Philemon 10-11 — “I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten while in my chains, who once was unprofitable to you, but now is profitable to you and to me.”
His name was Onesimus. Onesimos (Ὀνήσιμος), Strong’s G3682. It is a Greek word that means useful, profitable, beneficial. In the first century, it was a common slave name. The master named the slave, and many masters chose names that described the function they expected. Profitable. Lucky. Reliable. The name was less a name than a job description with a person attached to it.
Onesimus was not profitable.
He was, in fact, a runaway. He had escaped from his master, a Christian named Philemon who lived in Colossae, and he had somehow ended up nine hundred miles away in Rome, in the same neighborhood as the Apostle Paul, who was under house arrest there. We do not know whether he stole anything on his way out. Paul hints at it in verse 18 — “But if he has wronged you or owes anything, put that on my account” — and most scholars think the wronging was theft. We do not know how Onesimus found Paul, or whether Paul found him. We just know that somewhere in Rome, the runaway met the prisoner, and the runaway came to Christ.
And then Paul did the hardest thing.
Paul sent him back.
The setup
You have to understand what was at stake. In the Roman Empire, a runaway slave was the property of his master, and the master had every right to do whatever he wanted with him. Branding. Beating. Crucifixion. The law was on the master’s side. Custom was on the master’s side. There were professional slave catchers, fugitivarii, whose job was to bring runaways back, and their work was usually a death sentence dressed up as transportation.
Onesimus walking back into Philemon’s house, even with a letter from Paul, was not a safe trip. Whatever Paul wrote in that letter was going to have to land harder than the empire’s law. It was going to have to land harder than Philemon’s hurt.
So Paul wrote one of the strangest, gentlest, most carefully crafted letters in the New Testament. Twenty-five verses. No theology lecture. No commands. Just a wedge of grace driven into a relationship that had every right to end in execution.
And right in the middle of it, Paul plays a word game.
The pun
Verse 11 in Greek reads, “ton pote soi achreston, nuni de soi kai emoi euchreston.” Word for word, “the one once useless to you, but now useful to you and to me.”
Achreston (ἄχρηστον), Strong’s G890. Useless. A is the negative prefix. Chrestos is the root.
Euchreston (εὔχρηστον), Strong’s G2173. Well-useful, beneficial. Eu is the positive prefix. Same root.
Paul is doing two things at once. The obvious thing is that he is making a pun on Onesimus’s name. The name means useful. Onesimus was not useful. Now Onesimus is useful, in the truest sense. The slave is finally what his name said he was.
But there is a second thing happening underneath that, and you have to know a little about Greek pronunciation to see it. The Greek words chrestos (useful, kind) and Christos (Christ, anointed one) were pronounced almost identically in the first century. Inscriptions and graffiti from the period show people misspelling them interchangeably. Tertullian, writing a century and a half later, complains that pagans kept calling Christians “Chrestians” because they could not hear the difference, and he says this is fine because Christians actually are chrestoi, useful people, kind people, gracious people.
Paul knew this. Paul also wrote the letter to the Romans, where he is very careful about the way Greek and Hebrew sit together. Paul is not a man who wastes a syllable.
So when he writes achreston and euchreston, he is doing the obvious pun on Onesimus’s name. He may also be doing a quieter, deeper pun. The man who was a-chrestos, without usefulness, is now eu-chrestos, well-useful, because he is en Christo, in Christ. The name change and the Lord change are the same change. The runaway became the brother because the runaway met the Christ.
That is the gospel buried inside a punchline.
Receive him as me
The hinge verse in the letter is verse 17. “If then you count me as a partner, receive him as you would me.”
Pause on that.
Paul is asking Philemon to receive an escaped slave, as Paul. Open the door. Embrace the man. Treat him not as your runaway, but as the apostle who led you to Christ. Treat him as the brother he now is.
The doctrine in that sentence will eventually unbuild the entire institution of slavery. It will take eighteen hundred years and a lot of blood, but the seed is right here. Receive him as you would me. If Christ has made him your brother, the master-slave category has lost its theological footing. Paul is not going to march on the Roman Senate. He is going to drop a sentence in a personal letter that will quietly eat at the foundation of every system built on the lie that some people are property.
That is how the gospel often works. Not with a hammer. With a wedge.
What this means for you
There are people in your life you have written off as useless.
I don’t mean strangers. I mean the people whose name you say with a sigh. The cousin who keeps relapsing. The kid who keeps lying. The friend who keeps choosing the man who keeps hurting her. The brother-in-law you have stopped praying for because it feels like throwing seed on concrete. The pastor who failed. The parent who never showed up. The version of yourself you would not want to introduce anyone to.
Paul says they may be your Onesimus.
He does not say they will be. He does not promise the runaway always comes back through the door changed. He just says that the man whose name meant useful was a-chrestos before he met Christ, and that this same man is now eu-chrestos, and that Paul will personally cover whatever debt the past requires. The slave became the brother. The runaway became the letter.
This is who Jesus picks up. The ones the empire writes off. The ones whose names have become punchlines. The ones who have nothing to offer except a track record of failure and a fresh willingness to let the Christ rewrite the name.
Don’t be too quick to write them off.
Don’t be too quick to write yourself off.
The man who carried this letter back to Colossae was carrying his own death warrant in one hand and his own rebirth in the other.
He walked in alive.
Going deeper
For the Greek word study, see achreston (G890), euchreston (G2173), and Onesimos (G3682) in any Strong’s-keyed concordance. Douglas Moo’s commentary on Philemon in the Pillar New Testament Commentary series is the best one-stop scholarly treatment. For the Chrestos/Christos wordplay and the slavery question in the first century, N. T. Wright’s small but excellent Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters is worth your time. Tradition holds that Onesimus later became bishop of Ephesus, mentioned by name in Ignatius of Antioch’s letters around AD 110. The runaway became the shepherd.
Next time, the last underdog. A man with a pagan name who almost died for Paul and got two paragraphs in the whole New Testament.
He gambled.
Paul never forgot.
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