The report concerning them came to the ears of the assembly which was in Jerusalem. They sent out Barnabas to go as far as Antioch, who, when he had come, and had seen the grace of God, was glad. He exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they should remain near to the Lord. For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith, and many people were added to the Lord.
Barnabas went out to Tarsus to look for Saul. When he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they were gathered together with the assembly, and taught many people. The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv22–26 22. And the tidings. If this report had been…
22. And the tidings. If this report had been brought before Peter did excuse himself, those good men should have been reproved of many whose ministry notwithstanding God had sealed with the grace of his Spirit; but that superstition was now wiped away out of their minds, forasmuch as God had by evident signs declared that no nation ought to be counted profane. Therefore, they contend no longer, neither do they count it a point of rashness, that some durst preach Christ unto the Gentiles; but by sending help, they testify that they allow that which they had done. Furthermore, this was the cause why they sent Barnabas. The apostles did at that time bear all the burden of the kingdom of Christ; therefore, it was their duty to frame and set in order Churches every where; to keep all the faithful, wheresoever dispersed, in the pure consent of faith; to appoint ministers and pastors wheresoever there was any number of the faithful. The crafty wiliness of Satan is well known. So soon as he seeth a gate set open for the gospel, he endeavoreth by all means to corrupt that which is sincere, [pure;] whereby it came to pass that divers heresies brake out together with Christ’s doctrine. Therefore, the greater gifts every Church hath, the more careful ought it to be, lest Satan mix or trouble any thing amongst the ignorant, and those who are not as yet established in the right faith; because it is the easiest matter in the world to corrupt corn in the blade. To conclude, Barnabas was sent to bring them farther forward in the principles of faith; to set things in some certain order; to give the building which was begun some form, that there might be a lawful state of the Church.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv22, 25 The Apostles do not rashly condemn an extraordinary vocation,…
The Apostles do not rashly condemn an extraordinary vocation, but yet they judge it by the effects.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv22–26 22 Then tidings of these things came unto the…
22 Then tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church which was in Jerusalem: and they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far as Antioch.
Ver. 22. And they sent forth Barnabas] A very fit man; for he was a "son of consolation," and would handle those young plants with all tenderness. Wring not men’s consciences, saith Dr Sibbs, you may happen to break the wards of them if you do.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv22–26 Came unto the ears of the church; this pleonasm…
Came unto the ears of the church; this pleonasm seems emphatical, to show with what readiness and delight the church heard the news of the conversion of so many to Christ.
Of Barnabas we read, Act 4:36, who had given such an earnest of love to God, and true faith in Christ, for whose sake he sold what he had.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On v25 Observe here, A further instance of the piety of…
Observe here, A further instance of the piety of that good man. Barnabas having a great zeal and fervent desire that the gospel might be more and more prompted, he went to Tarsus to seek out Saul, that they might join together in the work of Christ; and having found him, he brought him to Antioch: where, for a whole year, they instructed the church in that city, and taught much people.
Oh how happy is it for the church of Christ, when her ministers, laying aside all private interest, do unitedly apply themselves to promote the common interest of Christianity, by propagating the gospel far and near!
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Observe farther, How the believers, both Jews and Gentiles, were united in one common name at Antioch: the Jews had hitherto called them Nazarites and Galileans, and they called themselves disciples, believers, brethren, and those of the church; but now in this place, Antioch, they were first called Christians: A very great honour conferred on this Gentile city, which exalted her now above Jerusalem itself.
At Antioch, a Gentile city, Christ set up his standard for the Gentiles, and displayed his banner, and puts his own name on the despised Gentiles. They who before were counted dogs, and the off-scouring of all things, have now the venerable name of Christ imposed upon them. "The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch."
Note lastly, that the disciples did not call themsleves Christians first at Antioch, much less did their enemies give them that name; but they had it by divine authority imposed upon them; God would have Christ’s disciples called Christians,
1. As scholars, who receive their denomination from their master, they are taught to learn and imitate Christ, whose name they bear.
2. As the word Christians signifies anointed ones, it put them in mind of their divine unction, which they have received from the Holy One, whereby they are made kings and priests unto God. We are at this day called reformed Christians.
God grant that we may not cheat ourselves with an empty and insignificant name; but let us fill up that glorious title, and be reformed in our lives, as well as in our religion; beautifying our holy profession by an holy and becoming conversation; otherwise an unbaptize heathen, at the great day, will not change estate with many baptized Christians.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv22–26 Who when he came, and had seen the grace…
Who when he came, and had seen the grace of God,.... The many instances of the powerful and efficacious grace of God in regeneration and conversion; the great goodness, love, and favour of God in enlightening, quickening, and converting so many souls; and the wonderful gifts of the Spirit bestowed upon many of them, fitting them for public use and service:
was glad; rejoiced at heart, and gave glory to God, as every good man will, at the success of the gospel in the conversion of sinners, let it be by what instrument or means it will, and at the gifts and grace bestowed on them:
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and exhorted them all; in whom he saw the grace of God implanted, who had received the doctrine of the grace of God, and had gifts of grace qualifying them for usefulness, in some nation or another:
that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord; that is, with a fixed resolution in the grace and strength of Christ, they would hold to his person, exercising grace upon him, abide by his truths and ordinances, keep close to his people, adhere to his cause and interest, and hold on and out unto the end. The Arabic version takes "the purpose of heart" to be meant of Barnabas, and reads the words thus, "and he exhorted them according to the usual firmness of his heart, that they would continue in the faith of the Lord"; in the doctrine and grace of faith in Christ.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On v26 And the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch…
And the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch - Here it was that they first received this standing appellation. They were before termed Nazarenes and Galileans.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv22–26 Verse 22. The Church which was in Jerusalem] This…
Verse 22. The Church which was in Jerusalem] This was the original, the mother Church of Christianity; not the Church of Rome; there were Christian Churches founded in many places, which exist to the present day, before Rome heard the Gospel of the kingdom. A Christian Church means a company of believers in Christ Jesus, united for the purposes of Christian fellowship, and edification in righteousness.
They sent forth Barnabas] It seems, then, that the Church collectively had power to commission and send forth any of its own members, whom it saw God had qualified for a particular work. There must have been, even at that time, an acknowledged superiority of some members of the Church beyond others. The apostles held the first rank; the deacons (probably the same as those called prophets, as being next chosen) the second; and perhaps those called evangelists, simply preachers of the truth, the third rank. Those who knew most of God and sacred things, who were most zealous, most holy, and most useful, undoubtedly had the pre-eminence.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv22, 25 Act 11:22-24. Then tidings of these things came to…
Act 11:22-24. Then tidings of these things came to the church at Jerusalem — And, as they had lately seen a way opened for the conversion of the Gentiles, they received information of this further progress of the gospel with peculiar pleasure; and sent forth Barnabas to Antioch — That he might confirm the new converts in the faith into which they had been initiated: who, when he came — To the city, and had seen — Evident proofs of the grace of God conferred upon them; was glad — Rejoiced in the good work wrought among them; and exhorted them all that — Whatever circumstances of difficulty and suffering might arise; they would, with purpose of heart — With full determination and constancy; cleave unto the Lord — Adhere to his truth, cause, and people. For he was a good man — A man eminently pious and benevolent; and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith — Largely endowed with the sanctifying graces and extraordinary gifts of the Divine Spirit; and much people — Through his instrumentality; were added unto the Lord — Were converted unto God, and received into the church by baptism.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv22–26 Then tidings ... - The church at Jerusalem heard…
Then tidings ... - The church at Jerusalem heard of this. It was natural that so remarkable an occurrence as the conversion of the Gentiles, and the extraordinary success of the gospel in a splendid and mighty city, should be reported at Jerusalem, and excite deep interest there.
And they sent forth - To aid the disciples there, and to give them their sanction. They had done a similar thing in the revival which occurred in Samaria. See the notes on Act 8:14.
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Barnabas - See Act 4:36-37. He was a native of Cyprus, and was probably well acquainted with Antioch. He was, therefore, especially qualified for the work on which they sent him.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv24–26 Multitude was added, as before, (chap. x.) a few…
Multitude was added, as before, (chap. x.) a few were added to the visible Church. Ever since Christ’s ascension, this Church has been notoriously seen. Of her ministers, their preaching has been open, their sacraments visible, their discipline visible, their persecutions visible, their wonderful increase visible, and their manifestly divine protection visible, and known to all the world. Whilst all that have separated themselves by schism from this venerable body, have fallen into discredit, and most into complete oblivion. The Catholic Church was the first, and it will be the last.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v22 s Act_11:22-26
B.—THE CHURCH IN JERUSALEM SENDS BARNABAS TO ANTIOCH; HE ENCOURAGES THE MEMBERS OF THE RECENTLY FORMED CONGREGATION; AND CONDUCTS SAUL TO THEM
s Act_11:22-26
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22Then [But] tidings of these things [concerning them (see Exeg. note)] came unto the ears of the church which was in Jerusalem: and they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go [travel]14 as far as Antioch. 23Who, when he came [arrived], and had seen [and saw] the grace15 of God, was glad [rejoiced], and exhorted them [om. them] all, that with purpose [determination] of [the] heart they would cleave [should adhere] unto the Lord. 24For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith: and much people [a considerable multitude] was added unto the Lord. 25Then departed Barnabas [But he went forth]16 to Tarsus, for to seek Saul: 26And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they17 assembled themselves [came together] with the church [in the congregation]18 , and taught much people. And [taught a considerable multitude, and (τε) that (χργμ. also depending on ἐγένετο)] the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Act_11:22. Then tidings of these things [concerning them].—The tidings referred to the men [not “things” Engl. vers.], who voluntarily labored in Antioch as missionaries among the Gentiles; for αὐτῶν in Act_11:22, like αὐτῶν in Act_11:21, must necessarily be understood as referring to the Hellenists who are described in Act_11:20, as performing the part of evangelists. Public report [ὁ λόγος, fama, as in Mar_1:45 (Meyer).—Tr.] brought the information concerning their operations among the pagans, and the results of their preaching in Antioch, to the congregation in Jerusalem. The members of the latter gave evidence of their interest in this matter, and in the congregation in Antioch, (which had been but recently formed, and which consisted mainly of converted heathens), by sending Barnabas to them. This mission was the more appropriate and kind, as Barnabas himself was also a native of the island of Cyprus (Act_4:36), from which some of those Christians came, who had spread the Gospel in Antioch. A certain connection between these men and Barnabas, accordingly, already existed, inasmuch as he was not only a Hellenist, but, in particular, a native of Cyprus.
Act_11:23-26. a. Barnabas was commissioned by the primitive congregation to examine the state of affairs in Antioch, and then to adopt such active measures as the circumstances should require. When he arrived, he saw such decisive evidences of the grace of God, which had attended the labors of the evangelists, and controlled the newly converted heathens, that he could only heartily rejoice. He found no occasion to censure any thing whatever, or even to remedy any defect, and therefore all that remained for him to do, was, solely, to exhort all the members of the congregation to persevere, and to remain faithful to the Redeemer. He urged them to adhere τῆ προθέσει τῆς καπδιας, with the determination of the heart, to the Lord, i.e., to adopt it as an established principle, and carry it into effect, that they would adhere to Christ. This παρακαλεῖν of Barnabas reminds us of the circumstance mentioned by Luke, Acts, Act_4:36, that he had been surnamed: “Son of prophetic discourse, or exhortation” [see Exeg. note on Act_4:36-37.—Tr.], on account of the special gift which he had received. We may hence assume, that the exhortations which he addressed to the Antiochian Christians, were discourses preëminently marked by depth and power of thought, and by earnestness of manner. There is another allusion to the same general point, in Luke’s remark that Barnabas had a kind heart and disposition, and was full of the Holy Ghost and of faith. The predicate ἀγαθιός designated not only moral worth in general, but also, in a special sense, kindness, or, affectionate sentiments. All this most fully agrees with the statement that he rejoiced so heartily (ἐχάρη, Act_11:23), when he ascertained the spiritual state of the recent converts.
