Philemon 1:4-16

⁴I thank my God always, making mention of you in my prayers, ⁵because I hear of your love and of the faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints; ⁶and I pray that the fellowship of your faith may become effective through the knowledge of every good thing which is in you for the sake of Christ. ⁷For I have had great joy and comfort in your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother.

⁸Therefore, though I have enough confidence in Christ to order you to do what is proper, ⁹yet for love’s sake I rather appeal to you—since I am such a person as Paul, an old man, and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus—

¹⁰I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, whom I fathered in my imprisonment, ¹¹who previously was useless to you, but now is useful both to you and to me. ¹²I have sent him back to you in person, that is, sending my very heart, ¹³whom I wanted to keep with me, so that in your behalf he might be at my service in my imprisonment for the gospel; ¹⁴but I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that your goodness would not be, in effect, by compulsion, but of your own free will. ¹⁵For perhaps it was for this reason that he was separated from you for a while, that you would have him back forever, ¹⁶no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother, especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.