Acts 8
8:1-13. Jesus had told his disciples that they would be his witnesses, “…in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” (Acts 1:8). In Jerusalem, as the persecution had begun, an angel of the Lord had told them to “stand and speak.” (5:20). Now, with the murder of Stephen, these Greek speaking Jews were being scattered, spreading the gospel as they went, in obedience to Jesus’ words, “Whenever they persecute you in this city, flee to the next.” (Mt.10:23). And so with Philip (not the apostle, who stayed in Jerusalem (1), but Philip the deacon), we see the good news spread to Samaria, and even into the court of the queen of Ethiopia (27).
Even Simon, the master of magic arts, was constantly amazed at the great miracles of cleansing and healing taking place through Philip, and he believed and was baptized (13). However shallow his belief proved to be, it did extend to this; that we have the expert testimony of this master of magic that the miracles he observed were real, not magic arts. That much he believed.
8:14-25. (Cf. Acts 19:1-7). There are difficulties and mystery in these verses, but there do seem to be some clear principles: 1. Simon believed, and was baptized on that basis. Philip could not know, nor did he need to know, the true condition of Simon’s heart. God alone judges the heart. A man is initiated into the church upon a credible confession of belief. 2. Baptism is no guarantee of salvation if the heart is not right with God (21-23). (The same applies to the Lord’s Supper, cf. 1 Cor.11:27, 29). 3. The receiving of the Holy Spirit spoken of here (15-17) seems to be uniquely connected to the laying on of the apostles’ hands. Philip, though he had great gifts of the Spirit, could not cause the kind of visible receiving of the Holy Spirit that seems to be the case here. No apostles, no visible bestowing of the Spirit (18). This was a matter of apostolic authority (19). 4. Clearly, the NT teaches that the Holy Spirit, which is the greatest gift, and essential to salvation, has regenerated all true believers. But that is an invisible work that had accompanied the work Philip was already doing before Peter and John came, and which brought salvation to the Ethiopian eunuch by Philip’s opening the Scripture without help of apostle or miraculous sign. The church would not forever have the apostles, or the visible signs that the Spirit poured out to confirm their authority. What we do have is their life giving Spirit inspired testimony, the completed Holy Scripture.
8:26-40. The Ethiopian eunuch was most likely born a Jew. Philip heard him reading Isaiah aloud. Reading aloud was expected in the ancient world, where books were expensive and most people unable to read. Augustine of Hippo comments on this in his Confessions. As a young man, he became a great admirer of Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, and says this about him. “When he sat reading, his eyes moved across the pages and his mind sought out their meaning, but his lips and tongue were silent.” After speculating about several reasons for such odd behavior, Augustine writes, “But whatever his reasons for doing, in such a man, they must have been good.”
The eunuch read aloud from the Greek translation (LXX). Its slight variance from the later Hebrew text (MT) from which our English OT is rendered would have made Is.53:8 very personal to the eunuch. “Who shall relate His generation? For His life is removed from the earth” (33). He knew the humiliation of being cut off from worship, not being allowed into the temple beyond the court of the Gentiles (Dt.23:1). Most painfully, he knew the impossibility of the natural generation of life. But none of this kept him from being born again by the power of the Holy Spirit, as Jesus was preached to him from the Scripture. And all his rights as a true member of Christ’s body were signed and sealed to him in baptism.
8:39-40. The Spirit snatched Philip away. Cf. Ezek.3:12ff. Perhaps Caesarea was Philip’s hometown? We know he later lived there and raised a family (Acts 21:8-9).