b. Who, when he came, etc.—The mission of Barnabas produced a twofold result: on the one hand, the number of converts was considerably increased (Act_11:24) through his labors in the congregation of Antioch; on the other, it was of the highest importance, and exerted a widely extended influence, in reference not only to this congregation, but also to the entire church of Christ, that Barnabas brought Saul in connection with the congregation of Antioch, Act_11:25 f. Saul did not himself originally conceive the thought, independently of others, of proceeding to Antioch, but it was Barnabas who induced him to adopt this course. It was, according to Act_9:27, Barnabas himself, who had, at an earlier period, introduced Saul to the apostles in Jerusalem, and placed him in connection with the primitive congregation of that city. The same man now brought Saul to Antioch, and established an organic communication between him and this congregation of Gentile-Christians, the future history of which promised to be so rich in events, and which converted Antioch into the metropolis of Gentile-Christianity. Barnabas was acquainted with all the circumstances connected with the conversion of Paul, and hence he had, doubtless, also been informed of the declaration of the exalted Redeemer that He had chosen Saul to bear His name before Gentile nations and kings, Act_9:15; comp. Act_22:21; Act_26:16 ff. It is therefore possible that while Barnabas was laboring in this Gentile congregation, which had been so recently called into existence, and yet had already become so large, the image of that man who was chosen for such lofty purposes, and, specially, for the conversion of heathens, may have, not without the illumination of the Holy Ghost (“full of the Holy Ghost,” Act_11:24), presented itself to his mind. It was soon clear to him that Saul was precisely suited for that field of labor, even as the latter was suited for him, so that he would be the right man in the right place. He accordingly proceeded at once to Tarsus in Cilicia, which was not far distant, for the purpose of seeking Saul in his native city, to which he had retired in order to escape the hostile movements of the Hellenists at Jerusalem, (Act_9:30). Here he had disappeared for a season from the view, not only of his enemies, but also of his Christian brethren, like one who had left no trace behind; it became necessary to seek him out (ἀναζητῆσαι), and, as it were, to discover him anew (εὑρὼν). Barnabas induced him by his earnest requests and representations to accompany him when he himself returned to Antioch. And now Saul enters upon that field of action on which his peculiar labors were destined to unfold themselves in their whole breadth and depth. He labored at first in connection with Barnabas during an entire year, within the limits of the Antiochian congregation: they assembled “in the congregation,” that is, they labored in the assemblies for public worship; [ἐν τῇ ἐκκλησία, they attended at the meetings of the congregation, (de Wette); they came together in the church, the public assembly, i.e., for the purpose of worship. (Hackett).—Tr.].—To understand the word συναχθῆναι, with Meyer (2d ed.) as denoting the hospitable reception with which the two men met, is not in harmony with the context, as the language of Luke refers alike to Paul and Barnabas, whereas the latter already had his home, as it were, in Antioch; συςάειν, moreover, occurs in such a sense only when the words εἰς οἰκίαν are connected with it, or when the connection indicates it unequivocally in some other manner. [In the last (3d ed. 1861) edition of his commentary, Meyer abandons the interpretation mentioned above, and now says: “συνχθῆαι does not denote a hospitable reception (Mat_25:35), which does not suit the case of Barnabas; the sense is: they were brought together, that is, united in the congregation, after having previously lived and labored apart from each other.”—Tr.].—The two men taught much people, which fact indicates the wide extent of their operations; their labors, however, are not to be viewed precisely as those of missionaries, but rather as those of teachers (διδάσκειν), who guided the converts in acquiring a knowledge of the truth, and conducted them onward in the Christian life and walk. It should, besides, be noticed that this διδάσκειν, in the proper sense of the word, is here, for the first time, mentioned in connection with Paul, (although Barnabas is also undoubtedly included), whereas in Act_4:2; Act_4:18; Act_5:25; Act_5:28; Act_5:42; comp. Act_2:42, it is represented as exclusively the act of the apostles.
c. That the name of “Christians” originated in Antioch, is a fact, for the knowledge of which we are indebted to Luke. It may seem to be one of very little importance, and is, indeed, mentioned incidentally, and in quite an unpretending manner. Still, it is a fact of some weight, and is so regarded by Luke, however unpretending his manner of stating it may be. For the connection in which it occurs, shows that he viewed it as an evidence of the blessing which attended the labors of Saul and Barnabas in Antioch. [The Christians styled themselves οἱ μαθηταί, οἱ ἅγιοι, οἱ πιστοί, or οἱ πιστεύοντες, οί ἀδελφοί οἱ τῆς ὁδοῦ, (Alf.) while the names Γαλιλαῖοι (Act_2:7), Ναζωραῖοι (Act_24:5), etc., were applied to them by the Jews. (Kuin.)—Tr.] The original introduction of the name of Christians, constitutes, indeed, in a certain sense, an era. It has long since, and with great truth, been said, that the Christians did not originally apply this name to themselves; for throughout the whole New Testament it is employed by those who were not Christians. (Act_26:28; 1Pe_4:16). Neither could the Jews have introduced it, since they would never have applied the Messianic name, which they held to be sacred, to a hated sect; it would have, according to their views, been desecrated by such a use. No other explanation is possible, except that the name proceeded from the pagans, and this view is sustained by the form of the word, which, in every respect, resembles the names of political parties, such as Herodians [Mat_22:16], Cæsarians, Pompeians. [“That it has a Latin form (like Mariani, Vitelliani, etc.), is no decided proof of a Latin origin: Latin forms had become naturalized among the Greeks, etc”. (Alf.).—Tr.]. To pagans, who were not acquainted with the historical and dogmatical or religious signification of ὁ χριστός as an appellative, it seemed to be a proper name, and thus they formed a party name from it. Ewald, who goes still further, conjectures that the name proceeded from the Roman government in Antioch, the residence of the proconsul of Syria; but it is not probable that the Roman authorities, at this early period, already noticed the Christians officially, as a body of men distinct from the Jews. [Xρηματίισαι, 1. aor. inf. act., “nominati sunt; χρηματίζειν Atticis erat res agere, apud recentiores, res ita agere, it nomen inde adipiscaris, hinc significatione intransitiva, dici, nominari, audire, id. quod ὀνομάξεσθαι, καλεῖσθαι, etc”. (Kuinoel). Comp. Rom_7:3.—Tr.].—Now if the name was furnished by pagans, this circumstance itself demonstrates that the development of the church of Christ had advanced to another grade, which was new in its essential features. Although the pagans often came in contact with Christians, they had not hitherto distinguished them from the Jews, nor recognized them as a separate and independent class of men. But they now made this distinction, and, first of all, in Antioch, and thus two points are established:—first, large numbers of pagans must have been converted in this city; for as Antioch contained a large Jewish population also, it is apparent, that if the great mass of the Christian congregation had consisted of converted Israelites, the Christians, as a whole, would have continued to be identified with the Jews. Secondly, the specific or peculiar features of Christianity, now came prominently into view, in so far as Christ was the centre of the faith, the love, and the hope of the Church (Xριστιανοί). The introduction of this name is, therefore, historically important, as an evidence that, at this point, the church of Christ is entering the sphere of General History, and that the Judæo-Christians are becoming commingled with Gentile-Christians as one body. See my [the author’s] work, entitled: Apostol. u. nachapost. Zeitalter, 2d ed. p. 372 f. [Lechler there remarks, in addition to the thoughts expressed above, that the name Christians embraced all the members, irrespectively of their Jewish or Gentile birth, since Luke here says τοὺς μαθητὰς, and that it appears from Gal_2:12-13, that previously to the arrival of certain men at Antioch, the Judæo-Christians had not been deterred by any Levitical laws from associating with their Gentile-Christian brethren on equal terms, etc., etc.—Tr.].—The supposition that the name of Christians had been originally employed as a term of ridicule, which, after the example of Wetstein, Baumgarten still entertains, has nothing to sustain it, except the circumstance that the people of Antioch were notorious for their wit and satirical language. [For the authorities by which this fact is proved, see Kuinoel, ad loc., and Conyb. and Howson: Life, etc. of St. Paul, I. 130, and n. 4. London. 1354.—Tr.]
DΟCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The apostles here recede in a remarkable manner from our view. When Philip had labored among the Samaritans, the apostles who were at Jerusalem, heard that Samaria had received the word of God, Act_8:14, and they sent thither Peter and John, two of their own number. But in the present passage the tidings of the conversion of Gentiles in Antioch, “came unto the ears of the church,” and it is the church that sends Barnabas to this city. Hence, it is not the college of the apostles, but the church, that grants the commission, and the messenger himself is not an apostle, but a member of the church. It cannot, indeed, be doubted in the least degree, that the church at Jerusalem, including, and not excluding the apostles, is meant, so that the apostles coöperate when Barnabas was commissioned. Nevertheless, even according to this view, it is a striking circumstance that the apostles, whose position was so prominent in Act_8:14, here retire, as it were, among the congregation, and act only in conjunction with the latter. Even when it is fairly taken into account, that at the former period the great majority of the members of the church in Jerusalem had been scattered abroad, in consequence of the persecution mentioned in Act_8:1, and that those who remained in the city were principally the apostles, (whereas, at the present time, a numerous congregation may have again gathered around them), it is still a very significant circumstance that the messenger was a man who did not belong to the circle of the apostles. This course of the apostles in thus retiring from their former prominent position, must, necessarily, have a certain reference to the specific nature of the event that is here brought to view. Baumgarten (I. 267) very correctly here recognizes an instance of the self-control of the apostles. It was not egotism nor sensitiveness which caused them to retire; the church rather acted with an intelligent understanding of the Lord’s plan of salvation, and was governed have by a spirit of love, which, with great delicacy and wisdom, anticipated and provided for the wants of the newly formed Gentile congregation, by sending to Antioch precisely Barnabas, the Hellenist who came from the island of Cyprus.
2. The choice of Barnabas as the representative sent by the primitive congregation to the Gentile-Christians in Antioch, was a very happy one, and fully in accordance with the mind of the Lord, who guides his church. Barnabas at once perceived the grace of God which had here manifested itself, and rejoiced; his part consisted simply in exhorting all to persevere and remain faithful to Christ. As God is, according, to Act_10:34, οὐ προςωπολήπτης, so, too, this disciple, who was enlightened by the Holy Ghost, did not regard the person either in the case of those who had preached here, or in that of the recent converts, who were pagans, but he directed his, attention to the grace of God, the power and operation of which he most plainly saw. Now where the grace of God in Christ is distinctly revealed, a child of God will always rejoice and feel at home, even if any thing unusual or strange should be found in the persons, and in their manners and ways.
3. That Jesus Christ is the personal centre of Christianity, is strikingly manifested in this history of the planting of the church in Antioch. The Hellenistic travelling preachers “preached the Lord Jesus,” Act_11:20; a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord, Act_11:21; Barnabas exhorted the new converts to cleave unto the Lord with purpose of heart, Act_11:23; and much people was added unto the Lord, Act_11:24. A vital Christianity is a vital and personal relation of the individual to the living and personal Christ. Without faith in the living Christ, with out a vital union with Him in spirit and character, Christianity becomes a mere form and mask. The circumstance, moreover, that the Christians received this distinctive name first of all in Antioch, shows that the believers in this city were devoted to Christ personally in a preëminent degree; for otherwise this name would not occurred to the pagans who introduced it, so naturally and vividly, as to be currently applied by them to the members of the church. It is striking that the believers derived their name, not from “Jesus,” but from “Christ.” That Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ [Mat_26:63; Joh_1:20], the Anointed of God, the King and Lord of His redeemed, was the article of faith which so abundantly filled the heart, that the mouth emphatically proclaimed it, insomuch that strangers bestowed on them, not the name “Jesuits,” but that of “Christians.”
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
See below, (Act_11:27-30.)
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Footnotes:
[14]Act_11:22. It is true that διελθεῖν is wanting in A. B. [and also Cod. Sin.], as well as in several versions [Syr. Vulg. etc.], and it is cancelled by Lachmann. It is, however, sufficiently attested [by D. E. G. H., and retained by AIf.] and could have more easily been omitted as superfluous, than have been interpolated, if it had originally been wanting. [See Winer: Gr. N. T. §65. 4. ult. where the presence of the word is justified and explained.—Tr.]
[15]Act_11:23. [τὴν after τὴν Χάριν omitted in the text. rec., with D. E., but Lachm. and Alf. insert it from A. B. It is found also in Cod. Sin. Alford takes it emphatically in the following sense: “the grace which (evidently) was that of God.”—Tr.]
[16]Act_11:25, The readings ὁ Βαρνάβας and αὐτόν [the latter both before and after ἤγαγεν], are alike spurious; the former [is found in E. G. H., Vulg. etc., but is omitted in Cod. Sin., and by Alf., and, besides,] is wanting in A. B. and D., even though the latter MS. (Cantabrig.) has inserted in the text an unnecessary amplification of this verse. [It is adopted by Bornemann, and is as follows: ἀκούσας δὲ, ὅτι Σαῦλός ἐστίν εἰς Θαρσόν. (corrected by a later hand to Ταρσόν) ἐξῆλθεν ἀναζητῶν—καἱ ὡς συντυχὼν παρεκάλεσεν αὐον ἐλθεῖν εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν.—αὐτὸν before ἤγαγεν, is found in G. H., but is omitted in A. B. E. Cod. Sin., and by Lach., Tisch. and Alf.—αὐτὸν after ἤγαηεν is found in E. G. H., but is omitted in A. B. Cod. Sin., and by Lach., Tisch. and Alf.—Tr.]
