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SOME thirty odd years after the night of the Last Supper in the Upper Room at Jerusalem, a vessel set sail from Caesarea, bearing passengers on board who were bound for Rome. It was to all appearances the last stage of one of the most momentous careers in the world's history. The central figure was a prisoner, under escort of Roman soldiers. Two friends had made up their minds to accompany him; and as he was a first-class prisoner, they were allowed to register themselves as attendants. One of them kept a journal, and on the second or third day of the voyage, as the journal informs us, "We had to sail under the lee of Cyprus, for the wind was against us." One feels sure that the three men - who were none other than Paul and Aristarchus of Thessalonica and the doctor, Luke, who tells the story from his diary - were on deck as the ship rounded the east-most point of the island; and that Paul spent a long time gazing wistfully towards the mainland, where the city of his youth and boy-hood, Tarsus, lay. For he himself felt, as his address to the elders of Ephesus a few months previously makes manifest, that it was his last long look at his native land. But he must have turned also now and then, as past memories came crowding in upon him, to look at the island of Cyprus - affection, self-reproach, and sadness meeting in his eyes. And to ease his aching heart he must have told again a chapter of the story of his past.
We believe that this story is to be found, almost as it was told, in the book of Acts (xi.19-i.13). It is just at the close of this story that Luke, as an eyewitness of the great events that followed, takes up the tale. And note the order of the incidents in this narrative, which we think, came mainly from the lips of Paul. The first word is a reference to the martyrdom of Stephen. That it was as the result of this tragedy that the great mission to the Gentiles first began, was something that Paul, who was consenting to Stephen's death, could never forget. His own life as the chief propagandist of that Gentile mission was a noble atonement for his false step; that mistake accounts in part for the life-long zeal with which he pursued his task. And it is the scattering of the Christians from Jerusalem in the terror that followed the murder of Stephen, with the consequent first proclaiming of the Gospel to the Greeks in Antioch, that is next recorded in the narrative here. Then - for this was the main burden of Paul's story to his friends - comes the mention of Barnabas. A noble description it is - "a good man,- full of the Holy Spirit and of faith." It reads like an echo from the stricken heart of Paul, to whom the memory of an old quarrel was speaking its sad reproach. Next, as we might expect, comes the story of how Barnabas found him out after his eleven years' seclusion in Tarsus, and rescued him for Christ's work. Then follows the account of the first important bit of Christian work they did together - the bearing of the famine relief-fund to Jerusalem. And then - apparently a long interruption. It is really no interruption at all. The visit to Jerusalem recalls the house where they stayed, and the house recalls a remarkable incident that happened there a year or two before. And the son of the house is mentioned - inevitably - for it is over him that the two friends quarrelled and separated; and that is the burden of Paul's confession to his friends. For note how the digression ends: "and Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their ministry, and took with them John, whose surname was Mark."
These, then, were the memories that moved Paul as he stood on the deck of the ship that day, while they sailed under the lee of Cyprus. And it is some hidden links of the story that we wish now to tell. It is a very instructive fact that while Christianity began as a working-class movement, many of the men who played a great part in its propagation were what we might call university men - Joseph of Arimathaea, Paul, Luke, Apollos. It is with yet another that we are now concerned.
Tarsus, the city in whose streets Paul played as a boy, was a flourishing town, as renowned for its culture as its commerce. According to Strabo, at its hey-day its zeal for learning surpassed even that of Athens and Alexandria. And the view of life that was chiefly taught within the gates of its University was Stoicism. The founder of Stoicism, Zeno, was born in Cyprus; Cleanthes, the second great teacher of this view of life, was a native of Assos, in the Troad; and Chrysippus, the third leader of the movement, hailed from Soli, which was actually in the province of Cilicia. The very atmosphere of Asia Minor seems to have been peculiarly favourable to the growth of such thinking. Epictetus was born in Hierapolis in Phrygia.
