_SALUTATIONS FROM THE PRISONER'S FRIENDS._
"Aristarchus my fellow-prisoner saluteth you, and Mark, the cousin
of Barnabas (touching whom ye received commandments; if he come unto
you, receive him), and Jesus, which is called Justus, who are of the
circumcision: these only _are my_ fellow-workers unto the kingdom of
God, men that have been a comfort unto me. Epaphras, who is one of
you, a servant of Christ Jesus, saluteth you, always striving for
you in his prayers, that ye may stand perfect and fully assured in
all the will of God. For I bear him witness, that he hath much
labour for you, and for them in Laodicea, and for them in
Hierapolis. Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas salute
you."--COL. iv. 10-14 (Rev. Ver.).
Here are men of different races, unknown to each other by face, clasping
hands across the seas, and feeling that the repulsions of nationality,
language, conflicting interests, have disappeared in the unity of faith.
These greetings are a most striking, because unconscious, testimony to
the reality and strength of the new bond that knit Christian souls
together.
There are three sets of salutations here, sent from Rome to the little
far-off Phrygian town in its secluded valley. The first is from three
large-hearted Jewish Christians, whose greeting has a special meaning as
coming from that wing of the Church which had least sympathy with Paul's
work or converts. The second is from the Colossians' towns-man Epaphras;
and the third is from two Gentiles like themselves, one well known as
Paul's most faithful friend, one almost unknown, of whom Paul has
nothing to say, and of whom nothing good can be said. All these may
yield us matter for consideration. It is interesting to piece together
what we know of the bearers of these shadowy names. It is profitable to
regard them as exponents of certain tendencies and principles.
1. These three sympathetic Jewish Christians may stand as types of a
progressive and non-ceremonial Christianity.
We need spend little time in outlining the figures of these three, for
he in the centre is well known to every one, and his two supporters are
little known to any one. Aristarchus was a Thessalonian (Acts xx. 4),
and so perhaps one of Paul's early converts on his first journey to
Europe. His purely Gentile name would not have led us to expect him to
be a Jew. But we have many similar instances in the New Testament, such
for instance, as the names of six of the seven deacons (Acts vii. 5),
which show that the Jews of "the dispersion," who resided in foreign
countries, often bore no trace of their nationality in their names. He
was with Paul in Ephesus at the time of the riot, and was one of the two
whom the excited mob, in their zeal for trade and religion, dragged into
the theatre, to the peril of their lives. We next find him like
Tychicus, a member of the deputation which joined Paul on his voyage to
Jerusalem. Whatever was the case with the other, Aristarchus was in
Palestine with Paul, for we learn that he sailed with him thence (Acts
xxvii. 2). Whether he kept company with Paul during all the journey we
do not know. But more probably he went home to Thessalonica, and
afterwards rejoined Paul at some point in his Roman captivity. At any
rate here he is, standing by Paul, having drunk in his spirit, and
enthusiastically devoted to him and his work.
He receives here a remarkable and honourable title, "my
fellow-prisoner." I suppose that it is to be taken literally, and that
Aristarchus was, in some way, at the moment of writing, sharing Paul's
imprisonment. Now it has been often noticed that, in the Epistle to
Philemon, where almost all these names re-appear, it is not Aristarchus,
but Epaphras, who is honoured with this epithet; and that interchange
has been explained by an ingenious supposition that Paul's friends took
it in turn to keep him company, and were allowed to live with him, on
condition of submitting to the same restrictions, military guardianship,
and so on. There is no positive evidence in favour of this, but it is
not improbable, and, if accepted, helps to give an interesting glimpse
of Paul's prison life, and of the loyal devotion which surrounded him.
Mark comes next. His story is well known--how twelve years before, he
had joined the first missionary band from Antioch, of which his cousin
Barnabas was the leader, and had done well enough as long as they were
on known ground, in Barnabas' (and perhaps his own) native island of
Cyprus, but had lost heart and run home to his mother as soon as they
crossed into Asia Minor. He had long ago effaced the distrust of him
which Paul naturally conceived on account of this collapse. How he came
to be with Paul at Rome is unknown. It has been conjectured that
Barnabas was dead, and that so, Mark was free to join the Apostle; but
that is unsupported supposition. Apparently he is now purposing a
journey to Asia Minor, in the course of which, if he should come to
Colossae (which was doubtful, perhaps on account of its insignificance),
Paul repeats his previous injunction, that the church should give him a
cordial welcome. Probably this commendation was given because the evil
odour of his old fault might still hang about his name. The calculated
emphasis of the exhortation, "receive him," seems to show that there was
some reluctance to give him a hearty reception and take him to their
hearts. So we have an "undesigned coincidence." The tone of the
injunction here is naturally explained by the story in the Acts.
