Acts 21:8

Note

Bound for Jerusalem after Miletus, Paul's company sails from Tyre to Ptolemais and goes on to Caesarea. There they stay with a man Luke calls the evangelist. He is the only person in the New Testament who bears that title.

Philip was one of the seven men the Jerusalem church chose to oversee the daily distribution to its widows (Acts 6:5). Scattered after Stephen's death, he "proclaimed the Christ" in Samaria (Acts 8:5), told the Ethiopian on the desert road the good news about Jesus, and preached the gospel in every town from Azotus to Caesarea (Acts 8:40). Some twenty years later he is still living in Caesarea, with four unmarried daughters who prophesied (Acts 21:9). And his guest is Paul, once Saul, who had approved of Stephen's death and set out to destroy the church (Acts 8:1–3), the persecution that drove Philip out of Jerusalem in the first place.

"Evangelist" is euangelistēs (εὐαγγελιστής), a noun built on the verb "to bring good news" with an ending that means "one who does it." It appears only three times in the New Testament: here; in the list of those Christ gave His church, "some to be evangelists" (Ephesians 4:11); and in Paul's charge to Timothy, "do the work of an evangelist" (2 Timothy 4:5). Acts explains the title by Philip's life. In chapter 8 the verb euangelizomai tells three times what Philip did (verses 12, 35 and 40).

The KJV reads, "And the next day we that were of Paul's company departed, and came unto Cæsarea: and we entered into the house of Philip the evangelist, which was one of the seven." "That were of Paul's company" (hoi peri ton Paulon) stands only in the Textus Receptus; the BSB, without it, simply says "we." The BSB capitalizes "the Seven," treating them as a recognized group. Acts 6 never calls these men deacons; the noun diakonos does not appear there, though their task was to wait on tables (diakonein). The church has long regarded them as the first deacons, and Wesley calls Philip "one of the seven deacons" Wesley.

Wesley also defines the title: "An evangelist is a preacher of the Gospel to those who had never heard it" Wesley. He thinks it not unlikely that Philip spent the following years preaching in the Gentile cities round about, with Caesarea as his base. Matthew Henry, in the same passage, writes of Mnason, an early disciple with whom they also lodged (Acts 21:16): "It is honourable to be an old disciple of Jesus Christ" Matthew Henry. The words fit Philip too, still known by his work after all those years.

Early in the second century Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor, said he had heard a remarkable story from the daughters of Philip, and Eusebius records it Eusebius, Church History 3.39. Eusebius calls this Philip the apostle, however, and many scholars think the tradition has merged the apostle Philip with Philip the evangelist, whose four daughters Acts records.

The man who had carried the gospel to strangers now opens his door to the man who had once persecuted the church. The gospel brings the one who told it and the one it changed under the same roof.