What Does Acts 18:26 Mean?

(26) **Whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard . . .**—Many of the best MSS. put Priscilla’s name first, as in Acts 18:18. The fact mentioned is interesting as showing (1) that Aquila and his wife continued to attend the services of the synagogue, and (2) that Apollos appeared there, as St. Paul had done, in the character of a Rabbi who had a message to deliver, and was therefore allowed, or, it may be, requested (as in Acts 13:15), to address the people. **And expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly.**—Better, as maintaining the right relation of the comparative to the positive adverb of the previous verse, *more accurately.* The prominence given to Priscilla in this instruction implies that she was a woman of more than ordinary culture, a student of the older Scriptures, able, with a prophetic insight, to help even the disciple of Philo to understand them better than he had done before. It follows of necessity that “the way of God” which they “expounded” to him was the gospel as they had learnt it from St. Paul, perhaps as they had learnt it, at an earlier stage, from the lips of Stephen or his followers. (See Note on Acts 18:2.) It would include, to put the matter somewhat technically, the doctrines of salvation by grace, and justification by faith, and the gift of the Spirit, and union with Christ through baptism and the Supper of the Lord. It would seem to follow almost necessarily, as in the case of the twelve disciples in the next chapter (Acts 19:1-6), that Apollos, who had before known only the baptism of John, was now baptised into “the name of the Lord Jesus.”