So faithful a friend did he prove, that the lonely old man, fronting
death, longed to have his affectionate tending once more; and his last
word about him, "Take Mark, and bring him with thee, for he is
profitable to me for _the ministry_," condones the early fault, and
restores him to the office which, in a moment of selfish weakness, he
had abandoned. So it is possible to efface a faultful past, and to
acquire strength and fitness for work, to which we are by nature most
inapt and indisposed. Mark is an instance of early faults nobly atoned
for, and a witness of the power of repentance and faith to overcome
natural weakness. Many a ragged colt makes a noble horse.
The third man is utterly unknown--"Jesus, which is called Justus." How
startling to come across that name, borne by this obscure Christian! How
it helps us to feel the humble manhood of Christ, by showing us that
many another Jewish boy bore the same name; common and undistinguished
then, though too holy to be given to any since. His surname Justus may,
perhaps, like the same name given to James, the first bishop of the
Church in Jerusalem, hint his rigorous adherence to Judaism, and so may
indicate that, like Paul himself, he came from the straitest sect of
their religion into the large liberty in which he now rejoiced.
He seems to have been of no importance in the Church, for his name is
the only one in this context which does not re-appear in Philemon, and
we never hear of him again. A strange fate his! to be made immortal by
three words--and because he wanted to send a loving message to the
Church at Colossae! Why, men have striven and schemed, and broken their
hearts, and flung away their lives, to grasp the bubble of posthumous
fame; and how easily this good "Jesus which is called Justus" has got
it! He has his name written for ever on the world's memory, and he very
likely never knew it, and does not know it, and was never a bit the
better for it! What a satire on "the last infirmity of noble minds!"
These three men are united in this salutation, because they are all
three, "of the circumcision;" that is to say, are Jews, and being so,
have separated themselves from all the other Jewish Christians in Rome,
and have flung themselves with ardour into Paul's missionary work among
the Gentiles, and have been his fellow-workers for the advancement of
the kingdom--aiding him, that is, in seeking to win willing subjects to
the loving, kingly will of God. By this co-operation in the aim of his
life, they have been a "comfort" to him. He uses a half medical term,
which perhaps he had caught from the physician at his elbow, which we
might perhaps parallel by saying they had been a "cordial" to him--like
a refreshing draught to a weary man, or some whiff of pure air stealing
into a close chamber and lifting the damp curls on some hot brow.
Now these three men, the only three Jewish Christians in Rome who had
the least sympathy with Paul and his work, give us, in their isolation,
a vivid illustration of the antagonism which he had to face from that
portion of the early Church. The great question for the first generation
of Christians was, not whether Gentiles might enter the Christian
community, but whether they must do so by circumcision, and pass through
Judaism on their road to Christianity. The bulk of the Palestinian
Jewish Christians naturally held that they must; while the bulk of
Jewish Christians who had been born in other countries as naturally held
that they need not. As the champion of this latter decision, Paul was
worried and counter-worked and hindered all his life by the other party.
They had no missionary zeal, or next to none, but they followed in his
wake and made mischief wherever they could. If we can fancy some modern
sect that sends out no missionaries of its own, but delights to come in
where better men have forced a passage, and to upset their work by
preaching its own crotchets, we get precisely the kind of thing which
dogged Paul all his life.
There was evidently a considerable body of these men in Rome; good men
no doubt in a fashion, believing in Jesus as the Messiah, but unable to
comprehend that he had antiquated Moses, as the dawning day makes
useless the light in a dark place. Even when he was a prisoner, their
unrelenting antagonism pursued the Apostle. They preached Christ of
"envy and strife." Not one of them lifted a finger to help him, or spoke
a word to cheer him. With none of them to say, God bless him! he toiled
on. Only these three were large-hearted enough to take their stand by
his side, and by this greeting to clasp the hands of their Gentile
brethren in Colossae and thereby to endorse the teaching of this letter
as to the abrogation of Jewish rites.
