back

Sunday, 19 July 2009 - Romans, chapter 16.

Well we've got there! This is the final study of our series on Romans. Which means we're looking at Romans chapter 16 - and you'll find it on page 1142 in the church Bibles.

You may be thinking I drew the short straw to have to speak on this last chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans. There's not much direct teaching in it - and it mainly sounds like a long list of greetings - a bit like a speech at a wedding reception. But actually - I chose it - in spite of being a bit dyslexic and now having to wrap my tongue around a list of unusual names! I trust I'll make them sound passably correct anyway!

So without further ado - let’s read Romans chapter 16:

(1)I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in Cenchrea. (2) I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been a great help to many people, including me.
(3) Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow-workers in Christ Jesus. (4) They risked their lives for me. Not only I - but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them.
(5) Greet also the church that meets at their house. Greet my dear friend Epenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia.
(6) Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you.
7 Greet Andronicus and Junias, my relatives who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.
(8) Greet Ampliatus, whom I love in the Lord.
(9) Greet Urbanus, our fellow-worker in Christ, and my dear friend Stachys.
(10) Greet Apelles, tested and approved in Christ. Greet those who belong to the household of Aristobulus.
(11) Greet Herodion, my relative. Greet those in the household of Narcissus who are in the Lord.
(12) Greet Tryphena and Tryphosa, those women who work hard in the Lord. Greet my dear friend Persis, another woman who has worked very hard in the Lord.
(13) Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother, who has been a mother to me, too.
(14) Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas and the brothers with them.
(15) Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas and all the saints with them.
(16) Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ send greetings.
(17) I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. (18) For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naïve people. (19) Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I am full of joy over you; but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.
(20) The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.
(21) Timothy, my fellow-worker, sends his greetings to you, as do Lucius, Jason and Sosipater, my relatives.
(22) I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter, greet you in the Lord.
(23) Gaius, whose hospitality I and the whole church here enjoy, sends you his greetings. Erastus, who is the city’s director of public works, and our brother Quartus, send you their greetings.
(25) Now to Him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, (26) but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him - (27) to the only wise God be glory for ever through Jesus Christ! Amen.

Perhaps we'll have a quiz next week to see how many of those names you can remember! Well you might not remember the names - but I do hope you remember some of the things I'm going to say this morning - because unfortunately this chapter doesn't lend itself to a PowerPoint presentation.

Let me say at the outset, commentators recognise this chapter doesn't sit comfortably on the end of this letter. Over the years some people have considered the original ending to be chapter 15 - or even before. Martin Luther didn't refer to it his Commentary - and some have thought of it as a short stand-alone letter sent with the main purpose of commending Pheobe - or even maybe as a covering letter for a copy of Romans sent somewhere else, but to which it became attached over the years. However - Leon Morris in his commentary on Romans says, "it is not easy to escape the conclusion that Romans 16 is the intended and original ending to the letter". And it's also in keeping with Paul's normal practice - albeit a bit longer.

Now the purpose of the letter to the Romans appears to be to introduce Paul to a group of churches in a city - and a in country - he'd never visited. One question that might therefore have crossed your mind is - how did Paul know so many people in Rome? Because in this chapter he greets 26 people - 24 of them by name. He calls three of them his co-workers - 2 of them his fellow-prisoners. And in the process he mentions five households (which could be a reference to five house churches).

We can't completely answer that question. But we do know that Jewish Christians had been dispersed from Jerusalem by persecution - the early chapters of Acts tell us that - and some would have undoubtedly gone to Rome - the hub of the Empire. But we noted before from Acts 18:2, that Emperor Claudius expelled Jews from Rome in AD49 - Christians included. In fact we're told in Acts 18 that that's how Aquila and his wife Priscilla got to know Paul. They also ended up doing tent-making with him. Since they've turned up in this chapter they're obviously back in Rome (Claudius having died in AD54). So - through necessity, expediency or choice - it's likely many Jewish and Gentile Christians would have travelled a lot around the Mediterranean area.

Paul was also fairly mobile - and often also not by choice - and his path would have crossed with - and - as the list of names here indicates - both worked with - and suffered with - a variety of other ‘mobile’ Christians.

When I was a lot younger we used to sing - "This world is not my home, I'm just a' passing through". I wonder if these early brothers and sisters of ours had a far better feel of that truth than we have at the beginning of the 21 st century - and that's in spite of what we consider to be our mobile society?

