The Cause of Christ – Our Common Cause
(Romans 16:20-24, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, February 19, 2006)
TODAY’S PASSAGE:
Romans 16:21-24 21 Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you; so do Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen. 22 I Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord. 23 Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church, greets you. Erastus, the city treasurer, and our brother Quartus, greet you. 24[The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.]
Warm Greetings from the Team in Corinth
As we move toward the conclusion of this important letter we now consider the greeters who are sending their Christian regards to their brothers and sisters in the churches of Rome. Let me leave aside Timothy for the moment, since there is so much to say about this man whom Paul calls his “fellow worker.”
Paul goes on to send greetings from three people he calls his “kinsmen.” Lucius, Jason, and Sosipater were probably from a Jewish background as Paul was. There is little more that we can say about them, since they are only mentioned in passing in the Bible.
Next Paul sends greetings from one Tertius (which means “Third”) who may literally have had a brother with him who is called Quartus (which means “Fourth”). Some suggest that these men may have been slaves who were given names based upon their order of birth in their family. It is obvious from other passages that slaves were an important part of the New Testament church who, together with their free brothers and sisters in the Lord, served Jesus Christ in accord with the gifts that God gave them. In any case, Tertius is noted here as the scribe that Paul used in penning this correspondence. He was more than a hired “hand.” He also was “in the Lord” and greeted the Roman believers accordingly.
Also sending greetings were two men who must have been of some economic means. Gaius was the host of the church, meaning that the church met for worship in his home. He was also a host to Paul. Finally, Erastus had some role in the civil government in Corinth. It is difficult for us to tell whether this treasurer or town manager position mentioned here was a very high civil office or a middle manager spot. It was apparently notable enough that Paul mentioned it in these greetings.
Obviously as we try to understand the story behind these names there is much that we cannot know and that we really do not need to know. But do not miss this. There is contained among this huddle of people who are there together at the closing of this monumental letter, an overflowing sense of dedication and enthusiasm to a common purpose. These are people who know each other, though they are not exactly the same. They share something together.
Here they are sending warm greetings to people that they very likely do not know. Is this warmth of address just the common cause that one might find in a civic organization, or among those who share a common experience as one might find in a gathering of those from a particular branch of the military? Or is there something more going on here that has to do with a special gift of faith and with a God who works miracles? Let’s explore the answer to this question through what we know about Timothy, since there is so much that we read about this man from the record preserved for us in the Scriptures.
The Story of Timothy
In Acts 16 we read that Paul came to the towns of Derbe and Lystra. There he met a disciple named Timothy, who was the son of a believing Jewish woman and a Greek father who was not a believer. This Timothy was apparently a young man who was well thought of by the people of his church. Paul wanted Timothy to come along with the apostolic team, and so he circumcised him. We know from Paul’s letter to the Galatians that the Apostle did not urge circumcision upon the church for any religious reason. The need was a missionary one, since Paul and his team would be visiting places where circumcision would be important to those who would hear the message they were bringing.
In Acts 17 through 20 we follow the story of Paul and Timothy, along with the rest of the team as they face challenging situations in the various cities that they visit throughout the Mediterranean world. Some people who hear their message and receive it are joined into local churches. But others are angry about what they hear, and they seem to chase the apostolic troop from town to town in order to try to discredit them. Sometimes Paul leaves Timothy behind in one place, while he and others move on to the next location. Sometimes he sends Timothy back to a church that they started some time ago in order to find out how the believers are doing. For long periods of time they are together doing the work of teaching people, visiting house churches, preaching the gospel, and facing victory and disappointment side by side with the other brothers engaged in this common mission.
Let me give you a few specifics so that you can have some sense of the depth of experience that they faced together. One of the places where they spent a great deal of time was the city of Ephesus. Paul’s great work in that place was his daily teaching of the faith for some two years. But he also performed miracles in Ephesus. We are told that “even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.”
Naturally there were other people who observed this or heard about it, and they wanted to do the things that Paul did. There was a family of itinerant Jewish exorcists who undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus in order to add to their powerful repertoire. One time when they tried to do this, the demon possessed people attacked them. They said something like, “Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who are you?” The Bible tells us that these would-be miracle workers “fled out of that house naked and wounded.”