[17]Act_11:26. a. The word αὐτοῖς [after Ἐγένετο δὲ], which in reference to the last member of the verse [χρηματίσαι, like the preceding infinitives, depending on ἐγένετο; Winer: Gr. N. T. §44. 3], is obviously the more difficult reading, is, nevertheless, sustained by three important MSS. [A. B. E., and now also Cod. Sin.], and a number of minuscules. Hence, Tisch. and Lach. [as also Born, and Alf.] have very properly preferred it to the reading αὐτούς [of text. rec. from G. H. Meyer says, in opposition to these editors: “The accus. is necessary, as χρημ. which follows afterwards, does not suit this dative.” But Luke may have chosen the dat. on account of εγένετο which immediately precedes, (comp. Act_20:16; Act_22:17) and retained this construction, although he appended the last member of the verse. See Win. Gr. Gr. § § 60–67.—Tr.].—It is more doubtful whether καί before ἐνιαυτὸν [omitted in text. rec., and by E. G. H.] and which Lach. and Tisch. [and Alf.] have inserted from A. B. etc., is genuine; it rather appears to be a later addition, designed to be emphatic. [It is found in Cod. Sin. Meyer regards it as genuine, and as corresponding to καὶ before διδ., equivalent to both—and also.—Tr.]
[18]Act_11:26. b. [The Engl. version offers in the margin the strictly literal rendering (Wiclif; Rheims): in the church (ἐντ. ἐ), instead of with the church (Geneva) in its text. See Exeg. notes below, Act_11:23-26. b.—Tr.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv22–25 sent . . . Barnabas . . . as…
sent . . . Barnabas . . . as far as Antioch--implying that even on the way to Antioch he found churches to visit [OLSHAUSEN]. It was in the first instance, no doubt, a mission of inquiry; and no one could be more suitable to inquire into the proceedings of those Cyprians and Cyrenians than one who was himself a "Grecian" of Cyprus (Act 4:36), and "a son of consolation."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv22–26 22. Barnabas… Antioch—Barnabas was evidently sent as a committee…
22. Barnabas… Antioch—Barnabas was evidently sent as a committee of inspection to see whether this new Gentile movement was genuine, and whether it confirmed the doctrine of Christianity without circumcision. His coming, and favourable decision and cooperation, doubtless settled the permanence of the Antioch Church under the maternal recognition of Jerusalem.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv22–26 22. Then tidings of these things came unto the…
22. Then tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church which was in Jerusalem] Better more literally, “And the report concerning them, &c.,” i.e. concerning these Gentile converts. These events took place, and were known to the Church in Jerusalem, before they heard of the visit of Peter to Cornelius. But what had happened at Antioch caused the Church no disturbance, because we read of no such breaking through the restrictions of the ceremonial Law as was made in Cæsarea when Peter took up his abode with Cornelius. The Jewish preachers mingled no further with the Gentiles to whom they preached at Antioch than the intercourse of everyday life forced them to do constantly.
and they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far as Antioch] The oldest MSS. omit “that he should go.” He was sent forth, as Peter and John before had been sent into Samaria (Act_8:14), to confirm and give the sanction and direction of the mother Church to the work which had begun at a new centre. Barnabas being a native of Cyprus would most likely be well known to the Cyprians who were preaching at Antioch, and so he was a most fit person to be selected for this errand.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv22–26 (22) They sent forth Barnabas.—The choice was probably determined,…
(22) They sent forth Barnabas.—The choice was probably determined, we may believe, by the known sympathies of the Son of Consolation for the work which was going on at Antioch. The friend of Paul, who had been with him when he was at Jerusalem (Act_9:27), must have known his hopes and convictions on this matter, and must have welcomed the opening which was thus given him for working in the same direction. The fact that he was himself of the same country would also qualify him for co-operating with the men of Cyprus, who were carrying on that work in Antioch.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv22–26 And the report concerning them for then tidings of…
And the report concerning them for then tidings of these things, A.V.; to for unto, A.V.; as far as for that he should go as far as, A.V. and T.R. The news of this accession of Gentiles to the Church was quickly carried to Jerusalem, with the same motive, probably, that brought thither the account of the baptism of Cornelius and his household, as we read in vers. 1-3 of this chapter. The conduct of the Church in sending so excellent and temperate a person. as Barnabas (as we read in the next verse), the friend of Saul (Act_9:27) and a favorer of preaching the gospel to Gentiles (Act_13:1, Act_13:2) to inspect the work at Antioch, is an indication that they had already heard the account of the conversion of Cornelius from the mouth of Peter, and were already led to the conclusion, "Then to the Gentiles also hath God granted repentance unto life!" There is no clue whatever to the length of time that elapsed between the flight from persecution and the arrival at Antioch, except that Saul had had time to sojourn three years in Arabia, to come to Jerusalem, and from thence to go and settle at Tarsus, where Barnabas found him; thus leaving abundant time for Peter"s operations in Judaea and Caesarea.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv22–25 Then tidings of these things came to the ears…
Act_11:22-26
Then tidings of these things came to the ears of the Church,…and they sent forth Barnabas.
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A St. Barnabas the need of the hour
You know the strain and the stress of the situation recorded in my text. We are speaking of Antioch, to which Barnabas is sent. Here, then, we have a strong, central, organised Church, going its own way on somewhat new lines, with a new environment, with a new development. And yet it causes a great deal of anxiety in those who are left at home in the old places in Jerusalem. This strong, assertive child of theirs, to what will it grow, what will happen to it? The very preachers who founded it made them at Jerusalem nervous. The gospel was in them as Stephen had proclaimed it; and they knew it was for the Greeks as well as for the Jews. It was the Greeks that were flocking in, from beyond the strict borders of the old race, and it was out of this people the Church grew. Such a Church would sit light by the old traditions. It was a new capital for Christianity, with altogether Gentile associations; and habits, and customs, and interests, and environment, and style of thought, and even of language, would none of them be Jewish. How different! And it was all going on so fast! To what lengths are they going at Antioch? Where will they stop? And so there was a bitter problem to solve, then as at all times; and it is difficult for us to realise how deep their anxieties would go; how possibly the Twelve would be almost as anxious as any. They might share the alarm with perfect loyalty. And then they had so much to think of--those Twelve at Jerusalem. There were the angry, hot-headed Pharisees, who believed in such numbers after the Lord had risen. They came pouring into the Church; but they were half Pharisees still. Their prejudices were very strong; and they had always been in terror of these Gentile converts; and here were the people at Antioch going ahead in a way just to give these people a sort of excuse to say, Ah, we told you what would happen if these foreigners were let in! And naturally the apostles say, Well, we must be tender to these Jewish converts of ours, we must consider them, they are sensitive; there may be a recoil, a schism, if we do not hold in those at Antioch. We can measure how terrible the danger was by remembering how fierce was the storm when it did finally burst on the head of St. Paul. So severe was the crisis, so imminent the peril. And yet all was warded off; the storm that afterwards broke on St. Paul was kept clear for the moment, and it was all done by one man. One name, the most honourable and beautiful; one name that could hold things together for the time; one name that could persuade, conciliate, win confidence, and avert wrath. It is the name of a man of healing, of advocacy, of intercession, of prevailing comfort--Joses, who was called Barnabas, the Son of Consolation. Now, Barnabas held this unique position, that each side of the controversy had a claim upon him. First for Jerusalem. He is, as we know, the very model and hero of the earliest Church in Jerusalem. In those very first days of the Church, when it still lingered on the Temple steps, when the apostles were altogether dominant, even then one name is singled out as specially catching the spirit of the hour--Barnabas, the Levite, who, having land, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles feet. As if to say that in that beautiful little Church, out of the host of people who were so good, one was supremely good, and he was Barnabas. He had the very spirit of generosity and charity that marked that hour. And yet Barnabas was not himself a Jew of Jerusalem; he was not a man who had been hedged in by all the ancient barriers and customs of the Jewish life. No; he was from Cyprus; he came from the very place to which these Antioch preachers had gone. He was a Jew of the Dispersion; he had got the temper and mind of a Jew who had lived in close contact with the Gentile life; and so disposed, he had been quick to understand, accept, and trust St. Paul. He was in sympathy with the Church at Jerusalem; he was in sympathy with the freer, bolder doings of the Church at Antioch. He would know these men who were going forward with such a dash. Let Barnabas go--that was the end of all these consultations. It was not a hostile mission, but one sent to allay a little alarm caused by wild rumour and exaggeration. Barnabas is just the man to review, to advise, to control anything amiss, to give confidence if he approves. So it was decided--They sent forth Barnabas. It was a delicate mission; and we know what happened, and how well he carried it out. We read of his wisdom, his sympathy, his width, his firmness, his insight, his courage. He came, and he saw the grace of God. Not suspicious, jealous, no standing aloof and refusing to acknowledge it. No, he saw it--it was grace. Only he gave them some warnings against unsteadiness, exhorting them all that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord. And then he does a most bold thing. He, so far, recognises that it is grace, true and real, that works at Antioch, that he determines to forward it with all his might; and he goes to Tarsus, where Paul is still in hiding, unable to work in a Church that suspects him. So he made the stroke of strokes--brought Saul to Antioch. That was the beginning of the work of St. Paul, of his ministry to the Gentiles; and all came from Barnabas, who had the courage to hold out his hand to Saul, and give him twice over to the Church. So triumphantly did he keep the unity of the Church and avert the storm. Antioch goes on growing apace, Barnabas and Paul working hand in hand for a whole year, assembling themselves with the Church and teaching much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch. Barnabas, the mediator between the contrasted forces that press for mastery over the fortunes of the Church. Ah! yes, we need his name still, today as much as ever. There is always a Jerusalem and an Antioch in the story of the Church. There is always an Antioch being occupied, always some new centre of action to be taken up, some new post on the line of advance, some new venture to be made, breaking new ground. There must always be a new Antioch where the fresh forces of civilisation and culture are active--forces which the Church must go out to, and establish herself in the midst of them. They cannot be reached from the old centres. There must be some adaptation of methods to reach them. Then Jerusalem too. There is--there always ought to be--Jerusalem behind us--the witness to the Eternal Truth, the unchanging apostolic deposit, on which the passage of time marks no alteration; there must always be the infallible experience, which touched, which felt, and knew the Word of God--the old, firm, solid centre, whence indeed all new effort must take its rise. Jerusalem--the sacred hearth of the holy fire whence all other fires were lighted; the ancient home, dear to all who name the One Name, Jesus Christ--Jerusalem, the mother of us all. There must always be Jerusalem, and always Antioch; but the difficulty is to keep the two together. Each will be apt to misjudge and to think the worse of the other. Each will judge the other by its most perilous adherents. At Jerusalem they will hear of nothing of Antioch but what is headstrong, reckless, rash, audacious, insolent. At Antioch they will be groaning at the rigid stiffness and obstinacy, nervous timidity, narrowness, and suspiciousness of Jerusalem. So there will alway be the need of a Barnabas, ready to pass from the one to the other centre; gracious, capable, sympathetic, loyal to the backbone; yet appreciative, sensitive, inside the movement, strong yet benign. Such men save the Church at each sharp crisis in her story. We want this son of advocacy to hold us together, someone who is courageous without hardness, conciliatory without weakness, who is so strong that he can afford to be firm. We shall want him in days to come I doubt not. We remember the simple qualification that the Bible gives of St. Barnabas--He was a man full of the Holy Ghost and of faith. That is all we want--someone sound and healthy to the core, someone felt to be morally wholesome, to have a good heart and a good nature all through, with nothing perverted or twisted about him, a man who has proportion and balance, and all his gifts in genial exercise. That first, full of the Holy Ghost--that Holy Ghost who is the Spirit of advocacy, who is so strong, who is so sweet and gentle--that Holy Ghost who is the very power that binds these two opposite gifts. He is the Spirit of fire, of vehement decision, the unconquerable purging force. And yet the Spirit of the wind--the Spirit so pliable, so elastic, so sensitive, so free, so moving, so quick, so ready to pass in and out, blowing where it listeth. The fire and the wind, strength and gentleness--that is the power of this blessed Spirit of God. Barnabas has both gifts; and we want a Barnabas nourished by the Holy Ghost, and so lifted and transformed by the power of Him who is fire and wind, to be full of faith, to be full of loyalty to the living Christ. (H. Scott Holland, M. A.)
