John Calvin Commentary Acts 13:17

"The God of this people Israel chose our fathers, and exalted the people when they sojourned in the land of Egypt, and with a high arm led he them forth out of it." — Acts 13:17 (ASV)

The God of this people. This preface testified that Paul was undertaking no new thing that might lead the people away from the law of Moses. There is but one God, who is God of all nations; but he calls him God of that people to whom he had bound himself, and who was worshipped among the posterity of Abraham, among whom alone true and pure religion was to be found.

To the same end tends that which is added immediately, He chose our fathers. For he testifies by these words that he seeks nothing less than to ensure they do not fall away from the true and living God, who has separated them from the rest of the world. Nor do I doubt that he expressed more clearly that he was not preaching to them an unknown or strange God, but the same who revealed himself long ago to their fathers. Thus, he briefly comprehends the sound knowledge of God, grounded in the law, so that their faith, derived from the law and prophets, may continue firm.

Nevertheless, he meanwhile commends and sets forth the free love of God toward that people. For how did it happen that only the children of Abraham were the Church and inheritance of God, except because it pleased God to separate them from other nations? For there was no worthiness to distinguish them; but the difference began with the love of God, with which he freely loved Abraham.

Moses often reminds the Jews of this free love of God, as in Deuteronomy 4:7, 8, 10, 14, 32, 34, and in other places; in this, God set before us a mirror of his wonderful counsel, in that, finding no excellence in Abraham, an obscure person and miserable idolater, he nevertheless preferred him above all the world. Furthermore, this election was common to all the people, as was also circumcision, by which God adopted to himself the seed of Abraham. But there was also a more hidden election, by which, separating to himself a few of the many children of Abraham, he declared that not all who came from the seed of Abraham according to the flesh are reckoned in the spiritual stock.

He did drive out a people. Paul teaches that all those benefits which God afterwards bestowed upon the Jews proceeded and flowed from that free favor which he bore toward their fathers. For this was the cause that they were delivered by the wonderful power of God, and brought by his hand into the possession of the land of Canaan, after he had driven out so many nations for their sake. For it is no small matter for the land to be deprived of its inhabitants, so that it might receive strangers. This is the fountain and root of all good things to which Paul calls us: that God chose the fathers. This was the reason and cause that moved God to such great patience, that he would not cast off that rebellious people, who otherwise would have destroyed themselves a thousand times with their own wickedness. Therefore, when the Scripture mentions that their sins were pardoned, it says that God remembered his covenant. He says that they were exalted, though they were strangers, so that they might remember how worthy and glorious their deliverance was.