Colossians 4:12-13 — Epaphras Prays

LINDA BROWN: Why does prayer have to be a fight? That is the question I think a real person has before anybody explains a word of this. A man is on his knees for a church, and Paul describes it like a wrestling match, like somebody straining in an arena with sweat in his eyes... and I want to know who he is wrestling. Because if it is God, that sounds like God needs convincing. And if it is not God, then who is on the other side of the mat?

FRANK EDWARDS: Who is on the other side of the mat. That is a better question than most commentaries ask, and it is where we are going today. Welcome to Dig Deeper, everyone, glad you are with us. We are in Colossians chapter four, verses twelve and thirteen, two sentences about one man, Epaphras, and the way he prays.

LINDA BROWN: Two sentences about a man most people cannot pronounce. And I mean that as a real objection, not a joke... we are near the end of a letter, Paul is signing off, saying hello from the people in the room. Why does a greeting get an episode?

FRANK EDWARDS: Because Paul does not just say hello from him. He tells them what Epaphras is doing with his life right now, and he swears to it. Let me read it, and then you will hear why. "Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends you greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, so that you may stand mature and fully assured in the full will of God. For I testify about him that he goes to great pains for you and for those at Laodicea and Hierapolis."

LINDA BROWN: "I testify." That is the word I trip on. Paul is not passing along a greeting, he is taking the stand, like somebody has to vouch for this... as if the Colossians might not believe that anyone was praying for them that hard.

FRANK EDWARDS: Paul takes the stand because the Colossians cannot see it. Epaphras is in Rome with him, hundreds of miles from home, and prayer is the one kind of work that leaves no evidence at the site. Nobody in Colossae watches him do it. So Paul becomes the witness. And the word he uses for what he witnesses, we spent real time on it back on day six, agōnizomai, the athlete's word, the strain of a competitor in the contest. I will not re-teach it. But I want you to notice what Paul does with it here that he did not do there, because there it described his own ministry, and here he hands the same word to another man and says, this is what he does for you, always. Not in a crisis. Always. The habit of his life is exertion on behalf of people who are not in the room.

FRANK EDWARDS: And then he tells us what all that exertion is for. This is where the passage turns, in my reading. Epaphras is not wrestling for their safety. He is not wrestling for the false teachers to leave town, or for the church to grow, or for anyone to be healed. He is straining "so that you may stand mature and fully assured in the full will of God." That is the summit of the prayer. Their assurance.

LINDA BROWN: Their assurance sounds soft to me, honestly. If a friend of mine is drowning in a bad job and a shaky marriage and I find out someone has been sweating in prayer that they would feel... confident? I would want more than that. Fix the job. Fix the marriage. Feeling sure of yourself is not the thing I would put at the top of the list.

FRANK EDWARDS: Feeling sure of yourself is not what the word means, and this is exactly the misreading worth clearing away. The Greek behind "fully assured" is plērophoreō. It is a picture word. It describes a ship carried along by a wind that fills every sail, or a vessel filled right to the brim, no empty space left. Paul uses it in Romans four of Abraham, who was fully persuaded that God was able to do what he had promised... and he uses it earlier in this very letter, chapter two, praying these same believers into the full riches of complete understanding. So what is Epaphras asking for? Not that they would feel good about themselves. That they would be so filled with the certainty of what God has done for them in Christ that there is no room left in the vessel for doubt to rattle around. Weighted confidence. Settled to the bone. And notice it sits next to the word "mature," because in Paul's mind a mature believer is not someone who has outgrown the gospel. It is someone who has sunk deeper into it, until the ground under their feet stops moving.

LINDA BROWN: A boat so full there is nowhere for the doubt to slosh. That is a different thing than confidence. Confidence is me pumping myself up. This is me being filled with something from outside.

FRANK EDWARDS: Filled from outside, yes, and the boat keeps going. Think about what was pressing on these people. The teaching that had come into Colossae did not deny Christ. It offered extras. Christ plus a philosophy, Christ plus angel worship, Christ plus a diet and a calendar. Every one of those pitches works on a person who has a little empty space in the hold, a little uncertainty that whispers, maybe there is more I need. A ship loaded to the waterline cannot take on more cargo. It has no room. That is why the prayer for their assurance is not soft at all. It is the most strategic prayer a man could pray for a church being sold add-ons. Fill them so full of Christ that nothing else fits.

LINDA BROWN: Now the harder question, and it is the one I opened with. If the goal is God filling them, why does Epaphras have to wrestle for it? God wants to give this, you just said so. Why would getting a good gift from a willing Father look like a fight?

