And one Ananias … said, The God of our fathers hath chosen thee.
The Divine ordination of human life
The verb here translated, “chosen,” only occurs in this form in one other place (Act_26:16), where it has the sense of “making,” or “appointing.” The idea here is ordination, or setting apart. This ordination is--
I. To an understanding of the highest subject. “That thou shouldst know His will.” God has a will in relation to all existences and to every individual man. It is the spring of all existence, the rule of all motion, the standard of all character. To understand it is to understand the philosophy of all being, the cause of all phenomena, and the science of all duty. All true subjects of thought are related to it, and lead into it as radia to their centre. It is, therefore, the sublimest subject of thought. It expresses the Divine nature, it reveals the universe. It is, therefore, the great theme for the study of eternity. To the study of this Paul was thus ordained. He began it then, he is at it now, he will continue at it forever.
II. To a vision of the highest existence. Not only to understand the will which is the law of the universe, but to see the Lawgiver Himself (chap. 3:14). Christ is called “that Just One,” not merely because, as God, He is absolutely just, nor merely because, as man, He “did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth,” but as Mediator who has engaged to make unjust men just to themselves, to their fellows, to the universe, to God. Paul wan ordained to Him in order--
1. To renovate him as a sinner. The vision of Christ is the soul transforming force. “Beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, we are changed,” etc.
2. To qualify him as an apostle. One of the necessary qualifications of an apostle was that he should have a personal view of Christ. Hence he says, “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen the Lord?”
3. To consummate his blessedness as a man. What is the heaven of souls? The beatific vision of Christ (Rev_5:6; Rev_5:12).
III. To a reception of the highest communications. “And shouldst hear the voice of His mouth.” To have a direct communication with Christ seemed necessary in order to put Paul on a level with the twelve apostles (Act_13:3; Gal_1:1). But whilst this was specially required for Paul as an apostle, it is the high privilege of all good men. “Never man spake like this man,” they said who heard Him when on earth, when He spoke only the few things that they could bear. But to listen to that voice in heaven, what an ecstasy of joy! What is the voice of your Plato’s compared with the voice of Christ?
IV. To a discharge of the highest mission. “Thou shalt be His witness,” etc. To bear witness--
1. Of the highest facts about the greatest Being.
2. Of the highest facts about the greatest Being to all mankind. How earnestly shall we aspire to such an ordination! (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Paul’s ordination
Fromthis we see--
I. What the preacher must bring along with him into the ministry.
1. The knowledge of the Divine will.
2. The experience of Divine grace.
II. What the preacher is to do in the ministry--to be a witness to all men in word and deed of what he has seen and heard.
III. On what the preacher may depend in his ministry--on the grace of God which has appointed him to the office and will strengthen him in it. (K. Gerok.)
For thou shalt be His witness.
Witnessing for Christ
Here is--
I. A special department of Christian service. “Thou shalt be His witness.” Sometimes a Christian is designated a steward, and is left in trust for Christ; sometimes a shepherd, and is commanded to feed the flock of God; but here he is called a witness. A witness is one who bears testimony to that with which he is personally acquainted. The apostle was a competent witness--he was permitted to see and know Christ; he was a courageous witness--he was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; and he was a consistent witness--both by word and deed he declared the whole counsel of God. How can we witness for Christ?
1. By our self-denying labours. This is the very essence of the Christian religion. “Whosoever doth not bear his cross,” etc. The need of a spirit of self-abnegation is abundantly manifest. We are surrounded by the ignorant, who must be taught; by the careless, who must be awakened; and by the lost, who must be led to the Saviour.
2. By our holy deportment. The end of Christ’s death is the holiness of His people. The Christian is commanded to let his light so shine before men, that they may see his good works, and glorify his Father who is in heaven. Holiness is power. “Argument may be resisted, entreaty may be disregarded, and eloquence may be scorned; but the exhibition of an exalted piety has a might which nothing can withstand. It is truth embodied; it is the gospel preaching in the lives of its votaries. No sophistry can elude it, no conscience can ward it off, and no bosom wears a mail that can brave the energy of its attack.”
II. An extensive sphere of Christian service. “To all men.” If you examine a map of the countries through which the apostle travelled, you will be amazed at the extent of his labours. Distance did not damp his zeal, nor danger daunt his courage. Where can we witness for Christ?
1. In private. This is a far more important sphere of service than many persons think. Are we diligent in the time of service? Are we patient in the hour of suffering? Are we resigned in the season of bereavement? Then we are witnessing for Christ.
