of way to motivate us – to power us – to want to obey. Isn’t it time to start over with everything?
What exactly DOES a command of God come packaged with, if not force? We are told that the “wages of sin is death”, but a wage is not a stick: a wage is a reward: a motivation! Proverbs says that all those who hate wisdom “love death”: want death: desire death. We sinners are all apparently zombies on kamikaze missions. We are programmed (with lies) to desire death: to be motivated by a death wish. That death wish forces (motivates) us to sin. Ask any addict: it looks like heaven but it feels like death. No wonder we have a hard time doing right: our wiring has been hijacked. We know what motivation sin comes packaged with: death! “But the gift of God is eternal life”. We have to want to live before we are motivated to obey God’s command to choose life: to renounce death.
I agree with you, Richard: I think God is our Father, shouting at us to stop before we run out into the street after the pretty balls of sin: but is He threatening us if we don’t comply, or is He warning us of what will happen if we choose to run in front of a car – continue to choose death? A command of love comes from a different place than the compulsion of sin. God does give us “power to become the sons of God”, but that power is not a threat: that power is Himself. So what exactly is a command of God powered by? “Behold, He stands at the door and knocks”. The power of God is attraction, not promotion. He is not selling us something or threatening us if we don’t agree: He is telling us that we are not going to be able to do it without Him, and He says He is WAITING for us to agree. Can we feel His magnetic love for us? Aren’t we tired of being shoved around already? Wouldn’t we rather enjoy being pulled by our real power source (which I think is more like a sail than an internal combustion engine)? Wouldn’t we rather get a gift – for once – than have to pay yet another bill from the piper?
A person can insist that another apologize but without love, what sort of an apology is it really? An empty one I would say. No one can force another to love. That is ultimately a personal choice. Love is amazingly powerful and yet violence seems to have a greater appeal to many. There is a time for everything under the sun and yet nothing new under the sun.
Honestly, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink!