This section of Chapter 4 has seven verses:
2 Timothy 4:9-15
9 Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me:
10 For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this
present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica;
Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia.
11 Only Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him
with thee: for he is profitable to me for the
ministry.
12 And Tychicus have I sent to Ephesus.
13 The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, when
thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but
especially the parchments.
14 Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the
Lord reward him according to his works:
15 Of whom be thou ware also; for he hath greatly
withstood our words.
We will begin with the Barclay commentary:
A ROLL OF HONOUR AND DISHONOUR
2 Timothy 4: 9-15
…paraphrased
Do your best to come and see me soon. Demas
has deserted me, because he loved this
present world, and has gone to Thessalonica.
Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to
Dalmatia. Luke alone is with me. Take Mark
and bring him with you, for he is very
useful in service. I have sent Tychicus to
Ephesus. When you come, bring with you the
cloak which I left behind at Troas at
Carpus’ house, and bring the books,
especially the parchments. Alexander, the
coppersmith, did me a great deal of harm.
The Lord will reward him according to his
deeds. You yourself must be on your guard
against him, for he hotly opposed our words. |
PAUL draws up a roll of honour and of
dishonour of his friends. Some are only names to
us; of some, as we read the Acts of the Apostles as
well as the Epistles, we get the occasional
revealing glimpse. If we are allowed to use our
imagination, we can reconstruct some of the stories.
~Barclay commentary
Beginning with verse 10 we see names named.
They are:
Demas [De'mas]
Crescens [Cres'cens]
Titus
Luke
Mark
Tychicus [Ty-chi-cus]
Carpus
Alexander the coppersmith
What you will see in tonight's lesson and those
through verse 14 is that they represent a
cross-section of what was true in the church then
and that same cross-section is still here today.
Now to the rest of the commentaries. As we always
do, we will begin with the general and move to the
specific
First the Matthew Henry Main and breaking into a
long commentary on this section.
Paul wanted Timothy's company and help; and the
reason he gives is because several had left him (2
Timothy 4:10); one from an ill principle, namely,
Demas, who abides under an ill name for it: Demas
hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.
He quitted Paul and his interest, either for fear of
suffering (because Paul was now a prisoner, and he
was afraid of coming into trouble upon his account)
or being called off from his ministry by secular
affairs, in which he entangled himself; his first
love to Christ and his gospel was forsaken and
forgotten, and he fell in love with the world. Note,
Love to this present world is often the cause of
apostasy from the truths and ways of Jesus Christ.
He has gone off, has departed to Thessalonica,
called thither perhaps by trade, or by some other
worldly business. Crescens had gone one way and
Titus another way. Luke however remained with Paul,
and was not this enough? Paul did not think it so;
he loved the company of his friends.
~Matthew Henry Main
Now the Matthew Henry Concise:
The love of this world, is often the cause of
turning back from the truths and ways of Jesus
Christ. Paul was guided by Divine inspiration, yet
he would have his books. As long as we live, we must
still learn. The apostles did not neglect human
means, in seeking the necessaries of life, or their
own instruction. Let us thank the Divine goodness in
having given us so many writings of wise and pious
men in all ages; and let us seek that by reading
them our profiting may appear to all.
~Matthew Henry Concise
Now notice this from the John Wesley that speaks to
who Demas before this was written about him.
Demas
- Once my fellowlabourer, Philemon 1:24. Hath
forsaken me. Crescens, probably a preacher also, is
gone, with my consent, to Galatia, Titus to
Dalmatia, having now left Crete. These either went
with him to Rome, or visited him there.
~John Wesley Explanatory Notes
Quoted verse:
Philemon 1:23-24
23 There salute thee Epaphras, my fellowprisoner in
Christ Jesus;
24 Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, my
fellowlabourers.
Note:
So Demas was a fellow laborer in the faith.
Now this from the Alexander MacLaren. This section
of verse 9 to 15 mentions several names and you will
hear reference to some or all of them in the
commentaries we read.
THIS last of Paul’s letters is written, as is
generally supposed, in his second imprisonment, and
very near his martyrdom. The condition in which it
represents him is remarkably contrasted, in several
respects, with the conditions of his first
imprisonment, as shown in the letters dating from
that period. In these - in two of them, at all
events - we find him surrounded by troops of
friends, among whom the same three names as occur in
my text appear as united with him in loyal
confidence, and joining with him in greetings to his
correspondents. Here they are again, but under what
different circumstances! ‘Demas hath forsaken me...
Only Luke is with me. Take Mark’ - who is also
absent - ‘and bring him with thee.’ The lonely
Apostle has none of the Old Guard around him, except
the faithful Luke, and he longs, before he dies, to
see once more the familiar faces, and to be
ministered to once more by accustomed and tender
hands. That touch of humanity brings him very near
us.
