WHEN BARNABAS AND Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem, taking with them John, also called Mark.
13:1In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. 2While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” 3So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.
4The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus. 5When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as their helper.
6They traveled through the whole island until they came to Paphos. There they met a Jewish sorcerer and false prophet named Bar-Jesus, 7who was an attendant of the proconsul, Sergius Paulus. The proconsul, an intelligent man, sent for Barnabas and Saul because he wanted to hear the word of God. 8But Elymas the sorcerer (for that is what his name means) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith. 9Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said, 10“You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? 11Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind, and for a time you will be unable to see the light of the sun.”
Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand. 12When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord.
Original Meaning
FROM 12:25 ON Paul dominates the book of Acts. Luke records the events that happened on the apostle’s three missionary journeys, his arrest in Jerusalem, and his trials before governing officials. Luke ends his book with the story of Paul’s journey to and arrival in Rome, including an exciting shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea.
A Missionary Team Is Sent Out (12:25–13:3)
WHEN SAUL AND Barnabas returned to Antioch from Jerusalem, Barnabas’s cousin (see Col. 4:10) John Mark was with them. We cannot be sure whether Luke is suggesting in Acts 13:1 that the same people were both teachers and prophets or whether these gifts resided in different people. Certainly Paul exercised both teaching and prophetic ministries, as we will see below.1 Harrison distinguishes these two roles, explaining that the teacher provided basic information for living the Christian life, while the prophet provided special guidance from the Lord as needed. The former had a more sustained ministry, expounding the Old Testament and the traditions about the life and teachings of Jesus as handed down in the church. The prophet spoke in response to a distinct moving of the Spirit.2 If the church was to be both responsible and creative, it needed both teaching and prophecy.3
The list of prophets and teachers (13:1) “symbolized the ethnic and cultural diversity of Antioch,” a city with a “cosmopolitan population.”4 Barnabas is mentioned first, possibly because he was the leader of the group. He was a Jew from the Jerusalem church but was originally from Cyprus (4:36), an island west of Palestine. Simeon is a Jewish name, but he is called Niger, meaning black. Attempts to identify him with Simon of Cyrene have not been convincing. Bruce suggests that Niger was a “descriptive addition, given to him perhaps because he was an African.”5
Lucius was from Cyrene, which was in North Africa (present-day Libya). Some have suggested that this is Luke, but that is unlikely. Manaen is a Jewish name. The NIV translates syntrophos as “had been brought up with” Herod the tetrarch, but it means foster brother or close friend from childhood.6 Bruce says that this title “was given to boys of the same age as royal princes, who were taken to the royal court to be brought up with them.”7 How strange that Herod should end up beheading John the Baptist and being involved in the trial of Christ, while Manaen became a leader of the church. Saul, an educated Jew originally from Tarsus, is mentioned last.
The Holy Spirit sent a message to this church, probably through one of the prophets there, which propelled it into a new era of missionary involvement. It happened “while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting” (13:2). “They” refers either to the prophets and teachers or to the whole church; the latter is more likely.8 The word translated “worshiping” (leitourgeo) literally means “ministering.” In classical Greek it was used for “doing public work at one’s own expense.” In the LXX this word group was “used almost exclusively for the service of priests and Levites in the temple.” Twice Paul uses these words for help given to him (Phil. 2:25, 30). The noun appears in this sense in Luke 1:23, referring to Zechariah’s service in the temple. In Acts 13:2 (the only other time one of these words appears in Luke-Acts) “the cultic meaning is completely spiritualized and applied to Christian worship in prayer.”9 The word for service seems to have fitted into the Christian understanding of worship and prayer.
The church’s prayer was accompanied by fasting, both when the church received the message and when they sent off the missionary team (13:2–3). When Paul and Barnabas visited the churches they had established on the way back from this first missionary journey, they “appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord” (14:23). Fasting gives evidence of an “atmosphere of urgent desire”10 in the church.
The sending-off ceremony with the laying on of hands was “an act of blessing in which the church associated itself with them and commended them to the grace of God (14:26).”11 Thus, it was more a commissioning to a specific task than an ordaining to ministry. It is not surprising that at the end of the mission, Paul and Barnabas returned to the church in Antioch and gave a report of what happened (14:26–27). There must have been much more work to be done in Antioch. But God asked the church to release their key leaders for missions. To their credit the church did so, with no apparent hesitation. That is how important missions and obedience to the Spirit were.