2. In public. This is not only a difficult, but a very delicate task. We may dishonour Christ by our silence, and we may displease men by our speech. But there is greater danger of grieving Christ by our indifference than of offending men by our imprudence. Our testimony must be constant and courageous. Wherever our lot may be cast, there we must be loyal to Christ.
III. An important qualification for Christian service. “Of what thou hast seen and heard.” An apostle must know the will and experience the grace of God. He had seen the “Just One,” and “heard His voice”; and you might as well have tried to reason him out of a belief in his own existence as to reason him out of his belief in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If we have seen the glory of God, or enjoyed the fellowship of Christ, we must “witness to all men of what we have seen and heard.” (J. T. Woodhouse.)
And now why tarriest thou?--
Delay
In the New Testament all who came to Christ at all came straightway. The apostles, Saul of Tarsus, the jailer at Philippi, the eunuch of Ethiopia, Lydia. Those who hesitated never came. Rich young ruler, Agrippa, Felix. This teaches us in a striking manner the danger of delay. Men, however, urge the reasonableness of delay. They declare that a matter so important should be duly weighed. Its responsibilities must not be rashly assumed. On the other hand, there are solemn and pressing arguments for immediate action.
I. The position is one of peril. If your house was in flames, and you were awakened at the dead of night by the cries of firemen calling upon you to escape, would you reply that you must deliberate upon the situation? To use the wise man’s image (Pro_23:34), would you, if you were lying on the top of the mast when the vessel was rocking violently and the crew were calling you to come down, respond that you must duly weigh the matter?
II. The position is sinful. It is a sin against the authority of God, who commands you to come; against the love of God, who yearns for you; against Jesus Christ--a rejection of the Divine claims, of His mercy. If it were theft, would you say, “I will steal one year more, and then I will stop”? Why, then, should you say, “I will sin by rejecting Christ one year or one day more, and after that perhaps I will turn from this sin?”
III. It may be instantly performed. You cannot stop fighting God gradually. Will you fire a few less guns tomorrow, and only an occasional gun the day after? Is that making peace? “As the Roman ambassador drew a circle around the captive princes, and bade them accede to his terms before they passed its bounds, so God requires an immediate response to His overture of mercy.”
IV. You have the ability now to perform it. No doubt you think you would prefer to have deeper convictions, stronger desires and all that; but you must learn to act on what you have. A vessel may leave the harbour with a wind of fifteen knots, or ten, or five, or one knot an hour. “Act on what you have; think not of what might be. It is better to go out of the harbour of false ease and delusive security upon a wind that merely fills the flapping sails than not to go at all.”
V. The difficulties will not be lessened by delay. You remember the countryman in AEsop’s fable who sat down by a running stream, saying: “If this stream continues to flow as it does now for a little while, it will empty itself, and I will walk over dry shod.” He waited in vain! and so do you. The difficulties will never become less.
VI. The difficulties will increase. The purchase of heaven is like buying of the Sibyl’s prophecies--the longer you delay the dearer the price. Men think as they grow older they will grow more virtuous. This is contradicted by the law of habit. Late conversions are rare. “Old age is, of all the ages of life, the least fitted for the work of salvation.” Facility in goodness does not come from habitually ignoring Christ.
VII. The shortness and uncertainty of life. The vistas of life seen in the perspective of hope may seem long to us; youth may smile at the suggestions of the tomb, and, conscious strength, may repel the insinuations of mortality; but the resistless hand of time is drawing us on. Nature and life are full of reminders of the brevity and incertitude of human existence. “The eagle poising a moment on the wing, and then rushing at her prey; the ship that, throwing the spray from her bow, scuds before the wind; the shuttle, flashing through the loom; the shadow of the cloud sweeping the hillside, and then gone forever, not leaving a trace behind; the summer flowers that, vanishing, have left our gardens bare”; the falling of the autumn leaf; the rushing of the mountain torrent; the dispersion of the morning mist; the fading of the summer day; these, with many other fleeting things, are emblems by which God through nature is teaching us how frail we are; at the longest, how short our days! (E. S. Prout.)
Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins.--
An argument for baptism, and an appeal
I.Baptism is an ordinance of Christ. It has been a question whether the rite is of Jewish origin. Moses, indeed, ordained “divers washings,” to which the elders added many more. But these were essentially different from Christian baptism; they being “waters of separation,” this of initiation; they being repeated on any fresh pollution, this not being on any account repeated. Jewish proselyte baptism is more analogous, but is not mentioned until the Christian era. The baptism of John bears more resemblance to it, being, as he declared, the shadow of it. They certainly are not identical, or Paul would not have baptized again the disciples of John at Ephesus. So we conclude that baptism is exclusively Christian. How or why we can hardly tell, except it were gathered from a few such hints as that prediction of Isaiah--“So shall He sprinkle many nations.” There prevailed among the Jews an expectation that Christ should institute a new and peculiar baptism. This impression is evident from the question put by the Pharisees to John--“Why baptizest thou, then, if thou be not that Christ,” etc. It is, therefore, no wonder chat earnest men among them flocked to receive “the baptism of repentance,” nor Chat afterwards “Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John”; and from His own baptism, needful only for example’s sake, the Teacher from heaven acted out this prevailing idea--an idea which gave an evident and definite meaning to that saying of His to Nicodemus, “Except a man be born of water,” etc., which agreed exactly with the current expectation, and must be law as long as men have to be translated out of the kingdom of this world into the kingdom of our Lord; which further appears from the very last charge of the Saviour (Mat_28:19-20).
II. Baptism represents the washing away of sins. Nothing can be clearer than this. Sin has ever been regarded as a defilement which required to be washed away to make a man fit to stand in the sight of God. When this purification became possible, through “the water and the blood” which flowed from the Saviour’s side, the fact was set forth by a rite in which water was employed; at the same time the Lord declared the Spirit of God, which He came to give, to be essential to that new birth without which there is no personal efficacy in baptism. Yet this is the matter upon which there has been most unaccountable and fatal confusion. The text says, “Be baptized, and wash away your sins”--two things as different as a sign, and the thing signified. Yet these two have been declared to he the same. If it were so, I myself should have been “a new creature in Christ Jesus” in virtue of it, without any conversion; but I know that I was not. If it were so, then Simon Magus must have been among the saved. The idea of baptism being the actual remission of sins, or regeneration, or anything whatever beyond a sign of these as needful and possible, is too groundless for argument. But it does show us, as clearly as any earthly image can, the necessity and the possibility of “the washing of regeneration.”
III. Baptism is of perpetual importance and obligation. Christianity and spirituality are all but synonymous terms, this being emphatically the dispensation of the Spirit. The ceremonial law of Moses was in itself very burdensome; but those who would prefer outward rites to true religion were always heaping up traditions upon it, until it became a yoke of bondage too heavy to be borne. Then the Saviour gave the very character of His economy when He said, “God is a Spirit,” etc.; in harmony with which He said also, “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation,” etc., which Paul did but illustrate when he said, “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink,” etc. Now, from these and a hundred such Scriptures we might have argued that the pure Spirit of Christ, without any figure, was Christianity. But our conceits, however logical they may seem, are not Christianity; and seeing that the thoughts and ways of God are so immeasurably higher than those of men, and wiser, and kinder, it is ever better to inquire what He has decreed than to imagine what He would do. We have already proved that Christ did institute this rite. Its very institution proves its importance then; and if it had any then, it must have as much if not more now; for if ever the outward and visible sign could be dispensed with, it must be while the Divine Teacher was living in our world to explain and to enforce His doctrines. And the most spiritual men have confessed that the two sacraments have proved a real help to their faith. At the dedication of their offspring to God in Christ, as well as at the table of the Lord, they have felt and learnt what they never learnt before, becoming more spiritual than ever. Whether this were so or not, the Divinely attested fact that Jesus decreed the baptism of all nations in His very last words is the proof that it is to have a continuance unto the end of the world. If one may explain away the rites ordained by the Lord, another may explain away the doctrines which they were ordained to teach; and, alas! many do both this day. What the very apostles needed we cannot less need; and it must be a right and safe conclusion that Christ only can unmake any ordinance which He has made, and that until He does so it rests upon all His disciples as an unquestionable obligation.
