Our Hidden Helpers

Welcome to another week of our podcast, Things Unseen. I wonder if you’ve ever noticed when you’ve been reading Paul’s letters that he mentions a remarkable number of fellow Christians. Actually, there are dozens and dozens of them. And we wouldn’t know of their existence apart from these little cameos that he sometimes paints, and they give us hints of what these people were like, and what they meant to him, and how some of them helped him.

The name that often pops up in my mind when I think of these people is one that he mentions in Romans 16:13. He refers to a man called Rufus, and he describes him as “chosen in the Lord.” But all Christians are chosen in the Lord, so why would Paul say that particularly about Rufus? I suspect because this was the Rufus who had a remarkable connection to the Lord Jesus. I think he was probably the Rufus who’s mentioned by Mark in Mark 15:21, the son of Simon of Cyrene, the man who carried Jesus’ cross. Mark would only have mentioned Rufus and his brother Alexander in that passage if they were well known to the church. But then Paul also mentions Alexander and Rufus’ mother and says this lovely thing about her: “She has been a mother to me as well.” Isn’t that beautiful?

I wonder if this kind of feature in the Bible, appreciation of an otherwise unknown lady who had obviously been such a blessing to Paul, has the same effect on you as it does on me. It makes me think about people who have helped me in my own Christian life that most people don’t know very much about. So, I hope you’ll not think I’m lapsing into a new phase of narcissism this week if I mention some of these people. I don’t want to draw attention to myself here but honestly to think about people who are hidden away in our lives, just as Rufus’ mother would be hidden away in Paul’s life, and we wouldn’t know anything about her if he hadn’t devoted a sentence to her in Romans. And I hope this will encourage you to reflect with gratitude on the hidden people who have been a help and blessing to you as well.

You remember Paul’s exhortation in Philippians 4:10: “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” Of course, that was part of his special role as an Apostle—to model the Christian life. But he also tells us to honor those who similarly follow Christ faithfully. That’s because Christian faith and life are not merely matters of book learning, as though being a Christian was basically a matter of opening the Bible, studying it and asking, so what do I need to do to make a success of this? No, the Christian life is not only about knowing, but it’s also about being. It’s not merely about what we know, but about what we become because of what we know.

So, for example, Ligonier’s daily Renewing Your Mind is full of biblical instruction, but its ultimate purpose is not only the renewal of our minds but what flows from that, as Romans 12:1–2, underline—namely, being transformed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus. So being a Christian can be something that’s caught—caught from others—as well as taught. It’s about a new way of living, about a style, about an atmosphere, about a manner of life that’s worthy of Jesus. And we often learn that through the people who have helped us.

So, I want to encourage you to think about these people in your own life as I share with you some reflections in the people who have helped me. Now, let’s pause to thank God for them and to ask Him to help us follow their example. I suspect that if you start doing that, you’ll soon feel as I do, that you’re in the same boat as the author of the letter to the Hebrews when he says towards the end of his list of the heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11 that time would fail to tell of all the people who come to mind.

So, I’m not alone, I think, in feeling that what I am as a Christian and who I am as a Christian is in very large measure the fruit of other people’s loving investment in my own life. Probably most of them have very little idea how much they’ve done to help me, and I suspect they wouldn’t be able to take it in if I tried to tell them, as I’ve sometimes done. I’ve breathed in the atmosphere of the grace of Christ that they breathed out, and it’s been a tremendous help to me. So, I’m going to have to limit my list of heroes of the faith, and perhaps it’s a good thing for us to do that ourselves.

And this week I want to mention a few people who helped me from my days as a young teenage Christian, when I was around fifteen, to the day I became a minister, when I was twenty-three. And I suspect that each day this week, simply by talking about them, I’m going to feel even more grateful for their influence, especially because the people I want to mention are not the well-known Christians who have influenced me but the hidden people that you’ll never meet—until perhaps you meet them in glory and say: “Oh, I think I know who you are. I heard about you on Things Unseen.”

So, join us again tomorrow. But perhaps today, you should start thinking with gratitude of the people who are hidden away in your life and have been major blessings to you. And I hope you’ll join us tomorrow.