Ministry in Cyprus (13:4–12)
VERSE 4 REMINDS us that the Holy Spirit is the one who ultimately sends his servants out. The first place of ministry for the missionaries was the area Barnabas came from, the island of Cyprus southwest of Antioch, to which they sailed from Seleucia, the port city of Antioch. They began their ministry in the northeastern city of Salamis, preaching first in a synagogue in keeping with the principle of going to the Jews first (Rom. 1:16). But they soon took a new step, directly approaching a Gentile official who sent for them (13:7).
Luke inserts a note that “John was with them as their helper” (13:5b). Some have suggested that the word “helper” here (hyperetes) has a restricted meaning similar to synagogue attendant (cf. Luke 4:20), so that Mark’s responsibility was to care for the scrolls of the Scriptures along with a “sayings of Jesus” collection. But Luke uses this word in the broader sense elsewhere (Luke 1:2; Acts 5:22, 25; 26:16), which seems to be the meaning here.12 As a resident of Jerusalem Mark may have had an eyewitness knowledge of events in the gospel story, especially relating to the Passion narrative, of which Paul would have availed himself.
The team next went to the provincial capital, Paphos, on the opposite (southwestern) side of the island. In the Roman empire “the peaceful and civilized provinces where no legions had to be quartered—about ten in number—were administered by the senate. A provincial governor had the title of proconsul (Acts 19:38), that is, ‘in the place of consul’ or functioning with the power of a consul in that provincia.”13 Cyprus was declared a senatorial province in 22 B.C.14
In Paphos Saul and Barnabas encountered a sorcerer, Bar-Jesus or Elymas, just as Philip and Peter did in Samaria. Like Simon in Samaria, Elymas faced a stern rebuke from the evangelist, because of his adverse influence on the proconsul of Cyprus, Sergius Paulus (13:6–11). Elymas presumably opposed Paul and Barnabas because their ministry jeopardized his standing with the proconsul. Such opposition to the gospel for selfish reasons is common in Acts.15
At this stage we are told that Saul “was also called Paul” (13:9), and from now on this is the name used in Acts (except when he relates the story of his conversion [22:7, 13; 26:14]16). As a Jew he would have proudly borne the name of Israel’s first king, Saul, who like him was from the tribe of Benjamin (Phil. 3:5). Roman citizens had three names: a praenomen, a nomen, and a cognomen. The apostle’s first two are not mentioned in the New Testament. Paul (Paulos, meaning “little”) was his cognomen, and inscriptions show that often the cognomen of Jews sounded like their Jewish name, as is the case here. As Paul entered the Gentile phase of his ministry, he would have gone by his Roman name. Thus, the view that this name change resulted from his conversion is wrong.
Paul has severe words for Elymas (13:9–11). Luke is careful to say that he was “filled with the Holy Spirit” when he uttered them, indicating that this was not an error on Paul’s part. It is an example of the use of the prophetic gift through which the apostle communicated a direct and specific word of judgment from God. Verse 12 attributes the belief of Sergius Paulus both to his seeing the miracle and being amazed at the teaching of the Lord. As we will see below, these factors present two key elements of effective evangelistic ministry.
Bridging Contexts
A LEADERSHIP REFLECTING the diverse population. It is significant that the church in Antioch had such a culturally diverse leadership in keeping with the diversity of the population of the city (13:1). Did Luke mention the names and backgrounds of the leaders to highlight this diversity? We cannot make a binding principle out of this one text, but what happened in Antioch was certainly remarkable and may be an example worthy of emulation. I will go so far as to say that fostering leaders from different cultural backgrounds is a goal to work at in all churches that have a diversity in their membership.
