Colossians 4:10-11 — Fellow Workers

FRANK EDWARDS: Paul's pain relief in a Roman prison had a name, and the name belonged to a man who once walked out on him.

LINDA BROWN: That sounds like a stretch, Frank. We are at the end of a letter, the part where he waves at people... this is the greeting list. Nobody underlines the greeting list. But you promised me a wound and a healing in three names, so... welcome to Dig Deeper, everybody, glad you are here, it is Colossians chapter four, verses ten and eleven, and Frank is about to earn that first sentence.

FRANK EDWARDS: The greeting list is where I skip too, most days. Today, though, Paul stops in the middle of it and tells a church he has never met something personal about himself, and I think it is the most tender thing in the letter. Would you read it for us?

LINDA BROWN: My fellow prisoner Aristarchus sends you greetings, as does Mark the cousin of Barnabas. You have already received instructions about him: If he comes to you, welcome him. Jesus, who is called Justus, also sends greetings. These are the only Jews among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God, and they have been a comfort to me.

FRANK EDWARDS: Three names, and Paul puts a label on each one. Start with the first. Aristarchus, "my fellow prisoner." We know this man. He is a Macedonian from Thessalonica, and Luke tells us in Acts nineteen that when the riot broke out in Ephesus, the mob grabbed Aristarchus and dragged him into the theater, because they could not find Paul. Later in Acts twenty-seven he boards the ship with Paul for the voyage to Rome, the one that ends in a shipwreck. So this is a man with a track record of being in the wrong place at the right time, on purpose, next to Paul.

FRANK EDWARDS: And the word Paul chooses for him is synaichmalōtos. It is built from the word for a spear. A captive taken at spear point, a prisoner of war, somebody the enemy marched off the field. Now, was Aristarchus formally under arrest? Most students of this letter think probably not. Paul, as we said back on day one, is under house arrest with a soldier, and anyone who chooses to live under that roof, attend that man, share that guard's suspicion, has in every practical sense given up his freedom too. He can sleep there, eat there, and never go home. Paul looks at that and says, you are in the chains with me. That is what "fellow prisoner" means in this series whenever it comes up. It is the men who chose the cell.

LINDA BROWN: Chose the cell. But a volunteer is not a prisoner, is he? If Aristarchus can walk out the door any morning he likes, then calling him a prisoner is Paul being generous with the word, and honestly a little dramatic.

FRANK EDWARDS: A volunteer who cannot walk out without leaving his friend alone with a Roman soldier is closer to a prisoner than you might think. The door is open, yes. Every day it is open. And every day he does not use it. I actually think that is why Paul reaches for the war word instead of a softer one, because he is not describing a legal status, he is describing a loyalty that has cost the man his life for however many years this lasts. Aristarchus has already been mobbed for Paul and nearly drowned for Paul. Now he is bored for Paul, in a rented room, for a very long time. That kind of steadiness is rarer than heroics. And then comes the second name... and what do you notice Paul does not say about him?

LINDA BROWN: Fellow prisoner, then, is the man who could leave and keeps not leaving. That I can hold. And the second name, Mark... he does not call him anything. No "faithful," no "beloved," just "the cousin of Barnabas," which feels like introducing someone by their more famous relative. Why does Barnabas need to be in this sentence at all?

FRANK EDWARDS: Because Barnabas is the name that broke the friendship. This is John Mark. On the first missionary journey, Acts thirteen, he leaves partway through and goes home. Nobody records why. Then in Acts fifteen, when the second journey is being planned, Barnabas wants to bring him again and Paul refuses, flatly, and Luke says "they separated," a sharp word, and Barnabas takes Mark and sails to Cyprus while Paul takes Silas and goes the other direction. Two apostles, one young man, and a partnership that had planted churches all over Asia Minor is over. So when Paul writes "Mark the cousin of Barnabas," he is putting the name of the man he fought with right next to the name of the man he fought about. And he is using it as a credential. Barnabas was right about the boy. Paul is saying so, in writing, to a church.

FRANK EDWARDS: Then the instruction. "If he comes to you, welcome him." That sounds like courtesy to us. In the Roman world it was a letter of recommendation, and a letter of recommendation was a matter of survival. Travel was dangerous, and a household that took in the wrong stranger could be robbed or shamed or worse, so hospitality ran on trust, and trust ran on a known name vouching for an unknown face. The whole network of the early church moved that way, believers going city to city on the strength of one respected man's word. Paul is spending his own name on Mark. If Mark turns out badly in Colossae, it is Paul's reputation that took the hit. The apostle Mark deserted is now the apostle guaranteeing him.

LINDA BROWN: That still reads to me like Paul being a decent human being a decade later. People fall out, time passes, you let it go. Anybody would write "welcome him." Why is this grace and not just... water under the bridge? Sell me on it.

FRANK EDWARDS: A decade is exactly long enough for a story to travel, and Colossae had heard stories. Paul says "you have already received instructions about him," which tells you Mark's name had come up before, and given how public the Antioch split was, it is very likely the version they knew was the failure. So Paul is not letting something go in private. He is asking a congregation that may have Mark filed under "the one who quit" to open their homes to him, and putting his signature on the request. Water under the bridge does not require a signature. And listen to where it goes. Years after this, in Second Timothy four, an old man writes from another prison, "Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is useful to me in the ministry." The man he once refused to travel with is the man he sends for at the end. That is not a thaw. That is the gospel working on a broken young man slowly, over years, until the deserter is the one you want in the room when you are dying. So let me ask you the question the Colossians had to answer. Who is that word "welcome" for, Mark or the church?

