Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Acts · About this commentary
Set apart by the Spirit
Acts 13:1-3
1 Now in the assembly that was at Antioch there were some prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen the foster brother of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. · WEB
The first deliberate mission to the nations is launched by a congregation at worship, and the sending is credited to the Spirit rather than to any council.
Five men are named as the prophets and teachers at Antioch, and the list is the most revealing sentence about that church in the book. Barnabas is a Levite from Cyprus. Simeon is called Niger, the Latin word for dark-skinned. Lucius is from Cyrene in north Africa. Manaen was the foster brother of Herod the tetrarch, raised in a royal household — the household of the man who beheaded John. And Saul, a Pharisee of Tarsus, is listed last.
An island Levite, two Africans, a courtier from a palace, and a rabbi. The leadership of the church that first sent missionaries to the nations was already a collection of nations, and nobody in the paragraph comments on it. The composition is simply reported, as an address might be.
What they are doing when the call comes matters. As they served the Lord and fasted — the word for their service is the one used of priests at the temple, and it is used here of a mixed group of Gentiles and Jews in a Syrian city. They are not holding a strategy meeting. There is no discussion of unreached regions, no survey, and no shortage of work at home.
The instruction is direct speech: Separate Barnabas and Saul for me, for the work to which I have called them. Two things are worth pressing. The call is prior — to which I have called them — so the congregation is being told about a decision, not asked to make one. And the men named are the two best they have. A church sending its finest teachers away has to be persuaded of something.
The response is fasting and prayer again, then the laying on of hands, then release. The gesture is not ordination to an office they lack; both are already leaders, and Saul has been an apostle by commission for years. It is the church associating itself with them, publicly, and letting go.
The next verse states the authorship without ambiguity — they were sent out by the Holy Spirit — while the paragraph has just described men doing the sending. Both are true in the same breath, and this book never treats them as competing accounts. The Spirit sends; the church lays on hands and lets go; the ships still have to be paid for.
What begins here is not the first evangelism of Gentiles. Philip had baptized an African, Peter had baptized a Roman household, and unnamed refugees had built a Greek congregation in this very city. What is new is intention. Every earlier crossing happened under pressure or by direct instruction to an individual; this is a church deliberately dispatching men to places where nobody has asked for them.
And it is a small thing on the day. Two men leave a congregation in a provincial city with no letters, no funding described and no plan recorded. The narrative gives three verses to a decision that will occupy the remaining sixteen chapters and carry the message to the capital of the world.
settled What this mark means