Verses 1-22
Chapter 4
4:1-5 I charge you
before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the
dead--I charge you by his appearing and by his Kingdom--herald forth the
word; be urgent in season and out of season; convict, rebuke, exhort,
and do it all with a patience and a teaching which never fail. For there
will come a time when men will refuse to listen to sound teaching, but,
because they have ears which have to be continually titillated with
novelties, they will bury themselves under a mound of teachers, whose
teaching suits their own lusts after forbidden things. They will avert
their cars from the truth, and they will turn to extravagant tales. As
for you, be steady in all things; accept the suffering which will come
upon you; do the work of an evangelist; leave no act of your service
unfulfilled.
As Paul comes to the end of his letter, he wishes to nerve and
to challenge Timothy to his task. To do so he reminds him of three
things concerning Jesus.
(i) Jesus is the judge of the living and the dead. Some day
Timothy's work will be tested, and that by none other than Jesus
himself. A Christian must do every task in such a way that he can offer
it to Christ. He is not concerned with either the criticism or the
verdict of men. The one thing he covets is the "Well done!" of Jesus
Christ. If we all did our work in that spirit, the difference would be
incalculable. It would save us from the touchy spirit which is offended
by criticism; it would save us from the self-important spirit which is
concerned with personal rights and personal prestige; it would save us
from the self-centred spirit which demands thanks and praise for its
every act; it would even save us from being hurt by men's ingratitude.
(ii) Jesus is the returning conqueror. "I charge you," says Paul, "by his appearing." The word is epiphaneia (Greek #2015).
Epiphaneia was used in two special ways. It was used for the manifest
intervention of some god; and it was specially used in connection with
the Roman Emperor. His accession to the throne was his epiphaneia (Greek #2015);
and in particular--and this is the background of Paul's thought
here--it was used of his visit to any province or town. Obviously when
the Emperor was due to visit any place, everything was put in perfect
order. The streets were swept and garnished and all work was brought
up-to-date so that the town might be fit for epiphaneia (Greek #2015). So Paul says to Timothy: "You know what happens when any town is expecting the epiphaneia (Greek #2015) of the Emperor; you are expecting the epiphaneia (Greek #2015)
of Jesus Christ. Do your work in such a way that all things will be
ready whenever he appears." The Christian should so order life that at
any moment he is ready for the coming of Christ.
(iii) Jesus is King. Paul urges Timothy to action by the
remembrance of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. The day comes when the
kingdoms of the world will be the Kingdom of the Lord; and so Paul says
to Timothy: "So live and work that you will rank high in the roll of its
citizens when the Kingdom comes."
Our work must be such that it will stand the scrutiny of Christ.
Our lives must be such that they will welcome the appearance of the
King. Our service must be such that it will demonstrate the reality of
our citizenship of the Kingdom of God.
There can be few New Testament passages where the duties of the Christian teacher are more clearly set out than here.
The Christian teacher is to be urgent. The message he brings is
literally a matter of life and death. The teachers who really get their
message across are those who have the note of earnestness in their
voice. Spurgeon had a real admiration for Martineau, who was a Unitarian
and therefore denied the divinity of Jesus Christ which Spurgeon
believed in with passionate intensity. Someone once said to Spurgeon:
"How can you possibly admire Martineau? You don't believe what he
preaches." "No," said Spurgeon, "but he does." Any man with the note of
urgency in his voice demands, and will receive, a hearing from other
men.
The Christian teacher is to be persistent. He is to urge the
claims of Christ "in season and out of season." As someone has put it:
"Take or make your opportunity." As Theodore of Mospeuestia put it: "The
Christian must count every time an opportunity to speak for Christ." It
was said of George Morrison of Wellington Church in Glasgow that with
him wherever the conversation started, it went straight across country
to Christ. This does not mean that we will not choose our time to speak,
for there should be courtesy in evangelism as in every other human
contact; but it does mean that perhaps we are far too shy in speaking to
others about Jesus Christ.
Paul goes on to speak of the effect the Christian witness must produce.
He must convict. He must make the sinner aware of his sin.