Missionary sending. From this church’s officially sending out “foreign missionaries” we can learn many important principles about the missionary involvement of churches. How the church came to recognize this call of God is instructive. Tannehill shows how three features in this passage are found in two other Lukan commissioning passages: “The beginnings of the missions of Jesus and the apostles are preceded by references to prayer (Luke 3:21; Acts 1:14), which provides opportunity for action of the Spirit (Luke 3:22; Acts 2:1–4), and the Spirit leads directly to mission (Luke 4:14; Acts 2:5–41).”17 Prayer here is viewed as a service we do for God (13:2). To this is added fasting (13:2), which was also associated with the start of Jesus’ ministry (Luke 4:2). Ralph Earle writes that fasting “emphasizes a state of uninterrupted concentration which made it possible to ascertain the will of the Lord. That is the main purpose and value of fasting.”18
The message the church received was to release their best for missionary service (13:2), and their earnestness was such that they were willing to do so (13:3). This is typical of churches that have a missionary vision, churches whose main aim is more than survival or maintenance. Missions is so important to them that they willingly take steps that may seem harmful to the church in order for the missionary program to thrive. They have a corporate “others orientation.”
Saul, of course, had already received a call from God to Gentile evangelism (cf. 22:15; 26:17). What happened here is that the church, having recognized this call, realized that this was the time for him to launch out into this task and commissioned the team to pursue it. “This event brings together the themes of personal call and congregational affirmation.”19 It is interesting that though verse 3 says the church “sent them off,” the next verse says they were “sent on their way by the Holy Spirit.” Ultimately the Holy Spirit is the key to the whole missionary enterprise.
Five words, then, characterize the missionary program of this church: prayer, fasting, guidance, release, and commissioning. These features come from an earnestness to know and obey God’s will, which allows the Holy Spirit to superintend the whole process.
Harsh words in evangelistic settings? We may be surprised to find such harsh words being spoken to Elymas in an evangelistic setting (13:10–11). Lest we think that Paul made a mistake here, Luke assures us that he was filled with the Holy Spirit when he spoke (13:9). These words are in keeping with Jesus’ harsh statement, “But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matt. 18:6). Elymas was trying to keep someone else from learning the way of salvation through “all kinds of deceit and trickery” (13:10). The salvation of Sergius Paulus was so valuable that this hindrance had to be rooted out. We too may at times need to speak and act strongly against those who try to keep others from the truth.
Evangelism through deeds and words. In our application of 2:43 we discussed how the conversion of Sergius Paulus is a good example of the place of signs and wonders in evangelism. He was “an intelligent man” (13:7), a provincial governor, and from other writings in that period we know that he hailed from “a family which rendered distinguished service to the empire in the first and second centuries.”20 In other words, as some would say, he was not a naive simpleton who would be easily attracted to the supernatural, the type with whom miraculous ministry will be effective.
This passage shows, therefore, the combination of the various elements of an evangelistic ministry that results in belief. The proconsul believed when he “saw what had happened” (13:12). But that was not the cause of belief. The verse goes on to give the real cause of the belief: “for he was amazed [lit., being amazed] at the teaching about the Lord.” Paul’s teaching had been faithfully done; that was the foundation of belief. But the proconsul’s heart was opened to receive this message through the miracle. It was a trigger for belief, a confirmation of the truthfulness of what was being said (see 14:3). The miraculous, then, was important because it directed people to the truth. Ministries that include the miraculous must ensure that there is also faithful proclamation of the gospel so that people respond to it rather than to miracles.
Contemporary Significance
FOSTERING LEADERSHIP FROM diverse backgrounds. While it is helpful to have a leadership that reflects the backgrounds of the members of our churches, often this does not happen. Usually a powerful type of people (e.g., educated, wealthy, English-speaking, white) forms the majority of the leadership. Even if people from different backgrounds gain leadership positions, they are often those who have become culturally like the majority.
We ought to develop an environment that is conducive to developing leaders from groups not usually represented in leadership. One problem with doing this is a difference in the biblical qualifications for leadership and the world’s qualifications. In the Bible the key qualifications are Christian character, reputation for godliness, and ability (giftedness) to lead. In the world, while ability is usually important, so are education and standing in society (wealth and cultural background). It is sad but true that in many churches most leaders and board members are rich and educated, even though there may be many poor members in those churches. To change this we need to do some serious thinking about the organizational culture that characterizes our groups. Those who meet the biblical criteria for leadership should be able comfortably to become leaders even though they may not meet worldly criteria.
