How do you want to be remembered? Let’s make that a little more specific; what would you want God to tell people that they should remember about you? I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want it to be this:
You know that everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me, including Phygelus and Hermogenes (2 Timothy 1:15).
Those two names, Phygelus and Hermogenes, are not found anywhere else in the New Testament. All we know about these men is that they came from the province of Asia, and that they deserted Paul when he needed them. Paul suffered many things as he worked to advance God’s kingdom, and one of them was to be abandoned by his friends. Just as Jesus’ disciples fled when he was arrested, so Paul’s fellow workers left him alone in a Roman prison. Not a great legacy for them. But there were others who left a better legacy. In the very next verse Paul wrote:
May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. On the contrary, when he was in Rome, he searched hard for me until he found me. May the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day! You know very well in how many ways he helped me in Ephesus (2 Timothy 1:16-18).
As with Phygelus and Hermogenes, the only things recorded in the Bible about Onesiphorus are what Paul wrote in these three verses, along with a simple greeting to the household of Onesiphorus in 2 Timothy 4:19.
Sitting in a Roman prison, expecting to eventually be executed, Paul took time to express gratitude for the ministry of Onesiphorus. And the Holy Spirit wanted us to remember this man who had shown such kindness to Paul during his imprisonment. God knows everything; this little bit about Onesiphorus is the part that he wants us to know too. Equally, the one thing the Holy Spirit wanted us to remember about Phygelus and Hermogenes is that they deserted Paul when he needed them.
There’s no indication that Onesiphorus was thinking about his legacy when he was ministering to Paul. There was no reason why he should have been thinking about it. It was, rather, his ordinary, day-to-day activities, both in Rome and in Ephesus, that built his legacy. Equally, it’s a good bet that Phygelus and Hermogenes weren’t thinking about their legacy when they abandoned Paul. They were pretty clearly thinking only about how to get out of Rome before they too found themselves in prison.
As I said earlier, we don’t know anything about the lives of these men beyond what is written in this book. But the Holy Spirit is not arbitrary, and he is not unjust. Knowing just who these men were, he chose them to be examples; one good and two bad.
So the question at the beginning about how I want to be remembered isn’t really about anything as superficial as my image. The question is really about what God will think is most worth remembering about my life. Am I going to be a bad example for future generations, or a good one? And I’m pretty sure that God’s answer is not going to be based on that one super cool thing I did back in 1988. Or on the other thing from 2023. It’s going to be based on what I’ve done during the times I wasn’t even thinking about what my legacy would be. I build my legacy during those moments when I’m not trying to build a legacy, but when I’m thinking either about serving another, or serving myself. That’s the portion of my life that God will think is most worth remembering about me. And about you.