Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 13:46

"And Paul and Barnabas spake out boldly, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first be spoken to you. Seeing ye thrust it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles." — Acts 13:46 (ASV)

In response to the Jews’ abuse and blasphemy, Paul and Barnabas asserted their new policy—“To the Jews first, but also to the Gentiles”—a policy that had begun with the conversion of Sergius Paulus and had evidently been discussed by the missioners on the way from Paphos to Pisidian Antioch (see comment on v.13). There is evidence from the fifth century Latin commentator Jerome that this policy of preaching first to Jews and then to Gentiles, though initiated on Paul’s first missionary journey and not in Jerusalem, was acknowledged very early even among certain Jewish Christians at Jerusalem.

As Paul and Barnabas saw it, the Jews of Pisidian Antioch in their exclusiveness had rejected the very thing they were looking for—“eternal life.” Now, however, the Gospel must be directed to the Gentiles, for included in its mandate is the promise of Isa 49:6, that God’s servant will be “a light for the Gentiles” and a bringer of salvation” to the ends of the earth” (cf. Lk 2:28-32). It was, of course, Jesus of Nazareth who was uniquely God’s Servant and who was at work through his Spirit in the church, completing what he had begun and also making the missioners God’s servants and inheritors of the promise in Isa 49:6.