Walter Bagehot once said: "The road to perfection lies through a series
of disgusts." Somehow or other the sinner must be made to feel disgusted
with his sin. Epictetus draws a contrast between the false philosopher,
who is out for popularity, and the real philosopher, whose one aim is
the good of his hearers. The false philosopher deals in flattery and
panders to self-esteem. The real philosopher says: "Come and be told
that you are in a bad way." "The philosopher's lecture," he said, "is a
surgery; when you go away you ought to have felt not pleasure, but
pain." It was Alcibiades, the brilliant but spoiled darling of Athens,
who used to say to Socrates: "Socrates, I hate you, because every time I
meet you, you make me see what I am." The first essential is to compel a
man to see himself as he is.
He must rebuke. In the great days of the Church there was an
utter fearlessness in its voice; and because of that things happened. E.
F. Brown tells of an incident from India. A certain young nobleman in
the Viceroy's suite in Calcutta became notorious for his profligacy.
Bishop Wilson one day put on his robes, drove to Government House, and
said to the Viceroy: "Your excellency, if Lord ______ does not leave
Calcutta before next Sunday, I shall denounce him from the pulpit in the
Cathedral." Before Sunday came that young man was gone.
Ambrose of Milan was one of the great figures of the early
Church. He was an intimate friend of Theodosius, the Emperor, who was a
Christian, but a man of violent temper. Ambrose never hesitated to tell
the Emperor the truth. "Who," he demanded, "will dare to tell you the
truth if a priest does not dare?" Theodosius had appointed one of his
close friends, Botherich, as governor of Thessalonica. Botherich, a good
governor, had occasion to imprison a famous charioteer for infamous
conduct. The popularity of these charioteers was incredible and the
populace rose in a riot and murdered Botherich. Theodosius was mad with
anger. Ambrose pled with him for discrimination in punishment, but
Rufinus, his minister of state, deliberately inflamed his anger and
Theodosius sent out orders for a massacre of vengeance. Later he
countermanded the order, but too late for the new order to reach
Thessalonica in time. The theatre was crammed to capacity with the doors
shut, and the soldiers of Theodosius went to and fro slaughtering men,
women and children for three hours. More than seven thousand people were
killed. News of the massacre came back to Milan and when Theodosius
presented himself at the Church service the next Sunday, Ambrose refused
him admission. The Emperor pled for pardon. Eight months passed and
again he came to Church. Again Ambrose refused him entry. In the end the
Emperor of Rome had to lie prostrate on the ground with the penitents
before he was allowed to worship with the Church again. In its great
days the Church was fearless in rebuke.
In our personal relationships a word of warning and rebuke would
often save a brother from sin and shipwreck. But, as someone has said,
that word must always be spoken as "brother setting brother right." It
must be spoken with a consciousness of our common guilt. It is not our
place to set ourselves up as moral judges of anyone; nonetheless it is
our duty to speak that warning word when it needs to be spoken.
He must exhort. Here is the other side of the matter. No rebuke
should ever be such that it drives a man to despair and takes the heart
and the hope out of him. Not only must men be rebuked, they must also be
encouraged.
Further, the Christian duty of conviction, of rebuke and of
encouragement, must be carried out with unwearied patience. The word is
makrothumia (Greek #3115),
and it describes the spirit which never grows irritated, never despairs
and never regards any man as beyond salvation. The Christian patiently
believes in men because he unconquerably believes in the changing power
of Christ.
Paul goes on to describe the foolish listeners. He warns Timothy that
the day is coming when men will refuse to listen to sound teaching and
will collect teachers who will titillate their ears with precisely the
easy-going, comfortable things they want to hear.
In Timothy's day it was tragically easy to find such teachers. They were called sophists (compare Greek #4680)
and wandered from city to city, offering to teach anything for pay.
Isocrates said of them: "They try to attract pupils by low fees and big
promises." They were prepared to teach the whole of virtue or L15 or
L20. They would teach a man to argue subtly and to use words cleverly
until he could make the worse appear the better reason. Plato described
them savagely: "Hunters after young men of wealth and position, with
sham education as their bait, and a fee for their object, making money
by a scientific use of quibbles in private conversation, while quite
aware that what they are teaching is wrong."
They competed for customers. Dio Chrysostom wrote of them: "You
might hear many poor wretches of sophists shouting and abusing one
another, and their disciples, as they call them, squabbling, and many
writers of books reading their stupid compositions, and many poets
singing their poems, and many jugglers exhibiting their marvels, and
many soothsayers giving the meaning of prodigies, and ten thousand
rhetoricians twisting lawsuits, and no small number of traders driving
their several trades."
