The Letter to the Romans: Message #3 – Meet the People in Rome (Part 1)

Alright, Andronicus and Junius. Anybody got anything on Andronicus and Junius? Okay. Let me hear. They were Jews, and there were also fellow prisoners. Somewhere or other, they got thrown in jail, and Paul says they’re fellow prisoners, and he calls them “my kinsmen.” We’ll come to that in a minute. You got anything else? I think what we read on Andronicus was that he might have been murdered. According to what we read, somehow, he may… you’ve got to be careful with some of those traditions, but, okay, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know he was killed, at least by church tradition. Some of these traditions are pretty accurate. There’s one old boy whom somebody will probably quote here, and I hope you will. He was trying to dig up, inventing names and identities for these people right and left. I’ve forgotten his name, but I’ll recognize him in a minute. Okay, I have this feeling about—may I tell you what I think about—Andronicus and Junius. I think that they were actually his own cousins. He says, “my kinsmen,” and most people say that simply means they were Jews. I think they were converts of the Lord Jesus in Jerusalem. I think it’s one of the things that ticked off Saul of Tarsus and made him start persecuting these people when people in his own house became followers of Jesus, who claimed to be the Messiah, because they were in the Lord before me, and they were well thought of among the apostles.

Now, you can interpret that two ways: they were considered apostles, or the apostles thought they were really incredible people. I tend to believe the second, not the first. Some people will look at this and say, “These two people were apostles, and one is a female, therefore there can be female apostles.” I wouldn’t argue it a minute, but I think it means—my personal judgment, I’m not pressing this, please—that they were well thought of by the apostles in Jerusalem. So, here we have a Jerusalem church experience about to be added to Rome by people whom I personally think were probably Paul’s own kinfolk. I think Paul will get just about anybody whom he thinks is free in Christ to go to Rome, even if he has to pick on his own kinfolks.

Now these people will be able to tell you all about Pentecost and the Twelve Apostles. If you are some little Italian who comes and gets saved in Rome, you start hearing all this. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could sit down and listen to a Christian from Jerusalem tell all about firsthand the experiences of what happened there? Wouldn’t that be neat? Wouldn’t that help you a lot in the Lord to hear firsthand experiences? Praise the Lord. I think one of the reasons they were chosen by Paul is that we need a report of what happened in the past. We really do. I have spent a good part of the early part of my ministry trying to listen to and hear the stories of Christian works that came before me, stories that could still be told by men and women who lived. If you have a couple of weeks, I’ll sometimes be happy to sit down and tell you all sorts of stories about things that were told to me firsthand by Christians who have now gone on to be with the Lord in the works of God outside the organized church. Now, I’m not going to tell you anything about stuff inside the organized church. They can tell their own stories, which they do, but the little forgotten groups—by the way, there is a tradition that they did go to Spain. Whether or not that’s true, I do not know.

Alright, we have Andronicus and his wife, Junius. You didn’t know she was a female? I think she is a female. Oh, really? Junius is a… look, it doesn’t end in “us,” it ends in “as.” Don’t you know your Latin? Okay, well, what would it be in Spanish if it ended in “as”? Would it be masculine or feminine? It would be female. Okay, that settles it.

Alright, how do you pronounce this next guy’s name? Ampliatus. Anything known about him? I know nothing about him except that he was beloved. Yes. He was a man, and his name is “large” or “enlarged”. He was a … of Paul, and that name was given to a slave at the time of the Roman Empire, and it was also a Latin slave name, and Paul called him his kinsman—he was a relative of Paul. Also, he was commended with Thacus and Urbanus, the saints together as martyrs. Okay, so there’s a tradition that they were martyrs. I don’t know if that’s true, and you don’t know if it’s true, but we’ll accept that. I think he was a Gentile, frankly. I would not think him a Jew; how could you be a Jew and be a slave? It’s not likely. I think all these brothers who were slaves who got sent to Rome were either set free or went with a master, one of the two.

