Philippians 2:25-30
Introduction: Chris Edmonds pastors at Piney Grove Baptist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. He became curious to know more about his father’s military service during World War II, because, like many veterans, the elder Edmonds had disclosed little of his time in combat. After extensive research, Pastor Edmonds finally got the story of his father’s heroism.
Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, from Knoxville, had fought in the Battle of the Bulge and had been captured and sent to a POW camp. He was the highest-ranking GI at the camp and was in charge of all the POWS. There were over a thousand American soldiers there, and some were Jewish. One day the Nazi commandant of the camp demanded at gunpoint that Sergeant Edmonds identify the American Jews. Sergeant Edmonds had all 1,292 soldiers step forward. When the German officer saw the group he became angry and turned to Edmonds and said he only wanted the Jews. Edmonds said, “We are all Jews here.”
In anger, the commandant threatened to shoot the sergeant, but Edmonds told him he would have to kill all the men because they all knew who he was and would report him for war crimes after the Allies won.
Sergeant Edmonds risked his life on other occasions too. After the war, he returned home, told nobody about what had happened, and made his living as a salesman and sang in many churches as a musician. When his story came out, he was recognized in a special ceremony at the Israeli Embassy in Washington with the President of the United States attending and speaking. By risking his life, Sergeant Edmonds, who was only 24 years old, saved some 200 Jewish soldiers.
Later Edmonds realized that some of the POWs were on the verge of giving up. Edmonds divided the soldiers into two groups, those who were up and those who were down, as he put it. He assigned one “up” man to one “down” man, and this way kept the soldiers alive.
I would like to think I’d be willing to risk my life like that—and I’m sure you would too. And by the grace of God, I think most of us who know Jesus are willing to both live and die for Him. But it helps us to have models like Sergeant Roddie Edmonds. A few “up” people do an awfully lot to help us “down” people.
Well, we have heroes like that in the Bible too, and some of them are minor characters like the one we’ll talk about today—Epaphroditus—whom Paul referred to in military terms as a soldier.
Scripture:
25 But I think it is necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, co-worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger, whom you sent to take care of my needs. 26 For he longs for all of you and is distressed because you heard he was ill. 27 Indeed he was ill, and almost died. But God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow. 28 Therefore I am all the more eager to send him, so that when you see him again you may be glad and I may have less anxiety. 29 So then, welcome him in the Lord with great joy, and honor people like him, 30 because he almost died for the work of Christ. He risked his life to make up for the help you yourselves could not give me.
Background: The backstory is very important, and we’ve touched on it before. But let me give it again in summary. Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke showed up in the vast Roman city of Philippi and planted a church. In the process, Paul and Silas were arrested and flogged. In some respects, the church was born from their shed blood. And the Philippian church felt very close to Paul and collected their gifts and send him financial aid wherever he was. When they heard he was under house arrest in Rome, they took up another offering.
In those days, prisoners received very little if any food and provisions from the prison. It had to be provided by family and friends. One of the members of the church in Philippi, this man Epaphroditus, said, “I can detangle my affairs here and travel to Rome and stay with Paul as long as needed. I’ll take our financial offering to him, and I’ll stay on as his helper, doing whatever I can to help him.” So the church commissioned him and he traveled the 800-plus miles over land and sea, and he found Paul in his rented house.
It must have been a joyful reunion, and Epaphroditus told Paul all the news from Philippi. I wish I could have been in that little rented room eavesdropping on the conversation. And Epaphroditus went to work, washing Paul’s clothes, tending to his wounds, shopping for his food and preparing his meals. But in the course of it all, Epaphroditus became deathly sick. He was stretched out in a bed of that rented house, and Paul tried every way possible to save his life. Paul became the caregiver.
When Epaphroditus recovered, Paul decided it was best to send him home and to send this letter to the Philippians with him. And so, his strength recovered, Epaphroditus left Rome for Philippi with this precious little scroll tucked away in his scant baggage.
The apostle Paul certainly didn’t want the Philippians to think Epaphroditus had failed in his mission, and so he added this paragraph to the letter and he described his friend using five different terms.
1. Brother
First, he called Epaphroditus his brother: 25 But I think it is necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother….
Have you ever noticed how God designed His church to be a gigantic family—the largest family on earth. We’re not just an organization or an enterprise or a mission or a business. Take Coca-Cola, for example. They have their product in every nation of the world. Technically there are two nations that don’t allow Coca-Cola—North Korea and Cuba. But even there, you can find a Coke if you have to. And the same secret formula is used. And yet those 700,000 employees around the world are not brothers and sisters.