Barnabas at Antioch
I. What Barnabas was.
1. He was a good man--a man of a kind, affable, and courteous disposition. This goodness, which is one of the fruits of Gods Spirit, should characterise all Christians. It--
(1) Adorns the doctrine of God our Saviour.
(2) Attracts the notice of the unhappy worldling.
(3) Wins the affections of the young.
2. He was also full of the Holy Ghost. An amiable disposition does not make a Christian. There are many whom we esteem for their sweetness of character, but who, like the young man that Jesus loved, yet lack one thing--the gift of the Holy Ghost.
(1) No man can be said to be a true Christian till the Holy Spirit has shown him his guilt, and led him to the Saviour.
(2) No man can call Jesus Lord but by the Holy Ghost.
(3) The sons of God are led by, pray, walk, and live in the Spirit.
3. He was full of faith. He had the most implicit confidence in the remedy he was to apply to the souls of men.
II. What he saw. The grace of God--i.e., its effects. These are sometimes seen in mens--
1. Countenances. Wisdom maketh the face to shine. A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance. And what can make the heart so merry as the assurance of salvation? Stephens face was as the face of an angel. Thus, too, was it with Moses. The believer may not be conscious of this heavenly expression. Others, however, will observe it.
2. Conversation. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A man cannot himself feel the value of the Saviour without commending His preciousness to others.
3. Conduct. A tree is known by its fruits, so are believers known by their works.
III. What he felt. He was glad because--
1. Souls were saved. A thirsty traveller would not rejoice over a dry well, nor a musician over a tuneless organ. Nor will the believer rejoice over ordinances, however well administered, unless he has evidence afforded that Christ is faithfully preached, and that good is being done to the souls of men.
2. A public profession of Christ was made. With the heart man believeth, but with his mouth he maketh confession. Nothing gives so much consolation and influence to a minister and his people as when they first see one and then another coming out from the world and joining themselves boldly to the Lords side.
3. Christs presence was vouchsafed. Excellent as are a pure creed, a large Church, and an attentive congregation, the faithful minister will esteem them but formal and unprofitable unless he can see resting upon his labours Christs presence and blessing.
IV. What he did. Barnabas knew the weakness of the flesh and the power of Satan; and hence, although he saw the grace of God, he rejoiced with trembling. He saw the tree covered indeed with blossoms, and this made him the more anxious lest any of those blossoms should be blighted. He therefore exhorted these disciples. In every age similar exhortation has been needful. There are now, as there were then, false teachers, and temptations to seduce men from Christ into the world. Suffer ye the word of exhortation.
1. Do I address any who are growing weary in well-doing?--any who are beginning to be backsliders? I have an errand, O worldly professor, to thee: Remember Lots wife. Arouse yourselves, then, and do your first works.
2. I am doubtless addressing some who do not wish to be considered as religious professors. Now you I cannot exhort to cleave unto the Lord, for you have never yet come to the Lord. To you I address this: If in that day the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? (C. Clayton, M. A.)
The mission of Barnabas
I. Authenticated the genuineness of Christianity at Antioch. Verses 23, 24, shows us that personal Christianity--
1. Is essentially identified with Divine grace. It--
(1) Originates in it. Of His own will begat He us.
(2) Is sustained by it.
(3) Is a reflection of it.
2. Is an observable fact. Barnabas saw it. It is not an inoperative sentiment, a light under a bushel. It must reveal itself.
(1) The ruling spirit of life is new. There is a new heart. Old things are passed away.
(2) The master purpose of life is new. The aim is not how to serve self or the world, but to glorify God.
(3) The prevailing conduct of life is new. Converted men are about their Fathers business.
3. In its extension delights the heart of the good. They know that as it spreads--
(1) The worlds happiness will be promoted. It is the only power that works off social, political, and moral evils.
(2) Gods character will be revealed. It clears away all that conceals the moral beauty of God.
4. In its development is dependent on personal efforts. Though it originates in Divine grace, it is only kept by cleaving to God.
II. Gave a new name to the disciples.
1. Though given in derision--
(1) It towers above every other name.
(2) Represents the highest thinking.
(3) Stands for the Divinest sympathies.
(4) Is the inspiration of the grandest enterprises.
(5) Produces the sublimest characters.
2. Is destined to supersede all other names that have usurped its place.
III. Developed a new spirit of beneficence (Act_11:27-30). This was--
1. Individual. Every man. There was no one who did not contribute something.
2. Proportionate. According to his ability--not according to what others did or expected.
3. Prompt. They did not postpone it for future consideration.
4. Judicious (Act_11:30). (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v26 Chapter 7
Chapter 7
THE HARVEST OF THE GENTILES.
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Act_11:26
THE eleventh chapter of the Acts is clearly divisible into two portions. There is first the narrative of St. Peters reception at Jerusalem after the conversion of Cornelius, and secondly the story of the origin of the Antiochene Church, the mother and metropolis of Gentile Christendom. They are distinct the one from the other, and yet they are closely connected together, for they both deal with the same great topic, the admission of the Gentiles to full and free communion in the Church of God. Let us then search out the line of thought which runs like a golden thread through this whole chapter, sure that in doing so we shall find light shed upon some. modern questions from this divinely written ecclesiastical history.
I. St. Peter tarried a certain time with Cornelius and the other new converts at Caesarea. There was doubtless much to be taught and much to be set in order. Baptism was in the early Church administered when the converts were yet immature in faith and knowledge. The Church was viewed as a hospital, where the sick and feeble were to be admitted and cured. It was not therefore demanded of candidates for admission that they should be perfectly instructed in all the articles and mysteries of the Christian faith. There were indeed some points in which they were not instructed at all till they had been "buried with Christ through baptism into death." Then when they had taken their stand upon the Christian platform, and were able to view the matter from the true vantage point, they were admitted into fuller and deeper mysteries. Peter too must have had his work cut out for him at Caesarea in striving to organise the Church. St. Philip may have here lent his aid, and may have been constituted the resident head of the local Church. After the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch he worked his way up to Caesarea, preaching in all the towns and villages of that populous district. There he seems to have fixed his residence, as fifteen years or so later we find him permanently located in that city with his "four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy." {Act_21:8-9} We may be sure that some such Church organisation was immediately started at Caesarea. We have already traced the work of organisation in Jerusalem. The apostles originally embraced in themselves all ministerial offices, as in turn these offices were originally all summed up. in Jesus Christ. The apostles had taken an important step in the establishment of the order of deacons at Jerusalem, retaining in their own hands the supreme power to which appeal and reports could be made. At Damascus it is evident that at the time of St. Pauls conversion there was an organised Church, Ananias being the head and chief of it, with whom communications were officially held; while the notices about Joppa and the six witnesses of his action whom St. Peter brought with him to Caesarea, indicate that an assembly or Church, organised after the model of the Jerusalem Church, existed in that town.
Having concluded his work in Caesarea St. Peter returned to Jerusalem, and there had to render an account of his action and was placed upon his defence. "When Peter was come up to Jerusalem, they that were of the circumcision contended with him, saying, Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised, and didst eat with them." This simple circumstance throws much light upon the character of the earliest Christianity. It was to a large extent a Christian democracy. The apostles exercised the supreme executive power, but the collective Christian assembly claimed the exercise of their private judgment, and, above all, knew not anything of the fancied privilege of St. Peter, as Prince of the Apostles, to lay down on his own authority the laws for the whole Christian Commonwealth. Here was St. Peter exercising his ministry and apostolic power among the earliest Christians. How were his ministry and authority received? Were they treated as if the personal authority and decision of St. Peter settled every question without any further appeal? This will be best seen if we tell a story well known in the annals of ecclesiastical history. The fable of Papal Supremacy began to be asserted about the year 500, when a series of forgeries were circulated concerning the bishops of Rome and their decisions during the ages of persecution. One of these forgeries dealt with a pope named Marcellinus, who presided over the See of Rome during the beginning of the great Diocletian persecution. The story goes on to tell that Marcellinus fell into idolatry in order to save his life. A council of three hundred bishops was summoned at Sinuessa, when the assembled bishops are reported to have refused to pass sentence on the Pope, the successor of St. Peter, saying that the Holy See may be judged by no man. They therefore called upon the Pope to condemn himself, as he alone was a judge competent to exercise such a function. This story, according to Dollinger, was forged about the year 500, and it clearly exhibits the different view taken of the position of St. Peter in the Church of Jerusalem and of his alleged successors in the Church of Rome five centuries later. In the latter case St. Peters successor cannot be judged or condemned by any mortal. According to the Acts of the Apostles the members of the stricter party in the Church of Jerusalem had no hesitation in challenging the actions and teaching of St. Peter himself, and it was only when he could prove the immediate and manifest approval of Heaven that they ceased their opposition, saying, "Then to the Gentiles also hath God granted repentance unto life."
We can in this incident see how the Church was slowly but surely developing itself under the Divine guidance. The incident when the order of deacons was instituted was the primary step. There was then first manifested that combination of authority and freedom united with open discussion which, originating in the Christian Church, has been the source of all modern society, of modern governments, and modern methods of legislation. Now we see the same ideas applied to questions of doctrine and discipline, till we come in a short time to the perfection of this method in the celebrated Council of Jerusalem which framed the charter and traced out the main lines of development upon which the Church of the Gentiles and true gospel freedom were established.
II. The centre of Christian interest now shifts its position and fixes itself in the city of Antioch, where a further step in advance was taken. Our attention is first of all recalled to the results of St. Stephens death. "They therefore that were scattered abroad upon the tribulation that arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phoenicia, and Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the word to none save only to Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus." This is clearly a case of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, and the question has been raised, Was the action of these men of Cyprus and Cyrene quite independent of the action of St. Peter or an immediate result of the same? Did the men of Cyprus and Cyrene preach the gospel to the Gentiles of Antioch of their own motion, or did they wait till tidings of St. Peters action had reached them, and then, yielding to the generous instincts which had been long beating in the hearts of these Hellenistic Jews, did they proclaim at Antioch the glad tidings of salvation which the Gentiles of that gay and brilliant but very wicked city so much needed? Our answer to these queries is very short and plain. We think that the preaching of the Hellenists of Cyprus to the Gentiles of Antioch must have been the result of St. Peters action at Caesarea, else why did they wait till Antioch was reached to open their mouths to the pagan world? Surely, if the sight of sin and wickedness and civilised depravity was necessary to stir them up to efforts for the spiritual welfare of the Gentile world, Phoenicia and Cyprus abounded with scenes quite sufficient to unseal their lips. But the force of national prejudice and of religious exclusiveness was too strong till they came to Antioch, where tidings must have reached them of the vision and action of St. Peter at Caesarea.
It is easy to see why this information reached the missionaries at Antioch. Caesarea was the Roman capital of Palestine, and was a seaport. Antioch was the Roman capital of the province of Syria, an immense extent of territory, which included not merely the country which we call Syria, but extended to the Euphates on the west and to the desert intervening between Palestine and Egypt on the south. The prefect of the East resided at Antioch, and he was one of the three or four greatest officials under the Roman emperor. Palestine was, in fact, a part of the province of Syria, and its ruler or president was dependent upon the governor of Syria. It is therefore in strictest accordance with the facts of Roman history when St. Luke tells in his Gospel {Luk_2:2} concerning the taxation of Augustus Caesar, "This was the first enrolment made when Quirinus was governor of Syria." Antioch being then the seat of the central government of the eastern division of the Roman Empire, and Caesarea being the headquarters of an important lieutenant of the Syrian proconsul, it is no wonder there should have been very constant intercourse between the two places. The great magazines of arms for the entire east were located at Antioch, and there too the money was coined necessary to pay the troops and to carry on commercial intercourse. It must have been very easy for an official like Cornelius, or even for any simple private soldier or for an ordinary Jew or Christian of Caesarea, to communicate with Antioch, and to send word concerning the proceedings of St. Peter and the blessings vouchsafed by God to any devout person who might be there seeking after light and truth. It is quite natural therefore that, while the Christians dispersed into various lands by the persecution at Jerusalem restrained themselves to the Jews alone throughout their previous labours, when the men of Cyprus and Cyrene heard tidings at Antioch of St. Peter and his doings and revelations at Caesarea, they at last allowed free scope to their longings which long ago had found place in their more liberalised hearts, and testified to the Gentiles of Antioch concerning the gladsome story of the gospel. Here again we behold another instance of the value of culture and travel and enlarged intelligence. The Hellenists of Cyprus and Cyrene were the first to realise and act out the principle which God had taught St. Peter. They saw that Gods mercies were not restrained to the particular case of Cornelius. They realised that his was a typical instance, and that his conversion was intended to carry with it and to decide the possibility of Gentile salvation and the formation of a Gentile Church all over the world, and they put the principle in operation at once in one of the places where it was most needed: "When the men of Cyprus and Cyrene were come to Antioch, they spake unto the Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus." The method of the Divine development was in the primitive ages very similar to that we often still behold. Some improvement is required, some new principle has to be set in motion. If younger men begin the work, or if souls notorious for their freer thought or less prejudiced understandings, attempt to introduce the novel principle, the vast mass of stolid conservative opposition and attachment to the past is at once quickened into lively action. But then some Peter or another, some man of known rectitude and worth, and yet of equally well-known narrow views and devoted adherence to the past, takes some hesitating step in advance. He may indeed strive to limit its application to the special case before him, and he may earnestly deprecate any wider application of the principle on which he has acted. But it is all in vain. He has served the Divine purposes. His narrowness and respectability and personal weight have done their work, and have sanctioned the introduction of the principle which then is applied upon a much wider scale by men whose minds have been liberalised and trained to seize a great broad principle and put it into practical operation.
