Trophimus

Biblical Record

Trophimus appears three times in the New Testament. His name renders the Greek Trophimos, commonly interpreted to mean "nourished" or "foster child."

• Acts 20:4: Toward the end of Paul's third missionary journey, as Paul traveled through Greece and Macedonia on his way to Jerusalem, Trophimus is listed among his traveling companions. The text introduces him, together with Tychicus, as being "of Asia." Here Asia refers to the Roman province in what is now western Turkey.
• Acts 21:29: In Jerusalem, Jews from Asia saw Paul in the temple and stirred up a commotion, crying out that he had brought Greeks into the temple and polluted the holy place (Acts 21:27-28). Luke explains that they supposed this because they had earlier seen "Trophimus an Ephesian" with Paul in the city. As a result of this uproar, Paul was taken into custody by the Roman chief captain.
• 2 Timothy 4:20: Paul writes, "Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick." Miletus was a port city south of Ephesus.

Significance Within Scripture

Trophimus was a Gentile believer from the church at Ephesus and a close coworker in Paul's ministry. The group named in Acts 20 appears to have represented various local churches, and many commentators hold that its members jointly delivered the collection gathered for the church in Jerusalem.

In Acts 21, Trophimus neither speaks nor acts. Even so, the assumption made by those who saw him with Paul becomes the starting point for Paul's arrest and for the subsequent account of his trials in Caesarea and Rome. At that time the Jerusalem temple barred Gentiles from entering its inner courts, and Greek inscriptions warning against such entry are reported to have been discovered in modern times. The scene illustrates how sensitive an issue the union of Jews and Gentiles in one church was for the early church.

Interpretations and Issues

• Illness and healing: 2 Timothy 4:20 records that Paul left a coworker behind ill rather than healing him miraculously. For this reason the verse is frequently cited in discussions of divine healing and cessationism and continuationism. Those who hold that the miraculous gifts ceased after the apostolic age cite it as evidence that, even within the apostolic era, healing was not a power Paul could exercise at will. Those who hold that the gifts continue today read the verse not as denying the gift of healing itself, but merely as showing that healing lies under God's sovereignty.
• Chronology: Because Trophimus was with Paul in Jerusalem in Acts, it is difficult to fit his being left at Miletus into the narrative of Acts. Traditionally this has been explained as occurring during further travels after Paul's release from imprisonment in Rome. Scholars who regard 2 Timothy as the work of a post-Pauline generation, however, interpret the passage differently.
• Extrabiblical traditions: Some scholars conjecture that the unnamed "brother" in 2 Corinthians 8:18-22 is Trophimus, but the text offers no basis for this identification. Eastern church tradition counts him among the Seventy and holds that he was martyred under Nero. A Western legend identifies him with Trophimus, the first bishop of Arles in France, but many historians regard them as different individuals. None of these accounts appears in the biblical text.

In the Korean Church

In the Korean church, Trophimus is rarely the subject of a sermon in his own right. He is mentioned chiefly alongside Tychicus, Erastus, and others in sermons or Bible studies on Paul's coworkers. Second Timothy 4:20 is also cited in sermons and devotional books on illness and healing, often when addressing the struggles of believers whose illness persists despite prayer.