7 For I have derived great joy and comfort and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints [who are your fellow Christians] have been cheered and refreshed through you, [my] brother.
8 Therefore, though I have abundant boldness in Christ to charge you to do what is fitting and required and your duty to do,
9 Yet for love's sake I prefer to appeal to you just for what I am–I, Paul, an ambassador [of Christ Jesus] and an old man and now a prisoner for His sake also–
10 I appeal to you for my [own spiritual] child, Onesimus [meaning profitable], whom I have begotten [in the faith] while a captive in these chains.
11 Once he was unprofitable to you, but now he is indeed profitable to you as well as to me.
12 I am sending him back to you in his own person, [and it is like sending] my very heart.
13 I would have chosen to keep him with me, in order that he might minister to my needs in your stead during my imprisonment for the Gospel's sake.