Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 9:31

"So the church throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria had peace, being edified; and, walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, was multiplied." — Acts 9:31 (ASV)

Luke’s second panel of material on the martyrdom of Stephen, the early ministries of Philip, and the conversion of Saul ends with a summary statement that speaks of the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria (an expression for all of the Jewish homeland of Palestine) enjoying a time of peace after the turbulence resulting from what happened to these three pivotal figures. Here also he insists that the church in the homeland, instead of being torn apart, “was strengthened; and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord.” Panel 3—Advances of the Gospel in Palestine-Syria (9:32–12:24) In his portrayal of the gradual widening of the Christian mission from its strictly Jewish beginnings to its ultimate Gentile outreach, Luke presents in this third panel three episodes of the Gospel’s advance: (1) the ministry of Peter in the maritime plain of Palestine (9:32–43), (2) the conversion of a Roman centurion and his friends at Caesarea (10:1–11:18), and (3) the founding of the church at Antioch of Syria (11:19–30). Two notes are sounded in these episodes of advance. (1) The Gospel was now spreading into areas more distant from Jerusalem than before. (2) The second, and undoubtedly the more important, has to do with the attitude of the converts and that of the missioners. Then, before moving on to speak of the distinctive advances of the Gospel within the Gentile world through the ministry of his hero Paul, Luke again returns to an account of the circumstances at Jerusalem and gives two vignettes of God’s continued working on behalf of his people there (12:1–23). Luke seems to be trying to make the point that though his interest is in tracing the movement of the early Christian mission from Jerusalem to Rome, his readers are not to assume that God was finished with Jerusalem Christianity or that his divine activity within the Jewish world had come to an end—a point all too often ignored by Christians since then. Finally, Luke summarizes the material in this third panel with the following statement: “But the word of God continued to increase and spread” (12:24).