Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. So, what’s in a name? In the final chapter of Romans, Paul seems to give recognition to those who have played an important part in the church. A simple hello with a genuine focus of attention goes a long way. Let’s listen in and see what else he has to say. It’s all yours.

Romans chapter 16. More than hey, how’s it going? When studying biblical writings like Romans, this is a very weighty book, as you’ve probably figured out by now, many feel like the most doctrinally significant New Testament writing, chapter 16 almost seems like an afterthought, something you could slide by without any comment. It’s mostly Paul’s personal greetings to people he knew in Rome and doesn’t really contain much, if any, new teaching material. But I really like this chapter, so we’re not sliding by. To me, it screams with authenticity.

By that I mean that this is really a letter from the Apostle Paul and from the first century. It’s definitely the most personal thing we have from him in the New Testament. So let’s think about his closing words to the Roman Christians for a bit. It’s interesting to think about the setting. Paul wrote this letter during his 18-month stay in Corinth in southern Greece. Margie pointed this out in her introduction, I believe.

He says in the previous chapter that he was looking forward to being with the Christians in Rome in person, that he’d wanted to visit them many times in the past but always been hindered. He further tells them that he was now planning a fourth mission trip, this time to Spain, and he hoped to stop by Rome en route to be with them in person before he proceeded westward. We might think, well, Rome is certainly a more important destination than Spain at the time. Why hadn’t Paul already been there? The reason I feel sure, apart from whatever he meant by being hindered in the past, is that Paul’s main objective was always to keep taking the gospel to places it had not yet been. He didn’t like, as he said, building on another’s foundation, as Christianity had been established in Rome now for almost two decades by others.

Although, as we see, Paul had many friends there. He obviously cared about those people. He wrote an extensive letter to this church. But his real goal was to take the gospel to places where it had never been, where no churches existed. That was his priority. He begins his personal greetings in chapter 16 with this.

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon or servant of the church in Cenchrea. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she might need on her way from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me. So a lady named Phoebe was apparently heading toward Rome, and she would carry this letter from Paul from Corinth to the Roman Christians. He’s asking them, when she comes, to take care of her on her way. She’s someone who has served Christ faithfully and been a benefactor of Paul and his team. Phoebe.

I was thinking, there’s lots of cool names in this chapter if you’re looking for something different to name your next baby. A lot of Christians like to take names from the Bible for their children. Others inadvertently do. My parents gave the kids in our family biblical names, but more common ones like David, Joel, Paul. But there are a lot of unusual first names, unusual for our time anyway, here in Romans 16, so consider these for your baby naming future. I won’t comment on all these people, but some of them we know interesting things about, like those Paul names first.

When he says, Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus. They risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well. Wow, that’s quite a statement, isn’t it? Prisca, that’s Priscilla. We’ve met these people before. You remember them.

They were a husband and wife team who were business people who were originally from Rome, but who were willing to uproot themselves more than once to go to places where new Christian churches needed to be planted. They lived for a while in Corinth. They lived for a while in Ephesus. They’d hosted new churches Paul and his team planted in each of these major cities of the empire. And as Paul says here, greet the church that meets in their house. They’re hosting another church in Rome now.

They were absolutely key players in the establishment of early Christianity. At the time of this writing, Prisca and Aquila were back in their home city, once again hosting a church there, probably the church that first received this letter. We wouldn’t know the name of the first Christian convert in the province of Asia, that’s western Turkey today, if it weren’t for Paul naming him here. Because next he says, Greet my beloved Epenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in Asia. Name your next kid Epenetus, I dare you. Then he mentions two relatives of his that apparently now lived in Rome, Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and fellow prisoners.

They’re well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me. I’d like to know more about those two people, because I think this is the only place they are mentioned. Paul says they were very early Jewish believers, Christians before him. But how were they related to Paul? He calls them his kinsmen. Had they moved to Rome to help carry the gospel to that city years before?

When were they in prison with him? Yikes, I’d like to have more information on them. But these names remind me that although we focus on people like Paul and Timothy and Peter and a few others in the early decades of Christianity’s spread, there were many others whose exact contributions we’ll never know until we meet them in heaven someday. People who obeyed Jesus’ Great Commission and redirected their lives to serve God’s purposes, carrying the good news and helping establish Christian churches. Now this one’s interesting. Four of the names mentioned in verses 8 through 11, scholars believe, based on evidence from secular history, extra-biblical history, were associated with the household of the Caesars in Rome.

We read elsewhere in the New Testament that the gospel made inroads into Caesar’s own household, meaning among his relatives and servants. Philippians 4, verse 22 says that. Greet Ampliatus, Paul says here. Greet those who belong to the family of Aristobulus. Greet my kinsman Herodian. Greet those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus.

Well, Aristobulus mentioned here as part of the church, people in his family anyway, were. Aristobulus was the brother of Herod Agrippa, the client king of the Jews in Israel at that time. If you know this era of history, the royal family of Israel, the Herod family, was very intertwined with Roman aristocracy by friendships and by marriage. Herodian was obviously another one from that clan who Paul calls here a kinsman, so apparently a distant relative of his. Narcissus is a name known to history as the private secretary of the Emperor Claudius, and several slaves of the imperial court mentioned in Roman annals were named Ampliatus. So already people connected to the imperial court of the Roman Empire had become Christians by 56 A.D. when Paul wrote this letter.

