And the disciples were filled with joy, and with the Holy Ghost.
And the disciples - who, though not themselves expelled, had to endure sufferings for the Gospel, as we learn from Acts 14:22.
Were filled with joy, and with the Holy Spirit - Who not only raised them above shame and fear, as professed disciples of the Lord Jesus,but filled them with joy in His salvation. 'Luke on several occasions (says Humphry, pertinently), after mentioning events which might be thought disheartening, notices the joy and elevation of spirit by which they were followed. So it was after Herod's persecution (Acts 12:24), after the scourging in presence of the Sanhedrim (Acts 5:41), and after the Ascension (Luke 24:52).
Remarks:
(1) The scene at Paphos bears a striking analogy (as Baumgarten remarks) to that of the magicians, Jannes and Jambres, withstanding Moses when he stood before Pharaoh in Egypt. Their conduct is described by Paul himself in terms very similar to those here employed: "Now as James and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth" (2 Timothy 3:8). But the analogy only serves to awaken our attention to the great difference between the two periods. The magicians were Egyptians and pagans: Elymas was a Jew, his real name being Bar-Jesus. Further, Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, surrenders himself to the unholy influence of his sorcerers, and allows himself to be taken captive by it. Sergius Paulus, the Roman lord of the island of Cyprus, is so far from allowing himself to be ruled by his sorcerer Elymas, that he defies all his powers of resistance, and gives his fullest confidence to the messengers of God. The fact which has already forced itself on our notice in its different elements-namely the turning of the Jews from God and the turning of the Gentiles to Him-is here brought before us in a highly significant manner and comprised in a single instance.
(2) As the blindness inflicted on Elymas was the first miracle of Paul (it is at least the first recorded one) - performed, too, upon a Jew when the apostle was just beginning his work among the Gentiles, and followed by the conversion of a Gentile in high official position, the first fruits of a harvest to follow; as the historian's language implies that the soul of the apostle was drawn out on this occasion as never before; and as it is at this stage of the history that the new name of 'Paul is first given to him, to be thence-forward the name by which he was ever to be known-we can hardly doubt that his actual call to be an apostle of Jesus Christ was now for the first time sealed, and his great gifts for the apostolic service of Christ for the first time revealed to his own consciousness; and since Barnabas never once comes forward as a public speaker in the record of this missionary tour, we may take it for granted that he also now perceived, and (as might be expected) generously acquiesced in the manifest design of the great Lord of both, that the prominent position should henceforth be taken by his gifted colleague, while he aided the work in other ways, hardly less important in their own place.
(3) On comparing Paul's address to the Jews at Antioch, and his other recorded addresses in Jewish synagogues, with those of Peter at Jerusalem, it will appear that he was at least quite as well qualified to deal with his own countrymen as "the apostle of the circumcision" himself. But how different the bearing of these two honoured apostles toward the Gentiles! We have but one recorded address of Peter to a Gentile audience-that to Cornelius and his friends. And what is its character and complexion? He begins it apologetically; he cannot open his proper subject until he has first explained how he comes to occupy so novel a position as that of a preacher to the Gentiles: even when he has done this, he still seems to feel himself on new ground; nor, in holding forth Christ to these Gentiles, does he ever stretch beyond the Jewish point of view, exhibiting Him, even to them, simply as the great Burden of prophetic testimony to the children of Israel, though designed for all.
True, Cornelius as a devout proselyte to the Jewish Faith, must have been well prepared for this way of preaching Christ. Still, it is impossible not to perceive, both in the speaker himself and in his discourse, the Jew throughout. Now, compare this with Paul's way of addressing both the barbarians of Lycaonia and the Greeks of Athens, and it will at once be seen that the speaker addresses Gentiles on Gentile ground-Jewish associations and Jewish phraseology being studiously, yet quite naturally and easily, avoided. In short, while quite as much at home with his own countrymen as if his whole ideas had been exclusively Jewish, he is to Gentile audiences as Gentile, in the point of view from which he presents the Gospel, as if he had been a converted Pagan. This flexibility of mind in dealing with men-this power of presenting the grandest truths in forms adapted to all classes, constitutes one chief feature of his superiority to all the other apostles; a feature which-as one conscious of possessing it, and determined to turn it to the best account for the Gospel-be has himself described in language the most impressive: "Unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some" (1 Corinthians 9:20-22).