But what I have chosen my texts for is the sharp
contrast which the three prominent names in them
present in their attitude to the Apostle - Demas the
renegade, Mark the restored runaway, Luke, the ever
steadfast and faithful companion- Now of course
these three men’s relation to Jesus Christ was not
identical with their relation to Paul. But at the
same time their relation to Paul, one has little
doubt, fluctuated with their relation to Jesus. It
is scarcely possible to believe that the first of
them would have done so base an act as to abandon
the Apostle at the very crisis of his fate, unless
his attachment to Jesus had become slender, nor that
Mark’s love to his Lord had not cooled when he ‘went
not with Paul and Barnabas to the work.’ I take
these three names as representations of three
different types of character and spiritual
experience, and I wish to look at the three
portraits in succession; only I venture to alter the
order in which they appear in the text. First, then
-
I.
Demas the renegade.
We know nothing of him except that in the letters of
the earlier imprisonment his name appears, honoured
by Paul with the designation of his ‘fellow-worker,’
evidently admitted into the inner circle, living in
amity and close communion with the other members of
it, trusted and honoured, a man of some maturity and
advancement, and now guilty of the base act of
leaving the Apostle. How deeply that wounded Paul’s
sensitive heart the language of our text
sufficiently shows. It is a sad fate that all the
world should know that fact, and only that, about
Demas, that he should be cursed and condemned to
such an immortality, and go down through the ages
branded with ‘ he hath forsaken me, having loved
this present world.’ He was not a monster, but just
a man like the rest of us; and he came to his bad
eminence by a very well-trodden and familiar path.
He ‘hath forsaken me, having loved this present
world’ - that is to say, he was a religious man who
had not religion enough to resist the constant
attractions and seductions of this present, and
because he loved it, in one or other of its forms -
wealth, ease, comfort, a whole skin, reputation, or
whatever it may have been - more than he loved
Paul’s Master, he turned his back upon principle,
friendship, honour, duty, everything noble, and
buried himself in the far-off Thessalonica. There
are a great many Demases amongst us, and a great
many different kinds of Thessalonicas to which we
run. But we are all exposed to that same danger, and
so we may well look at this one soul that fell under
its spell, and was too weak to resist its
pertinacious solicitations, and say to ourselves:
‘Lord, is it I?’
For there is nothing in human sin that is alien from
any of us, and no depth of lapse and apostasy is so
profound but that the tendencies towards it, and the
possibilities of it, are in us, even us also. So let
me translate into less well-worn words the language
of the text which, for all its force, is so familiar
that it does not appeal to us as it ought to do.
‘This present world,’ what is that? Well, it is
Protean, as I have already hinted, in its shapes,
and all manner of solicitations come from it, but we
may say in general terms that it is the aggregate of
‘things seen and temporal’ which, subtle, and
certainly corresponding to our own weakest sides,
appealing to some of us in the shape of wealth, to
some of us in the shape of earthly loves, to some of
us in the shape of material advantages, to some of
us in the form of the ‘hollow wraith of dying fame,’
to some of us in the nobler guise of scientific
pursuits, lie confined within the limits of the
phenomenal and the material, but to all of us being
essentially the presentation of the visible, the
material, the transient as the aim to strain after,
and the good to count as our treasure.
Let us remember how persistent and how terribly
strong the appeal of ‘this present world’ is to us
all. Its operation is continual upon us. Here it is,
and we are in necessary connection with it, and it
is our duty to be occupied with it, and it is
cowardice to shirk the duty because of the peril
that lies in it. You have to go to your business
tomorrow morning, and I have to go to my books or my
work; and the task for each of us is - and God knows
how hard a task it is - to have our hearts in [The
Kingdom] whilst our hands are busy with the things around us.
Christianity enjoins no false asceticism [uh-set-uh-siz-uh
m]
- [attaining
a high spiritual state by self-denial].
There is little need to preach that today, but still
it is to be remembered that it is duty to be
occupied with the world, and fatal sin to love it,
And just because it is so difficult to keep upon
that knife-edge, so difficult to put all our pith
and power into our occupation with material things,
and yet never to be tempted into the love of them
which fights against all nobleness of life, is it
incumbent on me, over and over again, to reiterate
to you and to myself the old threadbare
commonplace,’ Love not the world, neither the things
that are in the world.’ Leave your mark on them,
work on them diligently, and with all your heart,
bend them to be your servants, and to help you to
rise to the things above them, but on your soul’s
peril keep clear of that bowing down before them,
that trusting in them, that longing for them, that
despair if you lose them, which together make up the
love of the world, and the lust thereof which passes
away. There is an enemy within the fortress who is
always ready and eager to fling open the gates to
the besiegers. For the things ‘seen and temporal’
correspond with, and have their ally in, the senses
by which we are brought into contact with them. And
unless there is a very strong religious impulse
dominant in our minds, or to put it into more
Christian words, unless ‘the love of God is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is
given to us,’ it cannot be but that we shall follow
Demas, and run away to our Thessalonica, and leave
Paul, and duty, and, Paul’s Master, and duty’s
Source, behind us.
