Acts 11:24

“Because he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and faith.” Here we see confirmed the significant fact that the apostles and primitive saints all recognized the Holy Ghost as the sovereign Arbiter in every matter of doubt and controversy, and that they dared not put their hand on the ark of God. Here we see that Barnabas unhesitatingly acquiesces in a downright innovation. While the grace of God, in Judaism, had always been free to the Gentiles, yet they must receive it by way of proselytism into the Mosaic church. Now Barnabas sees an institution which had stood fifteen hundred years unimpeached, literally ignored and relegated to oblivion. That looked like smashing up all the honored and sacred institutions of his fathers, yet we hear Barnabas shouting an uproarious “Amen!” and pronouncing his blessings on the whole procedure, importunately exhorting them to abide in the way they had started out. Why was this? Simply because “Barnabas was a good man, full of the Holy Ghost and faith”; consequently he had the inward light of the Spirit to discriminate the hand of God and recognize His work wherever he saw it. Knowing well that all the apostles submitted to the Holy Ghost in everything great and small, he felt perfectly free to give his endorsement to the Gentile innovation in the name of the Apostolic church.