When our ministry in Sri Lanka began to work with the poor, we decided we would work hard toward fostering ownership and leadership from among the poor. We had to make some important adjustments in order to do this. Here the poor usually speak only the national languages (Sinhala and Tamil), not English. In fact, in some circles speaking in English is referred to as “wielding the sword,” for it cuts off those who do not speak English. On the other side, rich and middle class people often joke about how those who are not good in English “murder the queen” (with broken English). Thus, we gave new importance to the national languages and spoke little or no English when we were among those who did not speak it. We wanted to avoid things that alienated them or reminded them of the sinful class difference.
We knew that a key to ownership is financial contribution. So we began to urge the poor to support our work financially. To encourage this we decided not to publicize large gifts, for that would give the poor a message that their gifts were less important. We sought to foster Jesus’ “widow’s mighty mite” approach to giving from the poor (Mark 12:41–44), so that the poor would realize that their contributions were significant (and they are!). When we realized that our salaries are paid in part by people who cannot afford two meals a day, we had to modify our attitude to lifestyle and expenditure. We dared not to spend such sacrificial gifts carelessly or extravagantly.
Gradually leaders began to emerge from among the poor. Adjustments then had to be made at the leaders’ meetings. Formerly all the leaders spoke English. Now with people speaking three different languages, extra time had to be given for translation. Sometimes the leaders’ meetings were held in Tamil, a language I do not speak, and I had to have someone seated next to me quietly translating what was being said.
With people from poor backgrounds in the leadership, our effectiveness in evangelism among the poor increased markedly. They had wisdom about these matters that the others did not. We began to appreciate and enjoy new types of humor. (Humor, an important part of youth ministry, is also culturally conditioned.) We were challenged by new models of godliness (e.g., those who could not read meditated daily on what they heard at the meetings instead of doing the customary Bible reading). We were challenged by the faith of illiterates who were unencumbered by our debilitating sophistication (e.g., one person who could not read had the gift of praying for healing). It was no sacrifice to change our customary forms of activity, for the enrichment that came as a result has been immeasurable.
This is just one example of the types of adjustments that need to be made to ensure that the church truly reflects its belief in the worth and equality of every group. Each organization or church needs to go through a similar pilgrimage of discovery in the art of integration. The church in many places has a poor record in doing this, and that has brought much dishonor to Christ. Islam, which claims to be the answer to “the segregation of the Christians,” is growing rapidly today, especially in situations where there has been a history of segregation by Christians. This issue should be considered a major item in the priorities of any group that wishes to be God’s faithful representatives on earth.
Earnest prayer and missions. The Antioch church demonstrated earnestness by their prayers and fasting. From the word Luke uses, we know that prayer is service we do for Christ. There are some who ask others to pray, claiming that their calling is to work. But in the Bible prayer is work (Col. 4:12–13). The Scottish evangelical preacher Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) has said, “Prayer does not enable us to do a greater work for God. Prayer is a greater work for God.”21
The history of missions is replete with great leaps forward that took place when people got together to pray. In the Haystack Meeting of 1806, some students from Williams College, Massachusetts, who had a concern for the spiritual welfare of their fellow students, met twice a week for prayer. Because they were ridiculed, they met outside the college in the countryside. One day five of them got caught in a storm and sought refuge under a haystack. While they waited there they prayed, and their special focus of prayer was the awakening of foreign missionary interest among students. Their leader, Samuel Mills, directed the discussion and praying to their own missionary obligation. He said that unless students dedicated their lives to foreign evangelism, the gospel would not be taken to places like Asia. He exhorted his friends with the words that later became like a watchword for them: “We can do this if we will.”
After some discussion these five students offered their lives to foreign missions. This gave birth to the first student missionary society in America. The esteemed church historian Kenneth Scott Latourette has said, “It was from this haystack meeting that the foreign missionary movement of the churches of the United States had an initial main impulse.”22 Someone has described what was set in motion as “a golden chain stretching from the haystack meeting to the greatest student uprising in all history.” Urgent prayer arising from a desire for all that God wishes makes us receptive to him and inspires a great leap forward in the history of the church.
Missions and costly release. The Spirit directed Barnabas and Saul to be set apart for reaching the lost. As we noted above, these were the top leaders of the church, and the young church in Antioch presumably had many needs. But when God calls, we must release even those we consider the most important and valued persons. That’s how important missions is. One does not have to be brilliant (humanly speaking) to be a missionary. One has to be called, and God often calls “ordinary,” unspectacular people to do special things for him (1 Cor. 1:26). But sometimes he sends the most talented. When brilliant people respond to the missionary call, we may say, “What a waste! Their audience will be uneducated, backward people. Why should the most brilliant go to them?” But throughout history God has called some of the brightest people in their generation to the mission field—for example, Henry Martyn, Stephen Neill, Lesslie Newbigin, and Stanley Jones.
