Colossians 4:14 - Exposition

Luke the physician, the beloved, saluteth you ( Philemon 1:24 ; 2 Timothy 4:11 ). This reference to Luke's profession is extremely interesting. We gather from the use of the first person plural in Acts 16:10-17 , and again from Acts 20:5 to the end of the narrative, that he joined St. Paul on his first voyage to Europe and was left behind at Philippi; and rejoined him six years after on the journey to Jerusalem which completed his third missionary circuit, continuing with him during his voyage to Rome and his imprisonment. This faithful friend attended him in his second captivity, and solaced his last hours; "Only Luke is with me" ( 2 Timothy 4:11 ). His being called "the physician" suggests that he ministered to the apostle in this capacity, especially as "his first appearance in St. Paul's company synchronizes with an attack of St. Paul's constitutional malady". St Luke's writings testify both to his medical knowledge and to his Pauline sympathies. His companionship probably gave a special colouring to the phraseology and cast of thought of St. Paul's later Epistles. "The beloved" is a distinct appellation, due partly to Luke's services to the apostle, but chiefly, one would suppose, to the amiable and gentle disposition of the writer of the third Gospel. It is not unlikely that he is "the brother" referred to in 2 Corinthians 8:18 , 2 Corinthians 8:19 . Lucas is a contraction for Lucanus; so that he was not the "Lucius" of Acts 13:1 , nor, certainly, the "Lucius my kinsman" of Romans 16:21 , who was a Jew. He was probably, like many physicians of that period, a freedman; and, since freedmen took the name of the house to which they had belonged, may have been, as Plumptre conjectures, connected with the family of the Roman philosopher Seneca and the poet Lucan. And Demas ( Philemon 1:24 ; 2 Timothy 4:10 ), who alone receives no word of commendation—a fact significant in view of the melancholy sentence pronounced upon him in 2 Timothy 4:10 . His name is probably short for Demetrius.