Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Acts · About this commentary
Forbidden by the Spirit, and called to Macedonia
Acts 16:6-10
6 When they had gone through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. · WEB
Two closed doors and one vision take the gospel into Europe, and the narrator quietly joins the party.
Three sentences describe some hundreds of miles of walking and two decisive refusals. They went through Phrygia and Galatia and were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. They came opposite Mysia and tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit didn't allow them.
The guidance here is entirely negative, and that is what makes the passage useful. Nothing is said about how the prohibition came — no vision, no prophet, no voice is reported — and nothing about why. Asia and Bithynia were populous, Greek-speaking, full of synagogues, and exactly where a sensible planner would go. Both were closed. What Paul had was a right intention, a good plan, and a shut door, twice, with no explanation and no alternative offered.
So they walk. Passing by Mysia, they came down to Troas — and Troas is the northwest corner of the continent, where the land runs out. Two refusals have funnelled them to a port, and only there, with nowhere further to go by road, does anything positive arrive.
The vision is one line and has no interpretation attached. There was a man of Macedonia standing, begging him and saying, "Come over into Macedonia and help us." No angel, no commission, no explanation of what help means. A man from across the water in Macedonia , asking.
What happens next is the model of how this book treats guidance. When he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go out to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us. The verb is one of inference — they worked it out. A vision, two closed doors and a coastline were put together by men using their judgment, and the conclusion they reached is described as the Lord's call. Nothing was dictated. They reasoned, in the light of what they had been shown, and acted at once.
And there, in the middle of that sentence, the pronoun changes. Everything until now has been they; from here it is we sought to go out. The writer has joined the party at Troas, without a word of introduction, and will stay with it through the crossing. He never explains the shift, never names himself, and never claims anything for having been present.
The crossing itself is easy to underrate because the text makes nothing of it. No verse announces the entry of the gospel into Europe, and the writer plainly does not think in those terms. But the two prohibitions had a shape: the message was being held back from a whole province in order to be put on a boat, and the churches of Asia would be founded a few years later by the same man when the time came. The refusals were about timing rather than about worth.
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