Acts 11:23,24

The grace of God,— The happy effects of the divine goodness, in taking such a number of uncircumcised Gentiles into the Christian church. Barnabas, like a true son of exhortation, exhorted them to persevere with steadfastness and resolution;—to adhere to the Lord with full determination of heart; and indeed he was a very proper man to be sent among these converts; for he was not only a Cypriot, and born on Gentile ground, but he was a man of great benignity and sweetness of temper— Ανηρ αγαθος,— and on these accounts less bigoted to his own, and against the Gentile converts, and less likely to lay any unnecessary burden upon them.