Today's reading helps us better understand how the Kingdom spreads through the world after Pentecost. The account begins with a disagreement between Paul and Barnabas over the membership of their future missionary group. It was serious enough to cause tension between the apostles...
Today's reading helps us better understand how the Kingdom spreads through the world after Pentecost. The account begins with a disagreement between Paul and Barnabas over the membership of their future missionary group (15:36–41). It was serious enough to cause tension between the apostles—this is how the corresponding Greek word can literally be translated. It was probably connected with Paul's ardent and determined temperament: apparently, he did not have much confidence in John Mark, who, as the evangelist tells us, had earlier left Paul and Barnabas in Pamphylia. This disagreement evidently made the apostles part company.
This episode clearly shows us that even people who know the Kingdom are sometimes far from free of disagreements and even quarrels. The only question is how such quarrels end. In our world, not yet transfigured, they often turn into enmity, as we know. In the Kingdom, however, things do not reach that point: when there is a disagreement over a matter of principle, those involved usually simply part company—generally for a time—and continue separately the work God has entrusted to them, though the work itself does not cease to be shared. Of course, a quarrel is not the best form of human relationship. But if a quarrel does not turn into enmity and hatred, disagreements do not become insurmountable or destroy the unity without which the Kingdom is impossible. Such a situation certainly creates obstacles and difficulties, but God's power overcomes them: what is absent here is that resistance to God's will before which God stops, respecting human freedom of choice.
The situation involving Timothy that Luke mentions is also interesting (16:1–3). Given the decisions of the Council of the Apostles, it would seem that he had no need of circumcision at all. Yet Paul circumcises Timothy, in the evangelist's words, “for the sake of the Jews.” Evidently, the issue here is not that “there is no salvation without circumcision,” but that one should not set oneself against a particular church, probably made up entirely or predominantly of Jewish converts. In such circumstances, observing Jewish religious norms was quite natural, whereas ostentatiously rejecting them would more likely have caused disturbance within the community.
This is how the religious question is resolved in the Kingdom: if religion forms an organic part of the life of an individual or a whole community, there is room for it both in the Kingdom and in the Church. For in such a case it itself becomes one of the forms of the Kingdom, which is as many-sided as the lives of those who enter it.
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16:11 We ran with a straight course - Which increased their confidence that God had called them.
16:12 The first city - Neapolis was the first city they came to in that part of Macedonia which was nearest to Asia: in that part which was farthest from it, Philippi. The river Strymon ran between them. Philippi was a Roman colony.
16:13 We went out of the gate - The Jews usually held their religious assemblies (either by choice or constraint) at a distance from the heathens: by a river side - Which was also convenient for purifying themselves. Where prayer was wont to be made - Though it does not appear there was any house built there.We spake - At first in a familiar manner. Paul did not immediately begin to preach.
16:14 A worshipper of God - Probably acquainted with the prophetic writings whose heart the Lord opened - The Greek word properly refers to the opening of the eyes: and the heart has its eyes, Eph 1:18. These are closed by nature and to open them is thepeculiar work of God.
16:15 She was baptized and her family - Who can believe that in so many families there was no infant? Or that the Jews, who were so long accustomed to circumcise their children, would not now devote them to God by baptism? She entreated us - The souls of the faithful cleave to those by whom they were gained to God.She constrained us - By her importunity. They did not immediately comply, lest any should imagine they sought their own profit by coining into Macedonia.
16:17 These men are - A great truth: but St. Paul did not need, nor would accept, of such testimony.
16:19 The magistrates - The supreme magistrates of the city. In the next verse they are called by a title which often signifies pretors. These officers exercised both the military and civil authority.
16:20 Being Jews - A nation peculiarly despised by the Romans.
16:21 And teach customs which it is not lawful for us to receive - The world has received all the rules and doctrines of all thephilosophers that ever were. But this is a property of Gospel truth: it has something in it peculiarly intolerable to the world.
16:23 They laid many stripes upon them - Either they did not immediately say they were Romans, or in the tumult it was not regarded. Charging the jailer - Perhaps rather to quiet the people than because they thought them criminal.
16:24 Secured their feet in the stocks - These were probably those large pieces of wood, in use among the Romans, which not only loaded the legs of the prisoner, but also kept them extended in a very painful manner.