The women who ministered to Jesus of their substance, the two sisters of Bethany, the mourners at Calvary, the three who went through the morning twilight to the tomb, were but the foremost conspicuous figures in a great company through all the ages who have owed to Jesus their redemption, not only from the slavery of sin, but from the stigma of inferiority as man’s drudge or toy.  To the world in which Paul lived it was a strange, new thought that women could share with man in his loftiest emotions.  Historically the emancipation of one half of the human race is the direct result of the Christian principle that all are one in Christ Jesus.  In modern life the emancipation has been too often divorced from its one sure basis, and we have become familiar with the sight of the ‘advanced’ women who have advanced so far as to have lost sight of the Christ to whom they owe their freedom.  The picture of Phoebe in our text might well be commended to all such as setting forth the most womanlike ideal.  She was ‘a succourer of many.’  Her ministry was a ministry of help; and surely such gentle ministry is that which most befits the woman’s heart and comes most graciously to the woman’s fingers.

Phoebe then may well represent to us the ministry of succour in this world of woe and need.  There is ever a cry, even in apparently successful lives, for help and a helper.  Man’s clumsy hand is but too apt to hurt where it strives to soothe, and nature itself seems to devolve on the swifter sympathies and more delicate perceptions of woman the joy of binding up wounded spirits.  In the verses immediately following our text we read of another woman to whom was entrusted a more conspicuous and direct form of service.  Priscilla ‘taught Apollos the way of God more perfectly,’ and is traditionally represented as being united with her husband in evangelistic work.  But it is not merely prejudice which takes Phoebe rather than Priscilla as the characteristic type of woman’s special ministry.  We must remember our Lord’s teaching, that the giver of ’a cup of cold water in the name of a prophet’ in some measure shares in the prophet’s work, and will surely share in the prophet’s reward.  She who helped Paul must have entered into the spirit of Paul’s labours; and He to whom all service that is done from the same motive is one in essence, makes no difference between him whose thirsty lips drink and her whose loving hand presents the cup of cold water.  ’Small service is true service while it lasts.’  Paul and Phoebe were one in ministry and one in its recompense.

We may further see in her a foreshadowing of the reward of lowly service, though it be only the service of help.  Little did Phoebe dream that her name would have an eternal commemoration of her unnoticed deeds of kindness and aid, standing forth to later generations and peoples of whom she knew nothing, as worthy of eternal remembrance.  For those of us who have to serve unnoticed and unknown, here is an instance