He Was Not Ashamed of My Chain

Near the end of his life Paul was in a Roman prison and most people he knew had stopped coming.

He says so, plainly, and it is one of the loneliest sentences he ever wrote: all they which are in Asia be turned away from me. All of them. And later in the same letter he says that at his first defense, no man stood with him.

Being associated with Paul at that point was not a social awkwardness. It was a legal risk in a city that was starting to treat this movement as a problem, and everybody who had a family and a business knew exactly what visiting a prisoner might attach to their name.

And then he mentions one man.

He says: the Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus, for he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain. But, when he was in Rome, he sought me out very diligently, and found me.

Sought me out very diligently, and found me.

That man came to Rome and went looking. He had to ask people. Every question was a small confession: I am looking for the prisoner Paul, do you know where they are keeping him.

Every one of those conversations put his name next to a chain.

The detail Paul remembered

Read what he says about him, because of the three things listed, one is not like the others.

The Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus; for he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain. (2 Timothy 1:16, King James Version)

He oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain.

The first part is practical. Oft refreshed. He brought things, and he came repeatedly, and it made a difference in a hard place.

The second part is about a reputation. Not ashamed of my chain. That is not describing what he brought. It is describing what he was willing to be seen carrying alongside it.

And that is the thing Paul remembered and wrote down.

You are able to give something that costs a reputation, and money has never once been the only currency in generosity. That is not me making a small kindness dramatic. 2 Timothy 1:16 names the lack of shame as a separate item from the refreshing, and it is the Holy Spirit who supplies the willingness to be publicly associated with somebody.

The kind of giving nobody counts

Here is what I want to name, because it never appears in a conversation about generosity.

There is help that costs money, and there is help that costs standing, and the second one is more expensive for most people than they will ever say out loud.

Almost anybody will help somebody quietly. Send something, do something, handle a thing without any of it being visible.

Being seen is different. Being at the hospital where people from work might see you. Being at that person's house when the neighbors know their situation. Having your name next to somebody whose story is complicated and having no way to explain it to everybody who might ask.

That is a genuine cost, and it is not vanity, and I am not going to call it vanity. Reputation is a real asset that opens real doors, and a person who spends some of it has spent something.

You are able to spend standing on somebody, and it has never once been a smaller gift than money. 2 Timothy 1:16 keeps the shame clause on the record permanently, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a person willing to be publicly attached to a hard situation.

Diligently, and found him

Look at the effort in that sentence too, because it is not a single act.

He sought me out very diligently, and found me.

That implies searching. Rome was enormous and Paul was a prisoner and there was no way to look him up. Onesiphorus asked, and got wrong answers, and asked again, and eventually found the place.

So it was not one brave decision. It was a series of ordinary uncomfortable conversations over some number of days, and each one of them was a small opportunity to give up and go home with his reputation intact.

Most of what looks like courage from the outside is that: a person deciding the same thing repeatedly, in small increments, while nothing dramatic is happening.

You are able to keep going through the awkward part, and it has never once required a single heroic decision. 2 Timothy 1:17 has him searching until he found the place, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps somebody going through a stretch of ordinary discomfort.

Paul does not shame the others

And I have to point at this, because it is the mark of the man.

Paul mentions that everybody in Asia turned away from him. He mentions that no man stood with him at his first answer. And then he says immediately: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge.

That is a man who had every right to name names and did not, and who asked that their absence not be held against them.

So this article is not permission to look down on anybody who has kept a distance. Most of those people had families and reasons, and some of them were genuinely afraid, and Paul, who paid for their absence, forgave it in writing.

You are not being asked to judge anybody who stayed away, and God has never once used one person's courage to condemn another's fear. 2 Timothy 4:16 has him ask that it not be laid to their charge, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a generous person from becoming a superior one.