It was a brave thing to do, and the exuberance of the eulogium shows how
keenly Paul felt his countrymen's coldness, and how grateful he was to
"the dauntless three." Only those who have lived in an atmosphere of
misconstruction, surrounded by scowls and sneers, can understand what a
cordial the clasp of a hand, or the word of sympathy is. These men were
like the old soldier that stood on the street of Worms, as Luther passed
in to the Diet, and clapped him on the shoulder, with "Little monk!
little monk! you are about to make a nobler stand to-day than we in all
our battles have ever done. If your cause is just, and you are sure of
it, go forward in God's name, and fear nothing." If we can do no more,
we can give some one who is doing more a cup of cold water, by our
sympathy and taking our place at his side, and _so_ can be
fellow-workers to the kingdom of God.
We note, too, that the best comfort Paul could have was help in his
work. He did not go about the world whimpering for sympathy. He was much
too strong a man for that. He wanted men to come down into the trench
with him, and to shovel and wheel there till they had made in the
wilderness some kind of a highway for the King. The true cordial for a
true worker is that others get into the traces and pull by his side.
But we may further look at these men as representing for us progressive
as opposed to reactionary, and spiritual as opposed to ceremonial
Christianity. Jewish Christians looked backwards; Paul and his three
sympathisers looked forward. There was much excuse for the former. No
wonder that they shrank from the idea that things divinely appointed
could be laid aside. Now there is a broad distinction between the divine
in Christianity and the divine in Judaism. For Jesus Christ is God's
last word, and abides for ever. His divinity, His perfect sacrifice, His
present life in glory for us, His life within us, these and their
related truths are the perennial possession of the Church. To Him we
must look back, and every generation till the end of time will have to
look back, as the full and final expression of the wisdom and will and
mercy of God. "Last of all He sent unto them His Son."
That being distinctly understood, we need not hesitate to recognise the
transitory nature of much of the embodiment of the eternal truth
concerning the eternal Christ. To draw the line accurately between the
permanent and the transient would be to anticipate history and read the
future. But the clear recognition of the distinction between the Divine
revelation and the vessels in which it is contained, between Christ and
creed, between Churches, forms of worship, formularies of faith on the
one hand, and the everlasting word of God spoken to us once for all in
His Son, and recorded in Scripture, on the other, is needful at all
times, and especially at such times of sifting and unsettlement as the
present. It will save some of us from an obstinate conservatism which
might read its fate in the decline and disappearance of Jewish
Christianity. It will save us equally from needless fears, as if the
stars were going out, when it is only men-made lamps that are paling.
Men's hearts often tremble for the ark of God, when the only things in
peril are the cart that carries it, or the oxen that draw it. "We have
received a kingdom that cannot be moved," because we have received a
King eternal, and therefore may calmly see the removal of things that
can be shaken, assured that the things which cannot be shaken will but
the more conspicuously assert their permanence. The existing embodiments
of God's truth are not the highest, and if Churches and forms crumble
and disintegrate, their disappearance will not be the abolition of
Christianity, but its progress. These Jewish Christians would have found
all that they strove to keep, in higher form and more real reality, in
Christ; and what seemed to them the destruction of Judaism was really
its coronation with undying life.
II. Epaphras is for us the type of the highest service which love can
render.
All our knowledge of Epaphras is contained in these brief notices in
this Epistle. We learn from the first chapter that he had introduced the
gospel to Colossae, and perhaps also to Laodicea and Hierapolis. He was
"one of you," a member of the Colossian community, and a resident in,
possibly a native of, Colossae. He had come to Rome, apparently to
consult the Apostle about the views which threatened to disturb the
Church. He had told him, too, of their love, not painting the picture
too black, and gladly giving full prominence to any bits of brightness.
It was his report which led to the writing of this letter.
