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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
‘They sent forth Barnabas.’
Act_11:22
I. The character of St. Barnabas.—The result of this visit of St. Barnabas is recorded in the Acts, and the character of the Apostle is also given to us. What a wondrous character it is! ‘A good man.’ But not only ‘a good man’—plenty of men in this world are good men, but he was something more than that—‘a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.’ This man is sent as a deputation from the Church at Jerusalem to Antioch.
II. What he saw at Antioch.—When he came there he saw ‘the grace of God’ (Act_11:23). Barnabas saw the grace of God because he was ‘a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost.’ Some men can see no good in anything that is religious, no good in anything that points to Jesus, no good in anything that leads to God’s house and to God’s worship; no good whatever. They have not got eyes to see, and they have not got ears to hear, and they have not got hearts to understand. But Barnabas had. He had spiritual vision. When we see sin crucified, when we see evil habits overcome, when we see carnal desires trampled underfoot, when we see worldly things abhorred, when we see the flesh crucified, when we see men’s minds and hearts turned heavenward, when we see diligence in attending on the means of grace, when we see people coming frequently to the Holy Communion—then we see the grace of God as Barnabas saw it.
III. His gladness.—Then too, when he saw the grace of God, ‘he was glad.’ There is no person who does not rejoice to see a man really converted from his evil ways, really regenerated. We must be very hard-hearted if we are not really glad in heart. There is nothing that rejoices the heart of a clergyman more than to see the grace of God working in his congregation—a better attendance at church, more communicants, more liberality to the offertory, and a sympathetic interest in the work of the parish, and especially when he sees lives transfigured through the blessed leavening effect of the sanctifying grace of God the Holy Ghost.
IV. His exhortation.—What did he do? He exhorted them ‘that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord’; in other words, that they would continue in that grace upon which they had entered, that they would not be Christians one day, or one week, and then turn back again to the world, that they would not just merely be Christians on Sunday and be anything else every day during the week. So many professing Christians are like people who on Sunday put on their Sunday clothes, and on Monday put on different attire. Let me say to you, ‘Cleave unto the Lord.’ How? By constant diligent prayer, by attendance upon our religious duties, and especially by coming to the Holy Communion, not once a month, but once a week at least—by daily reading of God’s Word, and by doing all we can by our example and by our life in showing forth the glory of our Lord.
Illustration
“Barnabas” was the Christian, and probably the baptismal name, which the Apostle gave to “Joses,” a man of Cyprus, and a Levite—the first person recorded by name as having given his property to the Church, and who acknowledged the subordination of his own ecclesiastical office to, and its absorption in, the Christian ministry, by thus coming and laying the purchase-money of his land at the Apostles’ feet. The name “Barnabas” may equally mean “the son of consolation,” or “the son of exhortation.” And happily these two words are identical in the Greek. May we never divide them! always mixing comfort with teaching, and never approaching to anything like a reproof till we have first begun by consoling, even as Christ said of the Holy Ghost Himself, “When the Comforter is come, He will reprove.” ’