Men in the days of Timothy were beset by false teachers hawking
round sham knowledge. Their deliberate policy was to find arguments
whereby a man could justify himself for doing what he wanted to do. Any
teacher, to this day, whose teaching tends to make men think less of sin
is a menace to Christianity and to mankind.
In contradistinction to that, certain duties are to be laid on Timothy.
He is to be steady in all things. The word (nephein, Greek #3525)
means that he is to be sober and self-contained, like an athlete who
has his passions and his appetites and his nerves well under control.
Hort says that the word describes "a mental state free from all
perturbations or stupefactions...every faculty at full command, to look
all facts and all considerations deliberately in the face." The
Christian is not to be the victim of crazes; stability is his badge in
an unbalanced and often insane world.
He is to accept whatever suffering comes upon him. Christianity
will cost something, and the Christian is to pay the price of it without
grumbling and without regret.
He is to do the work of an evangelist. In spite of the
conviction and the rebuke the Christian is essentially the bringer of
good news. If he insists on discipline and self-denial, it is that an
even greater happiness may be attained than ever cheap pleasures can
bring.
He is to leave no act of service unfulfilled. The Christian
should have only one ambition--to be of use to the Church of which he is
a part and the society in which he lives. The chance he dare not miss
is not that of a cheap profit but that of being of service to his God,
his Church and his fellow-men.
4:6-8 For my life has
reached the point when it must be sacrificed, and the time of my
departure has come. I have fought the good fight: I have completed the
course: I have kept the faith. As for what remains, there is laid up for
me the crown of righteousness which on that day the Lord, the righteous
judge, will give to me--and not only to me, but also to all who have
loved his appearing.
For Paul the end is very near and he knows it. When Erasmus was
growing old, he said: "I am a veteran, and have earned my discharge,
and must leave the fighting to younger men." Paul, the aged warrior, is
laying down his arms that Timothy may take them up.
No passage in the New Testament is more full of vivid pictures than this.
"My life," says Paul, "has reached the point where it must be
sacrificed." The word he uses for sacrifice is the verb spendesthai (Greek #4689)
which literally means to pour out as a libation to the gods. Every
Roman meal ended with a kind of sacrifice. A cup of wine was taken and
was poured out (spendesthai, Greek #4689)
to the gods. It is as if Paul were saying: "The day is ended; it is
time to rise and go; and my life must be poured out as a sacrifice to
God." He did not think of himself as going to be executed; he thought of
himself as going to offer his life to God. Ever since his conversion,
he had offered everything to God--his money, his scholarship, his time,
the vigour of his body, the acuteness of his mind, the devotion of his
heart. Only life itself was left to offer, and gladly he was going to
lay it down.
He goes on to say: "The time of my departure is at hand." The word (analusis, Greek #359)
he uses for departure is a vivid one. It has many a picture in it and
each tells us something about leaving this life. (a) It is the word for
unyoking an animal from the shafts of the cart or the plough. Death to
Paul was rest from toil. As Spenser had it, ease after toil, port after
stormy seas, death after life, are lovely things. (b) It is the word for
loosening bonds or fetters. Death for Paul was a release. He was to
exchange the confines of a Roman prison for the glorious liberty of the
courts of heaven. (c) It is the word for loosening the ropes of a tent.
For Paul it was time to strike camp again. Many a journey he had made
across the roads of Asia Minor and of Europe. Now he was setting out on
his last and greatest journey; he was taking the road that led to God.
(d) It is the word for loosening the mooring-ropes of a ship. Many a
time Paul had felt his ship leave the harbour for the deep waters. Now
he is to launch out into the greatest deep of all, setting sail to cross
the waters of death to arrive in the haven of eternity.
So then, for the Christian, death is laying down the burden in
order to rest; it is laying aside the shackles in order to be free; it
is striking camp in order to take up residence in the heavenly places;
it is casting off the ropes which bind us to this world in order to set
sail on the voyage which ends in the presence of God. Who then shall
fear it?
Paul goes on, still speaking in these vivid pictures of which he was
such a master: "I have fought the good fight: I have completed the race:
I have kept the faith." It is likely that he is not using different
pictures from three different spheres of life, but one picture from the
games.
(i) "I have fought the good fight." The word he uses for fight is agon (Greek #73),
which is the word for a contest in the arena. When an athlete can
really say that he has done his best, then, win or lose, there is a deep
satisfaction in his heart. Paul has come to the end, and he knows that
he has put up a good show. When his mother died, Barrie made a great
claim. "I can look back," he said, "and I cannot see the smallest thing
undone." There is no satisfaction in all the world like knowing that we
have done our best.