IV. Baptism is to be administered to all who worship Christ. The last clause of the text is of all importance. It proves, even before it is expounded, that baptism alone, the rite as the outward action of another, cannot save, but that its efficacy depends upon the state of mind and heart in the subject; for there is something else to be done while it is being performed. What this is is now the question. Of course it does not mean the formal mention of His holy “name,” nor does it mean “calling,” without any wish or hope of answer. The phrase is one borrowed from the Old Testament, where it always intends the actual worship of God in the prayer of faith. In the Psalms it; is said, “I will offer to Thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord”; “O give thanks unto the Lord, call upon His name.” The phrase in question is also one of those which bind together the two Testaments. Joel says, “It shall come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be delivered”--which prediction both Peter and Paul quote word for word; and whatever may have been the prophet’s idea, we know the apostle’s intention in “the name of the Lord.” These meant not the Lord Jehovah, but the Lord Jesus. So, then, what Ananias here required from Saul was that with the highest possible intention he should call Jesus “Master and Lord”; and if any man whatever do this with apparent honesty, and is yet unbaptized, to him every minister of Christ should say, “And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins.” (J. De Kewer Williams.)
Directions to the awakened sinner
Thereis this idea in the text, this Divine purport and meaning--All things are ready. A redemption is obtained. A kingdom is purchased;up and take possession.
1. “Arise,” that is, lift up your hearts to the Redeemer! “Lift up your eyes to the hill Calvary, whence cometh your help.” “Arise,” hang down and droop thy head no more as if no balm was in Gilead, or as if there were no Physician there that could heal thee; though thou art a poor prodigal child, and hast been feeding upon the husks, the pleasures and vanities of a sinful world, thou hast a Father that loves thee, arise and go to Him. Thou hast a dear Saviour whose wounds will heal thy spoiled and poisoned nature. Thou hast the “Holy Ghost, who will lead thee and comfort thee as a mother comforteth her only son.” “Arise,” leave thy sins, thy lusts, thy dangerous place, and venture to come to the sinner’s refuge, and it shall go well with thee.
2. “Be baptized,” be immersed and covered in the bloody sweat of Jesus, be baptized with the baptism wherewith He was baptized, those great drops which fell from Him in His agony shall wash away thy great crimes and frightful offences.
3. “Wash away thy sins,” that is, come to the blood of the Lamb. No Jordan, no pool of Siloam, no Bethesda is like it. Whoever comes to this laver, to this fountain, though his sins were more than the hairs of his head, or the sands upon the seashore, all shall be washed away and remembered no more: and though his crimes were the most vile and abominable, so that his heart failed him, yet the blood of Christ shall make him whiter than the snow in Salmon, and soften and melt his hard and icy nature, and speak peace and pardon to his guilty conscience.
4. “Calling upon the name of the Lord,” this is to direct you where to apply, to whom you may address yourselves and make your requests, namely, to the Lord Jesus that appeared to Paul in the way. He is the Friend of sinners. He is the Minister of the true sanctuary, who hears prayer, and has the tenderest heart. Ask of Him and He will give you, seek to Him and you shall find, knock at the door of the sheepfold, and you shall find entrance by the new and living way of His flesh and blood, into the holiest place of all. (John Cennick.)
Getting rid of sin
is--
I. A possible work. “Be baptized, and wash away thy sins.” The Holy Word represents the sinful state of the soul under different figures--sleep, slavery, disease, death, pollution. Here pollution. The words imply that it is--
1. A cleansable pollution. It is not ingrained. It is something separable from the soul. It can be washed away. Baptism to Saul would symbolise moral cleansing. No water, of course, can wash the soul; all the waters of the Atlantic could not cleanse one moral stain. There is, however, a spiritual water, “the truth as it is in Jesus,” by which the Eternal Spirit does cleanse (Eze_36:25; Eze_36:27; 1Co_6:11; Tit_3:7; Eph_5:25-26; Rev_1:5-6; Rev_7:14).
2. A pollution of which man must cleanse himself: “Wash away thy sins.” No one can do it for us.
II. It is a praying work. “Calling upon the name of the Lord.” Christ’s name is Himself; to call upon His name is to call upon Him.
1. Christ is the efficient cleanser of human souls. His work is to wash away the sins of the world, to purify the moral garments of humanity.
2. Prayer is the ordained means of attaining His cleansing influence (Rom_10:13). The prayer addressed to Him in the upper room at Jerusalem brought down His cleansing influences on the day of Pentecost. You may get wealth by industry, intelligence by study, wisdom by experience, but moral purity only by prayer.
III. It is an urgent work. “Why tarriest thou?” Or, more literally, Why art thou about acting, instead of acting really? Do not hesitate a moment. Be prompt. The importance of promptitude may be argued--
1. From the greatness of the work. Eternity depends upon it.
2. From the time already lost. The whole life should have been given to it, but much has run to waste.
3. From the increase of difficulties. Disinclination, insensibility, force of habit--all increase by delay.
