Praising God While Gaining Favor with All People

Acts 1:47 presents the early Church at a crucial inflection: "Praising God, and having favour with all the people." Joseph S. Exell's Victorian commentary identifies three dynamics at work.

First, piety—"Praising God." The regenerate are constrained by gratitude as Israel was when redeemed from Egypt. This thanksgiving is not commanded compliance but spontaneous overflow, inseparable from genuine prayer. The bought-with-a-price believer cannot remain silent.

Second, popularity—"having favour." The early converts experienced no persecution in this stage. Yet Exell discerns a necessary oscillation in Church history: sometimes the world admires godliness, sometimes it reviles it. If righteousness always won approval, counterfeits would proliferate. If it always provoked enmity, the "spark of Divine truth in humanity would be quenched." Yahweh maintains this balance with surgical precision—permitting the world's wrath only as much as purges the Church and glorifies Him, then restraining the remainder. Like kindling catching fire, the blast must be withheld until the flame is established, then released to spread it.

Third, increase. "The Lord added them, and yet they added themselves." Divine sovereignty and human agency converge: we are simultaneously passive vessels carried like sheep and active agents walking like the prodigal. The Lamb's Book of Life contains pages for every day, names on every page—though some pages bear heavier crowding than others. Growth in God's family admits no blank registers.