(ii) "I have finished the race." It is easy to begin but hard to
finish. The one thing necessary for life is staying-power, and that is
what so many people lack. It was suggested to a certain very famous man
that his biography should be written while he was still alive. He
absolutely refused to give permission, and his reason was: "I have seen
so many men fall out on the last lap." It is easy to wreck a noble life
or a fine record by some closing folly. But it was Paul's claim that he
had finished the race. There is a deep satisfaction in reaching the
goal.
Perhaps the world's most famous race is the marathon. The Battle
of Marathon was one of the decisive battles of the world. In it the
Greeks met the Persians, and, if the Persians had conquered, the glory
that was Greece would never have flowered upon the world. Against
fearful odds the Greeks won the victory, and, after the battle, a Greek
soldier ran all the way, day and night, to Athens with the news.
Straight to the magistrates he ran. "Rejoice," he gasped, "we have
conquered," and even as he delivered his message he fell dead. He had
completed his course and done his work, and there is no finer way for
any man to die.
(iii) "I have kept the faith." This phrase can have more than
one meaning. If we are to keep the background of the games, it is this.
The great games in Greece were the Olympics. To these came all the
greatest athletes in the world. On the day before the games all the
competitors met and took a solemn oath before the gods that they had
done not less than ten months training and that they would not resort to
any trickery to win. So Paul may be saying: "I have kept the rules: I
have played the game." It would be a great thing to die knowing that we
had never transgressed the rules of honour in the race of life.
But this phrase may have other meanings. It is also a business
phrase. It was the regular Greek for: "I have kept the conditions of the
contract; I have been true to my engagement." If Paul used it in that
way, he meant that he had engaged himself to serve Christ and had stood
by that engagement and never let his Master down. Further, it could
mean: "I have kept my faith: I have never lost my confidence and my
hope." If Paul used it in that way, he meant that through thick and
thin, in freedom and in imprisonment, in all his perils by land and sea,
and now in the very face of death, he had never lost his trust in Jesus
Christ.
Paul goes on to say there is laid up for him the crown. In the
games the greatest prize was the laurel wreath. With it the victor was
crowned; and to wear it was the greatest honour which could come to any
athlete. But this crown in a few short days would wither. Paul knew that
there awaited him a crown which would never fade.
In this moment Paul is turning from the verdict of men to the
verdict of God. He knew that in a very short time he would stand before
the Roman judgment seat and that his trial could have only one end. He
knew what Nero's verdict would be, but he also knew what God's verdict
would be. The man whose life is dedicated to Christ is indifferent to
the verdict of men. He cares not if they condemn him so long as he hears
his Master's "Well done!"
Paul sounds still another note--this crown awaits not only him
but all who wait with expectation for the coming of the King. It is as
if he said to the young Timothy: "Timothy, my end is near: and I know
that I go to my reward. If you follow in my steps, you will feel the
same confidence and the same joy when the end comes to you." The joy of
Paul is open to every man who also fights that fight and finishes the
race and keeps the faith.
4:9-15 Do your best to
come and see me soon. Demas has deserted me, because he loved this
present world, and has gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to
Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Luke alone is with me. Take Mark and bring
him with you, for he is very useful in service. I have sent Tychicus to
Ephesus.
When you come bring
with you the cloak which I left behind at Troas at Corpus' house, and
bring the books, especially the parchments.
Alexander, the
coppersmith, did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will reward him
according to his deeds. You yourself must be on your guard against him,
for he hotly opposed our words.
Paul draws up a roll of honour and of dishonour of his friends.
Some are only names to us; of some, as we read the Acts and the
Epistles, we get little revealing glimpses. Some of the stories, if we
are allowed to use our imagination, we can reconstruct.
The Spiritual Pilgrimage Of Demas
First on the list comes Demas. There are three mentions of him in
Paul's letters; and it may well be that they hake in them the story of a
tragedy. (i) In Philemon 1:24 he is listed amongst a group of men whom Paul calls his fellow-labourers. (ii) In Colossians 4:14
he is mentioned without any comment at all. (iii) Here he has forsaken
Paul because he loved this present world. First, Demas the
fellow-labourer, then, just Demas, and, finally, Demas the deserter who
loved the world. Here is the history of a spiritual degeneration. Bit by
bit the fellow-labourer has become the deserter; the title of honour
has become the name of shame.
