Commendation
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in Cenchrea. 2 I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been a great help to many people, including me.
When Paul refers to Phoebe as “our sister,” he is likely not thinking of her as a blood relative but as a fellow believer. Phoebe came from Cenchrea, one of the seaports serving Corinth. Corinth is located on an isthmus and has two harbors, one serving westbound shipping (for example, Italy) and the other serving the east. Cenchrea was on the eastern (Aegean) side of the isthmus.
The term used to describe Phoebe is diakonos. It could very properly be translated “deaconess.” What her exact capacity was as a “servant of the church in Cenchrea” is not known, nor are we told what her role in Rome was to be. One thing is very clear: she had been most helpful to the Christian cause. Paul gives her high praise and an unqualified recommendation to the Christians in Rome.
We need to remind ourselves that in ancient times there was no international postal service such as we take for granted. A standard method of sending correspondence was for a letter to be carried by a traveler who happened to be going to the place you wanted to send it to. A likely scenario would be that during his three-month stay in Corinth, Paul, who wanted to send a letter to the Romans, learned that Phoebe was going there. Hence he prevailed on her to carry the letter and deliver it to the Roman Christians. It might also have served as a letter of introduction for her.