Acts 16:10 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Immediately we endeavoured... — The natural inference from the sudden appearance of the first person in a narrative previously in the third, is that the author became at this point an actor in the events which he records. (See Introduction to St. Luke’s Gospel.) The other hypothesis, that he incorporates a narrative written by Silas or Timotheus, is not probable in itself, and would naturally have involved an earlier change in the form of the narrative. Accepting the received view, it seems to follow, as there is no mention of the conversion of the Evangelist, that St. Paul and St. Luke must have been already known to each other, probably either at Tarsus or Antioch, the fulness with which the history of the latter Church is given pointing to it as the scene of their previous intimacy. On this assumption, the narrator must have left Antioch after the Council of Jerusalem, probably after the dispute between Paul and Barnabas, and travelled through the interior of Asia Minor, in part, perhaps, in the track of St. Paul’s earlier journey; and so gathered materials for his history till he came to Troas, and there carried on his work as an evangelist. The manner in which St. Luke introduces himself (“the Lord had called us”) implies, it may be noted, that he too was a preacher of the gospel. There is no record here of any mission-work done by St. Paul; but the language in 2 Corinthians 2:12, and, yet more, the facts of Acts 20:6, imply the existence of a Christian community. We may look, accordingly, on St. Luke as the founder of the Church of Troas, and place this among the “labours in the gospel” to which St. Paul refers in 2 Corinthians 8:18. The “we endeavoured” (literally, we sought) implies an immediate inquiry as to what ship was sailing, bound for any port of Macedonia. Such a call as that which had been given in the vision admitted of no delay. It came from the Lord Jesus, as the sequel of that given in the vision in the Temple (Acts 22:17-21), and was, therefore, to be obeyed at once.