TIMOTHEUS AND EPAPHRODITUS
PHILIPPIANS ii. 19-30
Epaphroditus--The variety of Scripture--Contrasts in context--Henry
Martyn's letter--"The human element"--"His letters I have read"--The
two aspects of Scripture--Divine messages in human context--"Together
with them"
Ver. 19. +But I hope in the Lord Jesus+, with an expectation
conditioned by my union with Him in all things, and with you in Him,
+promptly to send to you Timotheus,[1] that I too+, I as well as you,
who will of course be gladdened by his presence, +may be of good cheer,
getting+, through him, +a knowledge+ (_gnous_) +of your circumstances+
(_ta peri humon_). I send him, and not
Ver. 20. another, +for I have+--at hand, and free to move--+no one
equal-souled+ with him,[2] +one who+ (_hootis_) +will genuinely take
anxious care about your circumstances+; the "care" which is not a weary
burthen, better cast upon the Lord (iv. 6), but a sacred charge,
undertaken in and for Him, and absorbing all the
Ver. 21. thought. +For all of them+ (_oi pantes_), all from whom I
could in this case select, +are bent on+ (_xetousi_: cp. Col. iii. 1)
+their own interests, not the interests of Jesus Christ+; they plead
excuses which indicate a preference of their own ease, or reputation,
or affections, to a matter manifestly and wholly HIS.
Ver. 22. +But the test through which he+, Timotheus, +passed+ (_ten
dokimen autou_) you remember (_ginoskete_, "you recognize," as you look
back); you know +that as child with father+ so +he with me+, in closest
companionship and sympathy, +did bondservice[3] for the Gospel+, _eis
to euaggelion_, "_unto_ it," for the furtherance
Ver. 23. of its enterprise and message. +So him then+ (_touton men
oun_[4]) +I hope to send, immediately upon+ (_hos an_ . . . _exautes_)
+my getting a view of+ (_apido_) +my circumstances+, my position with
regard to my trial
Ver. 24. and its result. +But+ (though I thus allude to external
uncertainties) +I feel sure, in the Lord+, in the light of union and
communion with Him, +that I too in person shall speedily arrive+, in
the track of this my messenger and forerunner.
Ver. 25. +But I count[5] it obligatory+ (_anagkaion_), and not merely
a matter for hopes and personal satisfaction, +to send to you+, as I
now do, in charge of this Letter, another person, +Epaphroditus, my
brother, fellow-worker, and fellow-soldier+, a man who has toiled and
contended at my very side for the Lord and against the Enemy, +while he
is+ also +your missionary and ministrant[6] for my need+. Yes, I feel
that I _ought_
Ver. 26. to send him, and to send him _now_; +since he has been
suffering from home-sickness for[7] all of you+, (all, without
exception; his affection knows no party or partiality,) +and from the
distraction+ (_ademonon_) of over-wrought feeling, because you have
heard that he
Ver. 27. fell ill[8] (_esthenese_). +And+ so it was; +for he did fall
ill, almost fatally+ (_paraplesion thanato_). +But our+ (_ho_) +God
pitied him+, sparing him the grief of broken hopes and purposes in the
Lord's work on earth, and the grief of being a cause of tears to you;
+and not only him but also me, that I might not have[9] sorrow upon
sorrow+. For had he died, I should have had a sore bereavement, and
the sad consciousness that you, in a loving effort for my benefit, had
lost a beloved friend; and all this added to, heaped upon (_epi_ _c.
acc._), the antecedent pain of my captivity and the trials which it
involves.
Ver. 28. +With the more earnestness therefore I have sent him,[10]
that seeing him you may be glad again, and that I may feel less
sorrow+, finding my imprisonment, and also my loss of this dear
friend's company, softened to my heart by the thought of your joy in
Ver. 29. welcoming him back. +Receive him therefore in the Lord+, in
all the union and sympathy due to your common share in Him, +with all
gladness, and+
Ver. 30. +hold in high value such men as he is; because on account of
Christ's work he was at death's very door,[11] playing+ as it were the
+gambler with his life,[12] that he might+ (lit., "may") +supply your
lack+, do the service which you could not do, and so complete your
loving purposes, in regard +of the ministration+ you designed +for me+.