Perhaps some of the Colossians were not over pleased with his having
gone to speak with Paul, and having brought down this thunderbolt on
their heads; and such a feeling may account for the warmth of Paul's
praises of him as his "fellow-slave," and for the emphasis of his
testimony on his behalf. However they might doubt it, Epaphras' love for
them was warm. It showed itself by continual fervent prayers that they
might stand "perfect and fully persuaded in all the will of God," and by
toil of body and mind for them. We can see the anxious Epaphras, far
away from the Church of his solicitude, always burdened with the thought
of their danger, and ever wrestling in prayer on their behalf.
So we may learn the noblest service which Christian love can do--prayer.
There is a real power in Christian intercession. There are many
difficulties and mysteries round that thought. The manner of the
blessing is not revealed, but the fact that we help one another by
prayer is plainly taught, and confirmed by many examples, from the day
when God heard Abraham and delivered Lot, to the hour when the loving
authoritative words were spoken, "Simon, Simon, I have prayed for thee
that thy faith fail not." A spoonful of water sets a hydraulic press in
motion, and brings into operation a force of tons' weight; so a drop of
prayer at the one end may move an influence at the other which is
omnipotent. It is a service which all can render. Epaphras could not
have written this letter, but he could pray. Love has no higher way of
utterance than prayer. A prayerless love may be very tender, and may
speak murmured words of sweetest sound, but it lacks the deepest
expression, and the noblest music of speech. We never help our dear ones
so well as when we pray for them. Do we thus show and consecrate our
family loves and our friendships?
We notice too the kind of prayer which love naturally presents. It is
constant and earnest--"always striving," or as the word might be
rendered, "agonizing." That word suggests first the familiar metaphor of
the wrestling-ground. True prayer is the intensest energy of the spirit
pleading for blessing with a great striving of faithful desire. But a
more solemn memory gathers round the word, for it can scarcely fail to
recall the hour beneath the olives of Gethsemane, when the clear paschal
moon shone down on the suppliant who, "being in an agony, prayed the
more earnestly." And both Paul's word here, and the evangelist's there,
carry us back to that mysterious scene by the brook Jabbok, where Jacob
"wrestled" with "a man" until the breaking of the day, and prevailed.
Such is prayer; the wrestle in the arena, the agony in Gethsemane, the
solitary grapple with the "traveller unknown"; and such is the highest
expression of Christian love.
Here, too, we learn what love asks for its beloved. Not perishable
blessings, not the prizes of earth--fame, fortune, friends; but that "ye
may stand perfect and fully assured in all the will of God." The first
petition is for stedfastness. To stand has for opposites--to fall, or
totter, or give ground; so the prayer is that they may not yield to
temptation, or opposition, nor waver in their fixed faith, nor go down
in the struggle; but keep erect, their feet planted on the rock, and
holding their own against every foe. The prayer is also for their
maturity of Christian character, that they may stand firm, because
perfect, having attained that condition which Paul in this Epistle tell
us is the aim of all preaching and warning. As for ourselves, so for our
dear ones, we are to be content with nothing short of entire conformity
to the will of God. His merciful purpose for us all is to be the goal of
our efforts for ourselves, and of our prayers for others. We are to
widen our desires to coincide with His gift, and our prayers are to
cover no narrower space than His promises enclose.
Epaphras' last desire for his friends, according to the true reading, is
that they may be "fully assured" in all the will of God. There can be no
higher blessing than that--to be quite sure of what God desires me to
know and do and be--if the assurance comes from the clear light of His
illumination, and not from hasty self-confidence in my own penetration.
To be free from the misery of intellectual doubts and practical
uncertainties, to walk in the sunshine--is the purest joy. And it is
granted in needful measure to all who have silenced their own wills,
that they may hear what God says,--"If any man wills to do His will, he
shall know."
Does our love speak in prayer? and do our prayers for our dear ones
plead chiefly for such gifts? Both our love and our desires need
purifying if this is to be their natural language. How can we offer such
prayers for them if, at the bottom of our hearts, we had rather see
them well off in the world than stedfast, matured and assured
Christians? How can we expect an answer to such prayers if the whole
current of our lives shows that neither for them nor for ourselves do we
"seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness"?
III. The last salutation comes from a singularly contrasted couple--Luke
and Demas, the types respectively of faithfulness and apostasy. These
two unequally yoked together stand before us like the light and the dark
figures that Ary Scheffer delights to paint, each bringing out the
colouring of the other more vividly by contrast. They bear the same
relation to Paul which John, the beloved disciple, and Judas did to
Paul's master.
