And he went away to Tarsus to seek out Saul.
The work at Antioch was growing fast, and Barnabas was the man leading it. Then he left that wide-open field and travelled to Tarsus to find Saul, the man he had once introduced to the believers in Jerusalem.
Barnabas could have held on to a large work. One writer turns his choice into a question for every worker.
Here is another trait that marks this "good man." It marks the real working of the Holy Spirit too, both in sending him to Antioch and now in his going off to Cilicia. Is this how we feel and act when the Master honours us by using us in a large field of service? Do we, in the middle of it, remind ourselves of another who might be even more effective? Or does jealousy still get in the way? Does it still play its dark and deadly part, to the dishonour of Christ and the loss of souls inside and outside?
Barnabas had been encouraging the new believers. His journey shows he knew that encouragement was not enough.
Exhortation, however, is not enough to build up souls in the faith, helpful and necessary as it is in its place... Believers, however, need teaching as well. Now, Barnabas evidently felt that teaching was not his special line of service. Would he, then, keep the converts at Antioch under his influence, limited to his ministry alone? No. He wanted them to advance and be established in the faith. And knowing where to find one qualified to teach, he went off to Tarsus in Cilicia to look for Saul.
Another writer turns that into a rule for us all.
Let us not be selfish in our service; let us recognise our own limitations, and then recognise the qualities and abilities of others.
There is no angel here, and no recorded word from the Spirit.
As there was need in the church at Antioch, he goes and finds him. He had a conviction that this was the instrument the Lord would use for good. So we see this. In some cases we have the angel of the Lord. In others we have the Spirit of the Lord speaking directly. And we also have, simply, the holy judgment of the gracious heart. We must not treat this as a merely human arrangement. It was right, and God recorded it so that we might see it and profit from it.
Barnabas acted on his own reading of the need.
The work is enlarging, and help is needed in this field. Barnabas knows the one whom he introduced to the church in Jerusalem, and he knows what he is... The disciples do not send for Saul. This "good man" judges Saul to be fitted to help in this work.
The verse names one city, and the choice was not random.
Barnabas found Saul in his native city. Saul had gone back there after his first and short visit to Jerusalem, following his conversion. Barnabas seems to have had no difficulty in persuading him to leave that place of learning and help the work forward in the capital of Syria.
There is a lesson here for anyone waiting for a place in the Lord's work.
We may safely assume that bringing Saul to Antioch was his introduction to his mission. We may learn from the way it happened that there is no need to push ourselves into the Lord's work. If we wait quietly on Him, wanting to know nothing but His will, the time will come when our path will be unmistakably shown to us. Saul had waited, even though Christ in glory had appeared to him. Now his directions reached him. They did not come by the extraordinary method of his conversion, but through the invitation of a fellow servant. Saul was in communion with his Lord's mind, and that invitation came to him with the force of a divine command.
Some read a later chapter of Acts as Paul's ordination. One writer answers from this passage.
He had been recognised as a teacher for a long time. We get this in the eleventh chapter... Paul had been preaching and teaching long before what you have recorded in the thirteenth chapter of Acts. So far from that scene carrying the thought that at that moment he was ordained for apostolic work, his own writings set that aside.
- Need. A growing work needed more than Barnabas could give. Teaching was not his line, and he would not limit the converts to his own ministry.
- Humility. He went looking for the man most likely to outshine him. Kelly asks whether jealousy would have kept us working alone.
- Judgment. No angel, no vision, no summons from the assembly. Just the holy judgment of a gracious heart — and God recorded it for our profit.
- Waiting. Saul was already called by the glorified Christ. Even so, he did not push himself forward. His orders came as a fellow servant's invitation.
- Fruit. This quiet journey opened Saul's mission and set a teacher beside an encourager at Antioch.
And having found [him], he brought him to Antioch. And so it was with them that for a whole year they were gathered together in the assembly and taught a large crowd and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.
A crowd of new Gentile believers in Antioch had no teacher until Barnabas went to Tarsus and came back with Saul. Out of their year of teaching came a name the world had never used before.
Barnabas had a growing work in his hands. He went to find a man who might do it better.
Is this how we feel and act when we stand in front of a large field of service where the Master honours us by using us? Do we, while we are in the middle of it, remind ourselves of someone else who might be even more effective? It was not so with Barnabas.
The two men worked together for a year. Neither treated the gathering as his own.
It was Christ's flock, not the flock of either of them, and His love moved them both, as it no doubt moved others too, to care for it. In those days no one said that the assembly was his own. They served in it with more love and holiness, because they always remembered that it is God's, and not man's.
Teaching was the third thing Antioch received, and each stage had built on the last.
Preaching the gospel had been started and carried on by men of Cyprus and Cyrene. Encouragement had its place and produced much fruit after Barnabas first reached Antioch. Now teaching started, and great blessing followed. We read that "they taught a great many people." So these different gifts appeared. Each one was needed before souls could be fully established in the faith, yet they were quite distinct in character.
Several firsts belong to this city.
Antioch was a city second only to Jerusalem in the early history of the church. What Jerusalem had been to the Jews up to this point, Antioch now became to the Gentiles. From then on it held a leading place in spreading Christianity among the nations. Here the first Gentile church was planted. And here our apostle began his public ministry.
The city had a name for inventing insults. This time its habit produced something better than it knew.
The place once so famous for its nicknames was now to give a name that will never perish. It is a name of immeasurable sweetness and blessing, since it connects Christ with those who are His. It was, no doubt, a Gentile title. There would be no particular force in giving it to Jews, for all Jews claimed to be looking for Christ. What a wonderful change for these poor Gentiles to know Christ for themselves, and to be called after Christ! It was all ordered by God.
Neither the Jews nor the believers themselves picked the word.
The Jews certainly did not give this name; the Gentiles invented it. Antioch was famous for its readiness to jeer and hand out names; it was known for its witty sayings. So they coined a new word, "Christianoi" — Christians. It is used only by outsiders. Jews and Gentiles alike were called by this name, so it bears witness to the oneness of Jew and Gentile in Christ.
The neighbours chose the label from what they could see.
The disciples in Antioch were such eager, faithful and true followers of the Lord Jesus that, like Paul, they imitated Him. As the Lord blessed the ministry of Paul and Barnabas in that city, Christ lived in the believers there in a real way. They spoke and acted so much like Him that the world gave them the title "Christians" — which means "of the same character as Christ."
The nickname did not stay in the street.
Here we have the Spirit of God accepting and approving the name Christian as applied to believers. It was first used as a descriptive nickname at Antioch. It came into general use later, and now it is formally accepted by the Spirit of God. We may therefore accept it, and as Christians we glorify God even as Christ Himself did.
So what should believers call themselves?
Instead of the confusion of many names, Scripture gives us only the One Name: the name of Christ. It is a name above every name, the beautiful name, and it is put on all God's people without distinction. They are called Believers, Disciples, Christians, and Saints. But not one of these names is ever used to mark off one part of the Body of Christ from another. On the contrary, they serve as links to bind them all together.
- Grace first. Antioch became to the Gentiles what Jerusalem had been to the Jews: the place where the first Gentile church was planted.
- Then help. Barnabas refused to guard his own field and travelled to Tarsus to fetch the man who could serve it better.
- Then teaching. Preaching came first, then encouragement, then a full year of teaching — souls need all three to be fully established.
- Then the name. Outsiders watched, saw Christ's character in them, and coined a word that covered Jew and Gentile alike.
- Then the keeping. The Spirit adopted the street nickname as Scripture's own name for believers — one name for all, needing no other.