Philemon 1:25

1:23-25 Never have believers found more enjoyment of God, than when suffering together for him. Grace is the best wish for ourselves and others; with this the apostle begins and ends. All grace is from Christ; he purchased, and he bestows it. What need we more to make us happy, than to have the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ with our spirit? Let us do that now, which we should do at the last breath. Then men are ready to renounce the world, and to prefer the least portion of grace and faith before a kingdom.

See Poole on "Galatians 6:18" . See Poole on "Romans 16:24" . See Poole on "1 Corinthians 16:23" . See Poole on "Philippians 4:23" . See Poole on "2 Thessalonians 3:18" . With your spirit is the same as with you. By the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, he means the Spirit of Christ in all its gracious emanations: we have his meaning fully, 2 Corinthians 13:14 : The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen is a particle of praying and affirming, by which he declareth his earnest desire it might be so, and also his faith that it should be so. Nor doth he pray for Philemon alone, (though the Epistle chiefly concerned him), but for all those who at Colosse had with him obtained like precious faith. Written from Rome to Philemon, by Onesimus a servant.

Verse 25. - The grace. A omits ἀμήν Theodoret has appended the following to his commentary: "It is fitting that those who have obtained the privilege of handing on the holy doctrine should so teach servants to submit themselves to their lords, that through all things Jesus Christ may be praised, to whom with the Father and the most Holy Spirit belong glory and greatness now and always and forever. Amen." Philemon 1:25

Grace - with your spirit As in Galatians 6:18, with the omission here of brother. See on 2 Corinthians 13:14. Out of many private letters which must have been written by Paul, this alone has been preserved. Its place in the New Testament canon is vindicated, so far as its internal character is concerned, by its picture of Paul as a christian gentleman, and by its exhibition of Paul's method of dealing with a great social evil. Paul's dealing with the institution of slavery displayed the profoundest christian sagacity. To have attacked the institution as such would have been worse than useless. To one who reads between the lines, Paul's silence means more than any amount of denunciation; for with his silence goes his faith in the power of christian sentiment to settle finally the whole question. He knows that to bring slavery into contact with living Christianity is to kill slavery. He accepts the social condition as a fact, and even as a law. He sends Onesimus back to his legal owner. He does not bid Philemon emancipate him, but he puts the christian slave on his true footing of a christian brother beside his master. As to the institution, he knows that the recognition of the slave as free in Christ will carry with it, ultimately, the recognition of his civil freedom. History vindicated him in the Roman empire itself. Under Constantine the effects of christian sentiment began to appear in the Church and in legislation concerning slaves.

Official freeing of slaves became common as an act of pious gratitude, and burial tablets often represent masters standing before the Good Shepherd, with a band of slaves liberated at death, and pleading for them at judgment. In a.d. 312 a law was passed declaring as homicide the poisoning or branding of slaves, and giving them to be torn by beasts. The advance of a healthier sentiment may be seen by comparing the law of Augustus, which forbade a master to emancipate more than one-fifth of his slaves, and which fixed one hundred males as a maximum for one time - and the unlimited permission to emancipate conceded by Constantine. Each new ruler enacted some measure which facilitated emancipation. Every obstacle was thrown by the law in the way of separating families. Under Justinian all presumptions were in favor of liberty. If a slave had several owners, one could emancipate him, and the others must accept compensation at a reduced valuation. The mutilated, and those who had served in the army with their masters' knowledge and consent, were liberated. All the old laws which limited the age at which a slave could be freed, and the number which could be emancipated, were abolished. A master's marriage with a slave freed all the children. Sick and useless slaves must be sent by their masters to the hospital. Great and deserved praise has been bestowed on this letter.

Philemon 1:25 . Ἡ χάρις : cf. Galatians 6:18 , 2 Timothy 4:22 .— ὑμῶν : the reference is both to those addressed by name in the opening of the Epistle, as well as to the members of the local Church, see Philemon 1:2 . This final verse is a reiteration of the grace pronounced in Philemon 1:3 .

25 . The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ ] So Romans 16:20 ; Romans 16:24 ; 1 Corinthians 16:23 ; 2 Corinthians 13:13 ; Galatians 6:18 (where the whole formula is verbatim as here); Php 4:23 ; 1 Thessalonians 5:28 ; 2 Thessalonians 3:18 ; Revelation 22:21 . Cp. 2 Timothy 2:1 . “ The grace ” is in short the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, in His saving presence and power; Himself at once Gift and Giver. So the Epistle closes, as it began, “ in Him .” with your spirit ] Not “ spirits ”; as if Philemon and his house had, in Christ, “one spirit,” one inner life.—See further, Appendix N.—The same phrase occurs Galatians 6:18 and (in the true reading) Php 4:23 ; where see our note. Amen ] The word is probably to be retained here. So R.V. text. It is properly a Hebrew adverb, meaning “ surely; ” repeatedly used as here in the O. T. See e.g. Deuteronomy 27:15 , &c.; Jeremiah 11:5 (marg. A.V.). The Subscription Written from Rome , &c.] Lit., To Philemon it was written from Rome by means of (i.e., of course, “ it was sent by hand of ”) ( the ) domestic Onesimus . Obviously, the statement is true to fact. On the antiquity of this and similar Subscriptions see note on that appended to Colossians. A few mss. (of cent. 8 at earliest) have, (The) Epistle of the holy Apostle Paul to Philemon and Apphia, owners of Onesimus, and to Archippus the ( sic ) deacon of the Church in Colossæ, was written from Rome by means of (the) domestic Onesimus. N.

Dr MACLAREN ON THE LAST WORDS OF THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON. ( Philemon 1:25 .) In his excellent Expository Commentary on our two Epistles (3rd Edition, 1889) Dr Alexander Maclaren writes as follows: “The parting benediction ends the letter. At the beginning of the Epistle, Paul invoked grace upon the household ‘from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.’ Now he conceives of it as Christ’s gift. In Him all the stooping, bestowing love of God is gathered, that from Him it may be poured upon the world. That grace is not diffused, like stellar light, through some nebulous heaven, but concentrated in the Sun of Righteousness, who is the light of men. That fire is piled on a hearth, that from it warmth may ray out to all that are in the house.… “The grace of Christ is the best bond of family life. Here it is prayed for on behalf of all the group, the husband, wife, child, and the friends in their home-Church. Like grains of sweet incense sprinkled on an altar-flame, and making fragrant that which was already holy, that grace sprinkled on the household fire will give it an odour of a sweet smell, grateful to men and acceptable to God. “That wish is the purest expression of Christian friendship, of which the whole Letter is so exquisite an example. Written as it is about a common everyday matter, which could have been settled without a single religious reference, it is saturated with Christian thought and feeling.