Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Acts 18:27

Acts 18:27. And when he was disposed to pass into Achaia. No doubt it was to Corinth, where Apollos knew the early stories of a great and flourishing church had been laid by the very Paul of whom he had heard so much from Priscilla and her husband. He felt that there was a great work for him to do.

The brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him. It is an open question whether the Greek here should not be translated, ‘The brethren exhorted him and wrote to the disciples to receive him.' One very ancient MS. (I), Beza) contains here the following remarkable reading: ‘And certain Corinthians sojourning in Ephesus, after hearing him [Apollos], besought him to pass over with them into their country; and after he consented, the Ephesians wrote to the disciples in Corinth to receive the man.' This is the first instance we possess of the ‘letters of commendation' which afterwards became so usual throughout the Christian Church. Professor Plumptre, in his comment on 2 Corinthians 3:1, observes on these ἐπιστολαὶ ουστατικαί that they deserve notice ‘as an important element in the organisation of the early Church; a Christian travelling with such a letter from any church was certain to find a welcome in any other. They guaranteed at once his soundness in the faith and his personal character, and served to give a reality to the belief in the “communion of saints” as the necessary sequel to the recognition of a Catholic or universal Church. It is significant of the part they had played in the social victory of the Christian Church, that Julian tried to introduce them into the decaying system of Paganism which he sought to galvanize into an imitative life' (Sozomen, History, Acts 5:16).

St. Paul apparently refers to these letters of commendation granted to Apollos when about to proceed to Corinth, in his second letter to the Corinthian Church, Acts 3:1.

Who, when he was come, helped them much which had believed through grace. The concluding words, ‘through grace,' should be closely joined with ‘helped them.' They were added apparently by the inspired writer of these ‘Acts,' to impress on the reader that the real assistance, after all, which this eloquent and skilled man afforded to the believers of Corinth, was owing neither to his winning eloquence nor deep learning, but to the grace of God, to the Divine influence. St. Paul, with his usual generosity, bears his noble tribute to the work done by the man whom some wished to set up as his rival: ‘I have planted, Apollos watered;' and, ‘I have laid the foundation and another buildeth thereon' (1 Corinthians 3:6-10).

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Acts 18:27

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