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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - Acts 11:25 - 11:25
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Act 11:25, Act 11:26. Barnabas, finding the work in Antioch too much for him, goes to Tarsus for Saul - They labor there together for a whole year with much success, and Antioch becomes the honored birthplace of the term Christian.
Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus for to seek Saul - Of course, this was after the hasty dispatch of Saul to Tarsus, no doubt by Barnabas himself among others, to escape the fury of the Jews at Jerusalem. And as Barnabas was the first to take the converted persecutor by the hand and procure his recognition as a disciple by the brethren at Jerusalem (Act 9:27), so he alone seems at that early period to have discerned in him those peculiar endowments by virtue of which he was afterwards to eclipse all others. Accordingly, instead of returning to Jerusalem, to which, no doubt, he sent accounts of his proceedings from time to time, finding that the mine in Antioch was rich in promise and required an additional and powerful hand to work, he leaves it for a time, takes a journey to Tarsus, “finds Saul” (seemingly implying - not that he lay hid [Bengel], but that he was engaged at the time in some preaching circuit - see on Act 15:23), and returns with him to Antioch. Nor were his hopes disappointed. As co-pastors, for the time being, of the Church there, they so labored that the Gospel, even in that great and many-sided community, achieved for itself a name which will live and be gloried in as long as this world lasts, as the symbol of all that is most precious to the fallen family of man: - “The disciples were called CHRISTIANS first in Antioch.” This name originated not within, but without, the Church; not with their Jewish enemies, by whom they were styled “Nazarenes” (Act 24:5), but with the heathen in Antioch, and (as the form of the word shows) with the Romans, not the Greeks there [Olshausen]. It was not at first used in a good sense (as Act 26:28; 1Pe 4:16 show), though hardly framed out of contempt (as De Wette, Baumgarten, etc.); but as it was a noble testimony to the light in which the Church regarded Christ - honoring Him as their only Lord and Savior, dwelling continually on His name, and glorying in it - so it was felt to be too apposite and beautiful to be allowed to die.