Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 627. The Son of Exhortation
Subjects in this Topic:
The Son of Exhortation
1. We cannot read the Bible with the least degree of attention without observing what great importance is everywhere attached to names. In the Old Testament, the name of a person, being frequently taken from some leading incident in the course of his previous life, is found to convey this incident to us and, as it were, to concentrate it in a single word. We find names connected with events far more frequently than is the case with us; we find them changed from time to time, in order that they may become more fully descriptive of their owner, and impress his history on the mind. And above all, we find this usage expressly sanctioned by Almighty God Himself, in His giving new names to many of His servants, descriptive of His own will and regard concerning them. It was not, we may reverently believe, without a deep purpose in the Divine counsels that God commanded a name already given by man to be exchanged for another, which should be an earnest and a witness of His goodwill to His faithful servants. “Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.” “As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah”-that is, Princess-“shall her name be.” “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” In all these cases, of Abraham, of Sarah, and of Jacob, we see that the giving of a new name is made a pledge to them of mercies yet future, it might be yet distant, but secured to them by this title-deed of God's favour and gracious purposes towards them. In the New Testament the giving of a new name to the Apostle Simon-“I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter”-“thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone”-sets before us his office as the first and zealous preacher of Christ to the Gentile Church. The name “sons of thunder,” given by our Lord to St. James and St. John, tells of their fervour in His cause, their jealousy for His honour, and, it may be, the mighty effect which their mission should have on the hearts of men: Saul the persecutor becomes the Apostle Paul, the “little one,” “less than the least of all saints,” yet through the grace of Christ labouring more abundantly than all. We observe the change in the case of Barnabas. It is not by the name Joseph, but the surname added by the Apostles, “Barnabas, the son of exhortation,” that we bring him to our remembrance. It is difficult for us to point with confidence to the exact occasion on which this name Barnabas was given, or to the particular circumstances which led to its being given; nor is it indeed possible or necessary to enter now on the various opinions given by Christian writers on the subject. But we may without any difficulty trace, even in the short record of Barnabas given to us in the Acts of the Apostles, a singular degree of correspondence between his character and his name.
Notwithstanding the presence of miraculous gifts in the Church, and the ministration of Apostles, the need of gentle and tenderly helpful hearts must have been very great in the young community, if the manifold grace of God was to be adequately shown. And very deep and hallowed must Joseph's service of Christ and the Church have been for him to be known as the first believer, after the ascension of our Blessed Lord, who is recorded to have had a new Christian name. This renaming with a religious name had been begun by Christ Himself; and Peter, who was the notable instance of this, must have felt less worthy of his sacred and almost august name than Joseph was of his more tender and gracious nomination.
Dick Sunshine was not his real name; at least so they said. But the thing that they called his real name did not describe him a scrap; it seemed to abandon all attempt at description as hopelessly impossible; but when you called him Dick Sunshine it fitted him like a glove. That is the immense advantage that nicknames possess over real names. Of all real things, real names are the most unreal. There is no life in them. They stand for nothing; they express nothing; they reveal nothing. They bear no kind of relationship to the unfortunate individuals who are sentenced to wear them, like meaningless badges, for the term of their natural lives. But nicknames, on the other hand, sparkle and flash; they bring the man himself vividly and palpitatingly before you; and, without more introduction or ado, you know him at once for what he Isa_1:1-31 [Note: F. W. Boreham, Mushrooms on the Moor, 85.]
2. On three occasions in the history of the Apostolic Church we find Barnabas exhorting new converts to the faith of Christ-fulfilling his function as a son of exhortation. The first occasion was when he was sent by the Apostles from Jerusalem to Antioch, in Syria, to investigate the work which had been done among the Gentiles by the ministry of some of the disciples who had been scattered abroad upon the persecution that had arisen about Stephen. The second occasion was when, in company with Paul, he came to Antioch, in Pisidia, on the first missionary journey of the great Apostle of the Gentiles. The third occasion was on their return journey, when they confirmed the souls of the disciples in the various places which they had visited.
(1) Barnabas came to Antioch in some doubt about the work, the tidings of which had reached Jerusalem. It was a new and unexpected occurrence, this conversion of a multitude of Gentiles. They did not know what to make of it at Jerusalem-it does not appear that the tidings of the formal opening of the door of faith to the Gentiles by the Apostle Peter at Cæsarea had yet reached the Mother Church-and Barnabas came down, with instructions, perhaps, to keep things all right, to see that things were properly managed; but when he saw the work, all misgiving vanished, and he was glad; and instead of interfering in any way, he furthered the work by his exhortations. He was a large-hearted, liberal-minded man, and sympathized with every genuine spiritual movement. Wherever he saw the hand of God really at work, he was ready to co-operate and rejoice. We read, “When he came, and had seen the grace of God, he was glad, and exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord.”
