Tag Archives: greetings

PAUL’S HAPPY LETTER…OVER AND OUT – 18a

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“Give my greetings…(“salute”, ie, embrace, wrap in your arms)… to each of God’s holy people—all who belong to Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me send you their greetings. And all the rest of God’s people send you greetings, too, especially those in Caesar’s household. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”

‭‭Philippians‬ ‭4‬:‭21‬-‭23‬ NLT

Finally…after the finally’s that were, in the end, not incidental postscripts after all, Paul has to end his letter.  Despite his great love for the Philippians, his gratitude for their partnership, his confidence in their faithfulness…and the snippets of counsel, encouragement, and teaching he passed on to them, he had to say goodbye and, possibly, for the last time. He knew that his days on earth were coming to an end in Nero’s clutches. 

In true Pauline fashion, he sent greetings from far and wide…not only from him to them, not only from those with him to them, but also from and to everyone he classified as “God’s holy people”. Everyone under the banner of “believer in Jesus”, whether the Philippians knew them or not, was “with him”. 

Paul sent to each of them, all included, not just a friendly “hello“ but a warm embrace, enfolding each one as totally loved and accepted…and he asked them to do the same. 

Why is this important for us to know as well? “God’s holy people”is a bold classification. Everyone who has been born of the Spirit…transferred into the kingdom of God…washed in the blood of the lamb…and become a citizen of the “age to come”…belongs to the unique, worldwide group of people Paul called “Gods holy people”. 

This special category of men and women stretches around the world and across every generation from the beginning of time…a supernaturally chosen, redeemed, and perfected family of God…recreated in the image of Jesus…saved by grace… separated from sin to God…highly favoured…deeply loved…and eternally blessed. 

No matter what the world thought of them…no matter how the Roman government treated them…no matter how much the  religious Jews hated them, persecuted them, cancelled them…they belonged to God. In those three little words, “God’s holy people”, Paul encapsulated their status and standing before God, their eternal security despite temporary peril, their destiny in Christ, and all the resources of heaven at their disposal to reach their heavenly goal. 

Paul’s greetings to and from the whole family of God was like the wrapping paper around a very valuable gift. Within the parcel was God’s treasure…His people…the ones in whom He had invested His very best…His own Son. These are the ones He delights in, watches over, cares for, protects ands provides for…and shapes through careful discipline…for an eternity with Him. 

They were God’s children. Paul loved them, prayed for them, taught them, carried them on his heart…and wrapped them in a parcel of greetings to be received by those to whom he wrote. Now he entreats them to do the same. “Greet them…wrap them all up in your love and acceptance.”

Paul’s final prayer…

“May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”

…is more than a general wish. It’s a world of prayer in itself. “Grace”…all that we are and will ever be…all that we ever receive from God…all the promises we ever hope for…all our dreams and desires…flows from one source…God’s grace that comes to us through Jesus…His unmerited, undeserved, unearned, without a cause, “just because He is who He is” favour. 

…and so, we join with those who gladly received Paul’s ministry by reading, believing, and following his instructions with teachable and obedient hearts. 

Thank you, Paul, for the legacy  you left for us as well. 

To be concluded

FINALLY . . .

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FINALLY . . .

Our dear friend Luke the doctor, and Demas, send greetings. Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church at her house. After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn, read the letter from Laodicea. Tell Archippus: ‘See to it that you complete the ministry you have received in the Lord.’

I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you (Col. 4:14-18).

Two more names appear in Paul’s list of greetings that are of interest to us. Luke, the doctor and author of Acts, was often Paul’s travelling companion but he seemed to come and go. There were times in his narrative of Paul’s travels that he speaks of ‘we’ as though he were with Paul. Did he travel with him as his personal physician or as a dear friend? We don’t know. Perhaps both. He was a familiar figure who brought comfort to Paul especially in his imprisonment.

The other name is that of Demas. Why is he familiar to us? Because of Paul’s chilling words to Timothy from his final imprisonment in Rome:

Do your best to come to me quickly, for Demas, because he has loved this world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica (2 Tim. 4: 9).

In the previous verses, Paul spoke of John Mark who had been a deserter but had returned and had become helpful to him (Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry (2 Timothy 4: 11). Demas was also a deserter but there is no record of his ever returning. John Mark, “the disappointment” had become John Mark “the helpful”. Demas, once helpful, was now useless because he had chosen the world.

‘Demas . . . he has loved this world’, five little words but the implications are huge. What is the problem with loving the world? God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.

Demas loved the world too, but there was something sinister in Paul’s lament because it was an expression of sorrow for his desertion to the world, not of commendation for his ministry to the world.

Apostle John was aware of the danger of loving the world in the way that Demas loved the world.

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For everything in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever (1 John 2:15-17).

Loving the world as Demas did, implies identifying with the evil world system and fully participating in all of its evil ways. To love the world in this way is to negate what Jesus did for us through His death.

He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves (Col. 1: 13).

According to Jesus, we are in the world but not of the world. We still live in the world but we are not part of its rebellious attitudes and activities. We are here for a different reason. As Jesus was in the world, so are we – representing the Father and calling His lost sons and daughters to come home.

If we love the world as Demas loved the world, we have lost our perspective. The problem with the world as it is now is that it is transient and so are our earthly lives. The world will not remain forever in its present state. Everything in it that is contrary to God’s perfect will is destined to be destroyed by fire. Those who are of the world, participating in its rebellion and enjoying its sin, will go with it into eternal judgment.