III. "When they came to Antioch, they spake the word to the Greeks also." And verily the men of Cyprus and Cyrene chose a fitting spot to open the kingdom of heaven to the Greek world and to found the mother Church of Gentile Christendom, for no city in the whole world was more completely Satans seat, or more entirely devoted to those works which St. John describes as the lusts of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the vain-glory of life. Let us reflect a little on the history and state of Antioch, and we shall then see the Divine motive in selecting it as the site of the first great Gentile Church, and we shall see too the Divine guidance which led St. Luke in this typical ecclesiastical history to select the Church of Antioch for such frequent notice, exceeding, as it does, all other Churches save Jerusalem in the amount of attention bestowed upon it in the Acts of the Apostles.
Antioch and Alexandria were towns dating from the same epoch. They came into existence about the year 300 B.C., being the creation of Alexander the Great himself, or of the generals who divided his empire between them. The city of Antioch was originally built by Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the kingdom of Syria, but was subsequently enlarged, so that in St. Pauls time it was divided into four independent districts or towns, each surrounded by its own walls, and all included within one vast wall some fifty feet high, which surmounted mountain tops and was carried at vast expense across valleys and ravines. Antioch was in the first century counted the third city in the world, Rome being first, Alexandria second, and Antioch third. It bad marvellous natural advantages. It was blessed with charming mountain scenery. The peaks rising up on all sides could be seen from every part of the city, imparting thus to life in Antioch that sense not merely of beauty and grandeur, but of the nearness of such beauty and grandeur combined with solitude and freedom from the madding crowd which seem so sweet to a man who passes his life amid the noise and hurry of a great city. What a change in the conditions of life in London would be at once brought about could the scenery surrounding Edinburgh or Lucerne be transferred to the worlds metropolis, and the toiler in Fleet Street and the Strand be enabled to look amid his daily labours upon cloud-piercing mountains or peaks clad in a robe of virgin white! Antioch was built upon the southern bank of the river Orontes, along which it extended about five miles. The main street of the city, otherwise called the Street of Herod after the celebrated Herod the Great who built it, was four and a half miles long. This street was unrivalled among the cities of the world, and was furnished with an arcade on both sides extending its whole length, beneath which the inhabitants could walk and transact business at all times, free from the heat and from the rain. The water supply of Antioch was its special feature. The great orator Libanius, a native of Antioch, who lived three hundred years later than St. Paul, while the city yet stood in all its grandeur and beauty, thus dwells on this feature of Antioch in a panegyric composed under the Emperor Constantius: "That wherein we beat all other is the water supply of our city; if in other respects any one may compete with us, all give way so soon as we come to speak of the water, its abundance and its excellence. In the public baths every stream has the proportions of a river, in the private baths several have the like, and the rest not much less. One measures the abundance of running water by the number of the dwelling-houses; for as many as are the dwelling-houses, so many are also the running waters. Therefore we have no fighting at the public wells as to who shall come first to draw-an evil under which so many considerable towns suffer, when there is a violent crowding round the wells and outcry over broken jars. With us the public fountains flow for ornament, since every one has water within his doors. And this water is so clear that the pail appears empty, and so pleasant that it invites us to drink." Such was the description of a pagan who saw Antioch even as St. Paul saw it, and testified concerning the natural gifts with which God had endowed it. But, alas! as with individuals, so is it with cities. God may lavish His best blessings, and yet instead of bringing forth the fruits of righteousness His choicest gifts of nature may be turned into fruitful seed plots of lust and sin. Sodom and Gomorrha were planted in a vale that was well watered and fair and fruitful, even as the Garden of the Lord; but the inhabitants thereof were wicked, and sinners before the. Lord exceedingly; and so it was with Antioch. This city so blessed in situation and in natures richest and most precious gifts was celebrated for its wicked preeminence amid the awful corruption which then overspread the cities of the world. When the Roman satirist Juvenal, writing about this period of which we treat, would fain account for the excessive dissolution of morals which then prevailed at Rome, his explanation of it was that the manners of Antioch had invaded Rome and corrupted its ancient purity:
"Jampridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes."
Amid the general wickedness of Antioch there was one element of life and hope and purity. The Jews of Antioch formed a large society in that city governed by their own laws and preserving themselves by their peculiar discipline free from the abounding vices of Oriental paganism. It was at Antioch as it was at Alexandria and Damascus. The Jews at Alexandria had their alabarch to whom they owed special allegiance and by whom alone they were ruled; the Jews of Damascus had their ethnarch who exercised peculiar jurisdiction over them; and so too had the Jews of Antioch a peculiar ruler of their own, forming thus an imperium in imperio, running counter to our Western notions which in many respects demand an iron uniformity very foreign to the Eastern mind, and show themselves eminently deficient in that flexibility and diversity which found an abundant play even among the arrangements of the Roman Empire. This Jewish quarter of Antioch had for centuries been growing and extending itself, and its chief synagogue had been glorified by the reception of some of the choicest temple spoils which the kings of Syria had at first carried captive from Jerusalem and then in a fit of repentance or of prudent policy had bestowed upon the Jewish colony in their capital city.
Such was the city to which the men of Cyprus and Cyrene were now carrying the news of the gospel, intending, doubtless, to tell merely their Jewish fellow-countrymen and religionists of the Messiah whose love and power they had themselves experienced. Here, however, they were met by the startling information from Caesarea. They were, however, prepared for it. They were Hellenistic Jews like St. Stephen. They had listened to his burning words, and had followed closely his epoch-making speeches whereby he confounded the Jews and clearly indicated the opening of a new era. But then Gods dispensations seemed to have terminated his teaching and put a fatal end to the hopes which he had raised. Men then misread Gods dealings with His servants, and interpreted His ways amiss. The death of Stephen seemed perhaps to some minds a visible condemnation of his views, when in reality it was the direct channel by which God would work out a wider propagation of them, as well as the conversion of the agent destined to diffuse them most powerfully. Apparent defeat is not always permanent disaster, whether in things temporal or things spiritual; nay, rather, the temporal check may be the necessary condition of the final and glorious victory. So it was in this case, as the men of Cyprus and Cyrene proved, when the news of St. Peters revelation and his decisive action arrived and they realised in action the principles of Catholic Christianity for which their loved teacher St. Stephen had died. And their brave action was soon followed by blessed success, by a rich harvest of souls: "The hand of the Lord was with them; and a great number that believed turned to the Lord." Thus were laid the foundations of the headquarters, the mother Church of Gentile Christianity.
IV. Now we come to another step in the development. Tidings of the action taken at Antioch came to Jerusalem. The news must have travelled much the same road as that by which, as we have indicated, the story of St. Peters action was carried to Antioch. The intercourse between Jerusalem and Antioch was frequent enough by land or by sea; and no synagogue and no Jewish society was more liberal in its gifts towards the support of the supreme council and hierarchy at Jerusalem than the Jewish colony and its synagogues at Damascus. And the old custom of communication with Jerusalem naturally led the Nazarenes of Antioch to send word of their proceedings up to the apostles and supreme council who ruled their parent society in the same city. We see a clear indication that the events at Antioch happened subsequently to those at Caesarea in the manner in which the news was received at Jerusalem. There seems to have been no strife, no discussion, no controversy. The question had been already raised and decided after St. Peters return. So the apostles simply select a fitting messenger to go forth with the authority of the apostles and to complete the work which, having been initiated in baptism, merely now demanded that imposition of hands which, as we have seen in the case of the Samaritan converts, was one of the special functions of the apostles and chiefs of the Church at Jerusalem. And in choosing Barnabas the apostles made a wise choice. They did not send one of the original Twelve, because not one of them was fitted for the peculiar work now demanded. They were all narrow, provincial, untravelled, devoid of that wide and generous training which God had given to Barnabas. It may be too that they felt restrained from going beyond the bounds of Canaan before the twelve years had elapsed of which ancient Christian tradition tells as the limit of their stay in Jerusalem fixed by our Lord Himself. He was a Hellenistic Jew, and he could sympathise with the wider feelings and ideas of the Hellenists. He was a man of Cyprus, a friend and perhaps connection of many, both Jews and Gentiles, among those whose new-born faith and hope were now in question. And above all he was a man of kindly heart and genial temper and loving thought and blessed charity, fitted to soothe jealousies and allay suspicions, and make the long alienated and despised Gentiles feel at home in the Church and family of Jesus Christ. Barnabas was a person peculiarly fitted to prove a mediator and uniting link in a society where divergent elements found a place and asserted themselves. He was not the man to take a new step or to have decided the question of the admission of the Gentiles if it had not been already settled. He must have come therefore fortified by the authority of the apostles, and then, knowing right well what they approved, he was just the man to carry out the details of an arrangement requiring tact and skill and temper; though he was by no means suited to decide a great question on its own merits or to initiate any great movement. In the Church of God then, as in the Church of God still, there are a place and a work for the strong man of keen logic and a Vigorous intellect and profound thought. And there are too a place and a work for the man of loving heart and a charity which evermore delights in compromise. "Barnabas, when he was come, and had seen the grace of God, was glad; and he exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord. For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and faith; and much people was added unto the Lord." Barnabas had another virtue too. He knew his own weakness. He did not imagine like some men that he was specially strong where he was eminently weak. He felt his want of the active vigorous mind of his friend of boyhood, the new convert Saul. He knew where he was living in comparative obscurity and silence; so after a little experience of the atmosphere of Antioch he departed to Tarsus to seek for him and bring him back where a great work was awaiting his peculiar turn of mind. There is an ancient historian of Antioch who has preserved for us many stories about that city in these apostolic and even in much earlier ages. His name is John Malalas; he lived about six hundred years after Christ and had access to many ancient documents and writers that are no longer known to us. He tells us many things about the primitive Church of Antioch. He has his own version of the quarrel between St. Paul and St. Peter which happened in that city; and he fixes even the very spot where St. Paul first preached, telling us that its name was Singon Street, which stood neat "the Pantheon." This may seem to us a minuteness of detail too great to be believed. But then we must remember that John Malalas expressly cites ancient chronologers and historians as his authorities, and he himself lived while as yet Antioch retained all the ancient arrangements of streets and divisions. And surely Saul, as he travelled from Tarsus responding at once to the call of Barnabas, must have seen enough to stir his love to Christ and to souls into heartiest exertion. He came doubtless by sea and landed at Seleucia, the port of Antioch, some sixteen miles distant from the city. As he travelled up to Antioch he would get distant glimpses of the groves of Daphne, a park ten miles in circumference, dedicated indeed to the poetic worship of Apollo, but dedicated also to the vilest purposes of wickedness intimately associated with that poetic worship. Poetry, whether ancient or modern, can be very blessed, ennobling and elevating mans whole nature. But the same poetry, as in ancient paganism and in some modern writers, can become a festering plague-spot, the abounding source to its votaries of moral corruption and spiritual death.