Our present section illustrates well the inexhaustible variety of
Scripture. That pregnant Christian thinker, the late Dr John Ker, has
some good sentences on this subject: "What varieties are in the Bible,
side by side! The Book of Ruth, with its pastoral quiet after the wars
of the Judges, like an innocent child which has crept between the ranks
of hostile armies; the intense devotion of the Psalms after the
speculative discussions of Job, and before the practical wisdom of
Proverbs; the gloom of Ecclesiastes, and then the sweetness of the Song
of Solomon, as sharply divided as the eastern morning which leaps from
the night, or, as an old Greek might have said, silver-footed Thetis
rising from the bed of old Tithonus; Isaiah's majestic sweep of eagle
pinion, with Jeremiah's dovelike plaint; the cloudlike obscurities of
Ezekiel, to be solved, as one might expect, by piercing light from the
sky; and the perplexities of Daniel, to be opened by the movements of
the nations."[13]
What a variety lies before us here!
"Into the heaven of heavens we have presumed,
And drawn empyreal air";
while the Apostle has told us (only fourteen verses above) how Christ
Jesus, in the glory of the Throne, in the Form of God, cared for us men
and for our salvation, and made Himself void, and took the
creature-nature, and died; and how He is now on the Throne again in His
Incarnation, to receive supreme and universal worship. And then again
we came back to earth, yet so as to be led into the deep secrets of the
Lord in the inner life of His saints below; "God is working in you, to
will and to do, for His good pleasure's sake." And then we have seen
this inner life expanding and shewing itself in the holy life without,
which shines as a star in the dark, and speaks like a voice from the
unseen. And then again we have watched the Apostle's martyr-joy as he
thinks of dying for his Philippians, if need be. Close upon all these
heights and depths now comes in this totally different passage about
Timotheus and Epaphroditus, with its quiet, practical allusions to
individual character, and to particular circumstances, and to personal
hopes and duties; its words of sympathy and sorrow; the dear friend's
agitated state of mind; his recent almost fatal illness; the mercy of
his recovery; the pleasurable thought of his restoration to the loving
circles at Philippi.
Nothing could be more completely different than this from the grand
dogmatic passage traversed a little while before, nor again from the
passages to follow in the next chapter, where the believer's inmost
secrets of acceptance and of life are in view, and his foresight of
glory. We are placed here not in the upper heaven, nor before the
judgment-throne, nor in the light of the resurrection-morning. We are
just in the "hired rooms" at Rome, and we see the Missionary seated
there, studying the characters of two of his brethren, and weighing the
reasons for asking them, at once or soon, to arrange for a certain
journey. He reviews the case, and then he puts down, through his
amanuensis, for the information of the Philippians, what he thinks of
these two men, and what he has planned about them.
All is perfectly human, viewed from one side. I or my reader may at
any time, in the course of life and duty, be called upon to write about
Christian friends and fellow-workers of our own in a tone neither less
nor more human and practical than that of this section. In any
collection of modern Christian letters we may find the like. I open at
this moment the precious volume of Henry Martyn's correspondence,
published (1844) as a companion to the Memoir. There I read as
follows, in a letter to Daniel Corrie, dated Shiraz, December 12, 1811:
"Your accounts of the progress of the kingdom of God among you are
truly refreshing. Tell dear H. and the men of both regiments that I
salute them much in the Lord, and make mention of them in my prayers.
May I continue to hear thus of their state; and if I am spared to see
them again, may we make it evident that we have grown in grace.
Affectionate remembrances to your sister and to S. I hope they
continue to prosecute their labours of love. Remember me to the people
of Cawnpore who enquire. Why have I not mentioned Colonel P.? It is
not because he is not in my heart, for there is hardly a man in the
world whom I love and honour more. My most Christian salutations to
him. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit,
dearest brother. Yours affectionately, H. MARTYN."
