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Quartus, “A Brother” (Romans 16:23)
The Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (IVP) contains an excellent article by E. E. Ellis on “Paul and His Coworkers” in which he names thirty-six people who were associated with Paul in his ministry. Of course, there were many unnamed believers who worked alongside Paul, but even some who are named are a mystery to us, and one of them is “our brother Quartus” (Rom. 16:23). His name is last on a list of eight believers in Corinth who sent greetings to the saints in Rome (Rom. 16:21–23). Quartus did not have the stature of Timothy or the secretarial ability of Tertius, to whom Paul dictated the letter, nor did he hold any prominent civic office like Erastus. But he was a member of the family of God and wanted to send his love to Paul’s friends (16:1–16) and to all the saints who would hear the epistle read to the congregations in Rome.
In his sermon “Quartus, A Brother” (Week-Day Evening Addresses), Alexander Maclaren brings out some practical truths that should be considered by believers today:
He is only a good, simple, unknown Christian. He feels a spring of love open in his heart to these brethren far across the sea, whom he never met. He would like them to know that he thought lovingly of them, and to be lovingly thought of by them. So he begs a little corner in Paul’s letter, and gets it…. The first thing that strikes me in connection with these words is, how deep and real they show that new bond of Christian love to have been.
p. 125
It is impossible for us to throw ourselves completely back to the condition of things which the Gospel found…. Great gulfs of national hatred, of fierce enmities of race, language and religion; wide separations of social conditions, far profounder than anything of the sort which we know, split mankind into fragments. On the one side was the freeman, on the other, the slave; on the one side, the Gentile, on the other, the Jew; on the one side, the insolence and hard-handedness of Roman rule, on the other, the impotent, and, therefore, envenomed hatred of conquered peoples…. Into this hideous condition of things the Gospel comes, and silently flings its clasping tendrils over the wide gaps, and binds the crumbling structure of human society with a new bond, real and living.… “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).
pp. 126, 128
As if he had said, “Never mind telling them anything about what I am, what place I hold, or what I do. Tell them I am a brother, that will be enough. It is the only name by which I care to be known; it is the name which explains my love to them.”
p. 129
Another remark is, how strangely and unwittingly this good man has got himself an immortality by that passing thought of his. One loving message has won for him the prize for which men have joyfully given life itself—an eternal place in history. Wherever the Gospel is preached there also shall this be told as a memorial of him…. And how much ashamed some of the other people in the New Testament would have been if they had known that their passing faults—the quarrel of Euodia and Syntyche for instance—were to be gibbetted forever in the same fashion! … Let us live so that each act if recorded would shine with some modest ray of true light like brother Quartus’ greeting.
pp. 130–31
Queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10:1–13)
The first thing that is told us concerning the Queen of Sheba is this, that she had heard in Sheba concerning the Name of the Lord…. For the Name of the Lord is “The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” … The Queen of Sheba had lords many and gods many of her own…. But there was no name of any god given in Sheba that took such hold of the Queen of Sheba’s heart as did the Name of the Lord God of Israel.
AW-BC, pp. 292–93
Alexander Whyte imagines the Queen of Sheba riding back to her land and carrying a copy of the prayer Solomon prayed at the dedication of the temple, especially 1 Kings 8:42–43. This is the promise to “foreigners” that Jehovah would hear their prayers if they prayed toward the temple. He suggests that the queen was truly converted to faith in the God of Israel (pp. 296–97). Centuries later, another Ethiopian, a high official, was riding home in his chariot, reading the prophet Isaiah, and Philip the evangelist led him to faith in Christ (Acts 8:26–40).
Jesus pointed to the Queen of Sheba as a witness against the generation of Israelites in his day, for she traveled a long way to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and here was the Son of God—a “greater than Solomon”—in their very midst (Matt. 12:42). Jesus is greater than Solomon, for he is the very Son of God and the King of Kings. He is greater in wealth and wisdom (Col. 2:3), and he is building a greater temple than Solomon built (Eph. 2:19–22).
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