When we come to Jesus Christ, we’re born into His Kingdom and adopted into His family. We call God our Father. It’s not like a family. It is a family. Some time ago, I was in Myanmar and I met Christians from all over the Asia/Pacific realm. The moment I met them I loved them and felt a kinship with them I can’t explain.
I recall hearing a story years ago—I can’t remember the source—about an American Army officer on an island in the South Pacific. Every Sunday he left the military base to attend a local church in the nearby village. Someone asked him why he did it. He said, “Well, on the base they call me Lieutenant. On the island they call me GI Joe. But in the church, they call me brother.
When you know Christ as your Savior, you’re part of a 2000-year-old global family.
2. Co-worker
Second, Paul calls him his co-worker: But I think it is necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, co-worker….
We almost never see the apostle Paul working alone. He was left alone in Athens, and that didn’t go so well and by the time he got to Corinth he was in bad shape. But the Lord sent a Christian couple, Aquila and Priscilla, to take him in (Acts 17-18). From the very beginning when he set off with Barnabas, he always recruited co-workers. In his writings, Paul used the word “fellow worker” or “coworker” to describe 15 different people or groups:
- Timothy
- Apollos
- Silas
- The entire Corinthian church
- Titus
- Priscilla
- Aquila
- Urban
- Philemon
- Mark
- Aristarchus
- Demas
- Luke
- Justus
- Epaphroditus
In a similar way, when Jesus sent out His disciples, he sent them out two by two.
The prophet Elijah tried to work alone, but he broke down under the strain and God gave him Elisha.
Even Adam, the perfect man in Eden, couldn’t live in solitude. He needed what the old translations called a “help meet”—some to help him to meet the challenges. And even Jesus Christ, the Son of Man and Son of God, wanted His disciples near Him and needed their fellowship.
One drop of water is a beautiful thing—it’s shape and clarity. But I never put just one drop of water on a potted plant. I have a potted Japanese maple on my patio, and I may pour a gallon of water into its soil. There are 90,921 drops of water in a gallon. It takes all of us working together to keep this world alive and hydrated with the waters of the Holy Spirit.
3. Fellow Soldier
Paul also called Epaphroditus his fellow soldier. Remember, Paul was writing this while under Roman imprisonment. He may have still been under house arrest, but in those days they didn’t have ankle monitors. They had soldiers, and Paul was chained to one all the time. He drew a lot of inspiration from that. In Ephesians, he described the soldiers’ armor and suggested each piece as symbolic for the armor of the believer.
He wrote to Timothy, telling him to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ (2 Timothy 2:3).
I’ve heard some people criticize hymns and sermons for being too militaristic. When I was growing up, we sang hymns like “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “Am I a Soldier of the Cross?” The Christian life was considered a battle. Is that still true? Well, I’ve noticed some of our favorite contemporary songs talk about the battle belonging to the Lord and other such phrases. This is an enduring theme.
Paul told Timothy to “fight the battle well” (1 Timothy 1:18). He told him to fight the good fight of faith.
Jesus said we are like kings going out to war who ought to consider the cost and make sure we can win the battle (Luke 14:31).
Second Corinthians 10 says: “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. For the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (verses 3-5).
Ephesians 6 says: Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.
I’ve never been in the military, and I’ve always felt conflicted about that. The stories about the men and women in our armed forces fascinate me. Right now, I’m reading a book called Ship of Miracles. In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, and American forces were sent to repel the attack. When China entered the war, everything changed. United Nations, South Korean, and American forces had to retreat.
Bill Gilbert in his account of the Korean War, said: “Our troops were making their way along a winding, mountainous route toward Hungnan, the political, commercial, and educational center of the province. They carried what supplies and equipment they could, plus their weapons, in temperatures that plunged to forty degrees below zero at night in the mountains, in snow drifts sometimes ten feet deep, with howling winds blasting them in the face over twelve tortuous days—all the while under enemy fire.”
Being a soldier is not for the faint of heart. I was reading about the Marines in the Korean War on day when I was low in spirits and feeling sorry for myself. My transition from the church I loved had been distressing and hurtful, and I told someone at the grocery store I felt like a man without a country. I was brooding over that when I came back home and resumed my story of the Korean War—and I felt ashamed.
