Epaphras

Scripture: Colossians 1:7-8; 4:12-13; Philemon 23

Epaphras (Ἐπαφρᾶς) is a contracted form of Epaphroditus, but a distinct person from the Epaphroditus of Philippians 2:25. He was from Colossae (Colossians 4:12: "Epaphras, who is one of you"), a city in the Lycus Valley of Asia Minor, and he is almost certainly the man responsible for the existence of the Colossian church. Paul makes this explicit in Colossians 1:7: "...as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant (συνδοῦλος, syndoulos). He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf." The Colossians did not learn the gospel from Paul, they learned it from Epaphras. Colossians 2:1 confirms Paul's distance from them: "I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face." The most coherent reconstruction is that Epaphras was converted during Paul's Ephesian ministry, Acts 19:10 records that "all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks" during Paul's two-plus years in Ephesus, returned to the Lycus Valley as a missionary, planted the church at Colossae, and subsequently came to Paul in his Roman imprisonment with a report of the church's situation and the theological pressures it faced.

The letter to the Colossians is Paul's response to what Epaphras reported. In that sense, Epaphras is the hidden hinge of the letter: he brought the news that generated the argument for Christ's supremacy over every power and authority (2:9-15), the polemic against the shadow-regulations of the philosophy pressing on the church (2:16-23), and the exhortation to set one's mind on things above (3:1-4). He is Colossians' occasion, even if Paul is its voice.

Colossians 4:12-13 contains Paul's direct portrait of Epaphras at prayer: "Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers (πάντοτε ἀγωνιζόμενος ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν ἐν ταῖς προσευχαῖς), that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis." The word ἀγωνιζόμενος (agōnizomenos) is the athletic term, the same root as the English agony, and the same Paul uses in Colossians 1:29 for his own apostolic labor: "For this I toil, struggling (ἀγωνιζόμενος) with all his energy that he powerfully works within me." Epaphras prayed the way an athlete competes: with total exertion, sustained effort, a specific goal. The goal was that the Colossians would "stand mature (τέλειοι, teleioi) and fully assured (πεπληροφορημένοι, peplērophorēmenoi, completely filled, fully persuaded) in all the will of God." This is the letter's own goal stated in prayer form, and it is the prayer of the man who knew these people, had walked their streets, and understood what it cost them to stay in Christ.

Philemon 23, the shortest letter in Paul's corpus, contains one final Epaphras appearance: "Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus (ὁ συναιχμάλωτός μου ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ), sends greetings to you." The synaichmalōtos (fellow prisoner of war, from αἰχμαλωτίζω, to take captive with a spear) either indicates literal co-imprisonment at Rome or Paul's use of the military metaphor for one who has been taken captive to the mission of Christ. Whether literal or figurative, the man who planted the Colossian church was present with Paul in Rome, still praying for the churches of the valley where he had labored.

Epaphras is the Sanctum's model of the intercessor who prays at athletic cost for the maturity of those he loves, a figure who never met Christ in the flesh, was never one of the Twelve, and yet carried the gospel to an entire valley and wrestled with YHWH for its churches in prayer. The Sanctum world holds the kind of formation Epaphras prayed for: mature, fully assured, deeply rooted in the will of God.