To Encourage You

Colossians 1:7 “Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.”

If you attend a church, how do you view your role there?  Is the church you attend a place you go because of a sense of obligation?  Do you go because you just know you should?  When you get there, do you feel you have a role to play, or do you view that any responsibility for how things operate there is really the duty of the pastor, the elders, the deacons, or some other more or less official position there?  Is the church a place you go to be ministered to, perhaps to hear an uplifting message or to hear uplifting music?  Maybe it’s a place where you go to have your children or grandchildren taught about the Bible.  Well, perhaps we should take some cues from the man Epaphras who is mentioned in Colossians 1 as to what our role should be. 

Here we have an example of one who was not some outside observer of what went on in the church. Rather, he was a vital part of the body, part and parcel of all that went on there.  For one, he is called by the epithet “beloved.”  How else could he have gained that reputation other than that he was known for his selfless acts of love on the behalf of others who were part of the church?  He was involved in their lives. He knew about their needs, and as much as he was able, he reached out to those in need with an effort to help. 

He is also called a “fellow servant.”  He was known as one who worked alongside others in the church. He wasn’t just an observer.  The things that “went on” there, he was a part of.  His role didn’t begin and end within the confines of the hour that he showed up to worship on a Sunday morning. His very life was tied up with others there in service to the Lord. 

Then he is called “a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf.”  This doesn’t mean he was a “minister” in the sense that we think of it so often, i.e., as a pastor, “Minister so and so.”  This could mean a pastor, but more likely the sense of the word here is “a servant.”  He served others in love on behalf of Christ. He saw himself, all that he did to serve others, as a means to serve the Christ Whom he loved with all his heart.  He poured his life into others, for it was a means to pour his life out for Christ.  He took literally the words of Jesus, Who said “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). 

Finally, Epaphras was one who was concerned above all that the love of Christ be made evident in the lives of others in the church. He talked about their love. He was thrilled to see it.  He loved that others loved Christ as he did. His life of love served as an example for others to follow.  It was a regular topic of his conversation. 

So, is that how you view your own role in the church?  Are you truly “a member of the body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27)?  Are you part of the church as a member of a living organism, united to it, giving to it as much as you receive from it?  May we all who call ourselves believers and thereby members of the body of Christ consider the wonderful example of Epaphras, a faithful minister of Christ on behalf of the church in which God had placed Him.  May the church be so much more that a place we “attend” or “go to” once a week.  May it be a place that goes with us, for the church is not the building.  It is part and parcel of the lives of the people who assemble there to worship the One we call our Lord and Master.