The Stoic teachers in Tarsus were generally natives of the place. Antipater flourished there a generation or two before Paul's day; and Athenodorus may have been an older contemporary. Students came from all parts; and any youth of Cyprus who had an ambition to be a scholar, would naturally cross over to the mainland to attend the lectures of the professors at the University of Tarsus.
About the time that Christ was born, there was a Jewish family, the household of Nebo, which had settled in Cyprus, acquired property in the rich garden lands of the island, and grown wealthy in consequence. One of the sons of this man was a lad named Joseph, a tall lad with a grave and noble face: he was destined one day to be regarded as a god by a city mob - even as the supreme god in the Pantheon. His father's family seems to have belonged to the tribe of Levi in older days. And very probably the father had ambitions that his son should be educated, and eventually go to Jerusalem, and take his place as one of the Levites, the lesser priests of the great Temple. The boy himself had yearnings after knowledge. So by-and-by he was sent to Tarsus to be educated, for not all Jews, even among the stricter sort, despised the pagan culture.
Now there was a Jewish tent-maker in Tarsus who kept very strictly to the ancient faith. He had a sickly son, "small in stature, ... bandy-legged, but well built, with meeting eye-brows, and slightly prominent nose" (Acts of Paul and Thecia). But he was a lad "full of grace," for he "sometimes had the aspect of an angel" (Ibid.). He was somewhat younger than Joseph. Whether they met at the University we cannot tell. But it seems very likely that they met in Tarsus in these early days. For the loyal-hearted Joseph was the only friend Saul had in Jerusalem once - commending him to his former enemies when he was under a cloud. Joseph might possibly have lodged at the tent-maker's house. For a Jew would naturally look out for a lodging in a Jewish home. They would worship together in the Jewish synagogue of the place, at any rate. And the sickly Saul's strict Pharisaic father would be one of the leading men of that congregation. The early acquaintanceship between these two - the small, pale lad with the burning, eager spirit, and the tall, strong youth with the grave and noble face - was perhaps one of the stories which Saul, now called Paul, would tell his companions, Luke and Aristarchus, as they sailed between Cyprus and the mainland on that memorable voyage to Rome.
The strictness of Paul's upbringing may have precluded him from attending the University. But, if he did not, it is certain that he imbibed the intellectual ideas, and breathed to some purpose the spiritual atmosphere of the place. There is evidence that the noble if somewhat arid way of thinking of the Stoics quickened his mental agility, broadened his outlook, and gave him several suggestive points of view which were just needing to be baptised into Christ to become living and fruitful. The real truth that lurks in Stoic Pantheism never found juster expression, never was put to nobler service, than when Paul told the Athenians, "The LORD of heaven and earth dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is He worshipped with men's hands as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all life and breath and all things, and hath made of one blood all nations of men that they should seek the LORD, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring' " (Acts xvii.28). Or when he wrote to the Corinthians: "There is one God, the Father, from whom all comes, and for whom we exist." Or to the Romans: "All comes from Him, all lives by Him, all ends in Him." Or to the Ephesians "There is One God and Father of all who is over us all, who pervades us all, who is within us all."
Nor was there ever a more daring adaptation of the Stoic "logos"-doctrine than when Paul said of Jesus: "He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature; for by Him were all things created ... and for Him; He is before all things, and in Him all things cohere."
Again the Stoic doctrine of the spiritual unity of mankind is surely reflected in the pregnant figure of the Body and its members; and its practical consequences announced in the effective and far-reaching principle of the fellow-citizenship of Jew and Gentile, male and female, bond and free in the Kingdom of God - the unity of all, the new creation of all, and the consequent equality of all, in Christ (cf. l Cor..l2f, 27 ; Gal.iii.28 ; Eph.ii.19 ; Col.iii.11).
