Philemon 1:16

not now as a servant No more as bondservant. Not that he would cease to be such, necessarily, in law; St Paul does not say "set him free." But in Christ he was free, an and of kin.

a brother beloved Cp. 1 Timothy 6:2 for the same thought from the slave's point of view. These simple words are an absolute and fatal antithesis to the principle, and so ultimately to the existence, of slavery.

"Christianity alone can work these holy transformations, changing a temporal servitude into an eternal brotherhood" (Quesnel). See further, Introd., ch. 4, particularly pp. 163, 164.

specially to me Lit., most of all to me. Philemon's beloved "brother" was Paul's most beloved "son."

but how much more A verbal inconsistency, conveying a thought of noble warmth and delicacy. He had said "most to me"; but after all it is "more than most" to Philemon.

in the flesh A remarkable phrase, as if slavery were a sort of kinship. This thought appears, as a fact, in combination (and contrast) with the harshest theories of ancient slavery. Thus Aristotle (Polit., i. ii.; see Introd. to this Epistle, ch. 4) writes, "the slave is a portion ofhis master; as it were a living, though separated, portion of his body." And again: "he shares his master's reason, so far as to perceive it." The Gospel would of course assimilate and enforce with all its power thataspect of the connexion.

in the Lord? In whom there is "neither bond nor free," and in whom now master and slave were "one man" (Galatians 3:26-28).