(a) The first thing that strikes one about this all-sufficient directory for Christian life is the emphasis with which it sets forth “the Lord” as the one object to be grasped and held. The sum of all objective religion is Christ-the sum of all subjective religion is cleaving to Him. A living Person to be laid hold of, and a personal relation to that Person-such is the conception of religion, whether considered as revelation or as inward life, which underlies this exhortation. Whether we listen to His own words about Himself, and mark the altogether unprecedented way in which He was His own theme, and the unique decisiveness and plainness with which He puts His own personality before us as the Incarnate Truth, the pattern for all human conduct, the refuge and the rest for the world of weary ones; or whether we give ear to the teaching of His Apostles; from whatever point of view we approach Christianity, it all resolves itself into the Person of Jesus Christ.
If Barnabas had been like some of us, he would have had a very different style of exhortation. He would have said, “This irregular work has been well done, but there are no authorized teachers here, and no provision has been made for the due administration of the sacraments of the Church. The very first thing of all is to give these people the blessing of bishops and priests.” Some of us would have said, “Valuable work has been done, but these good people are terribly ignorant. The best thing would be to get ready as soon as possible some manual of Christian doctrine, and in the meantime provide for their systematic instruction in at least the elements of the faith.” Some of us would have said, “No doubt they have been converted, but we fear there has been too much of the emotional in the preaching. The moral side of Christianity has not been pressed home, and what they chiefly need is to be taught that it is not feeling, but righteousness. Plain, practical instruction in Christian duty is the one thing they want.” Barnabas knew better. He did not despise organization, nor orthodoxy, nor practical righteousness, but he knew that all three, and everything else that any man needed for his perfecting, would come, if only the converts kept near to Christ, and that nothing else was of any use if they did not.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]
(b) He also exhorted them to be resolute. It was to be the settled purpose of their heart to continue with the Lord. It was not to be a fitful, impulsive thing, a thing of wind and tide merely; it was to be a steadfast continuance. The purpose was to be deliberate and deep. Nothing else will enable any one to continue with the Lord. There might be some in Antioch who were caught up in the sweep of a great movement, and had not duly considered what it was to be the Lord's. It requires resolution and perseverance to be true to the Lord. Those who do not purpose in their hearts to continue with the Lord are sure to drop off when the immediate impulse that moved them to associate themselves with Him has spent its force. There are those who are easily moved, and very ready to form and express resolutions to be the Lord's; but they are soon drawn back to the world or turned aside. They do not really purpose in their hearts. The best sign in some cases is when people cease to resolve, and substitute a steady course of action for fitful and inconstant resolution. It is resolute action, resolute continuance with the Lord, that is wanted.
As in some great symphony the theme which was given out in low notes on one poor instrument recurs over and over again embroidered with varying harmonies, and unfolding a richer music till it swells into all the grandeur of the triumphant close, so our lives should be bound into a unity, and in their unity bound to Christ by the constant renewal of our early faith, and the fathers come round again to the place which they occupied when as children they first knew Him that is from the Beginning to the End one and the same.1 [Note: A. Maclaren, The Secret of Power, 121.]
The writer of this testimony was for many months engaged in a civil capacity on the fortifications near Gravesend, whose erection Gordon was superintending, and thus speaks of what he knew. The “superb confidence in himself” which he noted and admired in the hero was associated with unusual Christian humility. It is more than probable that something of Gordon's fixed resoluteness arose from the fact that he came to no decision but in implicit reliance on the Divine direction. Here we have what has very lately been described as the “insubordinate” element in General Gordon's character. The same fixed unchangeable quality-“insubordinate” to human dictation-is plainly evident in Saul of Tarsus, whom no warnings, no prayers, lamentations, or tears, could bend from his purpose when he went bound in the spirit to Jerusalem.2 [Note: A. E. Keeling, General Gordon, Hero and Saint, 63.]
(2) Let us now consider the second occasion on which we see Barnabas as an exhorter of young converts. It was at Antioch in Pisidia, in Asia Minor. He had arrived there after a perilous journey from the sea-coast with the great Apostle of the Gentiles. They had attended the synagogue on the first Sabbath after their arrival. St. Paul had preached to the assembled congregation, and after its dispersion, we read, “Many of the Jews and of the devout proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas: who, speaking to them, urged them to continue in the grace of God.” This after-meeting sprang from the felt and clearly expressed needs of the new converts. It was sought by the converts themselves, for the purpose of obtaining fuller and more detailed instruction than could be got from a public address to a large and more mixed audience. It afforded them the opportunity of putting questions and having doubts and difficulties removed. It gave the Apostles the opportunity of applying the Word to the needs of various single cases.
There were two parts in the work of this after-meeting. There was instruction and there was persuasion. The persuasion was the practical application of the instruction. Now what did Paul and Barnabas persuade their followers to do? They persuaded them to continue in the grace of God. They had received the forgiveness of sins that was preached to them through Jesus. They were now justified from all things from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses, and they were exhorted to continue in the grace of God. Now what is to continue in the grace of God? It is to hold fast the salvation that the grace of God brings, to practise what the grace of God teaches, to look for what the grace of God leads us to expect, to be what the grace of God would have us to be. This is continuance in the grace of God. “By the grace of God I am what I am,” wrote the great Apostle to the Corinthians, “and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all” (i.e. all the Apostles): “yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” St. Paul wrote thus of his position and work as an Apostle, but in principle his words apply equally to the position and life of every Christian.
