Onesimus of Byzantium

Life and Ministry

Onesimus is named in Paul's letter to Philemon as the runaway slave whom Paul, then in prison, converted and sent back to his master at Colossae with the charge to receive him no longer as a slave but as a beloved brother. Paul calls him my child whom I have begotten in my chains and says he is now useful, playing on the Greek meaning of the name (the Useful One). He is named again in Colossians 4:9 as the faithful and beloved brother who is one of you. The Sub-Apostolic tradition, preserved most clearly in the letter of Ignatius of Antioch to the Ephesians (c. AD 107), identifies the bishop of Ephesus in Ignatius's time as a man named Onesimus, and many ancient and modern readers have understood this to be the same man, freed and ordained, become at last the overseer of one of the great apostolic sees. The identification is strongly traditional, though not certain.

Circumstances of Death

The Greek martyr-act of Onesimus places his death at Rome around the end of the first century or beginning of the second, under the proconsul Tertullus, after the witness he gave to the imperial court resulted in his condemnation. He was, by this account, beaten with clubs and his legs broken on the stocks until he died — a slave's death even at the end. The historical detail is uncertain; the tradition of a martyr's end at Rome under one of the early waves of persecution is consistent across sources.

Legacy

Onesimus's witness is the witness of every man whom the gospel has freed from the deeper slavery beneath the legal one. The runaway became the bishop. The fugitive of Philemon became the shepherd of Ephesus. The slave who carried Paul's letter back to his master with his own forgiveness folded in it became himself the pastor who passed the deposit to Ignatius. Paul wrote to his master: receive him as you would receive me. The Church received him for two thousand years as a witness that no chain of birth or law or sin is stronger than the chain of the cross that breaks the others.