Confirming the souls of the disciples. — Better, perhaps, strengthening, so as to avoid the more definite associations connected with the other term. In Acts 18:23, the word is so rendered. It is not the same as that used by later writers for the ecclesiastical rite of Confirmation.
Exhorting them to continue in the faith. — The question meets us whether “faith” is used in its subjective sense, the “feeling of trust,” or objectively, as including the main substance of what was believed and taught — “a belief or creed.” That the latter meaning had become established a few years after St. Luke wrote, we see in 1 Timothy 5:8; Jude Acts 14:3; Acts 14:20; and on the whole it seems probable that it is so used here.
And that we must through much tribulation. — More accurately, through many tribulations. The use of the first personal pronoun is suggestive. Is St. Luke generalising what he heard from those who had listened to St. Paul, and giving it in their very words? Was he himself one of those listeners? The two had clearly met before we find them both at Troas; and on the supposition suggested in the last question, the apparently casual use of the pronoun would be analogous to what we find afterwards. (See Note on Acts 16:10.) In St. Paul’s latest Epistle to the chosen disciple of Lystra we have a touching reproduction of this teaching. He speaks of the afflictions which came on him at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra, and adds the general truth that “all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecutions” (2 Timothy 3:12).
The kingdom of God. — We may pause to note the occurrence of the familiar phrase and thought of the Gospels in the earliest recorded teaching of St. Paul. In his Epistles it recurs frequently (Romans 14:17; 1 Corinthians 4:20; 1 Corinthians 6:9; Colossians 4:11; 2 Thessalonians 1:5). For him, too, that which was proclaimed was not a theory or an opinion, but an actual kingdom, of which Jesus the Christ was king.