FRANK EDWARDS: Because the wrestling was never against God. That is the assumption to put down. Look at who else Scripture describes this way. Paul, in Romans fifteen, asks the believers to "strive together with me in your prayers," the same agony word. In Galatians four he says he is in labor, birth pains, until Christ is formed in his readers. Samuel tells Israel, "Far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you," so refusing to intercede is treated as sin. And Moses, after the golden calf, stands before God and says, forgive them... and if not, blot me out of your book. None of those men are fighting God. What they are fighting is everything in themselves and in the world that would let go. Distance. Fatigue. The temptation to shrug. The false teachers still pressing in while you pray. Wrestling in prayer is what it costs to keep holding people up when every natural force wants your arms to drop. The Father is not the opponent. The Father is the one you are carrying them toward.

FRANK EDWARDS: And the geography sharpens it. Epaphras is praying for three cities, and remember from earlier in the series what kind of cities they were. Laodicea was a banking center, so wealthy that when an earthquake leveled it, the city refused Rome's relief money and rebuilt itself. Hierapolis drew crowds to its hot springs. Prosperous, self-sufficient places, the exact soil where faith grows comfortable and starts to drift without anyone noticing. Praying for people in that soil is not a gentle murmur. You are praying against a current.

LINDA BROWN: Praying against a current for people who think they are fine. I know what that costs, because there is a name in my head right now, someone at church, and my whole body tightens a little when I see them in the parking lot. I have not prayed for that person in a long time. And "one of you" makes it worse, because Epaphras is not praying for strangers, he is praying for his own people. He knows their faults.

FRANK EDWARDS: His own people is the pointed part, you are right. Familiarity breeds the shrug. It is easier to labor in prayer for a missionary you have never met than for the person three rows back who said the thing about you last spring. You know too much about them. Some of them have hurt you. And Paul slides in this little detail, "one of you," as if to say, the hardest intercession is for the people you already know, and that is exactly what this man was doing from a rented room in Rome. So when that name comes up in the parking lot, the passage does not leave you a polite nod and a fast exit. It leaves you a man who kept wrestling for a hometown that could not see him doing it.

LINDA BROWN: That sounds exhausting, though, and I want to be honest about that rather than nod along. Three cities. Always. Great pains. If my friend's standing in the faith depends on how hard I pray, then the day I run out of steam, they fall. I do not have Epaphras in me. Some weeks I barely have five minutes.

FRANK EDWARDS: Their standing does not rest on your knees, and the passage itself tells you why, if you follow the thread one step further. Behind Epaphras stands a greater Intercessor. Hebrews seven says Christ "always lives to intercede" for those who come to God through him. Hear the difference. Epaphras wrestles for a season. He gets tired, he travels, one day he dies. Jesus intercedes without pause and without failure, and he is doing it now, this afternoon, for you. The prayers of a servant falter. The prayers of the Son never do. [short pause] And think about who is praying. The one who was himself plērophoreō, fully persuaded of the Father, in Gethsemane, with sweat like drops of blood, wrestling in a garden for people who were asleep twenty yards away. The assurance Epaphras is straining to see in the Colossians is an assurance Christ already possessed on their behalf, and then purchased for them. That is why theologians call this the doctrine of Christ's ongoing intercession, his high priestly work. He does not stop praying when we do.

LINDA BROWN: A garden, then, with everyone else asleep. So the whole structure is upside down from how I pictured it. I thought Epaphras was holding the church up, and Paul is saying Christ is holding all of them, Epaphras included, and Epaphras is just... joining in.

FRANK EDWARDS: Joining in is exactly the phrase. Which brings us back to your question at the top, who is on the other side of the mat. The answer is that the mat is not between Epaphras and God. It is Epaphras alongside Christ, straining in the same direction his Lord is already straining, for the same people. Alexander Maclaren, writing over a century ago, put it this way: "Epaphras is for us the type of the highest service which love can render." The highest service. Not preaching, not planting the church, though he did that too. Praying, unseen, for people who could not thank him. Love at its truest sweats, and it sweats where nobody is watching, because that is where Christ's own love does its work.

LINDA BROWN: Which forces the next thing, and it is uncomfortable in a good way. If this is what love looks like from the inside, then somebody is probably doing it for me right now. Somebody I have not thanked. Somebody who has carried my name to God for months while I assumed I was managing on my own.

FRANK EDWARDS: Somebody almost certainly is. That is the quiet claim under this passage. Behind every believer who stands firm there has nearly always been someone bent over in prayer for them, unthanked and unwitnessed. Your faith is not self-made. It was wrestled for. And here is the one thing I would want you to leave with today: your assurance rests on the finished obedience of the Son, who was fully persuaded of the Father on your behalf and who is praying for you at this moment. Think about that this week, every time the ground feels like it is moving. The ship is full because he filled it.

LINDA BROWN: Then two names. The one that makes you tighten in the parking lot, and the one you suspect has been praying for you. Pray for the first by name before you look away. Thank the second before the week is out. Which of those will be harder for you? Do something with that today.

FRANK EDWARDS: This conversation is part of the Dig Deeper app, and if you are new here you can find Dig Deeper in the app store or the Play Store.