St. Paul and Onesiphorus

Tue Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus; for he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain: But, when he was in Rome, he sought me out very diligently, and found me. The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day: and in how many things he ministered unto me at Ephesus, thou knowest very well. A.V.

May the Lord give mercy to Onesiphorus’ family, for frequently he refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain; yes, when he came to Rome he earnestly hunted me out and found me, The Lord give him to find mercy from the Lord in that day. And how many services he did me in Ephesus thou knowest better than to need me to tell thee.

WE have here again a reference to a person other- 2 Tim. i. wise unknown. Nowhere outside this Epistle do we 26-18. hear of Onesiphorus; and thus we have another of Onesiphorus. those isolated allusions, equally particular and unexplained, which are totally unlike the artifices of a

fabricator, certainly of such fabricators as were at

work in the early days of Christianity.

So far as we can put the hints given us to- The gether, the story here indicated would seem to run Sea somewhat as follows. Among the residents ‘in Asia’ who had been greatly attached to St. Paul was one Onesiphorus, head of a family, whose members also, of course, the Apostle knew. When St. Paul was seized and put in chains, and before his captors embarked him for Italy, Onesiphorus had repeatedly visited him, to ‘ refresh’ his spirit, and perhaps also,

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16-18, by timely reliefs and comforts, to ‘refresh’ his body. At that period of crisis and of terror, when all his compatriots turned from the seeming criminal, this man was ‘not ashamed’ of association with him. Then later, when the Apostle was actually immured at Rome, some cause unspecified brought Onesiphorus thither also, and he resolved to see his holy Friend again. It was no easy task. The days, as we have seen, were different from those when in ‘his own hired house’ Paul had ‘received all who came to him.’ It would appear that he was now shut up in some deeper recess of the Roman dungeons, perhaps in the vaults near the Capitol called, with a bad eminence, Career, ‘the Prison’; dark, dripping, miserable; to be entered, if at all, only by the key of a heavy bribe. But however Onesiphorus had found his way, and had cheered his beloved teacher and father by his presence. All this St. Paul recalls with grateful love, and then, looking further back (so I would explain the last clause of ver. 18), he remembers how, at Ephesus, in happier days of old, this same Onesiphorus had done him many an affectionate service. Well, the Ephesian disciple had now come to Rome for a time, while his family, his ‘house,’ were still at home in Asia; and the Apostle’s thoughts travel direct to them in connexion with their father. Were they by possibility tempted to be faithless too? While Onesiphorus at Rome had been so loyal had his family in Asia been sore tempted to cast the Missionary off? He can but pray for ‘mercy’ upon them, for his heart loves them for the sake of their paterfamilias. May they be held up; may they in

St Paul and Onesiphorus

any case be spared, and be found at last in Christ. 2 Tim. i. For Onesiphorus himself, a special prayer goes up 16-18. from the grateful heart of the saint that, ‘in that

day,’ mercy, eternal mercy, the mercy of the Lord’s

own ‘Well done, good and faithful, may be his

happy portion.

Such seems to me a fair explanation of this passage. I take it as referring to a Christian man, either then present in Rome, or recently there, while his family are at Ephesus. I take it to be a prayer for them separately, the man and the family, because they were for the time separated from one another by lands and seas.

It is probably known to my reader that this Is he prayed passage has an importance of its own, in view of Departed? the problem of Prayers for the Departed. It is maintained by many that Onesiphorus was dead; that he had visited St. Paul at Rome and soon afterwards had died; and that now St. Paul prays for him that he may find mercy in the great day.

On the grave question whether we should pray for those who have passed from us, I do not pretend to enter here. Such prayers were undoubtedly used fairly early in the history of the Christian Church, certainly before A.D. 200, although for many generations they took only the simplest and vaguest forms, and certainly did not presuppose any purgatorial sufferings in the case of the Christian dead. Yet for even such guarded and reserved prayers, or aspirations, I for one cannot see distenct Scriptural warrant — unless it be here. And here, as I have attempted to shew, there is no need at all to assume that

2 Tim. i.
16-18.
Prayer

for the
Departed.

Onesiphorus had died. Separation from his family by a journey quite satisfies the language of the passage.

Let no unloving word be said of those Christians who feel their hearts constrained to follow their departed ones with prayer. On the other hand let a caution, reverent and sacred, rest upon our spirits in the whole matter. On any shewing, the Bible is extremely reticent about it. But surely, were such prayer according to God’s will, would not the Bible be extremely explicit in its appeals to us to use it? Would it not exhort us, would it not adjure us, to pray for those who are gone before?

Is it not, as a thoughtful child once said, ‘a great liberty to take,’ to follow them with prayer into the immediate presence of the Lord?! Let us pursue them with love, with longing, with hope, with thanksgivings — but with prayer only in this respect, that for them as for ourselves we ever cry and pray, looking upward, looking onward, ‘Come, Lord Jesus’; ‘that we, with all those who are departed hence in the true faith of Thy holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss in thy eternal and everlasting glory.’

1 See W. Hay Aitken: The Dwine Ordinance of Prayer, p. 159.