In Paul's teaching, the Stoic doctrine of self-sufficiency (ἀυτάρκεια) is not only reproduced but touched to a finer morality. The proud humility and meekness of his personal claim, "poor, yet making many rich, having nothing, yet possessed of all things " (2 Cor.vi.10); the confidence of his exhortation: "God is able to make all grace abound towards you, that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound in every good work ... being enriched in everything to all bountifulness" (2 Cor. ix. 8, ll) ; the beauty of his contented closing days : "I have learned in whatever state I am to be content (ἀυτάρκης) ... I am all-strong in Him who puts power into me. ... I have enough and more than enough " (Phil.iv.11, 13, 18), are very striking transformations of the Stoic teaching. He found "religion with self-sufficiency a vastly repaying thing" in life (1 Tim.vi.6). He was familiar also with the Stoic term for "conscience" (συνείδησις) - uses it frequently; and his interpretation of it as the divine law written on the heart of man is surely a reflection of Stoic thought (Rom.ii.15).
Moreover we have evidence that Paul did not ban from his mind the Hellenic literary culture of the day. He can quote to good purpose the Greek poets in vogue at the time. There is a line in the first letter to Corinth which Paul had probably read in Menander, though Menander is said to have borrowed the line from Euripides:
'Φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρῆσθ' ὁμιλίαι κακαί Evil companionships corrupt good character.'
Indeed, in that address of his on the Areopagus in Athens, Luke reports him as twice quoting the poets. It is the poet Aratos, who himself had studied in Tarsus, who said of the Divine Being:
'Τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος ἐσμέν For we also are His offspring.'
And when Paul says "In Him we live and move and have our being," he is quoting a sentiment of the Cretan poet-prophet, Epimenides. It was the memory of this Divine Man (Θεῖος ἀνήρ), as Plato calls him, that the sight of those altars "to an unknown god" awakened in St. Paul. It was he at whose suggestion the chastened Athenians, who had sent for him after a plague in the city, erected these anonymous altars in 596 BC. It was he who defended the Divine Being as ever young and strong and beautiful, against the conception of Him as a dying god in the Myth of Dionysos, or reflected in the Cretan grave - so-called - of Zeus:
'The Cretans carved a tomb for thee, O holy and high! Liars, evil beasts, idle gormandisers!' For thou dost not die, thou art ever alive and steadfast: Yea, in thee we live and move and have our being.'
The second line is the line that is quoted in the letter to Titus. The passage seems to have deeply impressed itself on the mind of Paul. It was these prophetic voices in the literature of Greece that had moved him most profoundly.
The presence of these things in the writings of Paul ought to convince us that the Hellenist Jews were not despisers of the Greek culture. And, whether Paul had attended lectures in the University of Tarsus or no, it is clear evidence to us that his alert mind had drunk deep of the spirit of his age. Many a day when the young student Joseph came home from the lectures, he would be assailed by the eager questions of the younger Saul. And together they would talk gravely and earnestly about the meaning of life, this strange mystery the beginning and the end of which were lost in the mists of birth and death. What did the philosophers at the University say about it?
Human souls, they said, came to life upon the earth out of the bosom of the great Soul that animated the whole world. For the world was not a dead thing: it was alive; it had a mind that could think and reason. Anyone who looked long at the life of the world with earnest eyes could see that, they said. There was reason, intelligence in the plan on which the world was built. And for human souls, who in their power to think showed kinship with the Divine, the true life to live was not the life of the passions and the senses, but life according to reason, life according to Nature - a life of patience, self-sufficiency, calmness, serenity. Human souls when they died would be absorbed into the great Soul of the world again; for this Divine life was the only life that went on for ever and ever. Thus the only true life to live was a life attuned to that of the great Soul of Nature. ...
So these two lads talked about Eternal life. But it was sad and grey and gloomy teaching for young souls panting for more life and fuller. By way of contrast to it, the only system of thought that seemed to have religious attraction at the time was the Pythagorean. It was a reaction against the pantheistic conception, which meant the ultimate extinction of the soul. For Pythagoreanism maintained a doctrine of the transmigration of souls - a doctrine which said that souls at death were reincarnated in other bodies - the bodies of animals - to work out the evil entail of their previous life upon the earth. Often has the crux of philosophical contendings turned about this age-long problem of the soul's destiny. The young men weighed the contending views. The problem had become acute. It had for the most part slumbered unanswered in the bosom of their own Faith, and now that the question was awake, this ancient Faith, save for a few isolated cries, had nothing to offer that could give them lasting peace.