Daphne and its associations would rouse the whole soul, the healthy moral nature of Saul of Tarsus, inherited originally from his ancient Jewish training, and now quickened and deepened by the spiritual revelations made to him in Christ Jesus. It is no wonder then that here we read of St. Pauls first long and continuous period of ministerial work: "It came to pass that even for a whole year they were gathered together with the Church, and taught much people." The results of the new force which Barnabas introduced into the spiritual life of Antioch soon became manifested. "The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch." Saul of Tarsus possessed what Barnabas did not possess. He possessed a powerful, a logical, and a creative intellect. He realised from the beginning what his own principles meant and to what they were leading him. He taught not Judaism or the Law with an addition merely about Jesus of Nazareth. He troubled not himself about circumcision or the old covenant, but he taught from the very beginning Christ Jesus, Christ in His Divine and human nature, Christ in His various offices, Jesus Christ as the one hope for mankind. This was now at Antioch, as before at Damascus, the staple topic of St. Pauls preaching, and therefore the Antiochenes, with their ready wit and proverbial power of giving nicknames, at once designated the new sect not Nazarenes or Galileans as the Jews of Jerusalem called them, but Christians or adherents of Christ. Here, however, I prefer to avail myself of the exposition which one of the great spiritual teachers of the last generation gave us of this expression. The well-known and learned Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Trench, in his "Study of Words" (21st Ed.: Lond. 1890), p. 189, thus draws out the lesson connected with this word and the time of its appearance: "The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch. That we have here a notice which we would not willingly have missed all will acknowledge, even as nothing can be otherwise than curious which relates to the infancy of the Church. But there is here much more than a curious notice. Question it a little closer, and how much it will be found to contain, how much which it is waiting to yield up! What light it throws on the whole story of the Apostolic Church to know where and when this name of Christians was first imposed on the faithful; for imposed by adversaries it certainly was, not devised by themselves, however afterwards they may have learned to glory in it as the name of highest dignity and honour. They did not call themselves, but, as is expressly recorded, they were called Christians first at Antioch; in agreement with which statement the name occurs nowhere in Scripture, except on the lips of those alien from or opposed to the faith. {Act_26:28, 1Pe_4:16} And as it was a name imposed by adversaries, so among these adversaries it was plainly heathens, and not Jews, who were its authors; for Jews would never have called the followers of Jesus of Nazareth Christians, or those of Christ, the very point of their opposition to Him being, that He was not the Christ, but a false pretender to the name. Starting then from this point that Christians was a title given to the disciples by the heathen, what may we deduce from it further? At Antioch they first obtained this name-at the city, that is, which was the headquarters of the Churchs mission to the heathen, in the same sense as Jerusalem had been the headquarters of the mission to the seed of Abraham. It was there and among the faithful there that a conviction of the world-wide destination of the gospel arose; there it was first plainly seen as intended for all kindreds of the earth. Hitherto the faithful in Christ had been called by their adversaries, and indeed were often still called Galileans or Nazarenes-both names which indicated the Jewish cradle wherein the Church had been nursed, and that the world saw in the new society no more than a Jewish sect. But it was plain that the Church had now, even in the worlds eyes, chipped its Jewish shell. The name Christians or those of Christ, while it told that Christ and the confession of Him were felt even by the heathen to be the sum and centre of this new faith, showed also that they comprehended now, not all which the Church would be, but something of this; saw this much, namely, that it was no mere sect and variety of Judaism, but a Society with a mission and a destiny of its own. Now will the thoughtful reader fail to observe that the coming up of this name is by closest juxtaposition connected in the sacred narrative, and still more closely in the Greek than in the English, with the arrival at Antioch, and with the preaching there, of that Apostle who was Gods appointed instrument for bringing the Church to a full sense that the message which it had was not for some men only, but for all. As so often happens with the rise of new names, the rise of this one marked a new epoch in the Churchs life, and that it was entering upon a new stage of development." This is a long extract, but it sets forth in dignified and aptly chosen words, such as Archbishop Trench always used, the important lessons which the thoughtful student of the Acts may gather from the time and place where the term "Christians" first sprang into existence.
Finally, we notice in connection with Antioch that the foundation of the great Gentile Church was marked by the same universal impulse which we trace wherever Christ was effectually preached. The faith of the Crucified evermore produced love to the brethren. Agabus, a prophet whom we shall again meet many years after in the course of St. Pauls life, and who then predicted his approaching arrest and captivity at Jerusalem, made his earliest recorded appearance at Antioch, where he announced an impending famine. Agabus exercised the office of a prophet, which implied under the New Dispensation rather the office of preaching than of prediction. Prediction, indeed, whether under the Old or the New Dispensation, formed but a small portion of the prophetical office. The work of the prophet was pre-eminently that of telling forth Gods will and enforcing it upon a careless generation. Occasionally indeed, as in the case of Agabus, that telling forth involved prediction or announcement of Gods chastisements and visitations; but far oftener the prophets work was finished when he enforced the great principles of truth and righteousness as the Christian preacher does still. Agabus seems to have been specially gifted in the direction of prediction. He announced a famine as impending over the whole world, which came to pass in the age of Claudius, offering to the Gentile Church of Antioch an opportunity, of which they gladly availed themselves, to repay somewhat of the spiritual obligation which the Gentiles owed to the Jews according to St. Pauls own rule: "If the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, they owe it to them also to minister unto them in carnal things." We can trace here the force and power of ancient Jewish customs. We can see how the mould and form and external shape of the Church was. gained from the Jew. The Jewish colony of Antioch had been of old famous for the liberality of its gifts to the mother community at Jerusalem. The predominant element in the Church of Antioch was now Gentile, but still the ancient customs prevailed. The Gentile Christian community acted towards the Jerusalem Church as the Jewish community had been used to treat their countrymen: "The disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren that dwelt in Judaea: which also they did, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul."
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv22, 25 22–24. Sent forth Barnabas. Barnabas was himself a Grecian…
22–24. Sent forth Barnabas. Barnabas was himself a Grecian Jew (Acts 4:36), also the friend of Saul, another Grecian Jew (Acts 9:27). He was chosen as a suitable man to go to Antioch and see whether there had been a real work of the Lord. When he had seen that it was
the grace of the Lord, he rejoiced and gave it Godspeed, and the work grew more and more in this great metropolis. Note that this is the first church named outside the bounds of Palestine. It was to become the great missionary center for the conversion of the Gentile world.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv22–26 22. Here we see that the apostles at Jerusalem,…
22. Here we see that the apostles at Jerusalem, having heard of the progress of the gospel among the Syrian Gentiles, sent away that good preacher Barnabas, beloved by the apostles and saints, to go even to Antioch, the Syrian metropolis, and investigate the strange phenomenon.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv23, 24, 26
Acts
THE EXHORTATION OF BARNABAS 1
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Act 11:23.
The first purely heathen converts had been brought into the Church by the nameless men of Cyprus and Cyrene, private persons with no office or commission to preach, who, in simple obedience to the instincts of a Christian heart, leaped the barrier which seemed impassable to the Church in Jerusalem, and solved the problem over which Apostles were hesitating. Barnabas is sent down to see into this surprising new phenomenon, and his mission, though probably not hostile, was, at all events, one of inquiry and doubt. But like a true man, he yielded to facts, and widened his theory to suit them. He saw the tokens of Christian life in these Gentile converts, and that compelled him to admit that the Church was wider than some of his friends in Jerusalem thought. A pregnant lesson for modern theorists who, on one ground or another of doctrine or of orders, narrow the great conception of Christ’s Church! Can you see ‘the grace of God’ in the people? Then they are in the Church, whatever becomes of your theories, and the sooner you let them out so as to fit the facts, the better for you and for them.
Satisfied as to their true Christian character, Barnabas sets himself to help them to grow. Now, remember how recently they had been converted; how, from their Gentile origin, they can have had next to no systematic instruction; how the taint of heathen morals, such as were common in that luxurious, corrupt Antioch, must have clung to them; how unformed must have been their loose Church organisation- and remembering all this, think of this one exhortation as summing up all that Barnabas had to say to them. He does not say, Do this, or Believe that, or Organise the other; but he says, Stick to Jesus Christ the Lord. On this commandment hangs all the law; it is the one all-inclusive summary of the duties of the Christian life.
So, brethren and fathers, I venture to take these words now, as containing large lessons for us all, appropriate at all times, and especially in a sermon on such an occasion as the present.
We may deal with the thoughts suggested by these words very simply, just looking at the points as they lie-what Barnabas saw, what he felt, what he said.
I. What Barnabas saw.
The grace of God here has very probably the specific meaning of the miracle-working gift of the Holy Spirit. That is rendered probable by the analogy of other instances recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, such as Peter’s experience at Caesarea, where all his hesitations and reluctance were swept away when ‘the Holy Ghost fell on them as on us at the beginning, and they spake with tongues.’ If so, what convinced Barnabas that these uncircumcised Gentiles were Christians like himself, may have been their similar possession of the visible and audible effects of that gift of God. But the language does not compel this interpretation; and the absence of all distinct reference to these extraordinary powers as existing there, among the new converts at Antioch, may be intended to mark a difference in the nature of the evidence. At any rate, the possibly intentional generality of the expression is significant and fairly points to an extension of the spiritual gifts much beyond the limits of miraculous powers. There are other ways by which the grace of God may be seen and heard, thank God! than by speaking with tongues and working miracles; and the first lesson of our text is that wherever that grace is made visible by its appropriate manifestations, there we are to recognise a brother.
Augustine said, ‘Where Christ is there is the Church,’ and that is true, but vague; for the question still remains, ‘And where is Christ?’ The only satisfying answer is, Christ is wherever Christlike men manifest a life drawn from, and kindred with, His life. And so the true form of the dictum for practical purposes comes to be: ‘Where the grace of Christ is visible, there is the Church.’
That great truth is sinned against and denied in many ways. Most chiefly, perhaps, by the successors in modern garb of the more Jewish portion of that Church at Jerusalem who sent Barnabas to Antioch. They had no objection to Gentiles entering the Church, but they must come in by the way of circumcision; they quite believed that it was Christ who saved, and His grace which sanctified, but they thought that His grace would only flow in a given channel; and so do their modern representatives, who exalt sacraments, and consequently priests, to the same place as the Judaizers in the early Church did the rite of the old Covenant. Such teachers have much to say about the notes of the Church, and have elaborated a complicated system of identification by which you may know the genuine article, and unmask impostors. The attempt is about as wise as to try to weave a network fine enough to keep back a stream. The water will flow through the closest meshes, and when Christ pours out the Spirit, He is apt to do it in utter disregard of notes of the Church, and of channels of sacramental grace.
We Congregationalists, who have no orders, no sacraments, no Apostolic succession; who in order not to break loose from Christ and conscience have had to break loose from ‘Catholic tradition,’ and have been driven to separation by the true schismatics, who have insisted on another bond of Church unity than union to Christ, are denied nowadays a place in His Church.
The true answer to all that arrogant assumption and narrow pedantry which confine the free flow of the water of life to the conduits of sacraments and orders, and will only allow the wind that bloweth where it listeth to make music in the pipes of their organs, is simply the homely one which shivered a corresponding theory to atoms in the fair open mind of Barnabas.
The Spirit of Christ at work in men’s hearts, making them pure and gentle, simple and unworldly, refining their characters, elevating their aims, toning their whole being into accord with the music of His life, is the true proof that men are Christians, and that communities of such men are Churches of His. Mysterious efficacy is claimed for Christian ordinances. Well, the question is a fair one: Is the type of Christian character produced within these sacred limits, which we are hopelessly outside, conspicuously higher and more manifestly Christlike than that nourished by no sacraments, and grown not under glass, but in the unsheltered open? Has not God set His seal on these communities to which we belong? With many faults for which we have to be, and are, humble before Him, we can point to the lineaments of the family likeness, and say, ‘Are they Hebrews? so are we. Are they Israelites? so are we. Are they the seed of Abraham? so are we.’
Once get that truth wrought into men’s minds, that the true test of Christianity is the visible presence of a grace in character which is evidently God’s, and whole mountains of prejudice and error melt away. We are just as much in danger of narrowing the Church in accordance with our narrowness as any ‘sacramentarian’ of them all. We are tempted to think that no good thing can grow up under the baleful shadow of that tree, a sacerdotal Christianity. We are tempted to think that all the good people are Dissenters, just as Churchmen are to think that nobody can be a Christian who prays without a prayer-book. Our own type of denominational character-and there is such a thing-comes to be accepted by us as the all but exclusive ideal of a devout man; and we have not imagination enough to conceive, nor charity enough to believe in, the goodness which does not speak our dialect, nor see with our eyes. Dogmatical narrowness has built as high walls as ceremonial Christianity has reared round the fold of Christ, And the one deliverance for us all from the transformed selfishness, which has so much to do with shaping all these wretched narrow theories of the Church, is to do as this man did-open our eyes with sympathetic eagerness to see God’s grace in many an unexpected place, and square our theories with His dealings.
