CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 16:7. My kinsmen.—Kindred. Perhaps in this passage the wider sense of fellow-countrymen. It is difficult to state what is the imprisonment here mentioned.
Romans 16:8-9.—Amplias and Urbanus, two of few Latin names. Aquila, Junia, Rufus, Julia, etc., are names of Greek origin, and probably for the most part of a lower class, such as freedmen and slaves (Wordsworth). Peter’s name not mentioned. Conclusive against the pretensions of Rome.
Romans 16:10.—Apelles is a name used by Horace in ridicule, but here ennobled by St. Paul. Origen says, “approved by suffering and great tribulation.”
Romans 16:11.—Narcissus, perhaps a freedman of Nero. Another Narcissus was put to death before the date of this epistle.
Romans 16:14.—Everything to be consecrated by Christianity. Phœbe (the name of Diana) is a deaconess of the Church. Nereus and Hermes are Christianised. Striking is the contrast between Tryphena and Tryphosa, with their sensuous meaning and voluptuous sound, with the sterner words that follow, labouring in the Lord. Eusebius says that Hermes was the author of The Shepherd; but Lange says that the author of the book was the brother of Pius, bishop of Rome, and lived about the year 150. This book, pretending to give the revelation of an angel in a dream, once contended for authority with the Epistle to the Hebrews, and was held by some of the Alexandrian school in equal esteem with the Scriptures, and quoted as such; but it was never admitted into the canon.
Romans 16:16.—A holy kiss given at the feast of love. Justin Martyr says, “We mutually salute each other by a kiss, and then we bring forward the bread and the cup.” Tertullian calls it “the kiss of peace and the seal of prayer.” Discontinued on account of scandalous reports. Still practised in the Greek and Oriental Churches. Rabbins attached much importance to a kiss. Every kiss causes that spirit cleaves to spirit.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 16:6-16
St. Paul’s conception of the respectable.—In modern society we do not all move among what are called the respectable classes. There are classifications. It is sometimes highly amusing to hear one of the followers of him who was the friend of slaves, prisoners, freedmen, mere nobodies, parties whom you know one cannot know, declare that people are not respectable. In what is called Christianised society of to-day it is not the qualities but the quantities that a man possesses which command respect. The social pride of the day is odious. Some of the followers of fishermen are as proud as Lucifer. There are ecclesiastical dignitaries in every branch of the Church who need to study the kind of friends whom their great apostle saluted.
I. There is one quality possessed by all who command respect.—That quality is the one of being in Christ, in the Lord. The question with the apostle is not, Is he in our set? Is he the kind of person we ought to know? Does he attend our church? Does he speak our shibboleth? The question which absorbs all other inquiries should be, Is he in Christ? is he in the Lord?—in Christ by vital union with Him, deriving from Him spiritual life and force by active co-operation with all His loving plans and purposes.
II. Some have a bareness of quality which does not immortalise.—Some are saved, but so as by fire. They are Christians, and that is all which can be affirmed. There must have been many more names in the Roman Church, names known, it may be, to the apostle, in addition to those here mentioned; but their names find no place in this immortal scroll of honour. Even in this list are names with no special marks of approval; they are honourable, but do not take the foremost places. It is something, a precious something, precious beyond compare, to be numbered amongst Christ’s redeemed; but it is something more to be numbered amongst Christ’s valiant workers, amongst His true and stalwart soldiers. It is a noble ambition to leave behind a name which the world will not let die; but nobler to have a name which Christ will mention with approval amid the plaudits of rejoicing angels.
III. Others have a richness of quality which commands special respect.—We cannot be the firstfruits of our country in respect to time; but may we not be in respect to fulness, ripeness, and completeness? The richest fruits of our season—what a noble ideal! We cannot be the personally well-beloved of St. Paul, but the well-beloved of Him who knoweth all things and knows those who ardently love and serve Him. Helpers in Christ; mighty labourers in the Lord. However mean our position, however isolated our lot, we may all be helpers in Christ. He has need of all; He lays claim to the service of all. Helpers with Paul in Christ are all the faithful workers through the centuries. Faithful helpers in Christ are the world’s mighty labourers. Earth’s minsters do not entomb their ashes; national mausoleums do not enshrine their effigies; earth’s historians do not indite eloquent panegyrics on their memories. But what are earthly glories? Vanitas vanitatum. Our national mausoleum now honours the names of those whom Christian England a short time ago dishonoured and illtreated. Christ’s approvals do not thus change. His valuations are always correct; His awards are discriminating; His immortalities alone endure.
