《Expositor’s Dictionary of Texts - Acts》(William R. Nicoll)
Commentator
Sir William Robertson Nicoll CH (October 10, 1851 - May 4, 1923) was a Scottish Free Church minister, journalist, editor, and man of letters.
Nicoll was born in Lumsden, Aberdeenshire, the son of a Free Church minister. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and graduated MA at the University of Aberdeen in 1870, and studied for the ministry at the Free Church Divinity Hall there until 1874, when he was ordained minister of the Free Church at Dufftown, Banffshire. Three years later he moved to Kelso, and in 1884 became editor of The Expositor for Hodder & Stoughton, a position he held until his death.
In 1885 Nicoll was forced to retire from pastoral ministry after an attack of typhoid had badly damaged his lung. In 1886 he moved south to London, which became the base for the rest of his life. With the support of Hodder and Stoughton he founded the British Weekly, a Nonconformist newspaper, which also gained great influence over opinion in the churches in Scotland.
Nicoll secured many writers of exceptional talent for his paper (including Marcus Dods, J. M. Barrie, Ian Maclaren, Alexander Whyte, Alexander Maclaren, and James Denney), to which he added his own considerable talents as a contributor. He began a highly popular feature, "Correspondence of Claudius Clear", which enabled him to share his interests and his reading with his readers. He was also the founding editor of The Bookman from 1891, and acted as chief literary adviser to the publishing firm of Hodder & Stoughton.
Among his other enterprises were The Expositor's Bible and The Theological Educator. He edited The Expositor's Greek Testament (from 1897), and a series of Contemporary Writers (from 1894), and of Literary Lives (from 1904).
He projected but never wrote a history of The Victorian Era in English Literature, and edited, with T. J. Wise, two volumes of Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century. He was knighted in 1909, ostensibly for his literrary work, but in reality probably more for his long-term support for the Liberal Party. He was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 1921 Birthday Honours.
00 Introduction
01 Chapter 1
The Acts of the Apostles
Acts 1:1
The keynote to the book of the Acts of the Apostles lies in the word ἢρξατο of the first verse. That ἤρξατο is not pleonastic. It is the acts "which Jesus began," but has not finished.
—Dr. John Duncan, Colloquia Peripatetica, p138.
Reference.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p162.
Witnesses of the Resurrection—The Message to a Few
Acts 1
It would seem that our Lord gave His attention to a few, because, if the few be gained, the many will follow. To these few He showed Himself again and again. These He restored, comforted, warned, inspired. He formed them unto Himself, that they might show forth His praise. This His gracious procedure is opened to us in the first words of the book of the Acts. "To the Apostles whom He had chosen He showed Himself alive after His Passion by many infallible proofs; being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God." Consider, then, if we may state the alternative reverently, which of the two seems the more likely way, even according to a human Wisdom of Solomon , of forming preachers of the Gospel to all nations—the exhibition of the Resurrection to the Jewish people generally, or this intimate private certifying of it to a few? And remember that, as far as we can understand, the two procedures were inconsistent with each other; for that period of preparatory prayer, meditation, and instruction, which the Apostles passed under our Lord"s visible presence for forty days, was to them what it could not have been, had they been following Him from place to place in public, supposing there had been an object in this, and mixing in the busy crowds of the world.
—J. H. Newman.
References.—I:1.—Newman Smyth, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p387. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p238. I:1 , 2.—A. Maclaren, The Wearied Christ, p9.
Easter Commands
Acts 1:1-3
It is these Easter commands of our Lord Jesus Christ that I want to bring before you. They have all to do with service and with active work. They are very different to the Gethsemane commands. The Gethsemane commands had to do with resignation, with submission, with warfare. "Watch and pray." "Pray that ye enter not into temptation." "Put up thy sword into the sheath."
I. The first Easter command, the great Easter command, we had almost said the only Easter command, because it stands out pre-eminently above all the rest, is simply this: Go and tell. It is repeated again and again, but, alas! not once too often, as the lethargy of the Christian Church for nineteen hundred years doth signify. It is addressed to all classes. Go and tell. And the command comes to us today. It is given to all, to the women, to the men, to the Magdalene, to the Apostles, to the whole Church.
II. The second Easter command you will find in the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Luke , and in the thirty-ninth verse. "Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; handle Me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have." Jesus Christ will not have you go forth and obey the first command without having given you the means, first of all, to satisfy yourself as to the truth of the message which you are to deliver. You are to be thoroughly convinced yourself.
III. The third command you have in the twentieth chapter of St. John , and in the twenty-second verse. Jesus Christ, we read, "breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." This third command seems to teach me this: If you are to Go and tell, you must not only be intellectually convinced, you must be essentially united to your Lord and Master Himself, you must have His life flowing through your life.
IV. The fourth command is in the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Luke , and in the forty-ninth verse. "Behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you; but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." Christian work is no mere fanatical enthusiasm, Christian work is no mere feverish running hither and thither. Christian work is going forth calmly and quietly, living, speaking, working in the power of God the Holy Ghost.
—E. A. Stuart, The True Citizen and other Sermons, vol. ix. p177.
References.—I:2.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p314; ibid. (7th Series), vol. vi. p235. I:3.—H. Bailey, The Gospel of the Kingdom, p42. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p147. G. Bellett, Parochial Sermons, p177. Scottish Review, vol. ii. p412. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. pp145 , 508.
