A BLESSED WISH

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Greet Priscilla and Aquila and the household of Onesiphorus. Erastus stayed in Corinth, and I left Trophimus sick in Miletus.

Eubulus greets you, and so do Pudens, Linus, Claudia and all the brothers and sisters.

The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you all.

2 Timothy 4:19-20, 21b-22

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

In today’s final message from 2 Timothy, we find the Apostle Paul mentioning common acquaintances before ending his letter with a blessed wish that we should hold for all people. Let’s look again at these closing verses of chapter 4:

Greet Priscilla and Aquila and the household of Onesiphorus. Erastus stayed in Corinth, and I left Trophimus sick in Miletus.

Eubulus greets you, and so do Pudens, Linus, Claudia and all the brothers and sisters.

The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you all. Vv. 19-20, 21b-22

First, we find the imprisoned Paul asking Timothy to extend greetings to some of his brothers and sisters in Christ who lived in Ephesus where Timothy pastored. They included:

1. Priscilla and Aquila.

We first meet this couple in chapter 18 of the Book of Acts:

After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. Vv. 1-3

Here we find how Aquila and Priscilla had provided Paul as place to stay during his time in Corinth while on his second missionary journey. All three shared a common love for the Lord as well as the trade of tent making. And in his letter to the Romans, Paul identified the couple as his “co-workers in Christ” (16:3).

When Paul departed Corinth, the scriptures tell us that Aquila and Pricilla accompanied him as far as Ephesus where they remained while he continued on his missionary journey. As we see in this letter, the couple still lived in Ephesus and Paul desired that Timothy tell them that they were in his thoughts.

2. The household of Onesiphorus.

The only place we find Onesiphorus mentioned in the Bible is within this second letter to Timothy. In chapter 1, we learn a little more about why Paul held Onesiphorus and his household in esteem. There Paul shares that they “refreshed” him and were “unafraid of” his chains. Like Aquila and Priscilla, Paul wanted Onesiphorus to know he hadn’t remembered the love and care they showed him in Ephesus.

Paul then goes on to update Timothy on the status of a couple of Christians. They included:

1. Erastus.

In Acts 19, verse 22, we learn that Paul had sent Timothy and Erastus on mission to Macedonia. With this, we know they had been a Gospel ministry team and therefore would have developed a close relationship with one another. Paul wanted Timothy to know that Erastus was currently in Corinth.

2. Trophimus.

In Acts, chapter 20, we learn this about the relationship between Paul, Timothy, and Trophimus:

When the uproar had ended, Paul sent for the disciples and, after encouraging them, said goodbye and set out for Macedonia. He traveled through that area, speaking many words of encouragement to the people, and finally arrived in Greece, where he stayed three months. Because some Jews had plotted against him just as he was about to sail for Syria, he decided to go back through Macedonia. He was accompanied by Sopater son of Pyrrhus from Berea, Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica, Gaius from Derbe, Timothy also, and Tychicus and Trophimus from the province of Asia. These men went on ahead and waited for us at Troas. But we sailed from Philippi after the Festival of Unleavened Bread, and five days later joined the others at Troas, where we stayed seven days. Vv. 1-6

We know that Trophimus was “from the province of Asia” when he joined Paul’s missionary team which also included Timothy. They spent at least a week together in Troas, a coastal city in Asia. We know that Trophimus must have continued to be a part of Paul’s ministry group because Paul was aware of his whereabouts, telling Timothy that the last he knew was that Trophimus was sick in Miletus, the ancient capital city of Ionia. It was a little more than 30 miles south of Ephesus where Timothy was working as pastor.

Paul then shares greetings from people who Timothy knew who were with him in Rome. They included Eubulus, Pudens, Linus, and Claudia as well as “all the brothers and sisters” in Christ who were with Paul. Of interest, these people aren’t mentioned any other time in the Bible but we do know from history that Linus would become a bishop in the church of Rome and is widely seen as one of the first popes.

With all this covered - greeting people in Ephesus, updating Timothy on people he knew in ministry, and sending greetings from Rome – we find Paul close with some special words, words that for a blessed wish he had for his missionary friend and fellow servant of the Gospel. Paul writes:

The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you all.

When the Lord is with our spirit, when He sends His Holy Spirit to be the spirit within us, then we experience and enjoy the true fullness and appreciation of life itself. We are fulfilled and satisfied, seeing and feeling ourselves as being blessed in abundance by the Giver of every good and perfect gift from above (James 1:17).

One of those gifts we realize is the amazing gift of grace, a grace that reminds us of how God provided us salvation, the greatest gift ever, but at the expense of Jesus, His Son who purchased our ransom with His own life, with His body and blood.

Paul wishes this grace to be with Timothy and all his brothers and sisters in the Ephesian church. It was a common blessed wish we find him send to other Christian churches he wrote to like:

- The Christian believers in Rome (Romans 16:20) and the Hebrews (Hebrews 13:25)

- The Christian church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 16:23, 2 Corinthians 13:14)

- The Christians in Galatia (Galatians 6:18), Philippi (Philippians 4:23), Colossae (Colossians 4:18), and Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 5:28, 2 Thessalonians 3:18)

Paul also wished grace to be upon individuals he wrote to such as Titus (Titus 3:15), Philemon (Philemon 1:25), and of course, Timothy himself.

As we correspond with people in our own lives today, I think it would be prudent to incorporate Paul’s words into our final thoughts directed towards others. Let us be intentional in sharing his same blessed wish with others, asking for the Lord to be with their spirit and for His grace to be upon them. In doing so, we will be invoking the power of One greater than us to do more for those we love than we could ever do.

Or in other words, we would commit people to the Lord and to His provision and providence, trusting that they couldn’t be in any better hands than His.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com