Paul not only notes that love is the very heart of the Christian ethic. He not only sets forth his own position as someone whose love should be respected. But he is noting that when Christians are saved, they join a family. What are the characteristics of family? It is love. Through union with Christ in faith we become members of a loving, eternal, spiritual family over which God is Father. You see, becoming a Christian through faith in Christ does not really make us neighbors in the church. We are not just neighbors, not just colleagues in the work of the church. We are not even just comrades. We are brothers and sisters; there are father-son relationships, mother-daughter relationships; tender, affectionate commitments between Christians in the church. That is what Paul is arguing. He notes that he is the pastor who led Onesimus to Christ and so he became a spiritual father to him. Paul contributed more to his eternal life than his earthly parents did to his natural life. We will learn in Philemon 1:19, that Philemon is also a spiritual child of Paul's; he was converted under Paul's ministry, no doubt in Ephesus during Paul's three years there. And so the implication of this family bond between Philemon and his slave is rather obvious, although Paul is going to spell it out in this passage.
I think it is hard for us to imagine just how much it would have meant for Paul to speak of Onesimus as a spiritual child. He had many others: Timothy, Titus, a whole legion of them. They were like his children to him. They are his spiritual children, because Paul was a man who gave up the privileges of marriage and fatherhood in order to full time, in a special way, be the servant, the apostle of Christ and his gospel. He must have been lonely sometimes. You get this in the high degree of affection that characterizes his comments about his associates, and sometimes in his letters he appeals for somebody to come and keep him company. It reminds me of the English of evangelical leader John Stott, who also set aside marriage and family for the gospel, and he admitted that he was often lonely as a result. But Stott spoke of the blessing of the spiritual family. Here is what he said:” Although I have no children of my own, I have hundreds of adopted nephews and nieces all over the world, and they call me Uncle John. I cherish these affectionate relationships, they greatly lessen, even if they do not altogether deaden, the occasional pangs of loneliness.” The church is a place where many who cannot find love elsewhere are able to be part of a family, and so we need to love one another as we are taught. Christians without children of their own may become spiritual parents, aunts and uncles in relationships of great significance and commitment and affection. How appropriate it is then for Paul to make an appeal to love for someone who is a member of Christ and his Church.1
Richard D. Phillips
10 I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment.