Luther says that in Christ every Christian leads a kind of double life. In Philemon, Paul is not just a prisoner, he is also the embodiment of Christ, who reconciles and pays our debts. Lutheran scholar John Nordling observes:
There is a double life: my own, which is natural or animate [naturalis vel animalis]; and an alien life [aliena], that of Christ in me. So far as my animate life is concerned, I am dead and am now living an alien life. I am not living as Paul now, for Paul is dead.” “Who, then, is living?” “The Christian.”