It came about that when Joseph had completed his studies at Tarsus, he was sent up to Jerusalem to be trained for Levitical service. This wealthy family of Cyprus had relatives in Jerusalem. Joseph bar-Nebo had an aunt, a sister of his father, who was married to a Jerusalemite. It was to the house of his father's sister that this rich young man would be sent to stay. Who was this lady?
It is here that the meaning of the digression in the story Paul told to his companions that day as they sailed under the lee of Cyprus becomes plain. It was to tell of the beginning of his acquaintanceship with the man who had been the cause of the rupture between himself and his friend. No doubt he was easing his heavy heart by accepting his share of the blame, nay, perhaps taking it all to himself. "It was sad and foolish," Paul was fain to confess, "and I was hasty; but it is all over now. Joseph bar-Nebo was too big-hearted a man to harbour a grudge, and we became good friends again " (cf. 1 Cor.ix.6). "From what I hear John Mark and he may be labouring at this hour in Cyprus. Perhaps I was too severe on Mark. By his labours he has re-instated himself in my good opinion. I wish I could see him again."
Paul's wish was by-and-by fulfilled. And in the sentence from his letters which makes this clear, we learn at last the exact connection between Joseph Bar-Nebo and the house of the Upper Room. "Aristarchus, my fellow-prisoner saluteth you," he writes to the Church in Colosse, "and Marcus, sister's son to Barnabas." Mark was Joseph's cousin. And the house where Joseph the student from Cyprus stayed when he was training for the office of Levite in the Holy City was the house of the Upper Room! The lady of the house, Joseph's aunt, is John Mark's mother. What memories begin to cluster about that house in Jerusalem! top
The hidden and romantic side of the story is still to come. It is an extraordinarily attractive story, and if nothing more than a great deal of likelihood can be claimed for it, it is nevertheless worth the telling.
After Joseph Bar-Nebo's training was over, he in due course became a Levite (Acts iv.36). This is the only time that a Levite is mentioned by name in the New Testament, and perhaps we shall find that Luke has a reason for so designating Joseph here. The Levites served at the altar in courses, and Joseph's fortnight would come round twice a year. Naturally the young man would no longer stay with his aunt, but would set up house for himself elsewhere. Now the place where a great many of the priests stayed during the eleven months when they were not on duty at the Temple, was not in Jerusalem but down in the pleasant garden city of Jericho, in the Jordan valley. They were always passing up and down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. It gives us a very vivid insight into the skill of Jesus as a storyteller to observe that when He told of the man who was waylaid by thieves on that road, He pictures the two who passed by on the other side as a priest and a Levite. Of course whenever Joseph came up to Jerusalem he would always pay a visit to his relatives in the house of the Upper Room. He was a big, strong, greathearted, friendly soul; no doubt his very much younger cousin John Mark adored him. He was the boy's hero; they were great friends.
We must build the next part of the story for ourselves. One day Joseph, when he called, found that something great and wonderful had happened in the home. His father's sister and her husband were transformed. They had always been serious-minded folk, but now they seemed full of some unutterable happiness. They could not tell their priestly nephew what it was, but neither could they hide it ; and the sight must have awakened the old yearnings in his heart - the yearning and questioning about life, that had troubled him in far-off Tarsus: how to win true life, life abiding and eternal, how to reach satisfaction. For this was what his uncle and aunt seemed to be - satisfied. And yet they were comparatively unimportant people. As for him, he had reached the height of his own and his father's ambition. He was a rich man ; he owned land; he had all that this life could give him in the way of ease and comfort. He was a minister of their holy religion in the Temple. But still he was not satisfied. He had often felt the hollowness and sham of all this gorgeous ceremony. And his associates, the priests, the Sadducees - so many of them were just greedy, grasping worldlings. They were anything but religious. They laughed mockingly at the thought of the life to come ; they believed it was all moonshine. Yes, something was lacking in his life - what was it? Perhaps the boy, John Mark, had let fall some innocent talk, about a gracious Stranger that had visited their home, and become the friend of his parents. Joseph had heard rumours of the Prophet of Galilee, extraordinary rumours they were. And he wondered if this could be He. And so down in his fine villa in Jericho, surrounded with luxury, he was restless, ill at ease. The old yearning had broken out again. ...
