Enter Epaphras Stage Left

“All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all it truth.  You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, and who also told us in your love in the Spirit.”

                                                               Colossians 1:6b-8

Every person has a story and so much of that story is what makes them, them.  I love hearing people’s stories but only if they are of the authentic variety.  Keep away from me with the fake, pretentious versions.  They have no sustaining power for me.  I like the kind that are raw, real and void of any polish.  I want the details with all its bruises and failures.  To me that is real.  That is life.  That is what makes a person them.  Sorry. 

I tend to gravitate to people who are settled with who they are.  It is probably why I stink at chit chat.  I have a zero endurance capacity for it.  I am a chit chat failure.   It’s also why you can be in a conversation with me and within five minutes I am either gone or into your business.  I am not prying or nosy regarding your stuff, just truly interested.  And by the way the weirder you are the more I like you.  I embrace weirdness and I am way more comfortable around that than I am with the opposite, you know sameness.  Sameness is boring.  Boring.  Not a fan. 

I made a friend last summer.  I will be honest.  I meet a lot of people.  You do too.  As we go about the ordinary course of our day we have the opportunity to meet a great number of people.  Whether we engage with them or not is up to us.  I walk almost everyday because I have a dog that makes me do it.  This is how I made this friend.  We would stop and chat often and she would tell me about her life.  I grew to really love her as she poured out the heart wrenching difficulties she was enduring.  I empathized with her, I encouraged her and I prayed for her.  Loved her and her strength and her story.  Then one day I walked by her house and she was gone.  House was sold and someone else moved in.  I was shocked and so very mad at myself. 

Why?  Because I didn’t know her name.  You see, we knew each other casually and I kept forgetting her name even though she not once forgot mine.  As she started to tell me about the more intimate struggles she was going through it seemed really inappropriate to ask her “and what was your name again”.  So, I fell deeper and deeper into the hole that I dug for myself because of the glaring memory issues I have.  In my defense, I didn’t know what to do.  I did think of perhaps sneaking a peak at the letters in her mailbox but that seemed not right as well.  So our relationship grew, partly nameless until she was gone.  I hate that now I can’t find her because I don’t know her name.  Pride can be so dumb.  It’s never a good leader. Sigh.

Epaphras.  Today we are going to study Epaphras.  We are going to learn how to pronounce his name correctly and we are going to get acquainted with his story.  He has a story and it is a good one not to mention a gospel one.  I have learned from my mistakes.  I want to know people’s stories and the names that accompany those stories. 

In Colossians, there are several people that Paul wrote to and about in this letter.  We are going to study every one of them.  They are people with names and they have stories and they matter.  God was the author of their stories and He knows their names.  Enough said. 

Up until now we have only met Paul and Timothy.  Now in verse eight, we stumble on Epaphras, pronounce Ep-uh-fras.  Take a moment and pronounce his name a few times.  Try to remember it.  I’ll wait.  

Epaphras was a citizen of Colossae.  He had at sometime come into contact with Paul and been converted to Jesus Christ.  This was probably during Paul’s three-year stint in Ephesus.  Once he was saved he returned to his hometown and shared the good news with his relatives and friends.  One commentator notes that it probably would have been way more exciting to stay with Paul in Ephesus where all the action was than to return home.  But his first responsibility was to take it to his own city.  Already says a ton about Epaphras, doesn’t it?  Willing to walk away for all the goose bump ministry in Ephesus to return home and tell his people.  Hmmm.

Next we learn that there was indeed fruit from his labor since there was a church in Colossae that he led.  As a faithful minister of Christ, he taught them the Word and helped them grow.  When danger threatened the members of the church through false teachers (remember from our background), Epaphras went to Rome to get counsel from Paul.  He didn’t just teach them but he loved them enough to protect them from any false doctrines that might hurt their growth in the gospel.  The love he had for them was genuine.  

I like Epaphras.  His actions embody the ordinances of the great commission. 

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”  Matt 28:19-20a

In this passage, there is primarily one command and three participles (how to carry out that command).  Could you pick out what the primary command is? 

It is “make disciples”.   The “go”, “baptizing” and the “teaching to obey” is the how we make disciples.  It seems that Epaphras did all three. 

Spoiler alert.  He was also a man of prayer. Colossians 4:12 “He is always wrestling in prayer for you.”   We will get to that real soon. 

Epaphras got Paul’s message, he understood the mandate of the gospel message.  I admire him.  He lived obedient.  He made a difference.  I should remember his name.  He has an interesting story.

God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.                                               Psalm 18:24 Message