“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
“Do your best to come to me soon. For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry. Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments” (2 Tim. 4:9-13).
Paul was an apostle who depended upon his companions — even when his companions weren’t that dependable. Circumstances have conspired such that Paul was isolated, and needed to ask Timothy to come to him right away. He was left alone, with the exception of Luke, and he needed reinforcements. He asked Timothy to come to him asap. Demas had left, and not in a good way. Paul notes here that he left him to go to Thessalonica. We don’t know what the occasion was, but we do know that Demas was motivated in some way by the wrong kind of worldly love. Crescens went to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia, and both presumably because ministry called them there. Paul wanted Timothy to come, and he wanted him to make sure to bring Mark, who was useful to Paul in his ministry. This is the same Mark who wrote the second gospel, and who had accompanied Paul on the missionary journey of Acts 13 (13:5). Mark had left them, returning to Jerusalem (13:13), right after Paul had preached the gospel to a Gentile outside the context of the synagogue, for the first time (13: 7, 12). John Mark, apparently of the Judaizing faction, couldn’t handle this and returned to Jerusalem. If he was the rich, young ruler (the gospel of Mark is the only one that records how Jesus loved him), we can piece some of this together. He was wealthy, an inhabitant of Jerusalem, and devoted to the law. He left Paul over the Gentile issue, but after the Jerusalem council made its determination, he submitted to that decision. This is why Barnabas was willing to take him on the next journey (Acts 15:37), and yet we can see why Paul was unwilling to do so (Acts 15:38). Barnabas was a true son of encouragement, and Paul had profound reasons for being suspicious of every form of Judaizing. But here, near the end of Paul’s life, we see Paul’s acknowledgment that Barnabas had been right, if not in his judgment about that particular missionary journey, at least right in his assessment of Mark’s character.
It is quite striking that in this place Paul marks how he had been deserted by someone who was in love with the present world, Demas, and he remarks on how useful someone else was, Mark, a man who had once deserted him in much the same way that Demas had.