Bible Commentaries
Acts 14

Verse 22

Acts 14:22

The expression "through many tribulations," as connected with entering God's kingdom, is used in the sense of passing or travelling through as if they lay about our road, and we as pilgrims were advancing on in the midst of them. And this is at least an encouraging similitude. It sets us forth as independent of, superior to, the tribulations, and sets them forth as our appointed way, but no more not placed there to have the mastery over us, but to be faced and left behind, just as the traveller faces and leaves behind the dangers or rough places of his road. It is then through many of these gallings and fret-tings, these narrow inlets or these pressing burdens, that our way must be made to the land of everlasting rest and peace. Let us trace the fact in the rise and progress of the spiritual life.

I. First of all, strait is the gate itself that leadeth unto life; and when our Lord chose this expression He intended doubtless to represent not only the fewness of those who go in thereat, but the fact that to each man it proves narrow and uninviting. Through one mental process in the main do men enter into the life of the spirit. It is a humbling process.

II. The tribulations of God's people may be distinguished into essential and incidental that which sooner or later, with less or more intensity, every Christian must feel, and that into which he is liable, in the providence of his heavenly Father from varying circumstances, to be thrown. (1) There is a certain beaten track of sorrow which must be travelled by every son of God. The Christian in every class of life must prepare himself for fightings without and for fears within. Through distress of heart and wrenching asunder of earthly ties in some shape or other lies every one's path to the kingdom. (2) Incidental tribulations are the sicknesses and dejections and bereavements of the people of God. These troubles are, in fact, our highest privileges. "Tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope."

H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. iii., p. 131.

References: Acts 14:22 . J. Kelly, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 324; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 68; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. iv., p. 294; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. i., p. 217. Acts 15:1-29 . Homilist, 3rd series, vol. vii., p. 11.