Is this happening today too? I can think of many sharp people, young and old, who are on the mission field today. But I also see a hindrance to this happening. The church has been influenced by worldly standards of success, and going to the unreached is low on this status scale. The pastor of a church of 2,500 people may be considered a powerful person. If that person was called to go to the lost, he may at first have only two people in his church—himself and his colleague. For this reason many opt for the big church instead of answering God’s call to missions.
Paul also encountered these wrong values in the church. Towards the end of his life he wrote that no one was with him in his trial because they all had deserted him (2 Tim. 4:16). Perhaps there was no status in associating with Paul. He himself often spoke of how he was, humanly speaking, abased. But today he is a hero and one of the most admired persons in the history of the world. Usually heroes are admired only from a distance, not when they are doing their great work. In their own time they were often regarded as fools or failures. Their heroism made them give up earthly glory, so that earthly people did not admire them.
May we not be reluctant to challenge all—the brilliant and the ordinary—to consider missions. And when such are called, may we release them wholeheartedly for this work. May we place missions high up in our list of priorities. As David Livingstone said, “God had only one son and he was a missionary.” May we encourage those with an interest in missions. And may those who feel called to missions share this vision with their churches so that they can be sent away for this task by a group that is committed to them and will pray for them.
Paul’s approach to Elymas in an age of tolerance. Ours is an age of tolerance, where pluralism mandates that since there is no absolute truth, different ideologies are equals in the universe of faiths. We cannot pronounce one wrong and the other right. This attitude is well expressed in the statement coming from the heir to the British throne about being “defender of the faiths” rather than “defender of the faith.” (The king or queen of Britain is the titular head of the Church of England.) Today sorcerers, like Elymas, have equal status with ministers of the gospel in many surroundings. Governments want to be fair to all the ideologies represented by their citizens. In countries (like ours) where Christians are a minority, we appreciate that.
But let us remember that the church remains under the authority of a normative revelation. It therefore has a commitment “to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3). This task gains a high level of urgency when it views its mandate as being to “snatch others from the fire and save them” (Jude 23). If the gospel is indeed the only way to salvation, then our task becomes urgent—as urgent as it was to Paul when he said, “I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16).
Influenced by the pluralistic mood, many view evangelism as a mere exchanging of views among people of different ideologies. Instead, we should view the gospel we preach as holding the key to eternal salvation. If a father sees a man trying to peddle heroin to his little son, he will not seek to enter a discussion with the man on the merits and demerits of heroin or politely request him to stop doing that. He will take urgent and decisive action. If a mother sees her daughter about to accept an attractive piece of candy into which has been injected the deadly poison cyanide, she will not simply share her views on the subject. She will take urgent action. If a hotel employee discovers a fire in a room, realizes that the fire alarm has not gone off, and knows that hundreds of occupants might be killed, she does not calmly go her way, not wanting to disturb the sleeping people. She will take urgent action. If such drastic action is taken for temporal problems, how about a problem that has dire consequences for all eternity? One who loves humanity will not calmly stand by when he or she sees the eternal salvation of a person for whom Christ died jeopardized through the deception of a false teacher.
The place of miracles in conversion. When non-Christians are confronted with the message of Christ, most will at first have moral and cultural blocks to even considering it seriously. It is a costly message for it involves renouncing one’s past life and embracing Christ as Lord. Thus, unless there is some compelling evidence that will move their hearts, people will not regard it as worthy of consideration.
God often uses actions of Christians—such as deeds of kindness, miracles, and blameless lives—to incline the hearts of people favorably toward the gospel. Once the heart is open, it is possible for the will to be oriented to accepting the gospel. People will be able to regard its teaching for what it is worth without their earlier prejudices and fears. They will realize it is something worth committing their lives to. Acts 13 emphasizes that both deeds and words are important elements in the evangelistic process. Though ultimately people put their trust in Christ based on the words they hear, deeds often act as a trigger to open them to considering the words.