Naturally that created quite a stir. Remember that Paul was very well known in this city because of his daily teaching. We are told that this attack on the itinerant exorcists “became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled.”
That’s not the end of the story though. Apparently there was a great deal of spiritual and magical activity in that region, and many of the practitioners became impressed by what they heard. They believed what Paul taught and they were afraid of the power that they saw. We are told that “those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver.”
This was just one experience, but I hope that you get the point of all this. Timothy was there. He saw these events. He was a witness to the power of the message of Christ. He saw the response of those who believed the gospel, and he felt the anger of those who hated it. Through it all Paul was him companion, and his father in the faith.
There is so much more that could be said about this wonderful friendship. Along the way Timothy had been called by a gathering of elders to some office of pastoral and evangelistic endeavor that he gave himself to for many years. He struggled with timidity, and had to be encouraged by Paul to humbly stand for what he knew to be true in the face of opposition by those who were older and more forceful than he.
At the end of First Timothy Paul writes this: “O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called "knowledge," for by professing it some have swerved from the faith. Grace be with you.” There are some among the leaders of the church that have not been faithful to their Lord. Timothy has seen this as well. But Paul and his son in the faith were true to the One who bought them by His blood.
The last time we hear about this great companion of Paul, it is probably from another man’s pen. At the end of the book of Hebrews we read these moving words: “You should know that our brother Timothy has been released, with whom I shall see you if he comes soon.”
Timothy apparently faced imprisonment in order to stand for the truth of Christ. It is this man who, together with others in the church in Corinth, sent his warm greetings to the beloved brothers and sisters in the various churches in the capital city of the empire.
Our Common Cause throughout the Ages
There is something very special here. We see it not only in the first century of the church, but throughout the many years that have followed. In the contest of faith that we have during our brief sojourn on this earth, if we have to stand alone, we will. But we generally do not stand alone. We stand together, as a devoted team of brothers and sisters. We are willing to give our lives for the Captain of our Salvation, and we stand together.
Paul gives a wonderful explanation of this life of devoted sacrifice in 2 Corinthians 5:14-15. “The love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” This is what it is all about. The experience of true Christian friendship is a wonderful thing. The power of such friendship comes from our first relationship, the relationship between Jesus Christ and His church. You are not your own. And because there are others with you who are also not their own, then you are not alone. You are together with them in the Lord
The Great Blessing of Strong Christian Relationships
On the simplest level, some people from the church in Corinth were eager to send their greetings and became a part of a letter that Paul was sending to churches in Rome. But the story is bigger than that. Those who were struggling for the cause of Christ in Corinth were partners with those living for the Lord Jesus in Rome. Looking carefully at what it meant for them to be counted as part of the Lord’s family helps us to appreciate the precious gift of Christian friendship.
You don’t have to be a Christian to want to have a close connection with someone else. There is something here that is part of being a human being. We spend all our lives yearning for companionship, and don’t always know how to find it. Even within the church, we can find ourselves longing for strong relationships. Yet we often look for friends in ways that are not particularly Christian. We focus on lesser things that we seem to have in common with others, or put inordinate emphasis on how our personalities click. We need to remember the common life we have together as those who gather every Sunday and utter these ancient words: “Our Father.”
Christian bonds of love need not be based merely on natural affinity and mutually agreed upon activities of entertainment. Of course, there is nothing wrong with finding people who share your interests. But there is a deeper common bond that we share as those who are one in Christ.
These verses in Romans 16 speak of a meaningful relationship of love with one another in Christ. I want to urge you this morning to find that love again, even if someone has hurt you, or even if you feel all alone. Do not run away from the great gift of Christian relationship. Do not try to accomplish with a common grace friendship what can only be found in Christ.
