Epaphras salutes thee, my fellow-prisoner in Christ Jesus;
Paul's letter to Philemon closes with greetings from the men who were with him. The first name is Epaphras, and the title Paul gives him carries weight: a fellow prisoner, and a prisoner "in Christ Jesus."
Epaphras is not a stranger dropped into the last lines. One dictionary gathers his whole story from three short mentions:
Fellow prisoner with Paul at Rome. He worked at Colossae, the place he belonged to. He is described as "a faithful minister of Christ," and as one who agonised in prayer for the Colossians, with zeal for their welfare. Col. 1:7; Col. 4:12; Philemon 23.
What does "fellow prisoner" mean here? Kelly sets the word beside other titles Paul uses, and will not press it too far:
It is not "fellow-soldier," as said of Archippus in verse 2... It is not exactly desmios, "prisoner," as Paul speaks of himself in this and in other letters. Nor do we have enough reason to say that Andronicus, Junias and Epaphras were bound in a literal chain. The apostle himself was bound, for Christ's sake. Yet it is a word of force, and means a captive, or war prisoner. Certainly we hear of no outward event in the conflicts of the gospel that gives a ground for such a title.
One writer sets the two letters side by side and stops at a question:
In the letter to the Colossians Aristarchus was his fellow prisoner. Here it is Epaphras. Did the saints take it in turn to share the apostle's imprisonment?
Kelly knows the same suggestion from other writers. He finds one text stands in its way:
Meyer, following Fritzsche, suggests that some of the apostle's companions chose to share his prison by turns. On this view, it was the turn of Aristarchus when he wrote to the Colossians, and of Epaphras when he wrote to Philemon... This is ingenious, no doubt; but Rom. 16:7 presents no small difficulty to accepting it.
Why did the Lord leave Paul in prison? One writer answers by looking at what the prison produced:
There is nothing more blessed than this thought: Jesus is able to throw Himself into our own circumstances. He was in prison with Paul. He could as easily have delivered him out of prison as He had delivered Peter. But He chose rather to share the prison with him. There He made him the keeper of His deepest thoughts. We have the prison to thank for the deep revelations of the mind of God in the letters to the Ephesians and Colossians. It was not the active travelling. And so it was, in a lower degree, with Paul and Epaphras — the prison deepened their fellowship with one another.
Prayer is what Epaphras is known for. Mackintosh makes it the test for every kind of service:
But behind everything, we want a spirit of prayer — fervent, agonising, persevering prayer. Without this, nothing can prosper. A prayerless man is a dried-up man. A prayerless preacher is a profitless preacher. A prayerless writer will send out barren pages. A prayerless evangelist will do little good. A prayerless pastor will have little food for the flock. We want men of prayer, men like Epaphras. Only the walls of the room where they pray alone see their agonising labours.
Epaphras comes first in this list of names. Kelly warns against reading rank into that:
Luke, called "the beloved physician" in Col. 4:14, here comes last among the fellow workers: clear proof that the order in no way marks, as men do, the spiritual value or the honourable rank of those brought before us.
- Captive. Paul's word for Epaphras is not "prisoner" or "fellow soldier" but captive — a war prisoner. It is a word of real force, though we have no firm ground for saying he wore literal chains.
- By turns. Colossians gives this title to Aristarchus, Philemon to Epaphras. One suggestion is that friends shared Paul's prison by turns. Kelly finds Romans 16:7 stands in the way.
- Shared. The Lord could have opened the prison, as He did for Peter. He chose instead to keep Paul company inside it, and the prison deepened the bond with Epaphras too.
- Prayer. What Epaphras left behind was agonising prayer for his home town. That labour needs no gift and no platform.
- Unranked. First place in the list is not first place in value; the order of names carries no spiritual rank.
Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, Luke, my fellow-workmen.
Paul ends this personal letter by sending greetings from four men who were with him while he was a prisoner. Each name carries a story: a helper Paul once refused, a friend who chose danger, and a man who would later walk away.
Paul calls all four men his fellow workers. One writer weighs what that title was worth, coming from Paul:
Paul alone has given us Luke's name, and here he described him by the honourable title of "fellow-labourer." We call it an honourable title considering who Paul was. But it is one shared with others, in this letter and elsewhere.
Paul used the same kind of title for Philemon and Archippus:
Philemon was counted among Paul's co-workers, and Archippus as a fellow soldier. These terms are not used lightly. That would not suit the dignity of the apostle. Paul puts their ministries alongside his own. They were united in common service for Christ. They had known toil and conflict in the same field, in the cause of Christ.
Luke's name comes last in the list. That says less than it seems:
Luke, called "the beloved physician" in Col. 4:14, comes last among the fellow-workers. This is clear proof that the order does not rank these men by spiritual value or honour, as a human list would.
Mark had not always been welcome beside Paul. One writer tells what happened, and how it ended:
Barnabas wanted his relative Mark to go with them on their second missionary journey. Paul disagreed, because Mark had left them in Pamphylia and had not gone on with them to the work. So they parted company… Yet the great apostle to the Gentiles has left on record how much he valued his former helper in later years. Twice he commended him to the Colossian believers as a man who belonged among his honoured fellow-labourers (Col. 4:11; Philemon 24). That commendation held to the end of his life. In his last letter, the second to Timothy, he wrote, "Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry" (2 Tim. 4:11). It is pleasant to find that by true service Mark had won back the apostle's esteem.
Here Paul makes no mention of that failure. He simply names Mark among his fellow workers.
Aristarchus travelled with Paul and stayed with him on the sea voyage:
We see at once that Luke is with the apostle on his voyage, and Aristarchus also… Aristarchus has come before us from time to time in the book of Acts as the companion of the apostle (Acts 19:29; Acts 20:4). His name appears again later in Col. 4:10 and Philemon 24. Neither appears to have been a prisoner at this time. Both took their place beside the man who was treated that way. Love led them to join him in the face of shame and danger.
Paul describes the same man differently in his letter to Colosse:
In Colossians, Aristarchus shares the apostle's captivity, and in Philemon it is Epaphras who does. In Philemon, Aristarchus is called a fellow-labourer of the apostle along with others, while in Colossians Epaphras is spoken of at least as a servant of Christ. They may have shared the apostle's imprisonment one after another, as someone has suggested.
The fourth name is the sad one. Paul's last mention of Demas reads nothing like this one:
In Philemon he calls him a "fellow-labourer," along with Mark, Aristarchus and Luke. In 2 Timothy he has to say, "Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me." Nothing can be sadder than this last word about a man who had stood so close to the apostle Paul, a man who carried such a testimony. The final break with Paul may have been sudden. But we may be sure his soul had been slipping away long before… A gradual decline of spiritual life and energy always comes before an open failure.
Standing this close to Paul was itself a test:
It spoke well for the apostle that no one who loves this present world could stay with him.
Commentators differ on how far Demas fell. One reference work says this "may mean, not that he had given up the faith, but that he had fallen away from Paul's line of service through love of this present age" (Morrish Bible Dictionary).
- Fellow. One word covers all four men and sets their labour beside Paul's own — a weighed title, not a courtesy.
- Level. Luke comes last in the list, yet the order ranks no one above another.
- Restored. Mark once quit the work, yet Paul names him here with no mention of that failure.
- Costly. Aristarchus was no prisoner. Love still brought him alongside a man in chains, into the shame and the danger.
- Warning. Demas holds the same honourable title here, yet he later walked out on Paul — open failure follows a long, quiet decline.