7. For I have great joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother.
8. For this reason, although I have great boldness in Christ to command you to do what is right,
9. I appeal to you, instead, on the basis of love. I, Paul, as an elderly man and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus,
10. appeal to you for my son, Onesimus. I fathered him while I was in chains.
11. Once he was useless to you, but now he is useful both to you and to me.
12. I am sending him back to you as a part of myself.
13. I wanted to keep him with me, so that in my imprisonment for the gospel he might serve me in your place.