We need this thing called Christian relationship. We need many a Paul and a Timothy. We don’t have to be the same age or have all the same interests. We just need to be together in Christ by God’s purpose. One Lord, one faith, one mission, one destiny… Christ has loved you. Brothers and sisters, love one another. And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
TODAY’S PASSAGE:
Romans 16:21-24 21 Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you; so do Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen. 22 I Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord. 23 Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church, greets you. Erastus, the city treasurer, and our brother Quartus, greet you. 24[The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.]
Warm Greetings from the Team in Corinth
As we move toward the conclusion of this important letter we now consider the greeters who are sending their Christian regards to their brothers and sisters in the churches of Rome. Let me leave aside Timothy for the moment, since there is so much to say about this man whom Paul calls his “fellow worker.”
Paul goes on to send greetings from three people he calls his “kinsmen.” Lucius, Jason, and Sosipater were probably from a Jewish background as Paul was. There is little more that we can say about them, since they are only mentioned in passing in the Bible.
Next Paul sends greetings from one Tertius (which means “Third”) who may literally have had a brother with him who is called Quartus (which means “Fourth”). Some suggest that these men may have been slaves who were given names based upon their order of birth in their family. It is obvious from other passages that slaves were an important part of the New Testament church who, together with their free brothers and sisters in the Lord, served Jesus Christ in accord with the gifts that God gave them. In any case, Tertius is noted here as the scribe that Paul used in penning this correspondence. He was more than a hired “hand.” He also was “in the Lord” and greeted the Roman believers accordingly.
Also sending greetings were two men who must have been of some economic means. Gaius was the host of the church, meaning that the church met for worship in his home. He was also a host to Paul. Finally, Erastus had some role in the civil government in Corinth. It is difficult for us to tell whether this treasurer or town manager position mentioned here was a very high civil office or a middle manager spot. It was apparently notable enough that Paul mentioned it in these greetings.
Obviously as we try to understand the story behind these names there is much that we cannot know and that we really do not need to know. But do not miss this. There is contained among this huddle of people who are there together at the closing of this monumental letter, an overflowing sense of dedication and enthusiasm to a common purpose. These are people who know each other, though they are not exactly the same. They share something together.
Here they are sending warm greetings to people that they very likely do not know. Is this warmth of address just the common cause that one might find in a civic organization, or among those who share a common experience as one might find in a gathering of those from a particular branch of the military? Or is there something more going on here that has to do with a special gift of faith and with a God who works miracles? Let’s explore the answer to this question through what we know about Timothy, since there is so much that we read about this man from the record preserved for us in the Scriptures.
The Story of Timothy
In Acts 16 we read that Paul came to the towns of Derbe and Lystra. There he met a disciple named Timothy, who was the son of a believing Jewish woman and a Greek father who was not a believer. This Timothy was apparently a young man who was well thought of by the people of his church. Paul wanted Timothy to come along with the apostolic team, and so he circumcised him. We know from Paul’s letter to the Galatians that the Apostle did not urge circumcision upon the church for any religious reason. The need was a missionary one, since Paul and his team would be visiting places where circumcision would be important to those who would hear the message they were bringing.
In Acts 17 through 20 we follow the story of Paul and Timothy, along with the rest of the team as they face challenging situations in the various cities that they visit throughout the Mediterranean world. Some people who hear their message and receive it are joined into local churches. But others are angry about what they hear, and they seem to chase the apostolic troop from town to town in order to try to discredit them. Sometimes Paul leaves Timothy behind in one place, while he and others move on to the next location. Sometimes he sends Timothy back to a church that they started some time ago in order to find out how the believers are doing. For long periods of time they are together doing the work of teaching people, visiting house churches, preaching the gospel, and facing victory and disappointment side by side with the other brothers engaged in this common mission.
Let me give you a few specifics so that you can have some sense of the depth of experience that they faced together. One of the places where they spent a great deal of time was the city of Ephesus. Paul’s great work in that place was his daily teaching of the faith for some two years. But he also performed miracles in Ephesus. We are told that “even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.”
Naturally there were other people who observed this or heard about it, and they wanted to do the things that Paul did. There was a family of itinerant Jewish exorcists who undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus in order to add to their powerful repertoire. One time when they tried to do this, the demon possessed people attacked them. They said something like, “Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who are you?” The Bible tells us that these would-be miracle workers “fled out of that house naked and wounded.”