Now let’s greet Urbanus. What do we know about Urbanus? Oh, I can tell you what. Do you know anything about Urbanus? He was born in Chicago. (laughter)Well, the name means polite, courteous, considered, and fun. Oh, I wrote down here that it means city-bred. That is the guy. Anytime you hear these fellas getting made bishops or being one of the 70, that’s quoting some old boy who lived about 200 years later who was just turning everybody into bishops and one of the 70. Yeah, I think we have to scratch that out. Anytime anybody’s made a bishop, scratch it out. That’s somebody trying to prove a point hundreds of years later. I think his name means city-bred. I don’t know where we got the other part. Anyway, if it is city-bred, then who is Stachys? Did you call him Stachys? Alright, wonderful. Stachys. Tell me something about Stachys. His name is …. Okay. And, well, I guess he was just missing. He was called a bishop. I don’t think he was a bishop in Byzantium, but I think there’s a possibility he’d actually ended up there. The chances of his being a bishop in Byzantium are really low. Remember this: the word bishop is not a word. It’s a transliteration. You’ve got to be careful with these words. He might have ended up being an elder in a local body of believers, and later, they tried to make a big deal out of that by calling them bishops. Be careful with the word bishop. Before the year 323, you’re just going to be really hard-pressed to make a big deal out of that. Or even the year 327, up until about 327. I see in this a city kid and a country boy working and living together. Maybe I am wrong, but one’s called an ear of corn, the other one’s called city-bred. I don’t see how it could be any other way. One was probably a slave in a city, and the other one was probably a slave in the country. Isn’t that exciting that these two guys are living together in Rome, trying to carry on the Lord’s work, each with such differing attitudes and backgrounds?

Alright, Apelles? Is that their name? Have we got Apelles? What? He was greeted by Paul as an approved Christian. Do we know anything else about him? He was tested and approved by the Lord, and he probably had more experience than most of the other brothers in Rome. It is said that he was tested and approved by the Lord. I don’t think there’s any question about it; he’s a brother who’s gone through something really heavy and came out really faithful to the Lord, and Paul has picked him to go to Rome. He probably was a Christian from Asia Minor, right there in or near Ephesus. Anything else? We’ll go along here. By the way, he’s one of those people that some guy tried to make him one of the 70. He was just picking up names everywhere. He was said to have this name; they said that he was probably called Apollos in Acts 18:24. Oh, I think that’s a theory. Apollos in Acts, what? In Acts 18 verse 24? I’m about to look that up and see what that says. Thank you, brother.

Alright, greet those who belong to the household of Aristobulus. This one just really gets complex, intriguing, and who knows what. What have you got on the household, or greet those of the household of Aristobulus? Yes, ma’am. We have here that he was proudly a slave, and he was head of a household, and his name is advisor or counselor. He was probably a slave converted to Christianity. Usually, his name was given to the disciples of the Maccabees in the first century. He was probably the head of a household in Rome who was a—should I say this word—a bishop. Where’d they make him a bishop? Where? Barnabas of Palme made him a bishop. He was a laborer in Britain. Yeah, I don’t think he went to Britain. Alright, you want to hear the other side of the coin? Here is another—see, okay, here’s another theory, and I ascribe to it more than that one, and I don’t know which one’s correct. Aristobulus was the counselor, the closest counselor to Caesar, but he was put to death before any of this took place, but his household was left. And according to some traditions, many of his slaves were converted to Christ in the city of Rome. Aristobulus is deader than a doornail; the emperor put him to death; didn’t like what he did one day. There is even a possible indication that his wife became a believer, but anyway, there are a number of believers in his household in Rome, slaves who have become Christians. If that is true, then we find the first crack of the gospel in the Roman Empire. Have you ever heard the term “a servant in Caesar’s household?” A little peasant has gotten into a home but is wielding influence because they happen to know terribly important people. I had a young lady who came to me one day and said, ‘So-and-so wants to talk to you and meet you.’ Well, so-and-so was an extremely famous motion picture actor. She was the maid in his home, and she had been witnessing to him and telling me all about him. He was intrigued, and he wanted to talk to me. Now, you have to understand me. I didn’t go. I don’t know why I didn’t go. I guess I was afraid he might get converted. Isn’t that a terrible thing to say? I just didn’t want to get involved with someone who was a motion picture actor. I passed it up. Sorry, forgive me for doing that, but I just didn’t do it. It just didn’t seem right to me to do it, so I didn’t. But she was a “servant in Caesar’s household”. Do you understand? Okay. It may be that here we find the first indications of servants in the royal entourage, the royal court, and the upper rulers of the Roman Empire. Could be. Let’s play like it is, shall we? Alright, let’s do that.