What is the difference in quality and character between this extract
and our present section of Philippians, or between it and many another
passage in the Pauline Epistles? From one point of view, I repeat it,
none--none that we either can, or should care to, affirm. Of the
letters compared, one is as purely human as the other, in the
simplicity of its topics, in its local and personal scope, in its
natural and individual manner. I would add that, so far as we can
tell, the one was written under just as much or little consciousness of
a supernatural prompting as the other. I feel sure that when St Paul
wrote thus (whatever might be his sense of an _afflatus_ at other
times, when he wrote, or spoke, or thought, abnormally) he "felt"
exactly as we feel when writing a quiet letter; he was thinking,
arranging topics, choosing words, considering the needs of
correspondents, just as simply as we might do.
And all this is an element inestimably precious in the structure and
texture of the Bible. It is that side or aspect of the Bible which, at
least to innumerable minds, brings the whole Book, in a sense so
genuine, _home_; making it felt in the human heart as a friend truly
conversant with our nature and our life. "Thy testimonies," writes the
Bible-loving Psalmist (Ps. cxix. 24), "are the men of my counsel,"
_an'shey 'atsathi_; a pregnant phrase, which puts vividly before us
"the human element" of the blessed Word, its varieties and
individualities, its _living_ voice, or rather voices, and the
sympathetic confidence which it invites as it draws close to us to
advise and guide. How perfectly in contrast are the Bible on the one
side, with this humanity and companionship, and such a "sacred book" as
the Koran on the other, with its monotonous oracles! Strange, that the
man-made "sacred book" should be so little _humane_ and the God-made
Book so deeply and beautifully so! Yet not strange, after all. For
God knows man better than man knows himself; and when He prepares a
Book of books for man, we may expect it to correspond to the deep
insight of Him who is Maker of both the volume and the reader.
For now on the other part we have to remember that this Book, so
naturally and humanly written, as to a very large proportion of its
contents, is yet God-made all through. It is, in a sense quite
peculiar to itself, divine. I quoted a passage from a letter of Henry
Martyn's just now, on purpose to place it beside this letter of St
Paul's, with a view to shewing the likeness of the two. But are they
like in all respects? No; they present a radical difference from
another side. It is just this, that the biblical letter is not only
human as to its type and utterance; as to its message, it is
authoritative, it is from God. Henry Martyn writes as a Christian man,
and it helps us spiritually to be in contact with his affectionate and
holy thoughts. Paul writes as a Christian man, but also as "a chosen
vessel to bear the Name" of his Lord; as the messenger of the mind of
Christ; as he who received "his Gospel" "not of man, nor by man, but by
the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Gal. i. 12). From his own days to
these he has been known in the Church of God as the divinely
commissioned prophet and teacher. Clement of Rome in the first century
refers to him as having written to Corinth by divine inspiration.[14]
Simon Peter, earlier than Clement, refers to Paul (2 Pet. iii. 16) as
the writer of "Scriptures," _graphai_: that solemn word, restricted in
the language of Christianity to the oracles of God.
The simplest and seemingly most naturalistic passage occurring in a
Pauline letter is a "Scripture"; and as such it speaks to me only not
like the utterances of a Martyn but with the voice of the Lord of the
Gospel. "Paul, Paul--his letters I have read, but not always I agree
with him!" So, according to the story, said a German literary visitor
in an Oxford common-room, fifty years ago; the words shocked the
Anglican company. Very many people think with the German now, whether
or no they have really "_read_ Paul's letters." But their thought is
not that of the Church of God; and the soul that will indeed make
experiment of what "Paul's letters" can be when they are read as
divine, and before God, will surely find itself in harmony in this
matter with the Church. It will be little disposed to take up the cry
(true enough in itself), "Back to Christ," in that false sense which
discredits the servant's words as if the Master was not committed to
them. "If they have kept My saying, they will keep yours also."