At length the Prophet of Galilee appeared in Jericho. It was on His return journey from the Feast of Booths; whither He had gone, not in a public capacity, but as a private pilgrim (cf. John vii.10, x.40). Returning to His headquarters in the Peraea, He must needs pass through Jericho. The inmates of the house of the Upper Room may have been friends of Jesus earlier than this, but certainly they must have known Him by the time of this Feast. For it was all but His last visit to the Holy City before the Passion, and they were familiar friends of His by then. Almost certainly He must have heard from these friends about the wealthy and noble young Levite with the unsatisfied heart, who sometimes talked with sighs about his old student days in Tarsus, and his Stoic philosophy of life, life according to Nature, life full and abiding, the life for which he longed and longed. Certain it is that Jesus went into a synagogue at Jericho, and rose to speak, on the ruler's invitation to the stranger. What was it that Jesus talked about that day? Have we no hint? A certain captious lawyer stood up at the close of His address, and asked, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life? " Does it not seem as if Jesus had deliberately chosen that as the theme of His address? Life, True Life, Life abiding and eternal? And it was in answer to the lawyer that He told the story of the Good Samaritan. Was it a mere chance thrust - that reference to the Levite who came and looked at the wounded man, and then - passed by? Perhaps the ruler of the Synagogue could tell!
Some months after, and somewhere in the neighbourhood of Jericho, as Jesus was coming out of a house on to the highway, a man of great possessions, who had evidently been on the outlook for Jesus, saw Him and ran after Him, and kneeling at His feet asked earnestly, anxiously, breathlessly, "Good Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life? " "Good Master?" Jesus answered. "Why do you call me good? Have you ever learned the true meaning of goodness? You have lived a moral life, you have possibly escaped the temptations that beset a young man's way. Perhaps you are beginning to think that goodness is just a human achievement, and easy. My son, God alone is good. All goodness comes from Him. Have you never found that out? - Have you kept all the commandments? And the man answered, wearily, disappointedly, "All these have I kept from my youth up. But I am not satisfied; what lack I yet?" And Jesus, when He looked into his noble, open, manly face, and saw the deep, deep questioning in his eyes, loved him. Yet the swift and terrible thrust followed: "Go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor. And come, follow me." And when the man heard it he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
Why is this disappointing story told in the Gospels - the story, seemingly, of Jesus' failure, His unsuccess? Was He in the long run unsuccessful with this suppliant? We cannot believe it. Unsatisfied, unhappy, in such deep, tragic earnestness about the highest things - and such a beautiful soul, for Jesus loved him at first sight; no, no, it cannot be the completed story. Look closer at the narrative and see. It has long been the fashion to pause at the words "he went away sorrowful,", as if that were the Gospel ending of the tale. But that is to miss the whole point of Mark's narrative. The true end of the story is Jesus' confident word, "With God all things are possible." John Mark would never have told it, if that were the end - that sorrowful departure. For though the other Gospels add some details, Mark's is the most moving story, and it forms the basis for the others' version. Not only has it this note of unwavering hopefulness at the end, but it is Mark alone who remembers the touching fact that Jesus loved him. And it is Mark who maintains the deepest reticence about the man. It looks as though he could have told the end of the story, if only it had come within the scope of his narrative about the earthly ministry of Jesus.
