Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Acts · About this commentary
Barnabas takes him in, and the church has rest
Acts 9:26-31
26 When Saul had come to Jerusalem, he tried to join himself to the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. · WEB
The church in Jerusalem will not believe he has changed, and one man's willingness to vouch for him is what makes the rest of the book possible.
He comes to Jerusalem and tried to join himself to the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. The fear is entirely reasonable. This is the city where he entered houses and dragged people to prison, and some of those people are in the room. A convincing infiltrator is exactly what a hunter of this movement would send, and a claim of conversion is what such a man would say.
So the situation is a deadlock with no procedural solution. Saul cannot prove an inward change, and the church cannot risk being wrong. What breaks it is not evidence but a person: But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles.
The verb is physical — he took hold of him — and the sequence matters. Barnabas does not argue the case in the abstract and then produce the man; he attaches himself to Saul publicly first, and walks in with him. Someone had to be willing to be wrong in front of everybody, and the Son of Encouragement is introduced in this book selling a field and never does anything as costly with money as he does here with his reputation.
His testimony has three parts, and they are the right three. Saul had seen the Lord on the way; the Lord had spoken to him; and at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. A vision alone could be claimed by anyone. What Barnabas adds is that the man has already been doing the dangerous thing, in public, in a city where it nearly killed him. Conduct under risk is the evidence offered, and it is accepted.
What Saul does with his acceptance is immediately characteristic. He is preaching boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and specifically he spoke and disputed against the Hellenists. Those are the Greek-speaking Jews of the synagogues that had argued with Stephen and lost — the very circle Saul himself had come from, and the argument he had once helped to settle with stones. He goes back to the room where it started and takes the other chair.
The result is the same as at Damascus: they were seeking to kill him. And the same solution — the brothers bring him down to the coast and put him on a ship to Tarsus , his home city. He disappears from the narrative for years, and the next mention of him is Barnabas going to find him.
The chapter's hinge closes with the second of the book's progress reports, and its content is unexpected. So the assemblies throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were built up. Peace, not growth under pressure. The book's most violent persecutor has become a Christian and has left town, and the churches get their first quiet season. The report also names Galilee, which no earlier verse in this book has mentioned as having congregations at all — a whole region of believers, unrecorded, doing nothing dramatic enough to narrate.
settled What this mark means