In a passage like the present therefore we feel the two elements or
aspects, the human and the divine, each real and powerful, and both
working in perfect harmony. The human is there, not in the least as a
necessary element of error; rather as an element of delicate and
beautiful truth, the truth of justest thought and feeling. The divine
is there, as the message from Christ Himself through His servant;
sacred, authoritative, binding on belief, giving solid ground for the
soul's repose. We study here St Paul's watchful and unselfish
remembrance of the Philippians, in the case of Timothy and his mission,
and still more in that of Epaphroditus. We recognize of course the
actings of a noble human heart, and we are right to do so. But we find
more than this; we see JESUS CHRIST informing us, in the concrete
example of His servant, exactly how it behoves us, as His servants, to
feel and act under our responsibilities. St Paul's thought and action
is "written for our learning." True, the "learning" comes not as a
mere code, or lecture. It takes the form of a living experience,
recorded, in the course of correspondence, by the man who is going
through it. But the man is a vehicle of revelation. He writes about
himself; but his Master is behind him, and is taking care that his
whole thought shall be the well-adjusted conveyance of a thought
greater than his own.
As we come to the incidental details of the passage, we find the same
double aspect of Scripture everywhere. St Paul speaks about people who
are "seeking their own interests, and not the interests of Jesus
Christ" (ver. 21). He says this quite naturally, and with a reference
quite local and in detail. But on the other side the words are an
oracle; they convey the message of the Master of His people; they
implicitly claim _on His part_ that we shall seek not our own
interests, but His. Again, quite in passing, the Apostle speaks of
this or that "hope" or "trust" as being formed "in the Lord." He does
so with no conscious dogmatic purpose, surely; it is because it comes
as naturally to him to do it as for an ordinary correspondent to say
that he hopes to do this or that "if all goes well." But in the
epistolary _Scripture_ these brief phrases have another side; they are
authority and oracle; they convey the mind of Christ about _our_ right
relations with Him; they tell _us_, from Him, that it is His will that
we too, as His, should form our hopes and plans "in Him," in conscious
recollection of our being His members.
St Paul speaks again of his human sensibilities. He tells us of his
sorrows, and his longings for encouragement, and his thankfulness that
an aggravation of trial, "sorrow upon sorrow," has been spared him. He
speaks of Epaphroditus, and of his generous carelessness of his own
health and life, and of the illness he had contracted, and of his
merciful recovery, and of his home-sick longing for Philippi, and of
his "bewilderment" of regret as he thinks of the Philippians' anxiety
about him. All this is quite as naturally and "humanly" conceived and
written on St Paul's part as anything that I or my reader ever wrote
about joys and griefs, our own or of our friends. But not one whit the
less is this all a message, an oracle, from our Lord Jesus Christ, in a
sense in which no letter of ours could possibly be such. For it is a
"Scripture." And so it tells me _from above_ that the free and loving
exercise of human sympathies is entirely according to the will of God;
that human tears and longings are in perfect harmony with holiness. It
assures me that from one point of view it is right to speak of the
prolongation of the believer's life as a "mercy," even though "to
depart is to be with Christ, which is far better." It assures me, let
me notice by the way, that bodily sickness is not by any means
necessarily a direct result or index of sinfulness in the sufferer.
There are those who think and say that it is. But this is not the view
of the "chosen vessel." He sees no sin in Epaphroditus' "falling ill,
nigh unto death," "drawing near, up to death." It is for him only an
occasion for fresh gratitude and affection towards the sufferer, and
for deep thanksgivings to Him who in His mercy has granted the
recovery. All this is not only an experience, recorded with beautiful
naturalness; it is a revelation, an oracle. We learn by it, as by the
voice of Christ, that although "He took our infirmities and bare our
sicknesses," His servants do not therefore of necessity fail in either
faith or love when they suffer "in this tabernacle," and "groan, being
burthened." Let them look indeed with great simplicity, in humble
faith, for the healing power of their Lord, whether or not it may
please Him to apply it through human agency. But do not let them think
it an act of faith to dictate to Him, as it were, the necessity of
their physical recovery. "If it be Thy will," is never out of place in
such appeals. Faith can breathe its most absolute and restful reliance
into that "If."
We close the section of Timotheus and Epaphroditus. We have given our
main thought to the light which it throws upon the nature of the
Scriptures, those blessed "men of our counsel." We have scarcely
turned aside to think of the actual "men" of the passage; Timotheus,
and his self-forgetting devotion to the Lord and to St Paul, overcoming
the sensitiveness of a tender nature; Epaphroditus, at once brave and
affectionate, yearning for the old friends in the old scene, restless
in the thought of their trouble about him, yet ready to "throw his life
down as a die" in the cause of God and of His people. But if we have
said little about them, it is not that we do not love their very names,
and feel our union with them.
