This chapter marks a major division in the book of Acts. From this point on, the story will largely revolve around Saul of Tarsus and his “missionary journeys,” which are often depicted on the maps that are found at the end of most of our Bibles. Missions, then, is our theme, not just for this chapter, but for pretty much the rest of Acts as Luke tells us about the spread of the word throughout the world.

It all starts right here, when some of the leaders of the church in Antioch decide to send Saul and Barnabas out on the first missionary journey. Clearly Luke would want us to believe that every church needs to be committed to the joyful spread of the saving message of Jesus to every corner of the world. Here he tells us how Saul and Barnabas are sent out by the church to confront the powers of darkness with the good news of the resurrection.

Sent Out by the Church

First, in the first 3 or 4 verses, we see Saul and Barnabas sent out by the church for their missionary work.

The Makeup of the Church

The setting is “the church at Antioch,” which we know already is a healthy, growing church. It was here that the disciples of Jesus first took the name “Christian,” undoubtedly because of the attention and reputation they had in the city. When Barnabas arrived there, he saw the grace of God. What else could explain what he saw? He went to Tarsus and brought Saul from there to Antioch to join the teaching ministry.

We are told that in this church there were some prophets and teachers. Five men are mentioned. We are not told which were prophets and which were teachers. It seems more likely that all five were both.[1] At any rate, prophecy and teaching are very similar activities, given that both are about communicating to others the things God has said.[2]

We don’t know much about these men other than Barnabas and Saul, and it is they whom the story is mostly about. The point to be made here is that this was a church in which there were a plurality of Christians who were particularly gifted at hearing God’s word and communicating it to others. That would be an important skill to have for the kind of work that God was about to send them out on.

The Activity of the Church

Verse 2 speaks of them engaged in worshiping the Lord and fasting. And it is at that point that they heard the Holy Spirit speaking to them. The association of religious activity and divine communication is not surprising. If God is going to speak to us, we probably would hear him best while we are particularly focused on listening to him.

But this is not a prescription for receiving divine communication. Luke has not given us much detail about what their worshiping activity looked like, and we have no idea why they were fasting. They could be fasting as a sign of their fervency in worship or because they were seeking particular guidance, or even for some other reason.[3]

All we know is that while they were worshiping and fasting, they heard the Holy Spirit speak. We don’t have to suggest they heard a voice from heaven; most likely what they heard was the prophetic voice. Was someone so bold as to say, “God is saying that we should do this,” or was it a bit more cautious, “I have a sense that God might be saying we should do this”? Perhaps it wasn’t that way at all. Perhaps someone said, “Hey, I have this idea. Why don’t we commission Saul and Barnabas to take this show on the road!” And now Luke, in telling us this story from the benefit of hindsight, is certain that it was God’s own Holy Spirit who was leading them—like the Good Shepherd that he is.

However “natural” or “supernatural” the communication was, we know it fits the description of what Jesus had already said about Saul of Tarsus. “He is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel” (Acts 9:15).

The Response of the Church

So, “after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.” We will find out soon enough where they go and what they do. But sending them off means they are no longer serving there in Antioch. Their time and attention will be elsewhere. Barnabas and Saul have been commissioned. We might call them Goers. And it should be pointed out that the ones who were commissioned for this missionary work were two of the “most eminent and gifted leaders in the church.”[4]

For those who are followers of Jesus, there really ought to be a missionary impulse, which comes at the direction of God’s own Holy Spirit. He is a missionary God; he wants his message to go out. He commissions his people to do it. He urges his church to send them to do it.

Confronting the Powers of Darkness

Second, having been sent out by the church, we watch as Saul and Barnabas confront the powers of darkness.

Verse 4 says that Saul and Barnabas were “sent out by the Holy Spirit,” right after in verse 3 we were told that they were sent off by the church in Antioch. Let’s put this false dichotomy to rest: When God does his work, he normally does it through his people. It is both/and, not either/or. This is something of what it means for us to be made in God’s image. Of course, God does not need us. It is a demonstration of his grace that he allows us to have a share in what he wants to do. And notice here it isn’t just that God is at work through the missionaries that are being sent out; he is working through the whole church that sends them out. A church that commissions people to extend gospel ministry to others is a church that is participating with God in the ministry. So, churches are exhorted to be sending churches, commissioning churches.

The Meaning of the Mission

We can trace the itinerary of Barnabas and Saul. “They went down to Seleucia” which served as a seaport from which “they sailed to Cyprus.” Cyprus was Barnabas’s homeland (Acts 4:36), and not that far away, a natural spot to go to begin the mission.

