James Nisbet Commentary - Acts 28:28 - 28:28

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James Nisbet Commentary - Acts 28:28 - 28:28


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

THE MISSION TO THE GENTILES

‘Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will bear it.’

Act_28:28

The Jews had exhausted St. Paul’s patience. He had reasoned with them; he had pleaded with them; but all to no purpose. They refused to accept the message he brought, and henceforth he turned to the Gentiles. The Jews had lost their opportunity; ‘the salvation of God’ was ‘sent unto the Gentiles.’ ‘They will hear it,’ said St. Paul. And we have heard it. The great question is, Have we accepted it?

I. The mission to the Gentiles.—We have become inheritors of the promises of God. Unto us has the message of salvation been sent. St. Paul, as the Apostle of the Gentiles, was the instrument in God’s hands of the conversion of thousands. His forecast was right. The Gentiles heard the Gospel; they accepted it; and the Church which, in his day, was but a small company, has now spread over the whole earth.

II. Our privileges are neither few nor small. With nineteen centuries of Christian effort behind us the Church ought to be a great power. And it would become such if every baptized Christian realised how great and glorious is his position in Christ. This is our day of opportunity, not only in relation to spreading the Gospel in the vast unevangelised fields abroad, but also in regard to our own attitude towards the Christian faith and life. How few of us can say that we are living up to our Christian privileges. Is it not the fact, indeed, that some of us reject the Gospel as really and truly as did the Jews of old? We make profession, no doubt, of our belief in Christianity, but so far as our daily life is concerned it has no power or effect at all. ‘This people honoureth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me,’ are words which express the actual condition of some of us; and they seal our condemnation.

III. Our responsibility.—The day of privilege will not always last. ‘He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.’ What was the result? ‘The salvation of God is sent to the Gentiles.’ If we, in our sin or our indifference, reject Him, who can say how soon our day of visitation shall pass away?

IV. There is yet another point of view from which this question of privilege and responsibility may be considered. It is important to observe the influence of long-continued and exclusive privileges on the opinions and the doctrinal belief of those enjoying them. It is melancholy to observe with what facility advantages possessed by a few for the good of many may come to be regarded as prerogatives belonging to the few to the entire exclusion of the many. If the Jews, with an unfinished revelation and a heavy ceremonial yoke upon their necks, could dream of an exclusive right to God’s compassions, what may not we, without preventing grace, infer from our unclouded light and our unshackled freedom? And if this error had a tendency to vitiate their whole view of Divine truth, what security have we that an analogous effect may not be realised in our experience? If we are conscious of inadequate exertions in the great cause of missions, let us think of Israel and remember that if we do not value Christianity enough to share it with the heathen, they may yet become possessed of it at our expense.

Illustration

‘St. Paul remained in his hired house for two whole years of imprisonment, receiving all who came to him. The record suddenly ends here, and the account of his trial, as also of the after story, can only be gathered from the Epistles.’