"Once they were mourning here below";
finding then, as we find now, that the day's burthen is no dream. But
we shall see them hereafter, in the mercy of God, "changed and
glorified," yet the same, where there will be leisure to learn all the
lessons that all the saints can teach us from their experience of the
love of Jesus.
Meanwhile let us pray, with the Moravians in their beautiful Liturgy:
_Keep us in everlasting fellowship with our brethren of the Church
triumphant, and let us rest together in Thy presence from our labours._
[1] _Timotheon_ is slightly emphatic by its place in the Greek; as if
to say, "Though _I_ must still be absent, _he_ will soon be with you."
[2] Not "equal-souled _with myself_"; which would demand rather, in the
Greek, _oudena allon echo isopsychon_.
[3] Possibly, "_entered on_ bondservice," "_took up_ the slave's life,"
with a reference to Timothy's earliest connexion with St Paul (Acts
xvi. 1-3). But the reference to the memories of _Philippi_ is much
more likely. The aorist, _edouleusen_, will in this case gather up
into one the whole recollection.
[4] The _touton_ is slightly emphatic by position, for St Paul is about
to speak of other persons also, himself and Epaphroditus.
[5] _Egesamen_: I render the epistolary past by a present tense, which
is the English idiom.
[6] So I render _apostolon_, to represent something of the _sacredness_
attaching by usage to the word. If I read aright, we have here an
instance of gentle pleasantry, quite in harmony with the gravity of the
Epistle at large. He takes the Philippians' message of love and gift
of bounty as a sort of _gospel_ to himself, and so regards their
messenger as a _missionary_ to him. So also with the word
_leitourgos_: its usual associations in New Testament Greek are sacred,
or at least solemn; and so St Paul seems to employ it here.
Epaphroditus was no mere agent; he was a "_ministrant_," commissioned
from a high quarter--the Philippians' love.
[7] _epeide epidothon en_: the epistolary past (_en_) is rendered in
accordance with English idiom. _Epipothon_ is perhaps too _heavily_
rendered above; but the phrase is certainly a little stronger than
_epepothei_ would have been.
[8] Perhaps it was an attack of Roman fever.
[9] _Ina me_ . . . _scho_: lit., "that I _may_ not." But the English
idiom asks for "might." The Greek puts the past intention into what
_was_ its present aspect.
[10] _Epempsa auton_: the epistolary aorist.
[11] Quite literally, "up to death he drew near." It is as if St Paul
had been about to write, _mechri thanatou esthense_, and then varied
the expression by writing _eggise_.
[12] _Paraboleusamenos te psyche_: so read, not _paraboleusamenos_
(which would mean, "taking evil counsel for his life," neglecting its
interests). _Paraboleusamenos_ is a well-attested reading; the verb is
not found elsewhere, but the form is abundantly likely. It would be
developed from the adjective _parabolos_, "reckless," connected with
the verb _paraballesthai_, "to cast a die."
[13] _Thoughts for Heart and Life_, by John Ker, D.D. (1888), p. 92.
[14] See Ep. i. _ad. Cor._, Sec. 47: "Take up the Epistle of the
blessed Paul, the Apostle. . . . He wrote to you in the Spirit
(_pneumatikos_) about himself, and Cephas, and Apollos."
"One family we dwell in Him,
One Church, above, beneath,
Though now divided by the stream,
The narrow stream of death.
"One army of the living God
To His command we bow;
Part of His host hath cross'd the flood,
And part is crossing now."
C. WESLEY.
_JOY IN THE LORD AND ITS PRESERVING POWER: "THAT I MAY KNOW HIM"_
O Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life; Grant us
perfectly to know Thy Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and
the life; that, following the steps of Thy holy Apostles, we may
stedfastly walk in the way that leadeth to eternal life; through the
same Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Collect for St Philip and St James.