Going Deeper Demas: a bad steward A steward is a ruler and servant, one who exists to please his master.”
Life isn’t always black and white. Some of the time, our motives, like our choices, are complicated. But every once in a while, things get simple. Every once in a while, we reach a clear junction; one direction is wrong, the other is right. And that’s what happened to our next steward, Demas. Faced with a clear choice, he took a turning. It was the wrong one. Paul mentions Demas three times throughout his letters. Each time he does, he describes him as a fellow-worker. It’s high praise indeed. And yet, while Paul does not go into detail about his demise, we know that Demas messes up. For the clues, let’s look at someone mentioned in the same breath as Demas in two of Paul’s passages:
Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured. I vouch for him that he is working hard for you and for those at Laodicea and Hierapolis. Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings. (Colossians 4: 12-14)
And then there’s this extract from a letter:
Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends you greetings. And so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas and Luke, my fellow workers. (Philemon 1:23-24) Epaphras is not called a fellow-worker, yet Paul describes him in detail as such. He is ‘one of you’, a team player, a ‘servant’ who works ‘hard’ and ‘wrestles’ in prayer for the Colossian church. But note how in the letter to Philemon, there is a change in
Epaphras’ status: he is now a ‘fellow-prisoner’. He has gone all the way with Paul, a full partner in Paul’s successes and struggles. Demas, on the other hand, has not. Writing in 2 Timothy, Paul explains all:
...for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia . (2 Timothy 4:10) This is the last we hear of Demas. He left Paul stuck in a Roman prison, because ‘this world’ was more appealing to him. In choosing to leave, he undoes all the good work that came before. We might like to think of Paul as a maverick, riding off alone into the sunset. But the truth is better than that. Read enough of his letters and you will see that he saw himself as fellow-worker, a collaborator, a team player. His signature closing words to churches reflect this view and help us see the truth: bad stewards break ranks. Bad stewards go it alone. Broken fellowship is their prison. And it is of their own making.
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