The First Missionary Journey

Luke concluded Acts 12 with Saul and Barnabas back in Antioch in Syria with the note that “the word of God increased and multiplied” (vv. 24–25). As we see in today’s passage, Antioch was the launching point for an even greater increase and multiplication of the Word of God, for the church in Antioch commissioned Saul and Barnabas to take the gospel even farther into the world than it had yet gone.

Acts 13:1–3 marks the beginning of Luke’s account of what is known as the first missionary journey of the Apostle Paul. The journey, the record of which continues through the end of Acts 14, represented a significant step forward in the church’s outreach. Up until this point, the believers had been preaching the gospel to the gentiles, but not in any organized fashion. Individual Christians preached the gospel in Syrian Antioch as they fled persecution in Judea, but they did so haphazardly, not according to a defined church program but simply sharing the gospel with individual gentiles as they went. Only later did the church as an institution get involved, when the Apostles sent Barnabas to Antioch and he later retrieved Saul from Tarsus to help him (11:19–26). Now, the church as an institution began to take initiative, setting apart Barnabas and Saul to make the roughly nine-hundred-mile trip from Syrian Antioch to Cyprus to Pisidian Antioch to Iconium to Lystra and back to Syrian Antioch (13:4–14:28). Also, during Luke’s account of this trip, Luke shifts from referring to Saul of Tarsus as “Saul” to using the more well-known designation of “Paul,” shifting his focus to the Apostle’s gentile mission.

The church commissioned Barnabas and Saul after a time of worship, fasting, and prayer. Luke names several of the figures involved when Barnabas and Saul were set apart, but we know little about them, though Simeon and Lucius may well have been from North Africa (13:1–2). During prayer, the Holy Spirit revealed that the church was to set apart Barnabas and Saul, and the church did so by laying their hands on the two men (v. 3). Here we see the role of the church in recognizing those whom God has called to ministry. John Calvin comments, “They laid their hands upon Barnabas and Paul, that the Church might offer them to God, and that they might with their consent declare that this office was enjoined them by God; for the calling was properly God’s alone, but the external ordaining did belong to the Church.”