Verse 12 says, Greet Tryphena and Tryphosa, workers in the Lord. No idea who those women were, but I’m betting they were twins. The names mean dainty and delicate. So if twin girls are in your future, rather than naming them something like Carol and Linda, why not give them unique names like Tryphena and Tryphosa, after these early Christian women in Rome? Another interesting connection is greeted by name in verse 13. Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well.

I could develop a movie script around this one. According to the Gospel of Mark, which was written in Rome perhaps a decade or so after this letter, Rufus was one of the sons of Simon of Cyrene, that man from North Africa who just happened to be in Jerusalem for Passover the weekend Jesus was crucified, and somehow, by chance, got the unenviable job of carrying Jesus’ cross up the hill to Calvary. Remember, as Jesus was coming out of the city carrying his own cross Friday morning, early that day, exhausted, weakened from having been abused and beaten by the Romans, he fell beneath the weight of those beams. This man, Simon of Cyrene, just happened to be nearby on the street when the Roman centurion in charge said, Hey, you there, help carry this man’s cross up the hill to Calvary.

That tragic but divine encounter with Jesus had led to Simon and his family becoming Christians, and one of his sons, named Rufus, was now, a quarter century later, in Rome and part of one of the early Christian fellowships there. Paul also calls out Rufus’ mother, Simon’s wife, who he says had been like a mother to him. I’d like to know more about that. At some point, this family had ministered to Paul himself, maybe from their home he stayed with them, or possibly while he was imprisoned at some point. But for the record, I’m not suggesting any of you name your kids Rufus. Good dog name, not a great kid name.

There are also some other names in here that are better, like ones you won’t find in your baby naming books, but they would be outstanding. How about Urbanus, or Olympus, or Apelles? Apelles, Paul says, is approved in Christ. When your future son asks where you got that name from, you could tell him yours is the name of an outstanding Christian in the first century. After calling out 25 or more people he knew in this Roman Christian community, Paul says at verse 16, Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.

Greet one another. There’s that reciprocal pronoun again we’ve been talking about. But you know, when I was at my church this past Sunday, no one, not even my buddy Tony, greeted me with a holy kiss. Thank goodness for that, actually. Seriously, I want to make a point here about biblical interpretation that will help you discern how to obey some instructions in the Bible. And it’s about terms we call form and function.

I hope you know what I mean by those terms. By form and function, I mean the difference between a principle and its specific application in a particular time and place. In Near Eastern cultures, some of them to this day, a normal form of greeting among close people is a kiss on the cheek or a kiss on the forehead. Paul called it a holy kiss here to distinguish it from, you know, a sensual kiss, I guess. So when you hear, Greet one another with a holy kiss, what is the form and what is the underlying function? Which is a custom practiced in a certain place and time, and what is a timeless principle?

Clearly, the form part is the kiss, while the underlying function is greeting one another. In this last chapter of Romans, the Apostle Paul greets 26 people by name, with personal words of commendation for them and appreciation for them. People like to be greeted by name. People like to be personally commended and feel appreciated, whether in the first century or in this century. The form of personal greeting them, the kiss on the cheek or forehead, that was just a cultural practice at the time. Frankly, in Western culture, it might put many people off to come to a church meeting and be kissed by a bunch of people.

I know I would be, you know, put off by that. I’m not sure if I would come back a second time to a church where if I came in and a bunch of people started kissing me. That would seem very strange. But being greeted as an act of welcoming, as a sign of acceptance, simply as an indication you are noticed, you are valued, that’s probably more significant than we realize. In a church family, it should be all of those things: an act of welcoming, a sign of acceptance, an indication that you are noticed and valued. Not just a habit or an unthinking formality.

A genuine handshake, or as we call it today, a bro hug. Those are common forms of personal greeting in my society, and they’re more acceptable than a kiss. But they still contain a human touch, a personal touch, which is actually, we’ve learned from doctors and studies, very therapeutic for human beings. Have you ever thought about that? I read a fascinating article once about the New England Patriots, who had just won the Super Bowl, and about someone, many in that organization, from the owner to the head coach to the star quarterback, credit with helping mold them into a tight-knit team that enabled them to excel. It was all about a chaplain from the organization who was hired to kind of be a life coach for the young men from very diverse backgrounds who came to New England to play professional football.

His name was Jack Easterby. I found the article fascinating because of the overlap with the very ideas we’ve been discussing in these later chapters of Romans, the one anothers. One passage in the article said, Easterby has a gift for making others feel better about themselves. Players say it’s hard to overstate how valuable that is, working for a fiercely bottom-line team and in a league they believe treats them as commodities. When Easterby greets players or coaches alike, he pulls them in for an embrace and sometimes raises their handshake up to his chest. He fixes his eyes on theirs so long without blinking that it’s almost awkward.

