When we come across genealogies and other lists of names in the Bible, it can be difficult to remember that all Scripture is inspired and useful! Romans 16 is one such passage, where Paul greeted a list of friends by name. We know a few of them, but how is this list edifying?
Remember that the last major section of Romans starts in 12:1 with the exhortation to present our bodies as living sacrifices. Every word of Romans from there until the end either helps define or illustrate what the life of a living sacrifice looks like. In the last chapter, Paul names a bunch of them. With that in mind, let’s look at the list
First, Paul commends Phoebe, a woman active in the church at Cenchrea, a town near Corinth. Paul wrote Romans either in Corinth or Cenchrea on his way to Ephesus. Phoebe was on her way to Rome and may have carried the letter. In any case, Paul asked the Roman church to take care of this saint who had already worked so hard for her home church.
We know Priscilla and Aquila from the book of Acts. When Paul got to Corinth, they had just arrived there from Rome and hired Paul for their tent-making business. When Paul was away, they took a traveling teacher named Apollos under their wings to instruct him in parts of the gospel he didn’t yet know. Later, they went with Paul to Ephesus via Cenchrea. They were not part of his staff. It appears that they had business interests in at least three cities. I have a little trouble with the chronology here, but wherever this couple lived, they hosted a house church. By contrast we know nothing more of the rest of these people except the few words Paul addressed to them.
I need to say a little about Andronicus and Junia, however. Paul names them as apostles, one of 24 apostles identified by name in the New Testament. Don’t let anyone tell you there can only be 12 apostles! But there is something else a little controversial about these two. Junia is a woman, but many manuscripts give the name as Junias, a man’s name. I understand that one of the principles of determining the correct text of any piece of literature is that the most difficult reading is the most likely to be correct. It looks like some early monk gagged on the notion that a woman could be an apostle and “corrected” the manuscript he was copying. If we accept the feminine name, we could very well have a married couple who would certainly be worth knowing much better.
Rufus may or may not be the same Rufus identified elsewhere as the son of Simon the Cyrene, who carried Jesus’ cross. In any case, it looks like his mother cared for Paul almost as an adopted son during the earliest years of his life as a Christian, when he was still Saul.
Notice how many times Paul mentions someone’s hard work, even to the point of risking their lives. Notice how many times he refers to his love for some of them. Notice the number of times Paul mentions a household. That appears to be not just a family, but a house church.
By contrast, at the end of 2 Timothy, Paul singled out some other individuals: “Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica; Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Pick up Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for service. . . Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm.” And here is 3 John 9. “I wrote something to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first among them, does not accept what we say.”
The people Paul mentions in Romans 16 all serve as models of the living sacrifice, whether we know anything more about them or not. Some of the others Paul and John mentioned in other books do not. They either failed or outright refused to do what they should have done, displaying cowardice instead of courage and pride instead of humility.
Here is the challenge in this chapter, and why it is so rich in meaning for us: if God were to have someone write a one-sentence summary of our lives in a list of names, what would it say? Would we be called hard working? Beloved? Faithful? Faithless? Harmful? Do we, as individuals, count as living sacrifices?
Photo credit: Helping a stranger Some rights reserved by Ed Yourdon