But what exactly was the mission? What were Saul and Barnabas hoping to accomplish? What was the goal?

We find them arriving at Salamis on the eastern end of the island and then travelling “through the whole island” to Paphos on the western end. Presumably what they did in Salamis is more or less what they did everywhere. “They proclaimed the word of God,” which is one of Luke’s standard ways of referring to the proclamation of the gospel.[5]

What kind of “evangelism training” might we receive from the aims and methods we see in Saul and Barnabas? We see them proclaiming the word “in the synagogues of the Jews,” something which we find in Acts was the common starting point. “To the Jew first,” Paul writes in Romans 1:16. But few evangelistic trainings today urge us to begin by finding the nearest synagogue. Still, there is something to learn from this. The proclamation of the gospel ought to be something recognizable from within the Jewish worldview. Here is where we stand in need of a reformation in the way Christians think about the gospel and missions today.

The gospel we are often told to proclaim is often some good news about heaven, or at least the good news of escaping hell. A leader in missions today sets it up like this: Those who die without Christ will spend their eternal destiny in the lake of fire, so what matters most is

that we labor day and night so that those who die before Christ’s return die in Christ. No work is more important, more pressing, or more urgent. Nothing we could do out of concern for the poor in the Himalayas, the refugee in Greece, the neighbor in Johannesburg, or the stranger you walk by on the streets of Lima, begins to rival the importance and urgency of sharing the gospel with them. If people do not die in Christ, they die lost and condemned to an eternal hell.

Consequently, he says, “The world’s greatest problem is lostness. Nothing else comes close.”[6]

No one can argue with the logic there. Something must explain the urgency and importance of missions that we are reading about. But I do not see this motivation of post-mortem consequences being what it is that explains what we see Saul and Barnabas setting out to do.

What we do not see the early Christians doing is talking about what happens to people when they die. This simply was not the most important matter for them. What we see them doing was talking about Jesus and the kingdom of God that he has brought, the kingdom of God that is now breaking in all over the world. The good news they shared was primarily about the ultimate restoration of all creation, a restoration project that they really did believe was already underway because of what Jesus had done and because of the powerful presence of his Holy Spirit at work in them and through them. If we want to understand what it was Saul and Barnabas thought they were doing, we really need to get this straight.[7]

Conflict on Cyprus

I am saying that this is something many of us have not grasped, and it has discolored our understanding of the gospel, and consequently of the church and its mission. I’m asking you to take all this into consideration here and as we move forward in these “missionary journeys” and see if this helps make better sense of what it is we see Saul and his companions doing.

At Paphos, Saul and Barnabas “came upon a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet named Bar-Jesus.” As a “magician” he was one who claimed to have supernatural insight into matters that would enable him to predict the future, probably through necromancy, astrology, magic spells and rituals.[8] Such a person was useful to people of power, so no surprise that this man, also known as Elymas, was a cabinet member for the Roman magistrate of the island, a man named Sergius Paulus.

It is at this point, in verse 9, that Luke tells us that Saul of Tarsus was also called Paul. Saul did not have his name changed when he became a Christian. He probably had both names from birth. Saul is a Hebrew name, so that is not surprising. But Saul and his family were also Roman citizens, and the name Paul was common among the upper classes, and there is good reason to suspect that Saul and his family were among the social elite in Tarsus (see Acts 22:3). Luke says here that Saul was “also called Paul” because there is another Paul being talked about in this story, indeed the only two “Pauls” we find in the Bible.[9] From now on Luke will call him Paul, which was probably the name he was most generally known by.

So here now when he sees “Elymas the magician” opposing him and “seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith,” we are told that Paul was “filled with the Holy Spirit” and castigated him for “making crooked the straight paths of the Lord.” Paul confronts the devilish power that seeks to keep the world crooked and enslaved to sin, and he confronts it with the power of the Holy Spirit. Elymas is struck with blindness and “the proconsul believed,” notice, because “he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.” He was convinced not by the miracle but by the teaching, the instruction about Jesus and what it was he was doing.

Sergius Paulus was convinced, persuaded, not just by the proclamation of the gospel, but by its accompanying power, the power of goodness, truth, beauty, and justice that come from the message of Christ as the crucified, risen, and ascended Lord.

Perhaps one reason why many people today are not similarly astonished at the “teaching of the Lord” is because they do not see much evidence of its power at work through the ones who preach it.

