Mark and Luke

Onty Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable tome for the ministry. And Tychicus have I sent to Ephesus. A.V.

Lucas alone is with me: Marcus take up and bring with thee, for I find him serviceable for ministration. But Tychicus I am sending to Ephesus. We are still in the midst of allusions to persons and 2 Tim. iv. their movements, and another trio of names is before 12) 12+ us. Ali these three are known to us as associates of take St. Paul. Tychicus is first mentioned in the Acts (Acts xx. 4); an Asian by birth, St Paul’s companion on his third missionary journey to Jerusalem. In the Apostle’s first Roman imprisonment Tychicus was with him, ‘a beloved brother and faithful minister’ (Eph. vi. 21). Now in these darker days he has been again at his side, and is here specified — if I interpret aright the Greek verb rendered, ‘J am sending’ 1 — -as the friend whom St. Paul has just desired to travel to Ephesus, to Timothy, and no doubt to take this Letter with him thither.

The interest of the mention here of Marcus, Mark, Marcus. is great and peculiar. We cannot reasonably doubt

1 It is in the aorist, and so should be strictly rendered, ‘I did send.’ But the letter-writer of St Paul’s day mentally anticipated the time of the letter’s arrival and wrote as if looking back from it to the past. We write as from the time of action. Thus the English present here best represents the Greek aorist.

2 Tim. iv. that he is the Marcus of Col. iv. 10, one of those

followers who were a ‘comfort’ to the imprisoned Apostle at that time, a cheer amidst his cares aad sorrows by their faithful love. It is equally safe to suppose that he is the Marcus of Acts xii. 12, the ‘ John Mark’ to whose mother’s door St. Peter went after his mysterious release, to find the disciples praying together for his deliverance. If so, he was the man whom Paul and Barnabas took with them (Acts xii. 25), first to Antioch and then on their earliest missionary enterprise in Asia Minor (Acts xiii. 5, 13), and who so sorely grieved and disappointed St. Paul by turning back and leaving his leaders at Perga, for some not quite worthy motive (Acts xv. 39), the defection which led later to the ‘sharp dissension’ between St. Paul and Mark’s cousin St. Barnabas, and to their unhappy separation. That was a sorrowful and ominous incident. How easily it might have prompted to St. Paul’s mind a hopeless application to Mark of the Lord’s words about the ploughman who turns back, and have even led him to put down Mark as ‘reprobate silver’! Is it not all the more beautiful, and all the more encouraging, to see this very man more than restored — to the Apostle, and to the Lord Jesus? It may have been the loving Barnabas, with whom (Acts xv. 39) he ‘sailed to Cyprus,’ who helped him back to courage and to sacrifice; for assuredly Barnabas, however hotly he had ‘dissented’ from Paul, was still himself, and would long all the more to see his cousin wholly right with God because he had been, perhaps, his too eager advocate with man. But,

Mark and Luke

however, so it was. Marcus, a few years after his 2 Tim. iv. spiritual defeat, appears as St. Paul’s ‘comfort.’ II, 12. And now, a few years later again, in the very reign of terror, he is so ‘serviceable for ministration,’ so capable, so active, so devoted, so sure to be ready to come and help, even in formidable Rome, that he must be ‘taken up and brought’ with Timothy. Such in outline was the story of this man ‘of like passions with ourselves’; this Evangelist, this writer (for such he was) of our wonderful oldest Gospel, yet also this poor frail man, more than restored by the loving power of God. Shall not his experience of self, and of grace, cheer us about others now? Shall it not cheer us about ourselves? Lastly we come, reading backwards, to that dear Lucas. name, Lucas, Lucanus, Luke. Him too we have met before. In the Acts he does not write down his own name. But in those large and vivid sections of the Acts which run in the first person, beginning with xvi. 10 (where ‘we’ gathered that the vision of the man of Macedonia was the call of God to ‘us’) we see him as at once the author of the memorable narrative and the fellow-traveller of St. Paul. Then again in Colossians (iv. 14) and Philemon (24) he is with him in the Roman lodging; ‘the physician,’ ‘the beloved physician.’ And now, behold, the stern testing time is come, and fair-weather friends fly away to right and left. But Luke is there, upon the spot; ‘Lucas alone is with me’; not indeed the only true friend left to him in Rome, for he will presently be sending Timothy greetings from other loyal hearts before he closes (ver. 21), but

2 Tim. iv. apparently the only one who resolutely stays at his

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side in the dolorous prison, making it, for that dear leader’s sake, his home.

St. Luke is a beautiful and noble example of a phenomenon most congenial to the Gospel. His own writings seem to disclose him to us as a man thoughtful, cultured, mentally gifted, the perfect antithesis to the militant zealot. He was, for his day, the man of science, trained to a refined profession. He was master of a style which has a distinction of its own. He was a true historian by nature. But also, by grace, he was the temple of the possessing Spirit. And in that power the instructed and accomplished man was found, in the midst of the Neronian terror, quietly heroic at his post of love..