What happened to Demas? That we cannot tell for sure, but we can guess.
(i) It may be that he had begun to follow Christ without first
counting the cost; and it may be that he was not altogether to blame.
There is a kind of evangelism which proclaims: "Accept Christ and you
will have rest and peace and joy." There is a sense, the deepest of all
senses, in which that is profoundly and blessedly true. But it is also
true that when we accept Christ our troubles begin. Up to this time we
have lived in conformity with the world and its standards. Because of
that life was easy, because we followed the line of least resistance and
went with the crowd. But once a man accepts Christ, he accepts an
entirely new set of standards and is committed to an entirely new kind
of life at his work, in his personal relationships, in his pleasures,
and there are bound to be collisions. It may be that Demas was swept
into the Church in a moment of emotion without ever thinking things out;
and then when unpopularity, persecution, the necessity of sacrifice,
loneliness, imprisonment came, he quit because he had never bargained
for anything like that. When a man undertakes to follow Christ, the
first essential is that he should know what he is doing.
(ii) It may be that there came to Demas the inevitable weariness
of the years. They have a way of taking our ideals away, of lowering
our standards, of accustoming us to defeat.
Halliday Sutherland tells how he felt when he first qualified as
a doctor. If on the street or in any company there came the call: "Is
there a doctor here?" he thrilled to it, proud and eager to step forward
and help. But as the years went on, a request like that became a
nuisance. The thrill was gone.
W. H. Davies, the tramp who was also one of the greatest poets,
has a revealing passage about himself. He had walked to see Tintern
Abbey which he had last seen twenty-seven years ago. He says: "As I
stood there now, twenty-seven years after, and compared that young boy's
enthusiasm with my present lukewarm feelings, I was not very well
pleased with myself. For instance, at that time I would sacrifice both
food and sleep to see anything wonderful; but now in my prime I did not
go seeking things of beauty, and only sang of things that came my way by
chance."
Dean Inge had a sermon on Psalms 91:6
--"the destruction that wastes at noonday," which he called "The Peril
of Middle Age." There is no threat so dangerous as the threat of the
years to a man's ideals; and it can be kept at bay only by living
constantly in the presence of Jesus Christ.
(iii) Paul said of Demas that "he loved this present world." His
trouble may have been quite simple, and yet very terrible. It may
simply be that he loved comfort more than he loved Christ, that he loved
the easy way more than he loved the way which led first to a cross and
then to the stars.
We think of Demas, not to condemn, but to sympathize, for so many of us are like him.
It is just possible that this is neither the beginning nor the
end of the story of Demas. The name Demas is a shortened and familiar
form of Demetrius and twice we come upon a Demetrius in the New
Testament story. There was a Demetrius who led the riot of the
silversmiths at Ephesus and wished to lynch Paul because he had taken
their temple trade away (Acts 19:25).
There was a Demetrius of whom John wrote that he had a good report of
all and of the truth itself, a fact to which John bore willing and
decisive witness (3 John 1:12
). May this be the beginning and the end of the story? Did Demetrius
the silversmith find something about Paul and Christ which twined itself
round his heart? Did the hostile leader of the riot become the convert
to Christ? Did he for a time fall away from the Christian way and become
Demas, the deserter, who loved this present world? And did the grace of
God lay hands on him again, and bring him back, and make him the
Demetrius of Ephesus of whom John wrote that he was a servant of the
truth of whom all spoke well? That we will never know, but it is a
lovely thing to think that the charge of being a deserter may not have
been the final verdict on the life of Demas.
The Gentile Of Whom All Spoke Well
After Paul has spoken of the man who was the deserter, he goes on to
speak of the man who was faithful unto death. "Luke alone is with me,"
he says. We know very little about Luke, and yet even from that little
he emerges as one of the loveliest characters in the New Testament.
(i) One thing we know by implication--Luke accompanied Paul on
his last journey to Rome and to prison. He was the writer of the Book of
Acts. Now there are certain passages of Acts which are written in the
first person plural and we can be quite sure that Luke is here
describing occasions on which he himself was actually present. Acts 27:1-44
describes Paul setting out under arrest for Rome and the story is told
in the first person. Therefore we can be sure that Luke was there. From
that we deduce something else. It is thought that when an arrested
prisoner was on his way to trial at Rome, he was allowed to be
accompanied by only two slaves, and it is therefore probable that Luke
enrolled himself as Paul's slave in order to be allowed to accompany him
to Rome and to prison. Little wonder that Paul speaks of him with love
in his voice. Surely devotion could go no farther.
