XX.
(1) Paul called unto him the disciples, and embraced them... — The latter verb implies a farewell salutation.
Departed for to go into Macedonia. — We are able from the Epistles to the Corinthians to fill up the gap left in the narrative of the Acts. Having sent Timotheus and Erastus to see after the discipline of the Church of Corinth (Acts 19:17), the Apostle was cheered by the coming of Stephanas and his two companions (1 Corinthians 16:17), and apparently wrote by them what is now the First Epistle to the Corinthians. A previous Epistle had been sent, probably by Timothy, to which he refers in 1 Corinthians 4:17. When he wrote that Epistle he intended to press on quickly and complete in person the work which it was to begin (1 Corinthians 4:18-19). He was led, however, to change his purpose, and to take the land journey through Macedonia instead of going by sea to Corinth (2 Corinthians 1:16-17), and so from Corinth to Macedonia, as he had at first intended. He was anxious to know the effect of his letter before he took any further action, and Titus, who probably accompanied the bearers of that letter, was charged to hasten back to Troas with his report. On coming to Troas, however, he did not find him, and after waiting for some time in vain (2 Corinthians 2:12), the anxiety told upon his health. He despaired of life and felt as if the sentence of death was passed on him (2 Corinthians 1:8; 2 Corinthians 4:10-11). The mysterious thorn in the flesh “buffeted” him with more severity than ever (2 Corinthians 12:7). He pressed on, however, to Macedonia (2 Corinthians 2:13), probably to Philippi, as being the first of the churches he had planted, where he would find loving friends and the “beloved physician,” whose services he now needed more than ever. There, or elsewhere in Macedonia, Titus joined him, and brought tidings that partly cheered him, partly roused his indignation. There had been repentance and reformation where he most wished to see them, on the one hand (2 Corinthians 6:6-12); on the other, his enemies said bitter things of him, sneered at his bodily infirmities (2 Corinthians 10:10), and compared, to his disparagement, the credentials which Apollos had presented (2 Corinthians 3:1) with his lack of them. The result was that Titus was sent back with the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, accompanied by some other disciple (probably St. Luke, but see Notes on 2 Corinthians 8:18-19), the Apostle resolving to wait till they had brought matters into better order and had collected what had been laid up in store for the Church of Jerusalem, so that it might be ready for him on his arrival (2 Corinthians 9:5). At or about this time also, to judge from the numerous parallelisms of thought and language between it and the Epistles to the Corinthians on the one hand, and that to the Romans on the other, we must place the date of the Epistle to the Galatians. (See Introduction to that Epistle.) Probably after Titus and Luke had left, and before Timotheus had returned — when he was alone, with no one to share the labour of writing, or to give help and counsel — tidings came that the Judaising teachers had been there also, and had been only too successful. How the tidings reached him we do not know, but if the purple-seller of Thyatira was still at Philippi, she might naturally be in receipt of communications from that city, and it was near enough to Galatia to know what was passing there.