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We do not know anything about these two persons, men of position evidently, who had large households. But learned commentators of the New Testament have advanced a very reasonable conjecture in regard to each of them. As to the first of them, Aristobulus — that wicked old King Herod, in whose life Christ was born, had a grandson of the name, who spent all his life in Rome, and was in close relations with the emperor of that day. He had died some little time before the writing of this letter. As to the second of them, there is a very notorious Narcissus, who plays a great part in the history of Rome just a little while before Paul's period there, and he, too, was dead. And it is more than probable that the slaves and retainers of these two men were transferred in both cases to the emperor's household and held together in it, being known as Aristobulus's men and Narcissus's men. And so probably the Christians among them are the brethren to whom these salutations are sent.

I. THE PENETRATING POWER OF CHRISTIAN TRUTH. I think of the sort of man the master of the first household was if the identification suggested be accepted. He is one of that foul Herodian brood, in all of whom the bad Idumaean blood ran corruptly. The grandson of the old Herod, the brother of Agrippa of the Acts of the Apostles, the hanger-on of the Imperial Court, with Roman vices veneered on his native wickedness, was not the man to welcome the entrance of a revolutionary ferment into his household; and yet through his barred doors had crept quietly, he knowing nothing about it, that great message of a loving God, and a Master whose service was freedom. And in thousands of like cases the gospel was finding its way underground, undreamed of by the great and wise, but steadily pressing onwards, and undermining all the towering grandeur that was so contemptuous of it. So Christ's truth spread at first; and I believe that is the way it always spreads.

II. THE UNITING POWER OF CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. A considerable proportion of the first of these two households would probably be Jews — if Aristobulus were indeed Herod's grandson. The probability that he was is increased by the greeting interposed between those to the households — "Salute Herodian." The name suggests some connection with Herod, and whether we suppose the designation of "my kinsman," which Paul gives him, to mean "blood relation" or "fellow-countryman," Herodian, at all events, was a Jew by birth. As to the other members of these households, Paul may have met some of them in his many travels, but he had never been in Rome, and his greetings are more probably sent to them as conspicuous sections, numerically, of the Roman Church, and as tokens of his affection, though he had never seen them. The possession of a common faith has bridged the gulf between him and them. Slaves in those days were outside the pale of human sympathy, and almost outside the pale of human rights. And here the foremost of Christian teachers, who was a freeman born, separated from these poor people by a tremendous chasm, stretches a brother's hand across it and grasps theirs. The gospel that came into the world to rend old associations and to split up society, and to make a deep cleft between fathers and children and husband and wife, came also to more than counterbalance its dividing effects by its uniting power.

III. THE TRANQUILISING POWER OF CHRISTIAN RESIGNATION. They were mostly slaves, and they continued to be slaves when they were Christians. Paul recognised their continuance in the servile position, and did not say a word to them to induce them to break their bonds. Of course, there is no blinking the fact that slavery was an essentially immoral and unchristian institution. But it is one thing to lay down principles and leave them to be worked in and then to be worked out, and it is another thing to go blindly charging at existing institutions and throwing them down by violence, before men have grown up to feel that they are wicked. And so the New Testament takes the wise course, and leaves the foolish one to foolish people. It makes the tree good, and then its fruit will be good. But the main point that I want to insist upon is this: what was good for these slaves in Rome is good for you and me. Let us get near to Jesus Christ, and feel that we have got hold of His hand for our own selves, and we shall not mind very much about the possible varieties of human condition.

IV. THE CONQUERING POWER OF CHRISTIAN FAITHFULNESS. It was not a very likely place to find Christian people in the household of Herod's grandson, was it? Such flowers do not often grow, or at least not easily grow, on such dunghills. And in both these cases it was only a handful of the people, a portion of each household, that was Christian. So they had beside them, closely identified with them — working, perhaps, at the same tasks, I might almost say chained with the same chains — men who had no share in their faith or in their love. It would not be easy to pray, and love and trust God and do His will, and keep clear of complicity with idolatry and immorality and sin, in such a pigsty as that; would it? But these men did it. And nobody need ever say," I am in such circumstances that I cannot live a Christian life." There are no such circumstances, at least none of God's appointing. There are often such that we bring upon ourselves. And then the best thing is to get out of them as soon as we can. But as far as He is concerned, He never puts anybody anywhere where he cannot live a holy life.

(A. Maclaren, D.D.)

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KJV: Salute Apelles approved in Christ. Salute them which are of Aristobulus' household.

WEB: Greet Apelles, the approved in Christ. Greet those who are of the household of Aristobulus.