(ii) There are only two other definite references to Luke in the New Testament. In Colossians 4:14
he is described as the beloved physician. Paul owed much to Luke. All
his life he had the torturing thorn in his flesh; and Luke must have
been the man who used his skill to ease his pain and enable him to go
on. Luke was essentially a man who was kind. He does not seem to have
been a great evangelist; he was the man who made his contribution in
terms of personal service. God had given him healing skill in his hands,
and Luke gave back that skill to God. Kindness is the quality which
lifts a man out of the luck of ordinary men. Eloquence will be
forgotten; mental cleverness may live on the printed page; but kindness
lives on enthroned in the hearts of men.
Dr. Johnson had certain contacts with a young man called Harry
Hervey. Hervey was rich and more than something of a rake. But he had a
London house where Johnson was always welcome. Years later Harry Hervey
was being unkindly discussed. Johnson said seriously: "He was a vicious
man, but very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey, I shall love him."
Kindness covered a multitude of sins.
Luke was loyal and Luke was kind.
(iii) The other definite reference to Luke is in Philemon 1:24
; where Paul calls him his fellow-labourer. Luke was not content only
to write nor to confine himself to his job as a doctor; he set his hand
to the work. The Church is full of talkers and of people who are there
more for what they can get than for what they can give; Luke was one of
these priceless people--the workers of the Church.
(iv) There is one other possible reference to Luke in the New Testament. 2 Corinthians 8:18
speaks of "the brother who is famous among all the Churches." From the
earliest times that brother has been identified with Luke. He was the
man of whom all men spoke well. He was the man who was loyal unto death;
he was the man who was essentially kind; he was the man who was
dedicated to the work. Such a man will always be one of whom all speak
well.
There is still another name with an untold, yet thrilling, story behind it in this roll.
The Man Who Redeemed Himself
Paul urges Timothy to bring Mark with him "for he is profitable to me
for the ministry." The word ministry is not used in its narrower sense
of the ministry of the Church but in its wider sense of service. "Bring
Mark," says Paul, "for he is very useful in service." As E. F. Scott
puts it; "Bring Mark, for he can turn his hand to anything." Or, as we
might put it in our own everyday language: "Bring Mark, for he is a
useful man to have about the place."
Mark had a curiously chequered career. He was very young when
the Church began, but he lived at the very centre of its life. It was to
the house of Mary, Mark's mother, that Peter turned his steps when he
escaped from prison, and we may take it that this house was the central
meeting place of the Jerusalem Church (Acts 12:12).
When Paul and Barnabas set out on their first missionary journey
they took Mark with them--John Mark was his full name--to be their
assistant (Acts 13:5).
It looked as if he was earmarked for a great career in the company of
Paul and in the service of the Church. Then something happened. When
Paul and Barnabas left Pamphylia and struck inland on the hard and
dangerous road that led to the central plateau of Asia Minor, Mark left
them and went home (Acts 13:13). His nerve failed him, and he turned back.
Paul took that defection very hard. When he set out with
Barnabas on their second missionary journey, Barnabas--he was related to
Mark (Colossians 4:10)
--planned to take Mark with them again. But Paul absolutely refused to
have the quitter a second time, and so fierce was the argument and so
acute the difference that Paul and Barnabas split company and never, so
far as we know, worked together again (Acts 15:36-40).
So then, there was a time when Paul had no use for Mark, when he looked
on him as a spineless deserter and completely refused to have him on
his staff.
What happened to Mark after that we do not know. Tradition has
it that he went to Egypt and that he was the founder of the Christian
Church in that country. But, whatever he did, he certainly redeemed
himself. When Paul comes to write Colossians from his Roman prison, Mark
is with him, and Paul commends him to the Colossian Church and charges
them to receive him. And now, when the end is near, the one man Paul
wants, besides his beloved Timothy, is Mark, for he is a useful man to
have about. The quitter has become the man who can turn his hand to
anything in the service of Paul and of the gospel.