And what is the meaning of this reticence in the Gospels? None of them tell the man's name. The evangelists frequently manifest this delicacy of feeling. There is a Christian reserve of temper in the telling of the story of Judas, as if there were friends in the early circle of Christians whom unrestrained censure would have pained. There is a delicacy of reference to the case of the Magdalene, as if there were some prominent and loved member of the early Church whom it deeply concerned. But that is another story. The same reserve is apparent here. Is it the story of a prominent Christian among the early followers of the Nazarene? He was known in the early Church, though Mark merely calls him "one" (εἷς - an Aramaism which reveals that it was so he had been named in the first telling of the story). For in Matthew, the Palestinian Gospel, the Gospel of the Jerusalem Church, it is noted that he was young (Matt xix.20, 22), and Luke knew all about him, too, for he alone tells us that he was a ruler (ἄρχων - archon), i.e., a synagogue ruler, in all probability.
Is the reason for John Mark's reticence that the man was his own cousin Joseph? If Jesus loved him as He gazed on the noble form, might he not well be the man whom the citizens of Lystra mistook for a god in the likeness of men? We should expect the cousin of Mark to be a young man at the time of this incident. And who more likely to be a ruler of a synagogue in Jericho than a Levite, a man of wealth and lands, who had made Jericho his home?
It was a man of great possessions, himself seeking to fulfil the divine stewardship, who first suggested this solution of the story to the writer. "Do you not think," he said, "that this rich young ruler came at last to Christ in the days that followed Calvary?" And together we turned to the book of Acts (iv.32), and read these words: "Now there was but one heart and soul among all those who had embraced the faith; none of them claimed any of his possessions as his own, they shared all they had with one another. And in fact there was not a needy man among them, for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the money which they realised, laying it before the feet of the Apostles; it was then distributed according to each one's need. Thus Joseph, who was surnamed Barnabas, or (as it may be translated) 'Son of Encouragement,' by the Apostles, a Levite of Cypriote birth, sold an estate which he had, and brought the money, which he placed before the feet of the Apostles.'"
The first rich man to sell his possessions and give to the poor when he gave his whole heart to Jesus! Doubtless it was in the Upper Room this incident occurred - the place where Jesus had manifested Himself to His disciples after Calvary. It was the nearest possible to a literal fulfilling of the command, "Sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me" - the nearest possible with the Cross between. As we watch the dramatic and sacramental action, do we not feel constrained to say, "This is the rich young ruler at last"? We can almost hear his confession to the Apostles: "I have resolved to become a follower of your Master, Christ. Weeks ago I sought Him out, and asked the way to eternal life. But His command seemed too hard for me, too high. 'It is too difficult,' I said in self-justification. 'It would spoil and wrong the poor.' In truth, I - I was reluctant to part with my all. But He has made it easy for me. What is my poor wealth beside the wealth He poured to the death for us men, for me? What possessions of mind, what riches of heart, what power of will, what purity, what love! A king's ransom - a God's ransom, it was! And I come because He calls - I have felt His call again. Here in this place, where He came back to you after death, where His blessed presence was felt, was seen, I come to lay my possessions at your feet - at His feet. He knows the rest. Henceforward I am His - I give myself to His cause; always and only now, all that I have, all that I am, is His."