Immortal friendships.—There were women at Rome wearing in a single necklace of pearls a fortune of a hundred thousand pounds. Their very names have perished with their follies and vices, while Phœbe’s name is resplendent for ever in Paul’s gospel. Open your commentaries at this chapter, and note how often the dreary remark occurs, “Nothing is known of this person.” Nothing known of Epænetus and Urbanus and Olympas? If Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte could make their choice now, have you any doubt they would gladly exchange their fame for such a divine enrolment as this in the letter of some prophet or missionary—Alexander, the beloved, and Napoleon, my fellow-worker in the Lord? Let us first endeavour to find out how these names came to be in our Bible at all, and then consider the immortal friendships they celebrate. Three or four of them appear elsewhere in sacred history, and possibly two of them in the annals of Rome; but all the rest stand alone in this postscript of the letter which more than any other contains Paul’s gospel. How wide was its reach already! Most of the names are of Greek origin. Only a few years before he had come to the centre of learning and the arts with the wisdom of God unto salvation, and now Greece and her colonies furnish him with twenty-one names for his roll of honour. Rome contributes nine more. His own people, to whom the covenants and the oracles of God belonged, are represented by only four Hebrew names; and Persis is not a name, it means “the Persian woman.” The Orient and all the world are laid under contribution, but these names reflect no splendours of earthly honour. Phœbe, the first to appear in this galaxy, is the feminine of Phœbus Apollo; she was named from the fabled divinity which Virgil describes, “Semper rubet aurea Phœbe.” Yes, she shines for ever. But the name which her heathen parents gave her was a decoration of idolatry. And nearly all of these names had been tarnished by the superstitions and degradations of a false religion in which faith was perishing.
The glorious obscure.—Our English Bibles only hint at the fact that the greater number of persons mentioned are not known by name to Paul: “Salute them which are of the households of Aristobulus and of Narcissus.” This is not a literal translation of what was written: “Salute them who came out from the men belonging to Aristobulus and Narcissus.” They are the converted slaves of these great Roman families, the poor creatures who were corralled overnight like cattle, or chained to posts around their palaces. Now they are grouped, to the number of hundreds perhaps, among the shining ones of God. Nameless men, and men of obscure and of tarnished names, make up this divine enrolment. And this is the first practical lesson it yields us: how to make our names shine; how to remove reproaches, justly or innocently incurred, and come out of obscurity and be remembered with veneration and affection. Some good man will be writing a letter by-and-by; you and I can get into its postscript. There is a Lamb’s book of life to be written; we can all get into that divine enrolment.
The friends of childhood.—But these names do no stand here merely because they represent good men and women. They are also pledges of immortal friendships. This is a dull chapter to many because they do not know how to translate it. The friends of my childhood, friends on both sides of the ocean, my fellow-workers in the gospel, my beloved in the Lord—these are the faces that look at me out of this chapter, like the portraits which compose the clouds in Raphael’s great picture in Dresden. The Christian friendships immortalised here are only meant to bring back to you the names you love best in the fellowship of Christ.
How a friendship began.—Remember how Paul came to know Timothy at first, and then think of the special providence that has led to your most precious intimacies. Do you notice that there are no glittering generalities in this postscript? “Remember me to all inquiring friends.” No, indeed; Paul is the inquiring friend. He remembers the very things Phœbe and Prisca and Mary and all the rest have done who have bestowed much labour on him and on the brotherhood.
Unknown heroes and heroines.—Do you remember, or did you ever know, in detail all the little things which your own brethren and sisters in this congregation have done?
Helpful friendships.—The helpfulness of Christian friendships—this is our last and best lesson. It is helpfulness in the every-day work of life. There is no helping in church-work or in spiritual culture without taking hold of the work of making a living and of getting on in business. “Assist Phœbe in whatsoever business she hath need of you.” How were they to go about that? The word means law—business. She was engaged in a lawsuit. Immense interests were involved because it had been appealed to the Supreme Court at Rome. And there were saints at Rome in Cæsar’s household. Maybe they were slaves; but there were lawyers in those days of the servile class. They could get the ear of the court; they could do something; they could try to do something. This is what Paul asks: Assist her in her law business. Brethren, help one another in law business if you are ever so unfortunate as to get involved in law business, and in commercial business, and in all sorts of honest business. It may be that Philologus and Julia his wife, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, describe three homes where a little Church used to meet in turn, and that “the brethren with them” are this Church within their houses. But who are “Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobas, Hermes, and the brethren who are with them”? No wife or sister is mentioned to indicate their homes. There is nothing but their bare names. But this clause after their names speaks volumes. I believe the “brethren who are with them” are their workmen or partners in the same business. Perpetuate the Christian brotherhoods which have been sealed in the business combinations for gospel work in Rome, in convents of the deserts and in alpine passes, in soldiers’ bivouacs, in sailors’ forecastles, and in the frugal homes of our ancestors. Never let your warehouses get too big nor your homes too splendid and too frigid for this family life of God’s dear children.
