Barnabas — the 'Son of Encouragement' Who Vouched for Paul When No One Else Would

Paul’s name appears more times in the New Testament than almost any other, but the man who first brought him into the church community is rarely remembered by name. That man was Barnabas.

“Son of Encouragement” — a name that is itself an introduction

Acts 4:36-37 introduces him this way: “Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” His given name was Joseph; the nickname the apostles gave him is one of the rare places in the New Testament where a person’s character is summarized in the name itself. His very first appearance in the text — selling his own field and giving away the proceeds — already lives up to it.

The man who vouched for Paul when no one else would

Barnabas’s most decisive moment comes in Acts 9:26-27. Saul (Paul), newly converted on the road to Damascus, arrives in Jerusalem wanting to join the disciples — but “they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple.” No one could believe that the man who had recently persecuted the church was now one of them. Then: “Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord… and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus.” Without Barnabas, the early church might never have accepted Paul at all.

F. F. Bruce, in his Book of Acts commentary (NICNT), points out that this scene sets a pattern that runs through Barnabas’s entire ministry: recognizing and vouching for people the community was suspicious of. Later, when the Jerusalem church heard that the gospel was being preached to Gentiles in Antioch, it was Barnabas they sent (Acts 11:22). Once there, he “when he came and saw the grace of God, was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose” (11:23) — again cast not as an inspector but as an encourager.

Bringing in Paul

As the work in Antioch grew, Barnabas didn’t try to carry it alone — he went to Tarsus to find Paul and bring him in (Acts 11:25-26). Ben Witherington III, in his socio-rhetorical commentary on Acts, reads this as characteristic of Barnabas’s leadership style: rather than holding on to control, he actively recruited a co-worker with greater gifts than his own. Tellingly, starting in Acts 13, the order of the phrase shifts from “Barnabas and Saul” to “Paul and Barnabas” (13:43, 13:46, and after), and nowhere does the text suggest Barnabas resented the shift.

The split over John Mark

The most discussed episode in Barnabas’s story comes in Acts 15:36-41, on the eve of the second missionary journey, when Paul and Barnabas have “a sharp disagreement” over whether to bring John Mark along, and part ways. Mark had abandoned the team partway through the first journey (13:13), so Paul refused to take him again; Barnabas wanted to give him another chance.

C. K. Barrett, in his Acts commentary (ICC), suggests reading this not simply as a personal falling-out between two leaders, but as a collision between two consistent characters: Paul prioritized the mission’s completion, while Barnabas — true to his name — prioritized giving a person who had failed another chance. Interestingly, the story appears to end in reconciliation. Paul later mentions Mark as a coworker in Colossians 4:10, and in 2 Timothy 4:11 writes, “Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry” — a result that, in the end, vindicates Barnabas.

A note for preachers

Barnabas isn’t remembered for a dramatic miracle or a famous sermon. His role was always the same: building other people up — introducing a suspect convert, encouraging a growing church, and giving a failure a second chance. His story is a reminder that the early church’s growth wasn’t the product of Paul’s gifts alone, but was made possible by people like Barnabas whose gift was seeing people clearly and connecting them.

In apocrypha and the church fathers

Barnabas gets summoned unusually often in literature after the New Testament. Tertullian, in De Pudicitia 20, calls Hebrews “Barnabas’s letter to the Hebrews” and names him as its author — one of the oldest authorship theories for a letter whose author the New Testament itself never identifies. The document bearing his name, the Epistle of Barnabas (widely considered pseudonymous, written after his lifetime), was read with something close to canonical authority in some early Christian communities — enough that the 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus places it right after the New Testament.

The apocryphal Acts of Barnabas, composed in Cyprus around the 5th-6th century, records that he was stoned and burned by a Jewish mob in Salamis. Interestingly, this tradition didn’t stay confined to pious legend — around A.D. 478, Anthemius, archbishop of Cyprus, claimed to have actually discovered his tomb along with a copy of Matthew’s Gospel inside it. This event (recorded in the Laudatio Barnabae, c. 550) was reported to the emperor in Constantinople and used as the political basis for the Cypriot church’s independence (autocephaly) from the patriarchate of Antioch. Whatever the historical facts, it’s a rare case of a figure’s posthumous reputation shaping actual church politics.

Sources

• F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts (New International Commentary on the New Testament, Eerdmans, 1988)
• Ben Witherington III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Eerdmans, 1998)
• C. K. Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles (International Critical Commentary, T&T Clark, 1994-1998)
• Tertullian, De Pudicitia 20 (c. 200)
• Acts of Barnabas (5th-6th c.); Laudatio Barnabae (c. 550)

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