It used to be an axiom that there was no life in the sea beyond a certain limit of a few hundred feet. It was learnedly and conclusively demonstrated that pressure and absence of light, and I know not what beside, made life at greater depths impossible. It was proved that in such conditions creatures could not live. And then, when that was settled, the Challenger put down her dredge five miles, and brought up healthy and good-sized living things, with eyes in their heads, from that enormous depth. So, then, the savant had to ask, How can there be life? instead of asserting that there cannot be; and, no doubt, the answer will be forth coming some day.
We have all been too much accustomed to set arbitrary limits to the diffusion of the life of Christ among men. Let us rather rejoice when we see forms of beauty, which bear the mark of His hand, drawn from depths that we deemed waste, and thankfully confess that the bounds of our expectation, and the framework of our institutions, do not confine the breadth of His working, nor the sweep of His grace.
II. What Barnabas felt.
‘He was glad.’ It was a triumph of Christian principle to recognise the grace of God under new forms, and in so strange a place. It was a still greater triumph to hail it with rejoicing. One need not have wondered if the acknowledgment of a fact, dead in the teeth of all his prejudices, and seemingly destructive of some profound convictions, had been somewhat grudging. Even a good, true man might have been bewildered and reluctant to let go so much as was destroyed by the admission-’Then hath God granted to the Gentiles also repentance unto life,’-and might have been pardoned if he had not been able to do more than acquiesce and hold his peace. We are scarcely just to these early Jewish Christians when we wonder at their hesitation on this matter, and are apt to forget the enormous strength of the prejudices and sacred conviction which they had to overcome. Hence the context seems to consider that the quick recognition of Christian character on the part of Barnabas, and his gladness at the discovery, need explanation, and so it adds, with special reference to these, as it would seem, ‘for he was a good man, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith,’ as if nothing short of such characteristics could have sufficiently emancipated him from the narrowness that would have refused to discern the good, or the bitterness that would have been offended at it.
So, dear brethren, we may well test ourselves with this question: Does the discovery of the working of the grace of God outside the limits of our own Churches and communions excite a quick, spontaneous emotion of gladness in our hearts? It may upset some of our theories; it may teach us that things which we thought very important, ‘distinctive principles’ and the like, are not altogether as precious as we thought them; it may require us to give up some pleasant ideas of our superiority, and of the necessary conformity of all good people to our type. Are we willing to let them all go, and without a twinge of envy or a hanging back from prejudice, to welcome the discovery that ‘God fulfils Himself in many ways’? Have we schooled ourselves to say honestly, ‘Therein I do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice’?
There is much to overcome if we would know this Christlike gladness. The good and the bad in us may both oppose it. The natural deeper interest in the well-being of the Churches of our own faith and order, the legitimate ties which unite us with these, our conscientious convictions, our friendships, the esprit de corps born of fighting shoulder to shoulder, will, of course, make our sympathies flow most quickly and deeply in denominational channels. And then come in abundance of less worthy motives, some altogether bad and some the exaggeration of what is good, and we get swallowed up in our own individual work, or in that of our ‘denomination,’ and have but a very tepid joy in anybody else’s prosperity.
In almost every town of England, your Churches, and those to which I belong, with Presbyterians and Wesleyans, stand side by side. The conditions of our work make some rivalry inevitable, and none of us, I suppose, object to that. It helps to keep us all diligent: a sturdy adherence to our several ‘distinctive principles’ and an occasional hard blow in fair fight on their behalf we shall all insist upon. Our brotherhood is all the more real for frank speech, and ‘the animated No!’ is an essential in all intercourse which is not stagnant or mawkish. There is much true fellowship and much good feeling among all these. But we want far more of an honest rejoicing in each other’s success, a quicker and truer manly sympathy with each other’s work, a fuller consciousness of our solidarity in Christ, and a clearer exhibition of it before the world.
And on a wider view, as our eyes travel over the wide field of Christendom, and our memories go back over the long ages of the story of the Church, let gladness, and not wonder or reluctance, be the temper with which we see the graces of Christian character lifting their meek blossoms in corners strange to us, and breathing their fragrance over the pastures of the wilderness. In many a cloister, in many a hermit’s cell, from amidst the smoke of incense, through the dust of controversies, we should see, and be glad to see, faces bright with the radiance caught from Christ. Let us set a jealous watch over our hearts that self-absorption, or denominationalism, or envy do not make the sight a pain instead of a joy; and let us remember that the eye-salve which will purge our dim sight to behold the grace of God in all its forms is that grace itself, which ever recognises its own kindred, and lives in the gladness of charity, and the joy of beholding a brother’s good. If we are to have eyes to know the grace of God when we see it, and a heart to rejoice when we know it, we must get them as Barnabas got his, and be good men, because we are full of the Holy Ghost, and full of the Holy Ghost because we are full of faith.
III. What Barnabas said.
‘He exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord.’ The first thing that strikes one about this all-sufficient directory for Christian life is the emphasis with which it sets forth ‘the Lord’ as the one object to be grasped and held. The sum of all objective Religion is Christ-the sum of all subjective Religion is cleaving to Him. A living Person to be laid hold of, and a personal relation to that Person, such is the conception of Religion, whether considered as revelation or as inward life, which underlies this exhortation. Whether we listen to His own words about Himself, and mark the altogether unprecedented way in which He was His own theme, and the unique decisiveness and plainness with which He puts His own personality before us as the Incarnate Truth, the pattern for all human conduct, the refuge and the rest for the world of weary ones; or whether we give ear to the teaching of His Apostles; from whatever point of view we approach Christianity, it all resolves itself into the person of Jesus Christ. He is the Revelation of God; theology, properly so called, is but the formulating of the facts which He gives us; and for the modern world the alternative is, Christ the manifested God, or no God at all, other than the shadow of a name. He is the perfect Exemplar of humanity! The law of life and the power to fulfil the law are both in Him; and the superiority of Christian morality consists not in this or that isolated precept, but in the embodiment of all goodness in His life, and in the new motive which He supplies for keeping the commandment. Wrenched away from Him, Christian morality has no being. He is the sacrifice for the world, the salvation of which flows from what He does, and not merely from what He taught or was. His personality is the foundation of His work, and the gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation is all contained in the name of Jesus.
There is a constant tendency to separate the results of Christ’s life and death, whether considered as revelation, atonement, or ethics, from Him, and unconsciously to make these the sum of our Religion, and the object of our faith. Especially is this the case in times of restless thought and eager canvassing of the very foundations of religious belief, like the present. Therefore it is wholesome for us all to be brought back to the pregnant simplicity of the thought which underlies this text, and to mark how vividly these early Christians apprehended a living Lord as the sum and substance of all which they had to grasp.
There is a whole world between the man to whom God’s revelation consists in certain doctrines given to us by Jesus Christ, and the man to whom it consists in that Christ Himself. Grasping a living person is not the same as accepting a proposition. True, the propositions are about Him, and we do not know Him without them. But equally true, we need to be reminded that He is our Saviour and not they, and that God has revealed Himself to us not in words and sentences but in a life.
For, alas! the doctrinal element has overborne the personal among all Churches and all schools of thought, and in the necessary process of formulating and systematising the riches which are in Jesus, we are all apt to confound the creeds with the Christ, and so to manipulate Christianity until, instead of being the revelation of a Person and a gospel, it has become a system of divinity. Simple, devout souls have to complain that they cannot find even a dead Christ, to say nothing of a living one, for the theologians have ‘taken away their Lord, and they know not where they have laid Him.’
It is, therefore, to be reckoned as a distinct gain that one result of the course of more recent thought, both among friends and foes, has been to make all men feel more than before, that all revelation is contained in the living person of Jesus Christ. So did the Church believe before creeds were. So it is coming to feel again, with a consciousness enriched and defined by the whole body of doctrine, which has flowed from Him during all the ages. That solemn, gracious Figure rises day by day more clearly before men, whether they love Him or no, as the vital centre of this great whole of doctrines, laws, institutions, which we call Christianity. Round the story of His life the final struggle is to be waged. The foe feels that, so long as that remains, all other victories count for nothing. We feel that if that goes, there is nothing to keep. The principles and the precepts will perish alike, as the fair palace of the old legend, that crumbled to dust when its builder died. But so long as He stands before mankind as He is painted in the Gospel, it will endure. If all else were annihilated, Churches, creeds and all, leave us these four Gospels, and all else would be evolved again. The world knows now, and the Church has always known, though it has not always been true to the significance of the fact, that Jesus Christ is Christianity, and that because He lives, it will live also.
And consequently the sum of all personal religion is this simple act described here as cleaving to Him.
Need I do more than refer to the rich variety of symbols and forms of expression under which that thought is put alike by the Master and by His servants? Deepest of all are His own great words, of which our text is but a feeble echo, ‘Abide in Me, and I in you.’ Fairest of all is that lovely emblem of the vine, setting forth the sweet mystery of our union with Him. Far as it is from the outmost pliant tendril to the root, one life passes to the very extremities, and every cluster swells and reddens and mellows because of its mysterious flow. ‘So also is Christ.’ We remember how often the invitation flowed from His lips, Come unto Me; how He was wont to beckon men away from self and the world with the great command, Follow Me; how He explained the secret of all true life to consist in eating Him. We may recall, too, the emphasis and perpetual reiteration with which Paul speaks of being ‘in Jesus’ as the condition of all blessedness, power, and righteousness; and the emblems which he so often employs of the building bound into a whole on the foundation from which it derives its stability, of the body compacted and organised into a whole by the head from which it derives its life.
We begin to be Christians, as this context tells us, when we ‘turn to the Lord.’ We continue to be Christians, as Barnabas reminded these ignorant beginners, by ‘cleaving to the Lord.’ Seeing, then, that our great task is to preserve that which we have as the very foundation of our Christian life, clearly the truest method of so keeping it will be the constant repetition of the act by which we got it at first. In other words, faith joined us to Christ, and continuously reiterated acts of faith keep us united to Him. So, if I may venture, fathers and brethren, to cast my words into the form of exhortation, even to such an audience as the present, I would earnestly say, Let us cleave to Christ by continual renewal of our first faith in Him.
The longest line may be conceived of as produced simply by the motion of its initial point. So should our lives be, our progress not consisting in leaving our early acts of faith behind us, but in repeating them over and over again till the points coalesce in one unbroken line which goes straight to the Throne and Heart of Jesus. True, the repetition should be accompanied with fuller knowledge, with calmer certitude, and should come from a heart ennobled and encircled by a Christ-possessing past. As in some great symphony the theme which was given out in low notes on one poor instrument recurs over and over again, embroidered with varying harmonies, and unfolding a richer music, till it swells into all the grandeur of the triumphant close, so our lives should be bound into a unity, and in their unity bound to Christ by the constant renewal of our early faith, and the fathers should come round again to the place which they occupied when as children they first knew Him that is ‘from the beginning’ to the end one and the same.
Such constant reiteration is needed, too, because yesterday’s trust has no more power to secure to-day’s union than the shreds of cloth and nails which hold last year’s growth to the wall will fasten this year’s shoots. Each moment must be united to Christ by its own act of faith, or it will be separated from Him. So living in the Lord we shall be strong and wise, happy and holy. So dying in the Lord we shall be of the dead who are blessed. So sleeping in Jesus we shall at the last be found in Him at that day, and shall be raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
But more specially let us cleave to Christ by habitual contemplation. There can be no real continuous closeness of intercourse with Him, except by thought ever recurring to Him amidst all the tumult of our busy days. I do not mean professional thinking or controversial thinking, of which we ministers have more than enough. There is another mood of mind in which to approach our Lord than these, a mood sadly unfamiliar, I am afraid, in these days: when poor Mary has hardly a chance of a reputation for ‘usefulness’ by the side of busy, bustling Martha-that still contemplation of the truth which we possess, not with the view of discovering its foundations, or investigating its applications, or even of increasing our knowledge of its contents, but of bringing our own souls more completely under its influence, and saturating our being with its fragrance. The Church has forgotten how to meditate. We are all so occupied arguing and deducing and elaborating, that we have no time for retired, still contemplation, and therefore lose the finest aroma of the truth we profess to believe. Many of us are so busy thinking about Christianity that we have lost our hold of Christ. Sure I am that there are few things more needed by our modern religion than the old exhortation, ‘Come, My people, enter into thy chambers and shut thy doors about thee.’ Cleave to the Lord by habitual play of meditative thought on the treasures hidden in His name, and waiting like gold in the quartz, to be the prize of our patient sifting and close gaze.