Fosdick has a sermon with the great and uplifting title, "No man
need stay the way he is." Mark is proof of that. He is our
encouragement and our inspiration, for he was the man who failed and yet
made good. Still to this day Jesus Christ can make the coward spirit
brave and nerve the feeble arm for fight. He can release the sleeping
hero in the soul of every man. He can turn the shame of failure into the
joy of triumphant service.
Helpers And A Hinderer And A Last Request
So the list of names goes on. Of Crescens we know nothing at all.
Titus was another of Paul's most faithful lieutenants. "My true child,"
Paul calls him (Titus 1:4).
When the trouble with the Church at Corinth had been worrying him,
Titus had been one of Paul's emissaries in the struggle to mend things (2 Corinthians 2:13; 2 Corinthians 7:6; 2 Corinthians 7:13; 2 Corinthians 12:18). Tychicus had been entrusted with the delivery of the letter to the Colossians (Colossians 4:7), and of the letter to the Ephesians (Ephesians 6:21).
The little group of helpers was being dispersed throughout the Church,
for even if Paul was in prison the work had still to go on, and Paul
must go lonely that his scattered people might be strengthened and
guided and comforted.
Then comes the mention of a man who had hindered instead of
helping: "Alexander the coppersmith did me a great deal of harm." We do
not know what Alexander had done; but perhaps we can deduce it. The word
that Paul uses for did me much evil is the Greek endeiknumi (Greek #1731).
That verb literally means to display, and was in fact often used for
the laying of information against a man. Informers were one of the great
curses of Rome at this time. And it may well be that Alexander was a
renegade Christian, who went to the magistrates with false information
against Paul, seeking to ruin him in the most dishonourable way.
Paul has certain personal requests to make. He wants the cloak
he had left behind at the house of Carpus in Troas. The cloak (phainole)
was a great circular rug-like garment. It had a hole for the head in
the middle and it covered a man like a little tent, reaching right down
to the ground. It was a garment for the winter time and no doubt Paul
was feeling his Roman prison cold.
He wants the books; the word is biblia (Greek #975),
which literally means papyrus rolls; and it may well be that these
rolls contained the earliest forms of the gospels. He wanted the
parchments. They could be one of two things. They might be Paul's
necessary legal documents, especially his certificate of Roman
citizenship; but more likely they were copies of the Hebrew Scriptures,
for the Hebrews wrote their sacred books on parchment made from the
skins of animals. It was the word of Jesus and the word of God that Paul
wanted most of all, when he lay in prison awaiting death.
Sometimes history has a strange way of repeating itself. Fifteen
hundred years later William Tyndale was lying in prison in Vilvorde,
waiting for death because he had dared to give the people the Bible in
their own language. It is a cold damp winter, and he writes to a friend:
"Send me, for Jesus' sake, a warmer cap, something to patch my
leggings, a woollen shirt, and above all my Hebrew Bible." When they
were up against it and the chill breath of death was on them, the great
ones wanted more than anything else the word of God to put strength and
courage into their souls.
4:16-22 At my first
defense no one was there to stand by me, but all forsook me. May it not
be reckoned against them! But the Lord stood beside me, and he
strengthened me, so that through me the proclamation of the gospel was
fully made so that the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the
mouth of the lion. The Lord will rescue me from every evil, and will
save me for his heavenly kingdom. Glory be to him for ever and ever.
Amen.
Greet Prisca and
Aquila, and the family of Onesiphorus. Erastus stayed in Corinth. I left
Trophimus at Miletus. Eubulus sends greetings to you, as do Pudens,
Linus and Claudia, and all the brothers.
The Lord be with your spirit.
Grace be with you.
A Roman trial began with a preliminary examination to formulate
the precise charge against the prisoner. When Paul was brought to that
preliminary examination, not one of his friends stood by him. It was too
dangerous to proclaim oneself the friend of a man on trial for his
life.
One of the curious things about this passage is the number of reminiscences of Psalms 22:1-31
. "Why hast thou forsaken me?--all forsook me." "There is none to
help--no one was there to stand by me." "Save me from the mouth of the
lion--I was rescued from the mouth of the lion." "All the ends of the
earth shall turn to the Lord--that the Gentiles might hear it."
"Dominion belongs to the Lord--The Lord will save me for his heavenly
kingdom." It seems certain that the words of this psalm were running in
Paul's mind. And the lovely thing is that this was the psalm which was
in the mind of Jesus when he hung upon his Cross. As Paul faced death,
he encouraged his heart with the same psalm as his Lord used in the same
circumstances.