The Promise of the Father (For the Sunday after Ascension Day)
Acts 1:4
In old time this Sunday was sometimes called Expectation Sunday, because on it the Church recalls our thoughts to the disciples of our Lord waiting in expectancy for the promised gift of the Holy Spirit. We are told that those days of waiting were days of gladness and rejoicing, days of worship and prayer and praise. But surely they must also have been days tinged with anxiety, days of wonder when the great experience of which they had been warned would take place. Those men and women had passed through great experiences, moral and spiritual, during the year or two that was passed. Entirely new views of life and religion had opened out to them. Sin and moral evil had acquired new aspects. They had learned that God was to them a Father—tender, loving, patient, forgiving, claiming and seeking the response of their devotion. They were coming to see that as they stood related to Him whom they had owned as Teacher and Friend, so they were related to God and to eternity. But they had had experiences of another kind also. They had had great hopes, and their hopes had often been disappointed. Once indeed on the dark day of Calvary their hopes had been utterly dashed to pieces. Then came the unspeakable thrill of the unimagined surprise of the Easter Day. Surely that must be the climax, they would think. Could there be anything greater or richer or fuller in human experience than the moment when they saw the risen Lord? Then followed the wonderful experiences of the Forty Days, so blessed, so reassuring, when all unexpected Jesus would be standing in their midst, breathing upon them His benediction of peace, teaching them that they lived on the frontier of two worlds, or, if you prefer it, teaching them that this firm, solid earth was interpenetrated by the spiritual. And so experience upon experience was theirs, and yet there was still a greater, the greatest of all, to follow—the coming of the Spirit. How could they help asking questions? How could they forbear wanting to know more? What may be the end of it all? Direct answers were denied them. They were told to wait—to wait and see—to endure the discipline of expectancy which would in the Providence of God unfold its revelation and bring its own experience and power and blessing.
I. The Age-Long Lesson.—"Wait for the promise of the Father." This is the agelong lesson that each generation of man has to learn as it steps on the stage of human history, and it is a lesson that seems as difficult to learn now as ever it was in the far-off Old Testament times, when the years and the centuries went by and the redeemer came not. In every age the hearts and hopes of earnest men are strained to breaking-point because it seems to them that the cause of the Christ moves too slowly, and that the apparently unheeding God seems not to hear nor to answer. How good men must have felt this impatience in the fourth century, when the Arian heresy was ever raising up its head! How good men feel it today when they consider the difficulties and the slowness which beset the advance of the kingdom of Christ in the world, or hinder the reunion of our divided Christendom! But the truest goodness is content to wait for the promise of the Father, casting its burden upon the Lord, knowing that the cause is His, and that, to use Bishop Butler"s words, "He accomplishes His ends by slow, successive steps".
II. The Command to Wait.—"Wait for the promise of the Father"—that is the word, the impression that I would seek to leave with you. Wait! Ah! of course we have to wait, you may cry, for we cannot help ourselves; but none the less does our nature rebel against the delay. We hate the word and method alike in our hurrying, impatient time, when we desire to solve our problems and win our experiences the day after tomorrow. Yet it is both Christ"s Word and Christ"s method. It is the Word and method we need, not only for our great public questions, whether of Church and possibly of State, but certainly for the inward experiences of the soul"s life. Who of us is not seeking fuller, richer personal knowledge of God and of His Holy Spirit"s working? Who of us does not long to be more sure of Christ as Saviour and Lord, more sure of the things which are unseen and eternal? We sometimes look up with straining eyes and ears, but the heavens are as brass above us. What can we do? One thing it is clear we cannot do. We cannot force or manufacture spiritual experience any more than the disciples could by themselves obtain the Spirit which only God could bestow. Like them we must "wait for the promise of the Father". But like them we must learn, if we would go on from strength to strength, that waiting is no mere idle, listless dreaming or gazing up into heaven, but rather the maintenance of the attitude, the making of the atmosphere, in which alone the still small voice of the Spirit of God may reach our consciences, and strengthen our wills, and purify our affections, and inspire our souls.
—The Primus of Scotland (Dr. Robberds, Church Family Newspaper, 2June, 1911).
Waiting (For Ascension-tide)
Acts 1:4
That deep spiritual intention, which we have seen to underlie all the incidents of Christ"s life, extends itself, no less, to that remarkable interval of "ten days" that followed its close. That parenthesis between the ascension of our Lord and the coming of the Holy Ghost, in other words, between the visible and the spiritual presence of Christ in His Church, always appears to me a passage which it is very important to read aright It was a singular one—at least, it must have appeared very singular to the disciples at the time. Look at the circumstances, place yourselves in the disciples" position, and you will reel the peculiar character of that "waiting".
God appoints intervals, intervals as they relate to our little minds, though all an equal part in His great plan; and the right view and the proper duty of these intervals is an essential part of the Christian"s education.
I. It may be you are a Man Lately Awakened to a deep sense of sin You have gone, as you never went before, as a sinner to Christ—you have cast yourself at His feet—you have believed on Him as your Saviour, and assuredly you are at this moment a forgiven man. You have entered into the promise. God loves yon, and you are quite safe. But do you feel it? Do you realise your forgiveness and your acceptance? Are you forthwith happy? Perhaps not at all. You cannot receive it. You are at peace with God; but you do not feel you are at peace. You are reconciled; but you are not comforted. Jesus has done all for you; but you do not know it. And this may go on for, what seems to you, a weary while. I cannot say how long. Forgiveness, but no joy—grace, but no rest—till the Spirit comes—till the Spirit comes and reveals it to your heart, and makes you to see and feel that all along it was a fact, but it was a fact hidden from you, till the Spirit showed it you—that Christ is yours and you are Christ"s. Need I say that that interval between Christ"s cleansing and. the Spirit manifesting it is a very critical period in a believer"s life?