Another thought crossed my mind. Paul was a very busy man - without all the communication aids we have - probably with an eye-sight problem - often deprived of his freedom - and undoubtedly without any sort of personal organiser! Yet he kept in touch with people - told them how much he valued them - commended them to others - and as we know from elsewhere - prayed a lot for them. And the list of names in Ch.16 indicates (and I have to take other people word for this) that some of them were slaves - some freed slaves (men and women) - and some were highborn - as well as of course being both Jews and non-Jews. In other words - they came from right across the social spectrum. These people weren't just Paul 'own set'. He knew and valued distinctly different fellow believers from throughout the world of his day. Does that challenge you? Should it challenge us?

Let me ask you - how many brothers and sisters do you know in other parts of the world? Not just ex-pats like Graeme and Jenny , but indigenous Christians. African? Asian? Latin American? Ex-Eastern Block Christians? Middle Eastern Christians? Maybe suffering Christians? Maybe deprived Christians? Maybe - growing Christians? Who do you network with? How many do you encourage? How many do you get encouraged by? How many do you support? How many? Any? And does it matter?

Something I didn't say earlier about those mentioned in this chapter - is that about a third of them are women. In fact, the chapter starts with Paul commending one of these sisters to the fellowship of believers in Rome. She might have been the courier of this letter - and it would therefore have doubled as her 'letter of introduction'. Such 'introductions' were becoming a practical necessary because charlatans had been deceiving some groups of dispersed Christians. But we’ll talk about that when we look at verses 17-20.

So who was Pheobe? Well we know nothing more about her than we've got here. We surmise she's a non-Jew, because her name derives from a Greek mythical goddess. And we know she came from the port that served Corinth. Cenchrea is just southeast of Corinth - and Paul was there (incidently with Aquila and Priscilla) in Acts 18:18. I think the only bit of Cenchrea you can now see is a short length of Roman road disappearing into the sea.

Pheobe is called 'a servant of the church in Cenchrea'. Now we're all called to be servants of Jesus Christ - literally His slaves. But many commentators attribute a particular significance to describing Pheobe as 'a servant' - because it's the same Greek word used for Deacon - and it's the same word used in 1 Timothy Ch.3, where the offices of the church are dealt with in some detail. Many believe that Pheobe hosted the Cenchrean church meetings in her home - and believe she was probably quite well off. That's because some translators use 'patron' or 'patroness' for the words we've got as 'great help' in v.2 in the NIV. In fact - she was probably a bit like Lydia at Philippi mentioned in Acts 16:15 & 40 - but in this case - more formally accredited.

You're probably aware that over the years Paul's had varying degrees of bad press concerning his supposed views on women. That's often been because certain things he wrote have been taken and used in other people's agendas. I'm not even going to start entering that debate this morning. I could probably get an MA researching just a part of the subject! But I am going to point out that here's a woman who (by the agreement of most commentators) had a formal and significant role in a local church - and is being commended by Paul to the Christians in Rome - not as the accomplice of someone else - but in her own right.

And of course if you take that on board - it begs the question about how we view Paul's list of prerequisites for church office in 1 Timothy Ch.3. Do the holders always have to be married men with well behaved children?

Now I'm not questioning whether Paul meant what he wrote to Timothy. One of the problems with reading many of the NT letters is that we're reading someone else's mail without knowing the specific background to why they wrote what they wrote. But I am pointing out that 1 Timothy Ch.3 appears not to be the whole picture of first generation church structure. That's something else to ponder.

As Paul commends Pheobe to the believers in Rome - he appeals to them to observe a standard of hospitality apparently expected between Christians. Let me remind you of what he says in v.2 - "I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and to give her any help she may need from you..."

By the way - when Paul uses the word 'saints' he’s not talking about stained-glass-window worthies - or the latest person to be pronounced so by a man with an office in Rome. He's talking about everyone - that's anyone - who's accepted Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Simple as that.

So what Paul seems to be doing is giving a five star rating to ways we ought to receive each other - not just those we know - but those we have never met before. And not just from our own culture - but from 'every tribe, people, nation and language' - which is the way Revelation 5:9 describes the make-up of our eternal Christian family. (With a bit of God given common sense of course.)