Three things brought Paul courage in that lonely hour.
(i) All men had forsaken him but the Lord was with him. Jesus
had said that he would never leave his own or forsake them and that he
would be with them to the end of the world. Paul is a witness that Jesus
kept his promise. If to do the right means to be alone, as Joan of Arc
said, "It is better to be alone with God."
(ii) Paul would use even a Roman court to proclaim the message
of Christ. He obeyed his own commandment; in season and out of season he
pressed the claims of Christ on men. He was so busy thinking of the
task of preaching that he forgot the danger. A man who is immersed in
his task has conquered fear.
(iii) He was quite certain of the ultimate rescue. In time he
might seem to be the victim of circumstances and a criminal condemned at
the bar of Roman justice; but Paul saw beyond time and knew that his
eternal safety was assured. It is always better to be in danger for a
moment and safe for eternity, than to be safe for a moment and
jeopardize eternity.
Finally there come greetings sent and given. There is a greeting to
Priscilla and Aquila, that husband and wife whose home was ever a
church, wherever it might be, and who had at some time risked their
lives for Paul's sake (Acts 18:2; Romans 16:3; 1 Corinthians 16:19). There is a greeting to the gallant Onesiphorus, who had sought out Paul in prison in Rome (2 Timothy 1:16)
and who, it may be, had paid for his loyalty with his life. There is a
greeting to Erastus, whom once Paul sent as his emissary to Macedonia (Acts 19:22), and who, it may be, was afterwards within the Church at Rome (Romans 16:23).
There is a greeting to Trophimus, whom Paul had been accused of
bringing into the Temple precincts in Jerusalem, although a Gentile, an
incident for which Paul's last imprisonment began (Acts 20:4; Acts 21:29). Finally there are greetings from Linus, Pudens and Claudia. In the later lists Linus stands as the first bishop of Rome.
Around the names of Pudens and Claudia a romance has been woven.
The story may be impossible, or at least improbable, but it is too
interesting not to quote. Martial was a famous Roman poet, a writer of
epigrams, who flourished from A.D. 66 to A.D. 100. Two of his epigrams
celebrate the marriage of a highborn and distinguished Roman called
Pudens to a lady called Claudia. In the second of them Claudia is called
a stranger in Rome, and it is said that she came from Britain. Now
Tacitus tells us that in A.D. 52, in the reign of the Emperor Claudius,
certain territories in south-east Britain were given to a British king
called Cogidubnus, for his loyalty to Rome; and in 1723 a marble tablet
was dug up in Chichester which commemorates the erection of a heathen
temple by Cogidubnus, the king, and by Pudens, his son. In the
inscription the full name of the king is given and, no doubt in honour
of the Roman Emperor, we find that the British king had taken the name
of Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus. If that king had a daughter her name
must have been Claudia, for that is the name that she would take from
her father. We can carry the story further. It may be that Cogidubnus
would send his daughter Claudia to stay in Rome. That he should do so
would be almost certain, for when a foreign king entered into an
alliance with Rome, as Cogidubnus had done, some members of his family
were always sent to Rome as pledges of keeping the agreement. If Claudia
went to Rome, she would certainly stay in the house of a Roman called
Aulus Plautius, who had been the governor in Britain from A.D. 43-52,
and to whom Cogidubnus had rendered his faithful service. The wife of
Aulus Plautius was a lady called Pomponia, and we learn from Tacitus
that she had been arraigned before the Roman courts in A.D. 57 because
she was "tainted with a foreign superstition." That "foreign
superstition" may well have been Christianity. Pomponia may have been a
Christian, and from her Claudia, the British princess, may have learned
of Jesus also.
We cannot say whether the guesses in that story are true. But it
would be wonderful to think that this Claudia was actually a British
princess who had come to stay in Rome and become a Christian, and that
Pudens was her husband.
Paul comes to the end by commending his friends to the presence
and the Spirit of his Lord and theirs, and, as always, his last word is
grace.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)
FURTHER READING
Timothy
D. Guthrie, The Pastoral Epistles (TC E)
W. Lock, The Pastoral Epistles (ICC G)
E. F. Scott, The Pastoral Epistles (MC E)
E. K. Simpson, The Pastoral Epistles
Abbreviations
CGT: Cambridge Greek Testament
ICC: International Critical Commentary
MC: Moffatt Commentary
TC: Tyndale Commentary
E: English Text
G: Greek Text
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)