The source of immortal friendships.—And who is Tertius? He has hardly any name. There is a Secundus somewhere else, and a Quartus here. The second, the third, and the fourth—who is the third man, Tertius? Tertius is the amanuensis. He has been in the Lord as well as Paul all through this wonderful composition. Parchment, pen, ink, his own skilful hand, and the heart that is burning within him in the radiance of these sublime truths, are all in the Lord. Now we have found the true source of immortal friendships. It is Christ Himself. Two men who are in the Lord must help one another as the left hand helps the right. They are one divine life.—Rev. Wolcott Calkins, D.D.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 16:6-16
Usefulness of women.—Admitting that the Bible be the word of God, we might have inferred from His wisdom and goodness that no part of it can be useless. But we are expressly assured that “all Scripture is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” Therefore this long postscript, this catalogue of particular salutations, has its uses. It certainly shows us the principle that actuated the first Christians—all men were to know that they were the disciples of Christ by their loving one another. It shows also how mistaken they are who think the New Testament does not sanction private friendship. It also proves how impossible it was to forge this epistle, abounding as it does with so many specific allusions; for these not only render detection possible, but easy. Hence Paley much avails himself of this chapter in his Horœ Paulinæ. Neither is it improper to observe from it the error of Popery: Papists say that Peter was the bishop of Rome. But, had he been there, is it credible for a moment that he would have been overlooked by our apostle? The probability indeed is that he never was there. There is no evidence of it in the Scripture; and we know for what purposes of delusion it has been pretended—the Roman succession of bishops from him. But who can help observing how many females are mentioned here? Phœbe, Priscilla, Mary, Junia, Tryphena, Tryphosa, Persis, the mother of Rufus, Julia, the sister of Nereus. All these, with the exception of two, are not only mentioned, but commended; and these two would not have been saluted by name unless they had been persons of religious excellence, for Paul valued no other qualities compared with this. But all the rest of these worthies have ascribed to them some attainments or service “in the Lord.” Let not, therefore, females suppose that they are cut off from usefulness in the cause of Christ. The most eminent servants of God have acknowledged their obligations to them, and ascribed no little of their success to their care and kindness. Servants have blessed God for pious mistresses. Children have been prepared for the preaching of the word and the devotion of the sanctuary by the earlier but important efforts of a mother. How much does even the religious public owe to the mothers of Newton and Cecil, and a thousand more, from whom the Churches have derived such able ministers! To Hannah we owe a Samuel; and to Lois and Eunice, his mother and grandmother, we owe a Timothy. They are at home in almsdeeds, like Dorcas, who made garments for the poor; and are peculiarly adapted to visit the sick and the afflicted. The wife may win the irreligious husband without the word, and fan his devotion and give speed to his zeal when he is in the way everlasting. Who would keep them from those public meetings where feelings are to be excited which they will be sure to carry away and improve at home? In a word, women have the finest heads, and hearts, and hands, and tongues for usefulness in the world. Who does not wish to see them always under a religious principle? Who would not have them, appropriately, more encouraged and employed as workers together with the servants of Christ? “Help,” therefore says the apostle, “those women that laboured with me in the gospel, whose names are in the book of life.”—W. Jay.
The influence of a good woman.—That was a strange influence which Beatrice exercised over the great poet Dante, which not only moulded and affected his actions, but which entered into the spirit of his poetry, directed his thoughts, and gave the inspiration of his genius. Beatrice became to Dante the symbol of pure and holy things. “Death itself disappeared before the mighty love that was kindled in the heart of the poet: it transformed, it purified all things.” And then, when Beatrice died, his love became resigned, submissive; death sanctified it instead of converting it into remorse. The love of Dante destroyed nothing; it fertilised all, it gave a giantlike force to the sentiment of duty. The poet said: “Whenever and wherever she appeared to me, I no longer felt that I had an enemy in the world; such a flame of charity was kindled in my heart, causing me to forgive every one that had offended me.” The death of Beatrice imposed fresh duties upon him. That which he felt he had then to do was to render himself more worthy of her; he resolved to keep his love for her to the last day of his life, and bestow upon her an immortality upon earth. In his love for the beautiful, in his striving after upward purity, Beatrice was the nurse of his understanding, the angel of his soul, the consoling spirit which sustained him in poverty and in exile, in a cheerless, wandering, and sorrowful existence. La Vita Nuova, a little book which Dante wrote probably at the age of twenty-eight, in which he relates, both in prose and verse, the emotions of his love for Beatrice, is an inimitable little book of gentleness, purity, delicacy, of sweet and sad thoughts, loving as the note of the dove, ethereal as the perfume of flowers; and that pen, which in later years resembled a sword in the hand of Dante, here delineates their aspect, as Raphael might have done with his pencil. There are pages—those, for example, where is related the dream of Beatrice—the prose of which is a finished model of language and style far beyond the best style of Boccaccio.