My stock lies dead, and no increase
Doth my dull husbandry improve.
O let Thy graces without cease
Drop from above!
The dew doth ev'ry morning fall,
And shall the dew out-strip Thy dove?
The dew, for which grass cannot call,
Drop from above.
Death is still working like a mole,
And digs my grave at each remove;
Let grace work too, and on my soul
Drop from above.
Sin is still hammering my heart
Unto a hardness void of love;
Let suppling grace, to cross his art,
Drop from above.
O come! for Thou dost know the way.
Or if to me Thou wilt not move,
Remove me where I need not say,
Drop from above.1 [Note: George Herbert.]
(3) The third and last occasion on which we find Barnabas exercising his peculiar gift as an exhorter was on the return journey from Derbe-the extreme limit of St. Paul's first great missionary journey. We read (Act_14:21-22): “When they had preached the gospel to that city, and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, and to Iconium, and to Antioch, confirming the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God.” The exhortation is twofold. It is to continuance in the faith and to preparedness for manifold troubles.
(a) Continuance in the faith is just continuance in the belief of the gospel. There are many influences adverse to continuance in the belief of the gospel. They are inward and outward. They are moral and intellectual. They are different at different times, in different places and circumstances. Whatever they are to us, we must not let them rob us of our faith in the gospel. We must hold fast the faithful Word as we have been taught. The preservation of a good conscience is necessary to continuance in the faith. The putting away of a good conscience leads in many cases to the shipwreck of faith. The discernment of the true grounds of faith, the refusal to permit inappropriate tests to be applied to it, and the domain of faith to be invaded by intruders who have neither the authority nor the qualifications to speak concerning the things with which it is conversant, are necessary as safeguards against the assaults to which the faith of many is exposed and to their continuance in the faith.
(b) “Through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God.” The tribulations are such as are common to man, and they are such as are special to the believer. They include those things which the Christian has to suffer immediately for Christ's sake, for righteousness' sake. Paul and Barnabas spoke, doubtless, of what was before the particular disciples whose souls they confirmed by exhorting them to continuance in the faith, and by telling them that through much tribulation they should enter the Kingdom of God; but the way into the Kingdom is ever the pathway of tribulation. Tribulation is the disciple's portion in the world. “Enter ye in at the strait,” or, in more modern English, “the narrow gate.” Narrow is the gate, and restricted or crushed in, is the way that leadeth unto life, said our Saviour in the Sermon on the Mount. Christ, in the very terms in which He exhorted His hearers to enter by the gate and tread along the way, taught this, and on different occasions He insisted on the necessity of cross-bearing and self-denial in order to discipleship, and fully prepared His disciples for all they were to meet with in and from the world. He would have all His disciples fully and fairly count the cost. In the same spirit and with the same end in view-viz., the strengthening, the confirming, the establishment of the disciples whom they were addressing, the fortifying them against the shock their faith might experience when tribulation overtook them, and preparing them for it-Paul and Barnabas told them that “through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God.”
Blessed, thrice blessed are ye, to whom your Lord has fitted your cross, as He in His righteous but tender love saw best for you. Blessed are ye, if ye but learn your blessedness, whatever cross by nature or by the order of His government He has placed upon you. Ye will not seek high things on whom the lowly cross has been bestowed. But treasure it up for yourselves in your secret hearts, there is no form of it which is not healing-bury it deep there, it will heal you first, through His precious Spirit, and, when it has healed you, will through you heal others. Only yield yourselves to His Fatherly hand who gave it to you, to do to you, in you, through you, His loving and gracious will. To be by suffering made meet for doing well, and to do well and suffer for it, and to suffer in order that we may do well, this is our calling: and if God finds in us thus, any secret resemblance to the Son of Man, He may also lift us up towards heaven, and draw men unto us by suffering.1 [Note: E. B. Pusey.]
3. Barnabas and Paul were the first to venture forth into the unknown wastes of heathendom to claim the whole world for the Master. The beginning of that mighty enterprise and the epoch-making thought which suggested it were enough of themselves to give these men names which can never be forgotten. And it is not too much to say that Barnabas led the way, for the thought had its origin in his mind before it laid hold of the man who embodied it in his wider and grander labours. We are almost reminded of Luther and Melanchthon. The less-known man had the first vision of the thing that needed to be done, and the man of greater energy worked out the vision into act To Barnabas the light came first, and what we may describe as “the imperial call.” He knows that he belongs to those who set the pattern “how to live.” Not reluctantly, but eagerly and at once, he accepts the responsibility of leadership. He is a magnetic man; men are drawn to him as flowers to the light. His voice is cheery, his words feed courage, his presence radiates comfort and gladness. He is a lovable man, lifting those around him into a higher and sunnier sphere.
Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes,-they were souls that stood alone,
While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone,
Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline
To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine,
By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design.1 [Note: J. R. Lowell.]