27. His commendation and greetings
‘I think’, wrote Chrysostom, ‘that many even of those who have the appearance of being extremely good men, hasten over this part of the epistle as superfluous . . . Yet’, he went on, ‘the gold founders’ people are careful even about the little fragments . . . it is possible even from bare names to find a great treasure.’ Brunner went further and called Romans 16 ‘one of the most instructive chapters of the New Testament’, because it encourages personal relationships of love in the church. Chrysostom and Brunner are right. Even in the genealogies of both the Old and the New Testaments, and in Paul’s list of those who send or receive greetings, there are truths to ponder and lessons to learn.
1. A commendation (16:1–2)
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae. 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.
It seems very likely that Phoebe was entrusted with the responsible task of carrying Paul’s letter to its destination in Rome, although other business was apparently taking her to the city as well, perhaps commerce or ‘quite probably a law suit’. So she needed a ‘letter of commendation’ to take with her, which would introduce her to the Christians in Rome. Such letters were common in the ancient world, and necessary to protect people from impostors. They are mentioned several times in the New Testament. In his testimonial for Phoebe Paul asks the Roman church both to receive her, giving her a worthy Christian welcome and hospitality, and to give her any help she may need, as a stranger in the capital city, presumably in connection with her other business.
Before and after these requests Paul supplies some information about Phoebe, ‘so placing on each side of the needs of this blessed woman’, writes Chrysostom, ‘her praises’. Indeed, he goes on, ‘see how many ways he takes to give her dignity’. First, he calls her our sister, ‘and it is no slight thing to be called the sister of Paul’. Second, he acknowledges her as a deacon of the church in Cenchreae (1), which was Corinth’s eastern port at the head of the Saronic Gulf. The general meaning of diakonos may be correct here. On the other hand, we know that the office of ‘deacon’ already existed, in however undeveloped a form. Third, she has been the benefactor of many people, including Paul (2). Phoebe was evidently a woman of means, who had used her wealth to support the church and the apostle.
2. Many greetings (16:3–16)
Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus. They risked their lives for me. Not only I but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them.
Greet also the church that meets at their house.
Greet my dear friend Epenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia.
Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you.
Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.
Greet Ampliatus, my dear friend in the Lord.
Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and my dear friend Stachys.
Greet Apelles, whose fidelity to Christ has stood the test.
Greet those who belong to the household of Aristobulus.
Greet Herodion, my fellow Jew.
Greet those in the household of Narcissus who are in the Lord.
Greet Tryphena and Tryphosa, those women who work hard in the Lord.
Greet my dear friend Persis, another woman who has worked very hard in the Lord.
Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother, who has been a mother to me, too.
Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas and the other brothers and sisters with them.
Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas and all the Lord’s people who are with them.
Greet one another with a holy kiss.
All the churches of Christ send greetings.
Thus Paul sends greetings to twenty-six individuals, twenty-four of whom he names, adding in most cases an appreciative personal reference. Scholars have naturally wondered how the apostle could know so many people so well in a church he had never visited. Some have therefore developed the theory that these greetings were really sent to Ephesus, not Rome. For Paul had stayed three years in Ephesus and knew it well. Further, his first greeting was sent to Priscilla and Aquila (3), who had accompanied him to Ephesus, and his second to Epenetus, whom he describes as the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia (5), Ephesus being the provincial capital. On the other hand, there is no manuscript evidence that these greetings were ever detached from their place in Romans; the names fit Rome better than Ephesus; and if Paul had sent this list of greetings to Ephesus, it would have been too short rather than too long.
As for the question how Paul could have known so many Roman Christians, travel was more frequent in those days than many realize. Aquila and Priscilla are a case in point. New Testament references to them tell us that Aquila came from Pontus on the southern shore of the Black Sea, that he and Priscilla lived in Italy until the Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome in ad 49, that they then moved to Corinth where Paul met them and stayed with them, and that they travelled with him to Ephesus, which is perhaps where they risked their lives for him (4). It is not in the least unlikely that after Claudius’s death in ad 54 they returned to Rome, which is where they received Paul’s greeting. Perhaps a number of other Jewish and Jewish-Christian refugees from Rome met Paul during their exile and returned to Rome after Claudius’s edict had been revoked.
