Loving Mothers in the Church Life
There is another unusual concept in this chapter on the practical church life in verse 13: “Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother as well as mine.” The emphasis in Romans 16 is on the sisters, not the brothers, and there is mention of a mother but no mention of a father. Neither the sister nor the mother is the one in the flesh. “I commend to you Phoebe our sister,” not a sister in the flesh. The mother is the mother of Rufus in the flesh, but she was also Paul’s mother. Surely she was not Paul’s mother in the flesh. We do not have a verse to tell us the names of Paul’s mother and father in the flesh. The mother in verse 13 is a mother in the flesh in relation to Rufus, but more important, she is a mother not in the flesh in relation to Paul.