One coach in particular named Scott Pioli tells about a time after a particularly devastating loss when he really didn’t want to see Easterby. He was actually purposely avoiding him because the chaplain is always Mr. Positive and the coach just didn’t feel positive about the beatdown they just experienced. Then he said he rounded a corner in the team’s facility and found himself suddenly, unavoidably, face to face with Easterby. Pioli said the two of them stared each other down almost like it was an old West gunfight. Jack, Coach Pioli said sternly, just don’t do it.

But Easterby did it anyways. He gave him a big hug. He held him for a few seconds longer than necessary. I found that article fascinating because it was all about how this Christian chaplain was using the kind of biblical one another principles we’ve been discussing to build up a football organization and how it deeply impacted Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and that whole Patriots organization. These one another principles certainly will work to build up the organizations you’re part of too, especially your local church. If you notice someone in your church who looks like a stranger, possibly a guest, do you make it a point to greet them?

A warm handshake, a personal introduction will do, but learn their name. Find out where they are from. Invite them to come back again. And if they come back again, greet them by name warmly. If your emotional tank is pretty full, that might seem insignificant to you. But to many people who are hurting, who rarely get touched except perhaps in anger or to be used by someone, who are lonely, who are emotionally empty, a simple thing like a personal greeting, being noticed, being remembered, may mean more to them than you can imagine.

That simple act alone may bring them back to your church or your small group, or might be their first step toward Christ and spiritual healing in their life. I can tell you honestly, when I first walked through the doors of the church I serve at now, I was in some emotional pain right then. Fortunately, a couple people went out of their way to greet me, to find out who I was. I distinctly remember one of them asking not only who I was, but genuinely inquiring about how things were going in my life and waiting for an answer. I sensed he actually wanted to know, so I honestly said, You know what? Things are not going very well at all for me right now.

He followed up on that, invited me to go to lunch with him the coming week. That meant a great deal to me at that time, and frankly, it’s probably the main reason I ended up becoming a part of that church. This greeting one another instruction doesn’t just apply to those who may be new in the church either. When you greet a fellow member, look them in the eye. You can get a sense for how they really are. Too often we’re not tuned into that.

Gene Getz, in the book I mentioned last time called Building Up One Another, tells about coming into the auditorium of his church where he was the pastor before service and briefly greeting a teen he passed by with, Hey, Bruce, how’s it going? and moving on before waiting to get an answer. After the service, someone who was standing nearby said to him, I don’t think you heard Bruce’s reply, did you? Gene knew immediately he had not. No, I honestly was just thinking about the upcoming service. Why?

Did he say something more? Yes, his friend said. Bruce answered you. He said, Not very good, Pastor. My brother was in a motorcycle accident last night. Ouch.

Realize sometimes people who are hurting, like Bruce or me or Coach Pioli, may give off the signal they don’t want to be approached. I know I do that. Approach them anyways. That’s exactly what this directive to greet one another that’s repeated over and over and over again in the New Testament is telling us to do. Break through the barrier that people sometimes put up. Break through it with friendliness, with genuine interest, with a warm personal touch.

It’s such a simple but profound way that we build others up. I don’t think it’s by accident that this section at the end of such an important writing like Romans contains Paul’s personal greetings to so many in that fellowship. It wasn’t just politeness. He expressed his appreciation for them by name. He identified what they meant to him and to the Lord’s work. I’m sure when Urbanus and Priscilla and Herodian and the others read this part of the letter, they were personally very encouraged.

There’s more to this greeting thing than we might at first think, don’t you think? In the Christian fellowship, it’s not just a customary gesture. It’s not just something to be polite. It should be an intentional act of encouragement, a sign of acceptance among the family of God. Keep that in mind when you head to your next church service or to your next small group meeting. Okay, so we have come to the end of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, the most extensive New Testament writing summarizing Christian doctrine and practice.

We didn’t cover every idea, but I think we did cover the big ideas. You now know the importance and the meaning of terms like sin and righteousness and judgment. You know the remedy God has provided us through Christ’s sacrifice of atonement, which makes it possible for us to be justified before a holy God based only on our faith in Jesus. You understand something of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, who convicts the world of the truth as we share it, those people who are unbelievers, but also the Holy Spirit who resides in believers, trying to make us more of who God wants us to be. Sanctifying us is the big word.

You know how to respond to your government, how to make decisions about debatable practices, and never forget all the one another directives we discussed in the Romans practical section: being devoted to one another, honoring one another, accepting one another, admonishing one another, greeting one another. Principles that, when practiced, can transform a group of very different people into a warm, nurturing Christian fellowship. We all need to be members of one of those, by the way, and I hope you are. So on to another New Testament writing next time. Thanks for listening, and do me a favor, will you? Take a moment right now and pass on the podcast to someone you know who you think would benefit from understanding the big ideas in the Bible’s New Testament.

Thanks, Paul. So much information. And for those of you who are new to Share the Word, please keep in mind that the program is free for you to use, download, and to share. So, as Paul said, share away. Share the Word is a Great Commission project focused on sharing the big ideas of the New Testament chapter by chapter. As a nonprofit organization, we can’t do without you.

It’s because of the support from listeners like you that we’re able to do what we do. Help us continue to share the Word and the good news around the world. Simply go to sharetheword.org and click on Give. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.