And hospitality and help comes in many shapes and sizes. It might mean having someone for a meal - or taking them for a meal. It might mean putting them up for a week. It might just mean collecting them of a plane from Heathrow. But it might also mean checking they've got adequate clothing if they've come to a Britain from some less fortunate part of out global village - and if they haven't - finding some for them. When I was at Bible College the student body used to keeps warm jumpers in it's box-room for students from abroad starting there in September - those who'd come to the UK with no idea what an English winter was like!

Many of you know that I have been blessed over the years by being on the receiving end of Christian hospitably in a number of African countries. And some of the people who blessed me did so out of very limited resources. OK - to a degree it was the cultural norm in their societies to be hospitable - but in our country, where acquisitiveness and self-interest quite often strongly influence our cultural norms, let us demonstrate that the Christian life-style is radically different by using our wealth to bless each other - wherever - and whoever. And you may also find it can be great fun!

Chapter 16 divides into about five sections - the first is Pheobe's 'letter of introduction' - and we've just talked about that. Then there's all his greetings and appreciations - followed by a warning - more greetings - and the doxology. It's impossible to look at all the people Paul mentions in his greetings - if only because we don't know enough about them, in spite of a lot of guesswork over the years! But I do want to mention a few - and I'm going to start with a surprise. Well - it was a surprise to me anyway when I first came across it. That is, a woman who’s apostle. We've looking at v.7.

"Greet Andronicus and Junias, my relatives who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was". Junias (or Junia) was by general consent - a woman.

Incidently - while calling these two "‘my relatives" (kinfolk) Paul may be inferring that they were of his family-clan. But he might just be saying 'my fellow Jews' - particularly since in v.11 he calls Herodion - who was related to Herod - "my relative". And "being in prison with me" may mean they were incarcerated alongside him during one of his many imprisonments - but it could also mean that at some time they'd also been in prison for their faith in Jesus Christ - just like Paul had been.

So what is an 'apostle'? The word means 'one sent forth' - and in that sense Jesus was The Apostle - 'the sent one of God' - as Hebrews 3:1 tells us. He was sent by the Father to bring us salvation by dying in our place - as the one and only answer to the dreadful consequence of sin. But an apostle (at least in Paul's understanding) was more than just someone sent. Paul - writing in 2 Corinthians - pointed to evidence that authenticated the role. Apostles were people who did signs - wonders - and miracles.

Of course the twelve disciples were apostles in a special sense - as they were Jesus primary human witnesses of who He was and what He came to do. Matthias was added to their number after Judas hanged himself - and Paul became one after meeting Jesus on the Damascus road. But before Paul met the risen Christ - Jesus had shown himself to 'all the apostles' - says 1 Corinthians 15:7 - which was not necessarily only the twelve, because they'd been mentioned earlier at v.5. Someone's suggested that they were the 500 who met the resurrected Jesus - these people then being 'sent' as witnesses to the resurrection. Or was it the 120 who met in the upper room on the day of Pentecost? Certainly the term apostle was associated with a commissioned role in the Church from quite early on. And since Paul says they were "in Christ before I was", it's not inconceivable they might actually have met Jesus and believed in Him during His earthly ministry. But to Paul - this couple were both apostles - man and woman.

I'm not going to say too much about Priscilla and Aquila simply on the grounds of time this morning - that's in spite of the fact they are given 'top billing' in Paul's list of greetings. But if you want to track their travels some time - you can use a concordance and find where else their name's crop up in the NT. Priscilla (sometimes called Prisca) is often named first - so maybe she had some status in Christian circles in her own right. Their Christian service was regularly interwoven with Paul's - and Paul (both in v.3, and by putting them at the top of his list of greetings) shows his appreciation of them. One person's said that when we think about Priscilla and Aquila we see commitment. From Paul's perspective - that commitment appears to have gone so far as them having put their lives on the line for him.

I think sometimes we're guilty of viewing Paul as the 'Rambo' figure of the early church (partly of course because of our limited knowledge of others around at that time). But Paul often indicates that much of what he did was a team effort. Actually - any good leader worth the name will tell you that they can't achieve results single-handed. It's the efforts of a reliable team that product results. That's true in the world - but it's also true in the church. Was then. Is now. You see - God has put us together to work together.

