Aristobulus And Narcissus Series

tom lowe

1/10/2022

Aristobulus and Narcissus

Early Church Workers

• Aristobulus was the grandson of Herod the Great and lived in Rome as a private citizen.

• Since Paul does not greet him, but only those in his household, it is plausible to think he had either passed away or was not a Christian.

• If he had died, his slaves would have reverted to the emperor upon his death. Furthermore, they would have been known as the household of Aristobulus. ·

• Narcissus was a powerful freedman. Someone by that name was put to death by Nero shortly before this letter was written.

• Interestingly, members from his household are identified as being "in the Lord."

The Households of Aristobulus and Narcissus

Romans 16:10-11

Salute Apelles approved in Christ. Salute them, which are of Aristobulus' household.…

We do not know anything about these two persons, men of position evidently, who had large households. But learned commentators of the New Testament have advanced a very sensible conjecture concerning each of them. As to the first of them, Aristobulus — that wicked old King Herod, in whose lifetime Christ was born, had a grandson of the name, who spent all his life in Rome, and was in close relations with the emperor of that day. He had died some little time before the writing of this letter. As to the second of them, there is a very notorious Narcissus, who plays a great part in the history of Rome just a little while before Paul's period there, and he, too, was dead. And it is more than probable that the slaves and retainers of these two men were transferred in both cases to the emperor's household and held together in it, being known as Aristobulus's men and Narcissus's men. And so probably the Christians among them are the brethren to whom these salutations are sent.

I. THE PENETRATING POWER OF CHRISTIAN TRUTH. I think of the sort of man the master of the first household was if the identification suggested is accepted. He is one of that foul Herodian brood, in all of whom the bad Idumaean blood ran corruptly. The grandson of the old Herod, the brother of Agrippa of the Acts of the Apostles, the hanger-on of the Imperial Court, with Roman vices coated on his native wickedness, was not the man to welcome the entrance of a revolutionary uproar into his household; and yet through his barred doors had crept quietly, he knowing nothing about it, that great message of a loving God, and a Master whose service was freedom. And in thousands of like cases the gospel was finding its way underground, undreamed of by the great and wise, but steadily pressing onwards, and undermining all the towering grandeur that was so contemptuous of it. So Christ's truth spread at first, and I believe that is the way it always spreads.

II. THE UNITING POWER OF CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. A considerable proportion of the first of these two households would probably be Jews — if Aristobulus were indeed Herod's grandson. The greeting increases the probability that he was interjected between those to the households — "Salute Herodian." The name suggests some connection with Herod, and whether we suppose the designation of "my kinsman," which Paul gives him, to mean "blood relation" or "fellow-countryman," Herodian, at all events, was a Jew by birth. As for the other members of these households, Paul may have met some of them in his many travels, but he had never been in Rome, and his greetings are more probably sent to them as conspicuous sections, numerically, of the Roman Church, and as tokens of his affection, though he had never seen them. The possession of a common faith has bridged the gulf between him and them. Slaves in those days were outside the pale of human sympathy and almost outside the pale of human rights. Furthermore, the foremost of Christian teachers, who was born a freeman separated from these poor people by a tremendous chasm, stretches a brother's hand across it and grasps theirs. The gospel that came into the world to shred old associations split up society and do a deep split between fathers and children and husband and wife also came to more than counterbalance its dividing effects by its uniting power.

III. THE TRANQUILISING[1] POWER OF CHRISTIAN RESIGNATION. They were mostly slaves, and they continued to be slaves when they were Christians. Paul recognized their continuance in the servile position and did not say a word to them to induce them to break their bonds. Of course, there is no blinking away the fact that slavery was an essentially immoral and unchristian institution. However, it is one thing to lay down principles and leave them to be worked in and then to be worked out, and it is another thing to go blindly charging at existing institutions and throwing them down by violence before men have grown up to feel that they are wicked. Thus, the New Testament takes the wise course and leaves the foolish to foolish people. It makes the tree good, and then its fruit will be good. However, the main point that I want to insist upon is this: what was suitable for these slaves in Rome is good for you and me. Let us get near to Jesus Christ and feel that we have got hold of His hand for ourselves, and we shall not mind very much about the possible varieties of the human condition.