Reflecting on the names and circumstances of the people Paul greets, we are particularly impressed by the unity and diversity of the church to which they belonged.
a. The diversity of the church
The Roman Christians were diverse in race, rank and gender. As for race, we know already that the church in Rome had both Jewish and Gentile members, and this is confirmed by the list. Certainly Aquila and Priscilla were Jewish Christians, and so were Paul’s syngeneis (7 and 11), which is likely to mean ‘those of his own race’ (as in 9:3). But it is equally clear that others on his list were Gentiles.
The social status of his Roman friends is uncertain. On the one hand, inscriptions indicate that Ampliatus (8), Urbanus (9), Hermes (14), Philologus and Julia (15) were common names for slaves. On the other, some at least were freed people, and others had links with persons of distinction. For example, commentators consider it quite likely that the Aristobulus mentioned (10) was the grandson of Herod the Great and friend of the Emperor Claudius, and that Narcissus (11) was none other than the well-known, rich and powerful freedman who exercised great influence on Claudius. It is not of course that these celebrities had themselves become Christians, and in any case they were probably dead by now, but their households had clearly remained in being, and there were Christians in them.
More distinguished, though in a different and nobler way, was Rufus (13), for he may well have been the son of Simon of Cyrene, who carried Jesus’ cross to Golgotha. At least Mark, whose Gospel was written in or for Rome, is the only evangelist who mentions that Simon’s sons were Alexander and Rufus, and he does it in such a way as to imply that they were already well known to his readers in Rome.
But the most interesting and instructive aspect of church diversity in Rome is that of gender. Nine out of the twenty-six persons greeted are women: Priscilla (3), Mary (6), probably Junia (7), Tryphena and Tryphosa, who may have been twin sisters, and Persis (12), Rufus’s mother (13), Julia and Nereus’s sister (15). Paul evidently thinks highly of them all. He singles out four (Mary, Tryphena, Tryphosa and Persis) as having ‘worked hard’. The verb kopiaō implies strong exertion, is used of all four of them, and is not applied to anybody else on the list. Paul does not specify what kind of hard work they did.
Two names call for special attention. The first is Priscilla, who in verse 3 and in three other New Testament verses is named in front of her husband. Whether the reason was spiritual (that she was converted before him or was more active in Christian service than he) or social (that she was a woman of standing in the community) or temperamental (that she was the dominant personality), Paul appears to recognize and not to criticize her leadership.
The other woman to be considered is mentioned in verse 7: Greet Andronicus and Junia. In the Greek sentence the second name is Iounian, which could be the accusative of either Junias (masculine) or Junia (feminine). Commentators are agreed that the latter is much more likely to be correct, since the former name is unknown elsewhere. Perhaps then Andronicus and Junia were a married couple, about whom Paul tells us four things: they are his kinsfolk, that is, Jewish people; they have at some point been his fellow prisoners; they were converted before he was; and they are outstanding among the apostles. In which of its two senses is Paul using the word ‘apostles’? The commonest New Testament application of the word is to ‘the apostles of Christ’, meaning the Twelve (Matthias having replaced Judas), together with Paul and James, a very small group whom Christ had personally appointed and equipped to be the teachers of the church.
The much less frequent use of the term designates ‘the apostles of the churches’. This must have been a considerably larger group, who were sent out by churches as what we would call ‘missionaries’, like Epaphroditus who was an ‘apostle’ of the Philippian church, or like Barnabas and Saul who had been sent out by the church of Antioch. If then by ‘apostles’ in Romans 16:7 Paul is referring to the apostles of Christ, we must translate that they were ‘outstanding in the eyes of the apostles’ or ‘highly esteemed by the apostles’, for it is impossible to suppose that an otherwise unknown couple have taken their place alongside the apostles Peter, Paul, John and James. Since this translation slightly strains the Greek, however, it is probably better to understand ‘apostles’ as meaning ‘apostles of the churches’, and to conclude that Andronicus and Junia were indeed outstanding missionaries.
