Acts 18:26

Speak boldly. It required boldness, for the Jews were by no means all ready to listen to announcements concerning the coming of the Messiah. The speaker must be prepared with learning and eloquence, as well as courage, to discuss this theme, concerning which the Jews had been deluded time and again by impostors. Aquila and Priscilla. Textual evidence favors (cf. p. 10) the reading “Priscilla and Aquila,” as in v. 18 (cf. Rom. 16:3; 2 Tim. 4:19). She evidently took an active part in instructing Apollos, indicating that she was a woman of great power and zeal among the Christians. Aquila and Priscilla had apparently continued to attend the services of the synagogue. When Apollos appeared there in the character of a rabbi and delivered his message (cf. Acts 13:14, 15), they heard him and were attracted to him. They took him. Having gone as far as he had in the message of John, Apollos would be much more in sympathy with Aquila and Priscilla, in their stand concerning Christ, than with the Jews who had not followed thus far. He was prepared to accept the Messiah, but did not understand in what way Jesus had fulfilled the terms of that title. Expounded. Or, “set forth,” “explained.” Way of God. What they “expounded” to Apollos was what they had learned from Paul, and perhaps also through earlier contacts with Christianity at Rome (see on v. 2). It would include the doctrines of salvation by grace, justification by faith, the gift of the Holy Spirit after conversion and baptism, and the meaning and necessity of the Lord’s Supper. It would doubtless follow, as in the case of the twelve men discussed in ch. 19:1–7, that Apollos, who formerly knew only John’s baptism, would be rebaptized into “the name of the Lord Jesus.” More perfectly. Rather, “more accurately.”