Objection: Paul Left Trophimus at Miletum Sick Instead of Healing Him
2 Timothy 4:20:
Erastus abode at Corinth: but Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick.
If Trophimus’s experience “proves” that God wants some people to stay sick, then Demas’s experience ten verses earlier in 2 Timothy 4:10 (“For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia”) “proves” that God wants some people to forsake the ministry and love this present world. This is the classic mistake of letting experience decide doctrine. Things are not necessarily God’s will just because they happen. Going to hell “happens” for many people, but that is never God’s will. Walking out of love is never God’s will, but it happens all the time, too. Even if an experience happened to someone in the BIBLE, that still does not mean that it should be used to determine doctrine. Judas betrayed Jesus and Peter denied Jesus three times. It would be awful to decide that we should also do those things because their experiences are recorded in Scripture.
The objector wants you to ignore the multitudes of people who were healed in the New Testament and build a doctrine on this one snippet of Scripture, where no doctrine is being put forth and an experience is related. This is truly letting the tail wag the dog. You never let someone’s experience determine your doctrine – you get doctrine from passages that actually put forth doctrine!
If you want to know Paul’s doctrine, you should look at verses such as 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, where Paul clearly states that your body and your spirit were both bought with the same price. He clearly lived out this doctrine as special miracles were done by his hands in Asia (Acts 19:11-12) and he healed everyone who was sick on the island of Melita (Acts 28:8-9), to cite only two cases.
People have used the verse in question as proof that the righteous must suffer illness. But we are not even told why Trophimus the Ephesian was sick, let alone whether God healed him later. As a gospel worker with Paul (Acts 20:4, Acts 21:29), he may well have had the problem that Epaphroditus did in Philippians 2:25-30 – suffering from overwork in the ministry. (Some ministers today also fall into this trap.) It is also entirely possible that Trophimus was recovering from a beating or other abuse he got for preaching the gospel. We know that Paul certainly endured a lot of that. We don’t know why Trophimus was sick, but Paul definitely did not say that it was the will of God for him to be that way. He simply reported a fact. Even Paul himself ministered in Galatia “through infirmity of the flesh,” but it is evident that God healed him because this condition was only “at the first,” not an ongoing problem that Paul had to live with (Galatians 4:13).
Given the conditions under which the apostles had to minister, to say nothing of their beatings, it is truly amazing that more of them were not left somewhere sick. The fact that Trophimus is the exception should highlight the rule. God continued to restore His workers to health when they needed it.
What if we agree with the objector that because Trophimus was sick, that must have been the will of God? Following this “logic,” it must have been the will of God for the Corinthians to be carnal, for the Galatians and Colossians to be legalistic, for Alexander the Coppersmith to do Paul much harm, and for Demas to love this world and forsake Paul. It must have been God’s will for Judas to betray Christ and hang himself, too, and for David to commit adultery, and so on. After all, the Bible records these historical incidents, too. The fact that history was recorded honestly does not mean that God’s will was being done. Paul’s statement about Trophimus was not a teaching, only a statement of fact. You cannot use a mere statement of fact as a teaching.
Another angle some objectors take is that Paul should have healed Trophimus if healing is for all. There is certainly reason to suspect that Paul would have ministered to Trophimus. Why did Trophimus fail to receive his healing right away? We don’t know. There are many reasons why people can fail to receive their healing (see the Mistakes to Avoid section). Given that several other of Paul’s fellow workers lost their zeal for the Lord and deserted him or failed to stick up for him when he was greatly withstood by Alexander the Coppersmith (2 Timothy 4:14-16), and that this account is a few verses away from the Trophimus verse, it is possible that Trophimus had gotten himself out of the will of God for some reason. You cannot simply lay hands on a person who fails to do the known will of God even if you believe that it is the will of God for the person to be healed. We’ll never know for sure what happened in Trophimus’s case was because we don’t have the details. Thus, it is ridiculous to trot out a doctrine that God wants some people to stay sick because of a few words that report a fact.
If it is fair to blame Paul for Trophimus not walking in the light of his healing, we must also blame Paul for the failures of Demas and John Mark to continue with him in the ministry. Neither is fair to Paul. We don’t have authority over human wills and neither did Paul. While we’re at it, we could blame Jesus for not getting having any mighty miracles at Nazareth and be unfair to Him as well.
