July 13

Salute the beloved Persis, which labored much in the Lord. — Rom 16:12

This is one of the chapters a good many Bible readers think they can skip with impunity.

It is little but a list of names of people we do not know anything about. Really, however, there are no chapters we can afford to miss. In this sixteenth chapter of Romans there is a good deal more than a list of names. Each mention of a person has a condensed biography attached to it.

It is wonderful how much we will know about these Roman Christians when we meet them in heaven, if only we make a study of all that we are told about them here.

Take one name as illustration. “Salute Persis the beloved, who labored much in the Lord.” She was “beloved,” a women of such sweet life that, like John, she was called “the beloved.” She had “labored” – past tense; now she was laid aside, perhaps a shut–in. She had “labored much” – constantly, not sparing herself. It was “in the Lord” that she had labored – that she had wrought so faithfully.