I Tertius Who Wrote This Epistle

He would like his name on it. There. That is the whole thing and it took him about four years to be able to think it in that form.

The work goes out under an arrangement where no individual is named, and the arrangement is reasonable, and he agreed to it, and he would not change it if he could because he can see why it is that way.

And he would still like his name on it.

He has done a great deal of work on himself about this. He has told himself, correctly, that wanting your name on something is vanity, and that the desire for credit is one of the more embarrassing things a person can be carrying, and that a mature man does the work and lets it go.

None of that has removed the wanting. It has only made him ashamed of it, which means he now carries two things instead of one.

And what he cannot work out, in the honest hour, is what he actually thinks the name would do. He does not believe it would make the work better. He does not think anybody would care. He has interrogated this and the answer keeps coming out as something like: I would like there to be a place where it says I was here.

You may have your own version. Something you would like your name on, and a long private argument about whether you are allowed to want that, and a suspicion that the argument is not really about vanity at all.

A scribe who put his own name in

Here is one of the strangest verses in Paul's letters and almost nobody notices it.

I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord.Romans 16:22

That is the man holding the pen.

Paul is dictating, and near the end, in the middle of a long list of greetings, the scribe puts in one line of his own. I Tertius, who wrote this epistle. And there it has stayed for two thousand years, in the middle of the most consequential letter ever written, one sentence long.

Nobody knows anything else about him. That is all he is. But it is in there, and Paul left it in, and God let it stand.

You are wanting something a scribe wanted in the middle of Romans, and it was not taken out. Romans 16:22 keeps one line of a copyist's own name inside somebody else's letter, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that be an answer rather than an embarrassment.

Now let me take the shame off, because the shame is doing the damage rather than the wanting.

You have told yourself that wanting credit is vanity. Sometimes it is. But look at what you actually said in the honest hour: I would like there to be a place where it says I was here. That is not a request for admiration. That is a request for a record. Those are different wants and you have been prosecuting yourself under the wrong charge for four years.

A person wanting some evidence that they existed and did something is not a vain person. It is a mortal one.

You are asking for a record rather than for applause, and the two have never been the same. The written word keeps a scribe's single line in the middle of an apostle's letter, and the Holy Spirit is not the one who has been prosecuting you for wanting to have been here.

The honest half, and I will be plain. Your name is not going on it. The arrangement is what it is and you agreed to it and you would agree again, and nothing in this changes that.

And I am not going to tell you that God's record is exactly the same thing as your name on the object, because it is not the same and pretending otherwise would insult a man who has thought about this for four years.

What is true is that there is a record, and it is not a metaphor, and it is more durable than the object. Tertius is in the book. So is every quiet thing you did.

There is a part only you can do, and it is the awkward one. Say the wanting out loud, plainly, with no apology after it. The apology is the part that has been costing you.