For, brethren, if once this love of the world, which
is always soliciting each of us, gets a footing in
our hearts, it is impossible - as impossible as it
is for two bodies to occupy the same place at the
same time - for the love of Christ, which is the
love of God, to continue dominant there. There
cannot be two masters. That is plain common sense.
If my head is full of thoughts and schemes,
concerned only with the fleeting illusory present,
then there is no room in it for His serene,
ennobling presence. If my hands are laden with
pebbles, I cannot clasp the diamonds that are
offered to me.
Unless you fling out the sand-bags the balloon will
cleave to the earth, and unless we turn the world
out of our hearts, it is no use to say to Him,
‘Come! Lord Jesus.’ There is no room for Him. And
though He comes through the narrowest opening of the
door of the soul, He will not come unless we have to
some extent conquered the world, and the love of the
world.
If I could get you to translate for yourselves the
threadbare theological terminology of this text into
the vital facts that it represents, I should thank
God. Only, dear brethren, take this with you, either
we forsake Christ because we love the world, or we
forsake the world because we love Christ. On the one
alternative we choose restlessness and feverish
desires unsatisfied, and craving, all the misery of
mistaking mist for land and cloud-wrack for solid
ground; on the other, we choose all the blessedness
of having set our love on that which satisfies, of
having loved the worthiest, the best, the most
loving. Which of the two shall we choose? It may be
that the one choice shall mean, as it did for Paul,
a prison cell and a martyrdom, and that the other
may mean, as it did for Demas, comfort and safety,
and many an unmistakably good thing, in some
Thessalonica or other. But are we going to vote with
Demas, or is it going to be Paul? Whether is it
better to love the world, and get what the renegade
presumably got for a time, or is it better to get
what Paul speaks of in the words before my text, ‘a
crown of righteousness laid up for all them that
love’ - not the world - ‘but His appearing.’ like
the martyr Apostle.
~Alexander MacLaren
Now to the specific commentaries. We will only have
time Barnes Notes.
For Demas hath forsaken me
- Demas is honorably mentioned in Colossians 4:14;
but nothing more is known of him than what can be
gathered from that place and this - that he was at
first a friend and fellow-laborer of Paul, but that,
under the influence of a desire to live, he
afterward forsook him, even in circumstances where
he greatly needed the presence of a friend.
Quoted verse:
Colossians 4:14
Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you.
Having loved this present world
- This does not mean, necessarily, that he was an
avaricious [av-uh-rish-uh
s]
- [greedy;
covetous]
man, or that, in itself, he loved the honors or
wealth of this world; but it means that he desired
to live. He was not willing to stay with Paul, and
subject himself to the probabilities of martyrdom;
and, in order to secure his life, he departed to a
place of safety. The Greek is,
ἀγαπὴσας τὸν νὺν αἰῶνα agapēsas ton nun
aiōna
- having loved the world that now is; that is, this
world as it is, with all its cares, and troubles,
and comforts; having desired to remain in this
world, rather than to go to the other. There is,
perhaps, a slight censure here in the language of
Paul - “the censure of grief;” but there is no
reason why Demas should be held up as an example of
a worldly man. That he desired to live longer; that
he was unwilling to remain and risk the loss of
life, is indeed clear. That Paul was pained by his
departure, and that he felt lonely and sad, is quite
apparent; but I see no evidence that Demas was
influenced by what are commonly called worldly
feelings, or that he was led to this course by the
desire of wealth, or fame, or pleasure.
And is departed unto Thessalonica
- Perhaps his native place. “Calmet.”
Crescens
- Nothing more is known of Crescens than is here
mentioned. “He is thought by Eusebius [juːˈsiːbiəs/]
and others to have preached in Gaul, and to have
founded the church in Vienne [vjɛn],
in Dauphiny” - Calmet.
To Galatia
- See Intro. to the Epistle to the Galatians,
Section 1. It is not known to what part of Galatia
he had gone, or why he went there.
Titus into Dalmatia
- Dalmatia was a part of Illyricum [ih-leer-i-kuh
m],
on the gulf of Venice, or the Adriatic sea. On the
situation of Illyricum [ih-leer-i-kuh
m]
, see the notes on Romans 15:19. Paul does not
mention the reason why Titus had gone there; but it
is not improbable that he had gone to preach the
gospel, or to visit the churches which Paul had
planted in that region. The apostle does not suggest
that he was deserving of blame for having gone, and
it can hardly be supposed that “Titus” would have
left him at this time without his concurrence.
Perhaps, when he permitted him to go, he did not
know how soon events would come to a crisis with
him; and as a letter would more readily reach
Timothy at Ephesus, than Titus in Dalmatia, he
requested him to come to him, instead of directing
Titus to return.
~Barnes Notes
Quoted verse:
Romans 15:19
Through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of
the Spirit of God; so that from Jerusalem, and round
about unto Illyricum [ih-leer-i-kuh
m],
I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.
Understand that some in and around the Body of
Christ have a love for this world resulting in
backsliding and falling away. Do not be like
Demas. This is the lesson of verse 10.
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