A picture of the primitive Church.—“Here is,” says Gaussen, “a picture to the life of a primitive Church; we can see to what height the most ignorant and weak of its members can rise.… We wonder at the progress already made by the word of God solely through the labours of travellers, artisans, merchants, women, slaves, and freedmen, who resided in Rome.” Not only did the apostle know a large number of these workers, because he had been connected with them in the East (Andronicus and Junias, Rufus and his mother, for example), or because be had converted them himself (Aquila and Priscilla); but he also received news from Rome, as is proved by the intimate details into which he entered in chap. 14; and he might thus know of the labours of many of those saluted, whom he did not know personally. Such is probably the case with the last persons designated, and to whose names he adds no description. The Greek origin of the most of these names constitutes no objection to the Roman domicile of those who bear them. What matters it to us that, as M. Renan says, after Father Garucci, the names in Jewish inscriptions at Rome are mostly of Latin origin? If there be any room for surprise, five or six Latin names would perhaps be more astonishing at Ephesus than fifteen or sixteen Greek names at Rome. Have we not proved over and over that this Church was recruited much more largely from Gentiles than from Jews, and that especially it was founded by missionaries who had come from Syria, Asia, and Greece? M. Reuss no doubt asks what became of all those friends of Paul, when, some years later, he wrote from Rome his Epistles to the Colossians and Philippians; and later still, the Second to Timothy. But in writing from Rome to the Churches of Colosse and Philippi, he could only send salutations from individuals who knew them. And a little before the Second to Timothy there occurred the persecution of Nero, which had for the time dispersed and almost annihilated the Church of Rome. Our conclusion, therefore, is not only that this passage of salutations may have been written to the Church of Rome, but that it could not have been addressed to any other more suitably. As at the present day Paris, or even Rome, is a sort of rendezvous for numerous foreign Christians of both sexes, who go thither to found evangelistic works, so the great pagan Rome attracted at that time the religious attention and zeal of all the Christians of the East. Let us remark, in closing, the exquisite delicacy and courtesy which guide the apostle in those distinguishing epithets with which he accompanies the names of the servants or handmaids of Christ whom he mentions. Each of those descriptive titles is as it were the rough draft of the new name which those persons shall bear in glory. Thus understood, this enumeration is no longer a dry nomenclature; it resembles a bouquet of newly blown flowers which diffuse refreshing odours.—Godet.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 16
Romans 16:8. The tomb of Amplias.—The archœological researches in Rome of recent years have thrown much light upon the life of the early Christians in that city; but no discovery has produced such interest as that announced of the tomb of Amplias. Says Paul in Romans 16:8: “Greet Amplias, my beloved in the Lord.” Who was Amplias? Who were his friends? Why was he buried in this particular place? The answers to these questions are all furnished by the discovery of his tomb; and a flood of light is let in upon the times of the early Roman Christians. His tomb stands in one of the catacombs excavated in the time of Domitian, on the ground then belonging to Flavia Domitilla, his niece. Roman history preserves the fact that Flavia became a Christian. Amplias, the friend of Paul, must have been a distinguished man. Because he was buried in Flavia’s cemetery we judge they were personally acquainted. By Paul’s greeting we imagine he was a minister of the New World. Then the tomb is of such a character that only the possessor of great wealth could have constructed so remarkable a resting-place. Was this the work of Flavia, niece of the great Domitian? Was it erected at the cost of his family, or by the early Christians of Rome? These questions may not be answered, for the investigations are not yet concluded. All that we know at present is that there is no tomb in the catacombs that equals it for the beauty of its adornments and the variety of pictorial illustrations. The frescoes in the Golden House of Nero, and the adornments of the house of Germanicus in the Palatine, are not to be compared, so it is reported, with the symbolic illustrations of the tomb of Amplias, the teacher of Flavia, the beloved of Paul.—Christian Commonwealth.
Romans 16:12. Lord Shaftesbury’s tribute to a humble woman.—Very tender was Lord Shaftesbury’s reference on one occasion to the kind heart which led him to Christ. He was for a time, at an early period of his life, left solely in charge of an old Scottish nurse. This humble woman took infinite pains to teach him the story of Christ’s love, and with such success that the great earl confessed, “All that I am to-day, and all that I have done, I owe, under God, to that good woman’s influence.”