What Does Philemon 1:17 Mean?
If then you hold me as a sharer in common, receive him as me.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
If thou count me therefore a partner, receive him as myself.THE KEY
Partnership means sharing a common life so fully that receiving one person becomes receiving the one joined to them.
THE MEANING
The verse makes belonging tangible: welcome extends through the bond between people, so receiving one is treated as receiving the other. Its words speak wherever someone is welcomed in the place of a trusted companion.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that someone can be welcomed as a partner while the person joined to them is kept outside.
THE ROOT
κοινωνόν
koinōnon
GROWS FROM
κοινός
koinos
Common, shared; what is held or participated in together.
“sharer in common” in this verse is koinōnon. “Partner” carries the sense of one who shares something in common with another. The verse gives that shared belonging a concrete form: to receive one is to receive the other as oneself.
ALSO GROWS
koinōnia: Participation or fellowship held in common.
κοινωνία
The same root names the shared bond that makes this welcome more than a polite reception.
koinōneō: To take part in or share with another.
κοινωνέω
Partnership is not only a status; it is participation that joins people in what they share.
THE PATTERN
Receiving someone can express welcome toward the one with whom they share a bond.
And the King answers and says to them, Truly, I say to you, Whatever you did to one of the least of these my brothers, you did to me.Therefore take hold of one another, as the Anointed One also took hold of us, to the end that God is given weight.Therefore we are bound to take up such as these, that we may become fellow workers in the truth.THE THREAD
Is not the cup of blessing that we bless a sharing in common of the blood of the Anointed One? Is not the bread that we break a sharing in common of the body of the Anointed One?“Communion” translates κοινωνία (koinōnia), meaning “sharing in common,” from the same root as “partner” here. That shared participation opens the force of the welcome: receiving one is treated as receiving the one whose common bond they share.
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