LINDA BROWN: Both, I think. Mark needs a door. The church needs to give up its file on him, and the file is the harder thing to hand over. Here is where it turns for me, though, because the third name gets me. Jesus called Justus. We know nothing about him. He is a name and a nickname. Why does Paul bother?

FRANK EDWARDS: The nickname is the clue. Jesus was a common Jewish name then, our Joshua, and Justus is Latin, the name he answered to among Gentiles. A believer with one foot in each world, faithful in both. And that is what sets up the sentence I think cost Paul the most to write. "These are the only Jews among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God." By this point most of Paul's team is Gentile. His own people, by and large, had not come. You hear the ache in Romans nine, where he says he could wish himself cut off from Christ for the sake of Israel. That is not rhetoric, that is a man grieving his nation. And here in a greeting list the same grief sits in one quiet phrase... only these three. Theologians call this the remnant, the small faithful company God keeps out of Israel when the nation as a whole turns away, and Paul is looking at his remnant. Three faces. But here is what I love. Isaiah forty, God breaks his silence over exiled Israel with "Comfort, comfort my people." Simeon in Luke two is waiting for "the consolation of Israel," which had become a name for the Messiah himself. Paul, chained in Rome, is being consoled by Jews who found that Messiah. The promise made to Israel is arriving in Israel and flowing through Israel to him.

LINDA BROWN: The comfort, then, is coming from the very people he is grieving over. The wound and the medicine have the same address. But "comfort" is such a soft word, Frank. It sounds like a greeting card. Is that all Paul means?

FRANK EDWARDS: Paul does not use his usual word. He has a favorite, paraklēsis, he uses it constantly for encouragement. He passes over it here and picks parēgoria, a word that appears exactly once in the entire New Testament, right here. It is a physician's word. It is what a doctor lays against a wound to dull the pain, the relief that takes the edge off suffering. Our old word "paregoric," a pain-relieving medicine, comes straight from it. So think about what the apostle is admitting. Chained, getting older, watching coworkers drift away, feeling how few of his own people stand with him, and he does not say "I am fine, the Lord is my strength." He borrows the language of the sickbed. He says these men have been my pain relief. Alexander Maclaren put it plainly: "We note, too, that the best comfort Paul could have was help in his work." Not sympathy. Hands. Men who stayed and worked.

LINDA BROWN: A little of that bothers me, honestly. This is the man who says he learned contentment in every circumstance, and now he needs three guys around to take the edge off? Should God not have been enough for him?

FRANK EDWARDS: God was enough for him, and this is how God chose to be enough. That is the doctrine hiding in the greeting. The Lord does not usually comfort his suffering servants by taking the chains off. He comforts them through people. Elijah is told he is not alone, and the proof is seven thousand faces he had not counted. Jonathan walks into the wilderness and strengthens David's hand in God. Second Corinthians one calls the Father "the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles," and Paul names the source there so we do not mistake the channel for the spring. The comfort those three men brought was not warmth they manufactured. It came down from the Father and arrived wearing sandals. The old creeds call this the communion of saints, and it is not a phrase about heaven, it is about a rented room in Rome. God mends his people through his people. So, back to my first line. The pain relief had a name, and one of the three names was Mark. The deserter became the medicine.

LINDA BROWN: [short pause] The part that costs is not being somebody's medicine. That part sounds lovely. The part that costs is "welcome him." There is a name that tightens my stomach when it shows up on a screen, and I suspect the listener has one too, and this passage is asking me to be the Colossians. To stay in the room when that person walks in. To say "good to see you" and mean enough of it to sit down. To not rehearse the old thing out loud one more time. That is a very small obedience and I do not think I can grit my teeth into it.

FRANK EDWARDS: Staying in the room is the exact size of it, and you cannot grit your way there. Paul could not either. He is not a naturally forgiving man, read Acts fifteen, he is the one who refused. What changed him is the thing that changes the Colossians. He was welcomed first, taken in by Christ while he was still hunting Christians, and the Spirit that made room for him in the church is the Spirit making room in him for Mark. The welcome is borrowed before it is given. And there is a quieter half to this. Somebody near you is Aristarchus. The one who covers the shift, answers the question, keeps the place sane, never gets named. Paul refused to let those men go unnamed in a letter the whole church would hear. It seems to me the passage is asking for both, the door and the thank-you, and both of them are ordinary enough to do before dark.

LINDA BROWN: Mark's name is written for the person who feels finished, too. The one who walked away for a season and thinks God has filed them the way the church filed Mark. That name in the greeting list is proof the file got closed.

FRANK EDWARDS: The Christ who restored a deserter and made him a comfort is not finished with anyone. That is the one thing I would want to survive this episode. Parēgoria. The medicine God applied to a hurting apostle was a few faithful people, and one of them had failed him badly. Let that be the thing you keep. Linda, you send us out.

LINDA BROWN: Paul's own words can do it better than mine. "If he comes to you, welcome him." Take that into today.

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