NOTES for Act 13:1-12
In this story it is very important to understand that Elymas is not an enemy of the apostles, and that the apostles have no authority to punish their opponents or dissenters in any way. This is important because we are very inclined, for the sake of a God-pleasing cause, to find enemies for ourselves and, if we have the chance, to punish them thoroughly. What, then, happened?
As we remember, blindness in Scripture very often expresses conscious or unconscious resistance to God. Do you remember how the Lord spoke about "the blind man who leads the blind"? It is especially significant to hear words about blindness from Paul, who himself went through the experience of being blinded when he was a persecutor of the Church and of Christ. This very episode with Paul lets us understand that the blinding of Elymas is not so much a punishment as an act of God that places a person in a completely special position, the position of needing to choose, always freely nevertheless, between light and darkness, between hostility to God and faith.