No one can prove that Trophimus stayed sick a long time or did not recover. Basing anything on that one verse is truly a paper-thin anti-healing doctrine.
Yet people build a castle on this verse. “Paul had a healing ministry but couldn’t heal Trophimus!” Watch out! Paul’s Lord could not heal the sick at Nazareth, either. This proves nothing other the people’s unbelief, which is stated as the reason for their failure to receive healing. The fact that Jesus left many sick at Nazareth does not prove that God wanted them sick and was unwilling to heal them supernaturally. Therefore, the fact that Paul left Trophimus sick at Miletum does not prove that God wanted Trophimus sick and was unwilling to heal him supernaturally.
Saying, “Paul had a powerful ministry, and Paul didn’t get Trophimus healed – that shows that healing is not God’s will for everyone” would lead to another miserable conclusion that going to heaven isn’t God’s will for everyone! Jesus didn’t get Judas to go to heaven. So we could say, “Jesus had a powerful ministry, and Jesus didn’t get Judas saved – that shows that salvation is not God’s will for everyone.” I hope that you can see the faulty logic in such a position.
One “Trophimus objector” pleads that Paul did NOT say that there was anything unusual about Trophimus’s case, so that shows that Paul accepted sickness as a normal part of life. I don’t know how anyone can believe that in light of Acts 28:8-9, where Paul got everyone who was sick healed on an entire island. If sickness was a normal part of life to be accepted, why didn’t he tell the people on Melita that instead of healing them all? I would also add that Paul did NOT say that there was anything unusual about Demas forsaking him in the same chapter, so that “shows” that Paul considers unfaithfulness to Jesus to be the norm that others should be expected to follow – if we follow the objector’s logic.
It is also possible that Paul prayed over Trophimus and that Trophimus followed Jesus’ instructions to “believe that he received” when he prayed, but his healing had not yet manifested in his body, just as the tree that Jesus cursed did not appear dead on the outside right away. Again, we can’t prove whether or not this is true. The eight words about Trophimus’s condition are not enough to prove anything.
What Little We DO Know About Trophimus from the Bible
Trophimus only appears three times in Scripture – in the verse in question and in these two:
Acts 20:4:
And there accompanied him into Asia Sopater of Berea; and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timotheus; and of Asia, Tychicus and Trophimus.
Acts 21:29:
(For they had seen before with him in the city Trophimus an Ephesian, whom they supposed that Paul had brought into the temple.)
From Acts 20:4 above, we know that Trophimus accompanied Paul on his missionary journey that ended up taking him to Jerusalem. From Acts 21:29 above, we know that Trophimus had been in Jerusalem with Paul. However, it seems that this event had to have taken place on a PRIOR visit by Paul to Jerusalem. If you believe that it was the SAME visit that Paul made after he had been in Miletum bidding farewell to everyone, the healing objection has just disappeared in a puff of smoke because it means that Trophimus was healed so quickly that he was able to make up lost time and join Paul in Jerusalem! However, my take is that it was a PAST visit, and that Trophimus was unable to go with Paul on the last visit he made to Jerusalem before being sent to Rome, where he wrote 2 Timothy. I consider it too unlikely that Paul would write that he had “left” Trophimus sick at Miletum if Trophimus had immediately caught up with him. It would nice to assert that he did to kill the objection outright, but I couldn’t defend that explanation.
One could also square this by positing that the maps in the back of their Bibles are wrong (which is possible – they are not part of the divinely inspired writing), and that Paul made a mysterious fourth missionary journey after being in Rome and then returned there after visiting Miletum again. I consider that dubious even though it would be a “logical” explanation because of the mention of Trophimus as one of Paul’s companions above.
Conclusion
Why build a doctrine on one exceptional case, where we are never told why the man was sick, or if he remained that way? Wouldn’t it make more sense to build a doctrine on the rule rather than the exception? Rather than groping for some silly excuse to stay sick, build your doctrine on the crowds of people in the New Testament who were healed (where Jesus said that He only did what pleased the Father) and the statements made by the Lord and His disciples under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit! No Scripture says that you cannot be healed, but plenty of them say that you can receive healing. Base your doctrine and your believing on those Scriptures!
Get your doctrine from verses that actually teach doctrine, not from those that share someone’s experience. You’ll be on much steadier ground!