And when the great truths embodied in Him stand clear before us, then let us remember that we have not done with them when we have seen them. Next must come into exercise the moral side of faith, the voluntary act of trust, the casting ourselves on Him whom we behold, the making our own of the blessings which He holds out to us. Flee to Christ as to our strong habitation to which we may continually resort. Hold tightly by Christ with a grasp which nothing can slacken {that whitens your very knuckles as you clutch Him}, lean on Christ all your weight and all your burdens. Cleave to the Lord with full purpose of heart.
Let us cleave to the Lord by constant outgoings of our love to Him. That is the bond which unites human spirits together in the only real union, and Scripture teaches us to see in the sweetest, sacredest, closest tie that men and women can know, a real, though faint, shadow of the far deeper and truer union between Christ and us. The same love which is the bond of perfectness between man and man, is the bond between us and Christ. In no dreamy, semi-pantheistic fusion of the believer with his Lord do we find the true conception of the unity of Christ and His Church, but in a union which preserves the individualities lest it should slay the love. Faith knits us to Christ, and faith is the mother of love, which maintains the blessed union. So let us not be ashamed of the emotional side of our religion, nor deem that we can cleave to Christ unless our hearts twine their tendrils round Him, and our love pours its odorous treasures on His sacred feet, not without weeping and embraces. Cold natures may carp, but Love is justified of her children, and Christ accepts the homage that has a heart in it. Cleaving to the Lord is not merely love, but it is impossible without it. The order is Faith, Love, Obedience-that threefold cord knits men to Christ, and Christ to men. For the understanding, a continuous grasp of Him as the object of thought. For the heart, a continuous outgoing to Him as the object of our love. For the will, a continuous submission to Him as the Lord of our obedience. For the whole nature, a continuous cleaving to Him as the object of our faith and worship.
Such is the true discipline of the Christian life. Such is the all-sufficient command; as for the newest convert from heathenism, with little knowledge and the taint of his old vices in his soul, so for the saint fullest of wisdom and nearest the Light.
It is all-sufficient. If Barnabas had been like some of us, he would have had a very different style of exhortation. He would have said, ‘This irregular work has been well done, but there are no authorised teachers here, and no provision has been made for the due administration of the sacraments of the Church. The very first thing of all is to give these people the blessing of bishops and priests.’ Some of us would have said, ‘Valuable work has been done, but these good people are terribly ignorant. The best thing would be to get ready as soon as possible some manual of Christian doctrine, and in the meantime provide for their systematic instruction in at least the elements of the faith.’ Some of us would have said, ‘No doubt they have been converted, but we fear there has been too much of the emotional in the preaching. The moral side of Christianity has not been pressed home, and what they chiefly need is to be taught that it is not feeling, but righteousness. Plain, practical instruction in Christian duty is the one thing they want.’
Barnabas knew better. He did not despise organisation, nor orthodoxy, nor practical righteousness, but he knew that all three, and everything else that any man needed for his perfecting would come, if only the converts kept near to Christ, and that nothing else was of any use if they did not. That same conviction should for us settle the relative importance which we attach to these subordinate and derivative things, and to the primary and primitive duty. Obedience to it will secure them. They, without it, are not worth securing.
We spend much pains and effort nowadays in perfecting our organisations and consolidating our resources, and I have not a word to say against that. But heavier machinery needs more power in the engine, and that means greater capacity in your boilers and more fire in your furnace. The more complete our organisation, the more do we need a firm hold of Christ, or we shall be overweighted by it, shall be in danger of burning incense to our own net, shall be tempted to trust in drill rather than in courage, in mechanism rather than in the life drawn from Christ. On the other hand, if we put as our first care the preservation of the closeness of our union with Christ, that life will shape a body for itself, and ‘to every seed its own body.’
True conceptions of Him, and a definite theology, are good and needful. Let us cleave to Him with mind and heart, and we shall receive all the knowledge we need, and be guided into the deep things of God. In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and the basis of all theology is the personal possession of Him who is ‘the wisdom of God’ and ‘the Light of the world.’ Every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. Pectus facit Theologum.
Plain, straightforward morality and everyday righteousness are better than all emotion and all dogmatism and all churchism, says the world, and Christianity says much the same; but plain, straightforward righteousness and everyday morality come most surely when a man is keeping close to Christ. In a word, everything that can adorn the character with beauty, and clothe the Church with glorious apparel, whatsoever things are lovely and of good report, all that the world or God calls virtue and crowns with praise, they are all in their fulness in Him, and all are most surely derived from Him by keeping fast hold of His hand, and preserving the channels clear through which His manifold grace may flow into our souls. The same life is strength in the arm, pliancy in the fingers, swiftness in the foot, light in the eye, music on the lips; so the same grace is Protean in its forms, and to His servants who trust Him Christ ever says, ‘What would ye that I should do unto you? Be it even as thou wilt.’ The same mysterious power lives in the swaying branch, and in the veined leaf, and in the blushing clusters. With like wondrous transformations of the one grace, the Lord pours Himself into our spirits, filling all needs and fitting for all circumstances. Therefore for us all, individuals and Churches, this remains the prime command, ‘With purpose of heart cleave unto the Lord.’ Dear brethren in the ministry, how sorely we need this exhortation! Our very professional occupation with Christ and His truth is full of danger for us; we are so accustomed to handle these sacred themes as a means of instructing or impressing others that we get to regard them as our weapons, even if we do not degrade them still further by thinking of them as our stock-in-trade and means of oratorical effect. We must keep very firm hold of Christ for ourselves by much solitary communion, and so retranslating into the nutriment of our own souls the message we bring to men, else when we have preached to others we ourselves may he cast away. All the ordinary tendencies which draw men from Him work on us, and a host of others peculiar to ourselves, and all around us run strong currents of thought which threaten to sweep many away. Let us tighten our grasp of Him in the face of modern doubt; and take heed to ourselves that neither vanity, nor worldliness, nor sloth; neither the gravitation earthward common to all, nor the temptations proper to our office; neither unbelieving voices without nor voices within, seduce us from His side. There only is our peace, there our wisdom, there our power.
Subtly and silently the separating forces are ever at work upon us, and all unconsciously to ourselves our hold may relax, and the flow of this grace into our spirits may cease, while yet we mechanically keep up the round of outward service, nor even suspect that our strength is departed from us. Many a stately elm that seems full of vigorous life, for all its spreading boughs and clouds of dancing leaves, is hollow at the heart, and when the storm comes goes down with a crash, and men wonder, as they look at the ruin, how such a mere shell of life with a core of corruption could stand so long. It rotted within, and fell at last, because its roots did not go deep down to the rich soil, where they would have found nourishment, but ran along near the surface among gravel and stones. If we would stand firm, be sound within, and bring forth much fruit, we must strike our roots deep in Him who is the anchorage of our souls, and the nourisher of all our being.
Hearken, beloved brethren, in this great work of the ministry, not to the exhortation of the servant, but to the solemn command of the Master, ‘Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in Me.’ And let us, knowing our own weakness, take heed of the self-confidence that answers, ‘Though all should forsake Thee, yet will not I,’ and turn the vows which spring to our lips into the lowly prayer, ‘My soul cleaveth unto the dust, quicken Thou me according to Thy word.’ Then, thinking rather of His cleaving to us than of our cleaving to Him, let us resolutely take as the motto of our lives the grand words: ‘I follow after, if that I may lay hold of that for which I am also laid hold of by Christ Jesus!’
1 Preached before the Congregational Union of England and Wales.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv22–26 22-24. Jerusalem was still the chief center of religious…
22-24. Jerusalem was still the chief center of religious influence, being the chief residence of the apostles. They kept a watchful eye upon the movements of brethren in all directions, supplying help and counsel according to the demand of circumstances. They were anxious to hear of every new success, and the brethren were equally glad to report it. (22) " Then tidings of these things came to the ears of the Church in Jerusalem, and they sent forth Barnabas to go as far as Antioch. (23) When he arrived and saw the favor of God, he rejoiced, and exhorted them all with purpose of heart to cling to the Lord. (24) For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and faith; and a great multitude were added to the Lord. " It is not often that Luke bestows a direct encomium upon the characters of whom he writes, as he does here upon Barnabas. But it was proper, in this case, that the selection of Barnabas for this mission, in preference to other brethren, should be accounted for by stating the noble qualities which led to the choice. He was certainly a most proper man to send to a congregation of young disciples, to exhort them to cling to the Lord.
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v22 Barnabas in Antioch and Tarsus:
Barnabas in Antioch and Tarsus:
v. 22. Then tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church which was in Jerusalem; and they sent forth Barnabas that he should go as far as Antioch,
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v. 23. who, when he came, and had seen the grace of God, was glad, and exhorted them all that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord.
v. 24. For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith; and much people was added unto the Lord.
v. 25. Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus for to seek Saul;
v. 26. and when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.
Jerusalem, being the headquarters of the apostles, was still considered the capital city of Christendom. But proclamation of the unity of faith, so far as the believers of Samaria were concerned, had already been made, chap. 8:14-17. When therefore the news reached Jerusalem and was brought to the attention of the congregation, the brethren formally delegated Barnabas to go down to Antioch. If the report was based upon facts, he was to establish fraternal relations with the disciples in this great metropolis also. Barnabas made the trip, came to the end of his journey. and was more than repaid. He saw the grace of God; he was fully convinced by the many evidences of the working of God’s grace on every hand; he could not but acknowledge this fact with great joy and thanksgiving. And as a true son of comfort and exhortation he encouraged and admonished all the brethren to abide unwaveringly with the Lord, to cling to Him with full devotion of heart. The benefits and blessings of faith will come only to him that remains steadfast in his faith. And that is one of the purposes of the Gospel, to keep the believers in their faith. This preaching and admonishing of Barnabas made all the more impression, since he himself was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith. His preaching and exhorting was not like saying a lesson by rote, but it flowed out of the depth of his conviction of faith and the power of the Holy Ghost, who lived in him. It is not absolutely essential for the proclamation of the Word, but it is not without influence upon the force and vividness of presentation, that the preacher have the full conviction of the truth of Scriptures and the great Gospel-facts. In Antioch the effect was immediate and wonderful: a great multitude was turned to the Lord. With the establishment of the congregation now assured and the work growing in scope every day, Barnabas thought of his friend Saul, who was only a short distance from Antioch, at Tarsus, and who, as Barnabas knew, was destined for work among the Gentiles. So Barnabas made the trip across the sea to Tarsus to look up Saul, and finding him, he led him to Antioch. For a whole year these two men now worked together in the church at Antioch, with its hundreds and thousands of souls in need of salvation. "The united labors of two such men for a whole year, in a community to which the Gospel had already been favorably introduced, could not fail of great results; and the ultimate results were far beyond any hope which they could then have entertained; for they were now erecting, as it were, the second capital of the Christian world, whence were sent forth, not long afterward, the most fruitful missions of the apostolic age. " Here in Antioch also a great honor came to the disciples, for here, for the first time, they were called Christians. The heathen applied this name to the believers because they professed faith in Christ. Ever since, it has been the name which the believers have deemed the greatest honor to bear. Compare Act 26:28; 1Pe 4:16.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv22, 25 General Information:
General Information:
In these verses, the word "he" refers to Barnabas. The word "they" refers to the believers of the church at Jerusalem.
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General Information:
The words "them" and "their" refer to the new believers. (See: Acts 11:20)
ears of the church
Here "ears" refers to the believers' hearing about the event. AT: "the believers in the church" (See: Metonymy)
saw the grace of God
"saw how God acted kindly toward the believers"
he encouraged them
"he kept on encouraging them"
to remain with the Lord
"to remain faithful to the Lord" or "to continue to trust in the Lord"
with all their heart
Here the "heart" refers to a person's will and desire. AT: "with all their will" or "with complete commitment" (See: Metonymy)
full of the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit controlled Barnabas as he obeyed the Holy Spirit.
many people were added to the Lord
Here "added" means they came to believe the same thing as the others. AT: "many more people also believed in the Lord" (See: Metonymy)
translationWords
church
Jerusalem
Barnabas
Antioch
grace
lord
filled with the Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit
faith
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv25–26 11:25-26 Barnabas recognized the special gifts that Saul possessed…
11:25-26 Barnabas recognized the special gifts that Saul possessed for preaching and teaching. His assessment of Saul’s gifts was wise, and it resulted in a fruitful team ministry in Antioch.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.