"Son of Encouragement," the Apostles called him. It is a happy pun upon his ancestral name: bar-Nebo becomes bar-Nabas indeed. What would be more heartening to the disciples than to have had this great acquisition in the early days - at Pentecost? The Lord Jesus completing an unfinished story! And not merely a man of possessions, but a Temple Levite: what would Jesus not yet accomplish? And when Luke reminds us that he was a Levite, may he not be referring back significantly to that word inserted in his Gospel alone - "a ruler"? And the man proved a tower of strength to the early Church. He had the prophetic gift - "full of the Holy Spirit and of faith" - able to exercise the function of comfort, exhortation. Everybody trusted him. Large-hearted, courageously reaching the hand of fellowship to his old friend Saul, the converted persecutor - saving him from ostracism, saving him for the Gospel ministry. And when Saul, disheartened by his reception in Jerusalem, slipped away home to Tarsus, and spent eleven years there, doubtless witnessing to the new faith, but lost apparently to the Church, it was Barnabas, labouring among the Gentiles in Antioch, who remembered him and went off with unwearied hope to Tarsus; found him, and brought him to Antioch - to become the great Apostle of the Gentiles by-and-by. Fail? Nay, Jesus had not despaired of Barnabas when he turned away sorrowful, but found him out - after the Cross - at Pentecost. Jesus did not fail. Jesus had reserved a great role for the rich young man to play in the founding and spreading of His Kingdom in the world. Yes, truly with God all things are possible!
"I pleaded outlaw-wise, By many a hearted casement, curtained red, Trellised with intertwining charities; (For though I knew His love who followed, Yet was I sore adread Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside). But, if one little casement parted wide, The gust of His approach would clash it to. Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue. ... Nigh and nigh draws the chase, With unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, And past those noised feet A voice comes yet more fleet? "Lo! naught contents Thee, who content'st not Me!"
An afterword to the story may be permitted, ere the chapter closes. For the marks of probability are not yet exhausted. There is another fact which brings the likelihood close to the verge of certainty. Barnabas was known in the early Church as an Apostle. Now, besides the Twelve, there are only four, at the very utmost six, men to whom that title is ever applied in the New Testament. What was it that gave one the right to the name in the eyes of the first Christians? A definite and direct call of God felt and recognised by the Church as such was no doubt necessary. And Barnabas did receive such a sacramentally recognised call (Acts i.3). But there are others equally graced by the Spirit who are not called Apostles in the New Testament. No doubt also they had to be men whose works showed the visible signs and fruits of Apostleship. Paul appeals to that when he makes his own claim (2 Cor..12). But many powerful evangelists, who did great work, as recorded in the New Testament, were nevertheless not called Apostles.
There was one definite and decisive test of apostleship, which strictly limited the possession of the title to a few. When the disciples proceeded to elect one to fill the vacant place of Judas, they laid down this condition: the candidates must be chosen from "the men who have been associated with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, from the Baptism of John down to the day when He was taken up from us ... a witness to His resurrection." These were the qualifications which Matthias, and no doubt also his fellow-nominee, Joseph Bar-sabbas (surnamed Justus) possessed. Briefly, they must have seen Jesus and received His risen Spirit. It may not be possible to say with certainty that Andronicus and Juntas, whom Paul calls his " fellow-countrymen and fellow-prisoners, men of note among the Apostles, who have been in Christ longer than I," were actually Apostles; though, since they were in Christ before him, they were probably in the company of the Upper Room on whom the Holy Spirit fell, and may have been first followers of Jesus (Rom.xvi.7).
It is possible, though doubtful, that Silas had received the designation (1 Thess.ii.6), but it is very likely that he had been one of the Seventy, and so would also answer to this test. It is these qualifications no doubt which entitled James, the brother of the Lord, to be called an Apostle later. But besides these just mentioned there are only two others named " Apostles" in the New Testament - Paul and Barnabas. Does Paul answer to this test? Let him speak for himself - "Am not I an apostle?" he writes to the Corinthians, "... have not I seen Jesus Christ our Lord?" (1 Cor.ix.1.). It may have been that he saw Christ in the flesh (2 Cor.v.16), but in any case he claims here his vivid vision of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus as a sufficient fulfilment of the test (cf. 1 Cor.xv.8). Barnabas seems to have been finally won for Christ at Pentecost, but though he may have shared the Pentecostal experience, which was a demonstration of the resurrection, there was no actual vision of Christ at that time. Thus, if we are to claim for him a complete fulfilment of the test, we must postulate some actual contact with Jesus in the days of His flesh. May not the story we have told here plead to be recognised as the circumstance that makes good that claim?