Okay, who’s next? Herodian. What do you know about Herodian? Nothing? Oh, there’s a lot to be known about him. We have another Jerusalem Christian here. He has to be a Jew. He belongs; he is kin to old Herod the Great, and he carries the name of Herod’s family with him. He’s probably much more akin to Herod…Herod, oh, one of the sons of Herod the Great, and probably a cousin or something like that. We have here a brother who, and he calls him my relative, and this probably means because he’s Jewish, they could be kin. I really question that they are, but anyway, he is another brother coming from Jerusalem who can tell us all about what happened there.

Now, what do you have with Narcissus? He was probably the head of a household, and his name means love of self, a name given to a flower. Alright, have you ever heard of the Narcissus Complex, where the kid thought he was so beautiful he looked over the water and wouldn’t leave, and he starved to death sitting there; he turned into a flower. Oh, okay, I think we have exactly the same situation here. We don’t know anything about Narcissus, but there are some of the people in his home who are believers, and they are almost certainly slaves. Yes. Says he was a free man with considerable authority under Emperor Claudius. He also had slaves whom he converted. Could be that…I wonder if I have…oh, I think I just did. May I make a mistake right here in public? Everything I just said about Aristobulus may have to do with Narcissus. I think I jumped the gun here. Everything you just wrote down about Aristobulus, circle it, put it down here to Narcissus. There was a man named Narcissus who was a counselor to Claudius. He got killed, and it may be the slaves in his house. I don’t have anything here on Aristobulus except that he might have been a slave in a house or that he had a home, and he had slaves; I don’t know. There’s an old tradition that he was a brother of Barnabas; I don’t anymore believe that, and I doubt he died in Britain.

Alright! Now we come to Tryphaena and Tryphosa. Does anybody know anything about Tryphaena? They’re girls. Alright. Profound. Those women who work hard in the Lord. What do you know? They could have both been twin sisters; I don’t think there’s any question about it. We’ve got two twin sisters here who are slaves or had been, and they are Greeks. Somewhere, they found the Lord, and somewhere or other, Paul got those two slave girls freed or somehow got them to Rome. That, to me, is one of the most exciting things in this list. We’ve got two twin sisters. Well, obviously, we’ve got twin sisters, and you can just see them. One gets halfway through a sentence, and the other one picks up the other hand. You know how twin sisters are. Here they are in Rome, probably ex-slaves serving the Lord somewhere, living near one another in this growing number of people whom Paul has sent to Rome.

Alright. Who do we have next? What do we know about Persis? She’s a female. We really got some profound statements here. Alright! Do we know anything about her? Praise the Lord. Now something begins to emerge here, to me. I did not know that that name meant one who had been a slave and has now been freed, but that’s wonderful. We assume that’s happened to all three of them, then. They are very close friends. Somewhere in one of those Gentile churches, they have really served the Lord with all their hearts, souls, and minds, and Persis seems to have worked even harder than the twin girls, somewhere, probably Ephesus, who knows, maybe Corinth. We’ll never know where those ladies came from, but we know this: they packed their little bags, and together those three gals boarded a boat somewhere and headed for Rome, Italy, and set up housekeeping so that there might be a church in Rome, Italy. Praise the Lord.