The Good News of the Resurrection

Some time after this, “Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia,” which is near modern-day Antalya, Turkey. They made their way to another city named Antioch (there were 16 cities known by this name at this time). One of the travelling companions, John, who had gone on the journey as an assistant to Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13:5), left them at this point and returned to Jerusalem. But Paul and Barnabas continue on, and here we see them proclaiming the good news of the resurrection.

Retelling Israel’s Story

Upon arriving in Antioch in Pisidia, Paul and Barnabas went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day and were invited to speak any “word of encouragement” they might have after the reading of the Law and the Prophets. Again we see that Paul and Barnabas were readily accepted as Jews; they did not think themselves otherwise. But of course, Paul would take this opportunity to share his thoroughly-Jewish though increasingly-controversial message of Jesus.

His “word of encouragement” is the first major discourse of Paul that Luke records, occupying verses 16-41. He rehearses the story of Israel, because the gospel he preached could not be properly understood without that context, in spite of the fact that many today seem to be able to evangelize without it. Paul talks about the people of Israel in Egypt, the Exodus, God’s preservation of them in the wilderness and bringing them into the Promised Land. He spoke of the judges God gave them, and then of the monarchy, of King Saul followed by King David, and of one of David’s offspring, Jesus, whom “God has brought to Israel” as “a Savior, just “as he promised” (v. 23).

The Story Fulfilled

What is the purpose for all this re-telling of Israel’s story? Take note of this: if we want to speak of the same “good news” that Paul spoke about, then it must be the good news that God has fulfilled what it was he had promised to Israel. And that promise is the promise of a kingdom. On earth. With a good and righteous king, sort of like David, a man after God’s own heart. That’s what we are all looking for, isn’t it? Someone who can administer justice for all. Someone who can bring flourishing to God’s world. The gospel is the announcement that what everyone is looking for has arrived, and his name is Jesus.

What shall we say about this Jesus? The most important point here in Paul’s discourse, and this will be true of his gospel proclamation over and over again, is Easter Sunday. “But God raised him from the dead,” he says in verse 30. And what this means, he says in verse 32. “And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers (kingdom, remember!), this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus.” In verses 34-37 Paul cites from Psalms 2 and 16 as well as Isaiah 55 to prove that it is in Jesus and his resurrection that the good news can be fully understood.

The Story Sets Us Free

And not just understood, but appropriated. Enjoyed. The good news of Jesus is good news for you, whoever you are.

Look at verses 38-39.

Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.

What does the good news mean for you, for everyone? It means freedom. The “forgiveness of sins” is all about freedom if you think about it from within Israel’s ancient story and hope. It’s not just about the assurance that God doesn’t hold anything against you anymore. That’s obviously true and important, but sin does more than just cause a relational breakdown with God. It also enslaves us, causes us to be less than what God has made us to be. The law of Moses provided some remedies for sin, sacrifices and offerings that were there to atone for the sinner. But Jesus has done something more than the law of Moses could ever do. He has broken the power of sin forever. Set us free. Justified us. Declared us to be in the right, the verdict of God’s final judgment already spoken over you and me in the present.

***

It remains a wonder, and a mystery why such good news is not accepted by everyone, but such was the case for Paul and Barnabas, such will be the case for you and me. Verse 48 assures us that God will get his work done: “as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” But the next day a group had gathered to contradict everything Paul had been saying.

But the work would go on. They shook the dust off their feet and went on to Iconium. Perhaps there they would find a better reception there.

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[1] Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, electronic ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), n.p.

[2] C. K. Barrett (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, vol. 1, International Critical Commentary, ed. J. A. Emerton, C. E. B. Cranfield, and G. N. Stanton [London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004], 602), says that the distinction between these two “is a matter of manner not content.”

[3] Ben Witherington, III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 393.

[4] F. F. Bruce, The Book of the Acts, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, ed. F. F. Brcue (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1988), 246.

[5] Barrett, Acts of the Apostles, 611. See also Acts 15:36; 17:13; cf. Rom 10:8.

[6] Paul Chitwood, “The World’s Greatest Problem Has No Close Second,” Momentum, June 10, 2024. Available online at www.coloradobaptists.org/the-worlds-greatest-problem-has-no-close-second.

[7] This paragraph largely adapted from N. T. Wright, Paul: A Biography (New York: HarperOne, 2018), 105.

[8] Witherington, III, The Acts of the Apostles, 396.

[9] Gene L. Green, The Letters to the Thessalonians, The Pillar New Testament Commentary, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002), 82, note 8.