Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 1

The former treatise.—Literally, word, or discourse; but the English of the text is, perhaps, a happier equivalent than either. The Greek term had been used by Xenophon (Anab. ii. 1; Cyrop. viii. 1, 2) as St. Luke uses it, for what we would call the several “Books” or portions of his Histories. The adjective is strictly “first” rather than “former,” and the tense of the verb, “I made,” rather than “I have made.”

O Theophilus.—See Note on Luke 1:3. It has been thought that the absence of the words “most excellent” implies that the writer’s friendship with Theophilus was now of a more intimate and familiar nature. It is possible, just as a similar change of relation has been traced in Shakespeare’s dedication of his two poems to the Earl of Southampton, but the inference is, in each case, somewhat precarious.

That Jesus began both to do and teach.—The verb “begin” is specially characteristic of St. Luke’s Gospel, in which it occurs not less than thirty-one times. Its occurrence at the beginning of the Acts is, accordingly, as far as it goes, an indication of identity of authorship. He sought his materials from those who had been from the beginning eye-witnesses and ministers of the word (Luke 1:2).

Until the day in which he was taken up.—We notice, as a matter of style, the same periodic structure that we found in the opening of the Gospel, made more conspicuous in the Greek by an arrangement of the words which places “he was taken up” at the close of the sentence. On the word “taken up,” see Note on Luke 9:51.

That he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments.—The words admit of two possible meanings:

1. that the work of “commanding” was left to the Holy Spirit, guiding the spirits of the disciples into all the truth;
2. that in His human nature the Lord Jesus, after, as before, His passion, spoke as one who was filled with the Holy Ghost (Luke 4:1), to whom the Father had given the Spirit not by measure (John 3:34).

As the Apostles were still waiting for the promised gift, the latter aspect of the words is, we can scarcely doubt, that which was intended by the writer.

After His passion.—Literally, after He had suffered. The English somewhat anticipates the later special sense of “passion.”

By many infallible proofs.—There is no adjective in the Greek corresponding to “infallible,” but the noun is one that was used by writers on rhetoric (for example, Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.2) for proofs that carried certainty of conviction with them, as contrasted with those that were only probable or circumstantial. No other New Testament writer uses it.

Being seen by them forty days.—St. Luke uses a peculiar and unusual word (it occurs twice in the LXX: 1 Kings 8:8 and Tobit 12:19) for “being seen,” perhaps with the wish to imply that the presence was not continuous, and that our Lord was seen only at intervals. This may be noted as the only passage that gives the time between the Resurrection and the Ascension.

It had its counterpart in the forty days of the Temptation in the wilderness (Luke 4:2), just as that period also had its precedent in the earlier histories of Moses (Exodus 24:18; Deuteronomy 9:9; Deuteronomy 9:18) and Elijah (1 Kings 19:8).

There was a certain symbolic fitness in the time of triumph on earth coinciding with that of special conflict. If we ask what was the character—if one may say so—of our Lord’s risen life between His manifestation to the disciples, the history of the earlier forty days partly suggests the answer.

Then, as before, we may believe His life was one of solitude and communion with His Father, no longer tried and tempted, as it had been then, by contact with the power of evil. It was a life of intercession, such as that which expressed itself in the great prayer of John 17.

Where He spent His days and nights, we can only reverently conjecture. Analogy suggests the desert places and mountain heights of Galilee (Luke 4:42; Luke 6:12). The mention of Bethany in Luke 24:50, and of the Mount of Olives in Acts 1:12, makes it probable that Gethsemane may have been one of the scenes that witnessed the joy of the victory, as it had witnessed before the agony of the conflict.

The things pertaining to the kingdom of God.—This implies, it is obvious, much unrecorded teaching. What is recorded points to:

1. The true interpretation of the prophecies of the Messiah (Luke 24:27; Luke 24:44–45);
2. The extension of the mission of the disciples to the whole Gentile world, and their admission to the Kingdom by baptism (Matthew 28:19);
3. The promises of supernatural powers and divine protection (Mark 16:15–18);
4. His own perpetual presence with His Church (Matthew 28:20).

And, being assembled together with them.—The manuscripts present two forms of the participle: one with the meaning given in the English version; the other, though an inferior reading, with the sense of “dwelling together with” the disciples. The Vulgate, convescens, “eating with,” probably rests on a mistaken etymology of the Greek term. The whole verse is in substance a repetition of Luke 24:49 (see the notes on that verse).

John truly baptized with water.—See Note on Matthew 3:11. The words threw the disciples back upon their recollection of their first admission to the Kingdom. Some of them, at least, must have remembered also the teaching which had told them of the new birth of water and of the Spirit (John 3:3–5). Now they were told that their spirits were to be as fully baptized, i.e., plunged, into the power of the Divine Spirit, as their bodies had then been plunged in the waters of the Jordan. And this was to be not many days hence. The time was left undefined, as a discipline to their faith and patience. They were told that it would not be long, lest faith and patience should fail.