Thus, Paul’s grief was very real because he knew the implications of Demas’s desertion. He has stepped backwards from eternal life to eternal death and there was no going back.

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace (Heb. 6: 3-6).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Finally . . .

Bible Study, ,

FINALLY . . .

Our dear friend, Luke the doctor, and Demas, send greetings. Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church at her house. After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn, read the letter from Laodicea. Tell Archippus: ‘See to it that you complete the ministry you have received in the Lord.’

I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you (Col. 4:14-18).

Two more names appear in Paul’s list of greetings that are of interest to us. Luke, the doctor was often Paul’s travelling companion but he seemed to come and go. There were times in his narrative of Paul’s travels that he speaks of ‘we’ as though he were with Paul. Did he travel with him as his personal physician or as a dear friend? We don’t know. Perhaps both. He was a familiar figure who brought comfort to Paul especially in his imprisonment.

The other name is that of Demas. Why is he familiar to us? Because of Paul’s chilling words to Timothy from his final imprisonment in Rome:

Do your best to come to me quickly, for Demas, because he has loved this world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica (2 Tim. 4: 9).

In the previous verses, Paul spoke of John Mark who had been a deserter but had returned and had become helpful to him (Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry (2 Timothy 4: 11). Demas was also a deserter but there is no record of his ever returning. John Mark, the disappointment had become John Mark the helpful. Demas, once helpful, was now useless because he had chosen the world.

‘Demas . . . he has loved this world’, five little words but the implications are huge. What is the problem with loving the world? God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.

Demas loved the world too, but there was something sinister in Paul’s lament because it was an expression of sorrow for his desertion to the world, not of commendation for his ministry to the world.

Apostle John was aware of the danger of loving the world in the way that Demas loved the world.

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For everything in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever (1 John 2:15-17).

Loving the world as Demas did, implies identifying with the evil world system and fully participating in all of its evil ways. To love the world in this way is to negate what Jesus did for us through His death.

He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves (Col. 1: 13).

According to Jesus, we are in the world but not of the world. We still live in the world but we are not part of its rebellious attitudes and activities. We are here for a different reason. As Jesus was in the world, so are we – representing the Father and calling His lost sons and daughters to come home.

If we love the world as Demas loved the world, we have lost our perspective. The problem with the world as it is now is that it is transient and so are our earthly lives. The world will not remain forever in its present state. Everything in it that is contrary to God’s perfect will is destined to be destroyed by fire. Those who are of the world, participating in its rebellion and enjoying its sin, will go with it into eternal judgment.

Thus Paul’s grief was very real because he knew the implications of Demas’s desertion. He has stepped backwards from eternal life to eternal death and there was no going back.

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace (Heb. 6: 3-6).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

A Postscript

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 A POSTSCRIPT

“I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon 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 may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me.” Romans 16:1, 2.

Chapter 15 ends with a greeting as though it were the end of the letter. Chapter 16 adds personal details that show Paul’s intimate connection with the Roman church (probably made up of many small house churches), even though the church was not founded by him. It also gives a glimpse of the interconnection between the churches though they were scattered far and wide across the empire.

He also shows us how closely he was allied to the yoke of his Master. Jesus honoured and respected women. He treated them with the same dignity that He treated men. Women were not inferior beings, nor were they second-class citizens, unreliable and at men’s disposal to be at their beck and call. From Jesus’ perspective, women were the crown of His creation, and to be treasured like fragile and delicate bone china.

Phoebe had a servant heart. She was a “deacon” in the church from which she came, not necessarily as an office but as a function. She must have been visiting Rome for some or other reason. It fell to Paul, who knew her and knew the value she was to her local church, to commend her to the Roman congregations so that she would have a home base while she was in their city.

“Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus. They risked their lives for me. Not only I but all the Gentiles are grateful to them. Greet also the church that meets at their house…” Romans 16:3-5.

This is a puzzling verse. Priscilla and Aquila, a Jewish Christian couple, had been expelled from Rome, along with all the Jews in Rome during the reign of the Emperor Claudius. They moved to Corinth where Paul met them and stayed with them, working together with them as tentmakers, and preaching every Sabbath in the synagogue (Acts 18:2-4).

At some point, they moved to Ephesus where they met Apollos, a Jewish believer from Alexandria who knew only the baptism of John and whom they instructed more fully in the Scriptures. Apollos became a powerful teacher and ally of Paul in Ephesus

Why were they back in Rome and apparently resident there again? Was it possible that many of the Jews, Priscilla and Aquila included, returned to their old home after Claudius’ death? When Paul reached Rome under Roman guard, he preached to many Jews who came to his home where he was under house arrest (Acts 28:17, 23).

Priscilla and Aquila led a group of believers who met in their home. Paul was eager to pass on his greetings to them because they had meant a great deal to him in his travels and ministry in Europe. Priscilla appears to have been the more prominent of the two since her name is consistently mentioned first.

“…Greet my dear friend Epenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia.” Romans 16:5b.

What a network of friends and colleagues Paul had across the whole empire, not just converts but dear personal friends whom he remembered with great affection! Probably because the church had become an offence to both Jews and Gentiles, and many superstitions had grown up around this “secret society” including the accusation of cannibalism because of their celebration of the Lord’s death, the believers were isolated and stuck together, doing life together and connecting with each other as they moved around the empire.

They had a “social network” of personal interaction, not on the World Wide Web but of hospitality and letters and messages passed from one to the other to keep them connected and their faith alive as they supported and encouraged one another in a hostile environment. We can learn a great deal from the early church about the meaning of fellowship.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.