Naturally that created quite a stir. Remember that Paul was very well known in this city because of his daily teaching. We are told that this attack on the itinerant exorcists “became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled.”
That’s not the end of the story though. Apparently there was a great deal of spiritual and magical activity in that region, and many of the practitioners became impressed by what they heard. They believed what Paul taught and they were afraid of the power that they saw. We are told that “those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver.”
This was just one experience, but I hope that you get the point of all this. Timothy was there. He saw these events. He was a witness to the power of the message of Christ. He saw the response of those who believed the gospel, and he felt the anger of those who hated it. Through it all Paul was him companion, and his father in the faith.
There is so much more that could be said about this wonderful friendship. Along the way Timothy had been called by a gathering of elders to some office of pastoral and evangelistic endeavor that he gave himself to for many years. He struggled with timidity, and had to be encouraged by Paul to humbly stand for what he knew to be true in the face of opposition by those who were older and more forceful than he.
At the end of First Timothy Paul writes this: “O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called "knowledge," for by professing it some have swerved from the faith. Grace be with you.” There are some among the leaders of the church that have not been faithful to their Lord. Timothy has seen this as well. But Paul and his son in the faith were true to the One who bought them by His blood.
The last time we hear about this great companion of Paul, it is probably from another man’s pen. At the end of the book of Hebrews we read these moving words: “You should know that our brother Timothy has been released, with whom I shall see you if he comes soon.”
Timothy apparently faced imprisonment in order to stand for the truth of Christ. It is this man who, together with others in the church in Corinth, sent his warm greetings to the beloved brothers and sisters in the various churches in the capital city of the empire.
Our Common Cause throughout the Ages
There is something very special here. We see it not only in the first century of the church, but throughout the many years that have followed. In the contest of faith that we have during our brief sojourn on this earth, if we have to stand alone, we will. But we generally do not stand alone. We stand together, as a devoted team of brothers and sisters. We are willing to give our lives for the Captain of our Salvation, and we stand together.
Paul gives a wonderful explanation of this life of devoted sacrifice in 2 Corinthians 5:14-15. “The love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” This is what it is all about. The experience of true Christian friendship is a wonderful thing. The power of such friendship comes from our first relationship, the relationship between Jesus Christ and His church. You are not your own. And because there are others with you who are also not their own, then you are not alone. You are together with them in the Lord
The Great Blessing of Strong Christian Relationships
On the simplest level, some people from the church in Corinth were eager to send their greetings and became a part of a letter that Paul was sending to churches in Rome. But the story is bigger than that. Those who were struggling for the cause of Christ in Corinth were partners with those living for the Lord Jesus in Rome. Looking carefully at what it meant for them to be counted as part of the Lord’s family helps us to appreciate the precious gift of Christian friendship.
You don’t have to be a Christian to want to have a close connection with someone else. There is something here that is part of being a human being. We spend all our lives yearning for companionship, and don’t always know how to find it. Even within the church, we can find ourselves longing for strong relationships. Yet we often look for friends in ways that are not particularly Christian. We focus on lesser things that we seem to have in common with others, or put inordinate emphasis on how our personalities click. We need to remember the common life we have together as those who gather every Sunday and utter these ancient words: “Our Father.”
Christian bonds of love need not be based merely on natural affinity and mutually agreed upon activities of entertainment. Of course, there is nothing wrong with finding people who share your interests. But there is a deeper common bond that we share as those who are one in Christ.
These verses in Romans 16 speak of a meaningful relationship of love with one another in Christ. I want to urge you this morning to find that love again, even if someone has hurt you, or even if you feel all alone. Do not run away from the great gift of Christian relationship. Do not try to accomplish with a common grace friendship what can only be found in Christ.
We need this thing called Christian relationship. We need many a Paul and a Timothy. We don’t have to be the same age or have all the same interests. We just need to be together in Christ by God’s purpose. One Lord, one faith, one mission, one destiny… Christ has loved you. Brothers and sisters, love one another. And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
posted by Pastor Magee at 5:48 PM
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