The prominent place occupied by women in Paul’s entourage shows that he was not at all the male chauvinist of popular fantasy. Does it also throw light on the vexed question of the ministry of women? As we have seen, among the women Paul greets four were hard workers in the Lord’s service. Priscilla was one of Paul’s ‘fellow workers’, Junia was a well-known missionary, and Phoebe a deacon. On the other hand, it has to be said that none of them is called a presbyter in the church, even though an argument from silence can never be decisive.
b. The unity of the church
Alongside the Roman church’s diversity in race, rank and sex, it experienced a profound unity which transcended its differences. For ‘there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’. Moreover, the list of greetings contains several indications of this fundamental unity of the people of God. Four times Paul describes his friends as being in Christ (3, 7, 9, 10) and five times as in the Lord (8, 11, twice in 12, 13). Twice he uses the family language of ‘sister’ and ‘brother’ (1, 14). In addition, he is not inhibited from calling people ‘beloved’ or ‘my beloved’ (dear friend; 5, 8, 9, 12). He also mentions two experiences which strengthen Christian unity, namely being fellow workers (3, 9) and fellow sufferers (4, 7).
How then in practice was the Roman church’s unity in diversity displayed? We know that they met in houses or household churches, for Paul probably refers to such six times (5, 10, 11, 14, 15; cf. 23). How was membership of these determined? We cannot suppose that they met according to sex or rank, so that there were different house churches for men and women, for slaves and free. What about race, however? It would be understandable if Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, and specially the weak and the strong, wanted to meet with their own people, because culture and customs are a strong cement to fellowship. But did they? I do not think so. The toleration of ethnic division in the Roman house churches would be entirely incompatible with Paul’s sustained argument in chapters 14–15, and with its climax. How could the church members ‘accept one another’, and how ‘with one mind and one voice . . . glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (15:6f.), if they worshipped in different, ethnically segregated house churches? Such an arrangement would contradict the church’s unity in diversity.
The same is true today. It is of course a fact that people like to worship with their own kind, as experts in church growth remind us; and it may be necessary to concede to different congregations according to language, which is the most formidable barrier of all. But heterogeneity is of the essence of the church, since it is the one and only community in the world in which Christ has broken down all dividing walls. The vision we have been given of the church triumphant is of a company drawn from ‘every nation, tribe, people and language’, who are all singing God’s praises in unison. So we must declare that a homogeneous church is a defective church, which must work penitently and perseveringly towards heterogeneity.
Paul concludes his list of individual greetings with two universals. The first is that, although only a few of them have been greeted by name, they must all greet one another with a holy kiss (16a). The apostles Paul and Peter both insisted on this, and the Church Fathers took it up. Justin Martyr wrote that ‘on finishing the prayers we greet each other with a kiss’, and Tertullian seems to have been the first to call it a ‘kiss of peace’. The logic is that our verbal greeting needs to be confirmed by a visible and tangible gesture, although what form the ‘kiss’ should take will vary according to culture. For those of us who live in the West, J. B. Phillips paraphrases: ‘Give each other a hearty handshake all round for my sake.’
Paul’s second universal follows: All the churches of Christ send greetings (16b). But how can he speak for all the churches? Is this mere rhetoric? No, he is probably writing representatively. Since he is about to set sail for Jerusalem, we know that those appointed by the churches to carry and deliver the offering have just assembled in Corinth. Luke tells us that they included delegates from Berea, Thessalonica, Derbe, Lystra and Ephesus. Perhaps he has asked them if he may send their churches’ greetings to Rome.