In his hymn, “Am I a Soldier of the Cross,” Isaac Watts said:
Must I be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
While others fought to win the prize,
And sailed through bloody seas?
The Bible says, “Endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”
In his book, Ship of Miracles, Bert Gilbert quoted an Army report about the American troops in Korea:
They were only a few weeks away from the scenes of home, but it seemed like a thousand years. Then most of them had been recruits. Now they were veterans. They had fought their fight and knew they would fight again; but it wouldn’t be something strange and unknown next time. Now, there were heroes among them and others who no longer answered roll call…”
It would be good for us to more frequently think of ourselves as soldiers in the army of the Lord!
4. Messenger
There’s a fourth word used to describe Epaphroditus—He was a messenger.
25 But I think it is necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, co-worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger, whom you sent to take care of my needs.
The word “messenger” here is the Greek word “apostolos,” from which we get apostle—one who is sent. Epaphroditus volunteered to be sent for what today we might call a short-term mission trip. The church sent him to care for Paul’s needs. The entire congregation could not go. Perhaps they wanted to. Perhaps all 300 or 3000 of the Christians in Philippi—we don’t know the size of the church by this time—had wanted to go. But most of them had families and jobs or physical or financial limitations. But one man was able to go. He volunteered, and he was sent as apostle for the rest.
The NIV translates this word as “Messager.”
If so, what was his message? It must have been one of encouragement! He was an apostle of encouragement. The Philippians said, “Now when you get to Rome and track down Paul, you encourage him. Let him know we love him and we are praying for him and we are going to continue sending him money for his needs. And give him some Scripture!”
We need to be apostles of encouragement!
Remember what I said earlier about Sergeant Roddie Edmonds? Edmonds realized that some of the POWs were on the verge of giving up. Edmonds divided the soldiers into two groups, those who were up and those who were down, as he put it. He assigned one “up” man to one “down” man, and this way kept the soldiers alive. Let’s be up people, apostles of encouragement.
5. Minister
Finally, Paul referred to Epaphroditus as a minister. We have to look at this a bit closer.
25 But I think it is necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, co-worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger, whom you sent to take care of my needs.
The phrase “care,” as in to take care, is a noun in the Greek and it really means caregiver. I’m not a good enough scholar to figure out why the NIV converts this to a prepositional phrase.
The much more literal New American Standard Version puts the verse in a way that helps us clearly see the five roles Paul reference (bullet-pointing mine):
But I thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my…
- Brother
- Fellow worker
- Fellow solder
- Your Messenger
- Minister to my need.
Epaphroditus was to be Paul’s caregiver, but in a twist of events Paul became his caregiver.
25 But I think it is necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, co-worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger, whom you sent to take care of my needs. 26 For he longs for all of you and is distressed because you heard he was ill. 27 Indeed he was ill, and almost died. But God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow. 28 Therefore I am all the more eager to send him, so that when you see him again you may be glad and I may have less anxiety.
My wife, Katrina, had Multiple Sclerosis for 25 years before she passed away, but very often when someone referred to me as her caregiver, I’d correct them. I’d tell them we were each other’s caregivers. I did some things for her, but she was the strength and stability of my life. We never know when one of us will become sick, or even be imprisoned for the Gospel. But our calling is to be one another’s caregivers.
Conclusion:
Now let’s conclude with verses 29 – 30:
29 So then, welcome him in the Lord with great joy, and honor people like him, 30 because he almost died for the work of Christ. He risked his life to make up for the help you yourselves could not give me.
The name of this man was Epaphroditus. Do you know what that means? His name literally meant “Honored by Aphrodite.” [afro-dye-tee]. She was the Greek goddess of love and sex. Assuming that his parents named him, they were pagans who apparently worshiped the god of love and sex, and his life was devoted to the honor of Aphrodite. Often this name indicated being handsome or charming, being blessed and honored by Aphrodite with good looks.
But somewhere, somehow, he had come to faith in Jesus Christ and now he was a brother, a fellow worker, a soldier of the cross, an ambassador of encouragement, and a caregiver. Instead of being honored by Aphrodite, now he was to be honored by the Philippians.
The Bible says to give honor to whom honor is due. When you find someone who is a living demonstration of the kind of life Paul described in Philippians 2—someone who is Christlike and Timothy-like and Epaphroditus-like, who is a brother, a fellow worker, a soldier of the cross, an ambassador of encouragement, and a caregiver for others—honor such a person. For their lives are valuable, and they are not afraid to risk them for the cause of Christ.