As for most of those Paul mentions as part of the Christian team in Rome - we have little or no other information on them. But Rufus (v.13) - is considered with some consistency to be the son of Simon of Cyrene - identified in Mark 15:21 as the father of Alexander and Rufus -and the man who was forced to carry Jesus' cross. Small world isn't it?

But then into this list of greetings Paul suddenly introduces a terse warning. And so abrupt is the change of tone - and so strong the language compared with the rest of the letter - theologians have had a field day trying to dissecting it inclusion. Let's just re-read v.17-20.

(17) I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. (18) For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people. (19) Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I am full of joy over you; but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.
(20) The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.

We could ask - had Paul heard that there was dissension amongst the Christians in Rome - and had waited until this late juncture in this letter to address the issue? Or was it the matter of Jews intent on introducing traditional ritual as an 'add on necessity' to the true gospel that concerned him - the same problem he'd attacked so vehemently in his Galatians letter? We simply don't know. The comment is too general to point to some specific problem current in Rome at that time. More likely - and remember - Paul's writing from Corinth - where in his first letter to that church he'd had to seriously censure divisive attitudes and faulty behaviour - he's just sharing his genuine Pastor's heart for their well-being - maybe because he remembered the painful situations he'd encounter previously at Corinth. He want's the believers in Rome prepared - as it were - ahead of time - to be ready to act appropriately should the need arise.

Many companies - sometimes countries - do training exercises to prepare themselves in case some trouble strikes them. It's so they know exactly what to do if it does.

So how prepared do you think you are - or we are as a church - to spot and correct the subtle inroads of error and division? To challenge it - reject it - and eject it. Because that's the question Paul's asking the Christians in Rome. It's a bit like being on the lookout for a destructive virus - and dealing with it before it creates havoc. After all - we even do that for our computers - don't we! And Paul has no hesitation about pointing to the motivating source of such infection - Satan. That's why he end's up saying - "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." Which - being good Bible students - you've probably already recognised is a promise lifted out of Genesis 3:15 - the offspring of the woman will crush the serpent's head. But note - and please underline - it's God who will some crush Satan under your feet. And the reason - because he has already been defeated by Jesus Christ. Therefore Paul can say - "The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you."

I said earlier Paul was a team player. If you weren't convinced - take a look at the list of the people he has around in him verses 21-23 as he concludes his letter. But I just want to draw attention to one.

I mentioned before that Paul probably had a serious eyesight problem (although we can't be absolutely sure). But it's a fact Paul often only personally penned the final greetings of his letters. He tells us so at the end of many of them. So in Galatians 6:11 he says "See with what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand". For this letter - he used someone called Tertius to write it down - and in v.22 he let’s his scribe get in on the act and send his own greetings! It might even be that Tertius knew the Christians in Rome personally - because Tertius is a Latin name.

And so we come to the doxology - and Paul saying "Now to Him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ...". 2By my good news2 - says Paul.

You might have heard Romans is sometimes referred to as 'the Gospel according to St. Paul' - so one way of finishing off our brief look at this letter could be to now go back over the letter and highlight all the key, fundamental, statements Paul makes in it related to this ‘good news’.

However, if I did that, those with dinners in ovens at home will go back to a burnt offering! So instead I thought I’d look at just one of Paul’s key passions in this letter - and to leave you with just two thoughts as we close. And they both come from chapter 12 verse 2.

The first is the reasonable well know Phillips translation of the first part of Romans 12:2: "Don’t let the world squeeze you into it’s mould". And if ever a statement was necessary to take-in in our media driven twenty-first century - that has got to be it!

And the second is printed in your notice sheet - and is also stuck to the front of this lectern. The CEV translation we’ve adopted to display says, "Let God change the way you think. Then you will know how to do everything that is good and pleasing to him."

So I leave you - and this series of studies - with something to resist - and something to embrace. Resist having your life moulded by our current culture. Instead - wholeheartedly embrace what God has said - and also wants to go on saying to you personally - every day.

I think if Paul was here today - he’d wholeheartedly embrace my choice of closing hymn. It encapsulates a lot of what he wrote about. It’s SoF 559 - To God be the glory, great things he has done.

PRAYER:

Paul said - Now to Him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ ...

Father - please establish us by Your good news - and empower us by Your indwelling Holy Spirit - to live the way you want us to - to not do the things we should not do - but to be consistently the people You want us to be. Amen.

Granville Richards