As for Luke, his long and faithful companionship of the Apostle is too
well known to need repetition here. His first appearance in the Acts
nearly coincides with an attack of Paul's constitutional malady, which
gives probability to the suggestion that one reason for Luke's close
attendance on the Apostle was the state of his health. Thus the form and
warmth of the reference here would be explained--"Luke the physician,
the beloved." We trace Luke as sharing the perils of the winter voyage
to Italy, making his presence known only by the modest "we" of the
narrative. We find him here sharing the Roman captivity, and, in the
second imprisonment, he was Paul's only companion. All others had been
sent away, or had fled; but Luke could not be spared, and would not
desert him, and no doubt was by his side till the end, which soon came.
As for Demas, we know no more about him except the melancholy record,
"Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world; and is
departed unto Thessalonica." Perhaps he was a Thessalonian, and so went
home. His love of the world, then, was his reason for abandoning Paul.
Probably it was on the side of danger that the world tempted him. He was
a coward, and preferred a whole skin to a clear conscience. In immediate
connection with the record of his desertion we read, "At my first
answer, no man stood with me, but all men forsook me." As the same word
is used, probably Demas may have been one of those timid friends, whose
courage was not equal to standing by Paul when, to use his own metaphor,
he thrust his head into the lion's mouth. Let us not be too hard on the
constancy that warped in so fierce a heat. All that Paul charges him
with is, that he was a faithless friend, and too fond of the present
world. Perhaps his crime did not reach the darker hue. He may not have
been an apostate Christian, though he was a faithless friend. Perhaps,
if there were departure from Christ as well as from Paul, he came back
again, like Peter, whose sins against love and friendship were greater
than his--and, like Peter, found pardon and a welcome. Perhaps, away in
Thessalonica, he repented him of his evil, and perhaps Paul and Demas
met again before the throne, and there clasped inseparable hands. Let us
not judge a man of whom we know so little, but take to ourselves the
lesson of humility and self-distrust!
How strikingly these two contrasted characters bring out the possibility
of men being exposed to the same influences and yet ending far away from
each other! These two set out from the same point, and travelled side by
side, subject to the same training, in contact with the magnetic
attraction of Paul's strong personality, and at the end they are wide as
the poles asunder. Starting from the same level, one line inclines ever
so little upwards, the other imperceptibly downwards. Pursue them far
enough, and there is room for the whole solar system with all its orbits
in the space between them. So two children trained at one mother's knee,
subjects of the same prayers, with the same sunshine of love and rain of
good influences upon them both, may grow up, one to break a mother's
heart and disgrace a father's home, and the other to walk in the ways of
godliness and serve the God of his fathers. Circumstances are mighty;
but the use we make of circumstances lies with ourselves. As we trim our
sails and set our rudder, the same breeze will take us in opposite
directions. We are the architects and builders of our own characters,
and may so use the most unfavourable influences as to strengthen and
wholesomely harden our natures thereby, and may so misuse the most
favourable as only thereby to increase our blameworthiness for wasted
opportunities.
We are reminded, also, from these two men who stand before us like a
double star--one bright and one dark--that no loftiness of Christian
position, nor length of Christian profession is a guarantee against
falling and apostasy. As we read in another book, for which also the
Church has to thank a prison cell--the place where so many of its
precious possessions have been written--there is a backway to the pit
from the gate of the Celestial City. Demas had stood high in the Church,
had been admitted to the close intimacy of the Apostle, was evidently
no raw novice, and yet the world could drag him back from so eminent a
place in which he had long stood. "Let him that thinketh he standeth
take heed lest he fall."
The world that was too strong for Demas will be too strong for us if we
front it in our own strength. It is ubiquitous, working on us everywhere
and always, like the pressure of the atmosphere on our bodies. Its
weight will crush us unless we can climb to and dwell on the heights of
communion with God, where pressure is diminished. It acted on Demas
through his fears. It acts on us through our ambitions, affections and
desires. So, seeing that miserable wreck of Christian constancy, and
considering ourselves lest we also be tempted, let us not judge another,
but look at home. There is more than enough there to make profound
self-distrust our truest wisdom, and to teach us to pray, "Hold Thou me
up, and I shall be safe."