{14} And some days after Paul said unto Barnabas, Let us go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord, and see how they do.

(14) Congregations or churches easily degenerate unless they are diligently watched over, and therefore these apostles went to oversee the churches they had planted, and for this reason also synods were instituted and appointed.

People's New Testament

15:36 Paul said unto Barnabas. This is a proposal to start on a second missionary journey, in order to visit and strengthen the churches already planted, as well as to extend the work.

Wesley's Notes

15:36 Let us go and visit the brethren in every city where we have preached - This was all that St. Paul designed at first; but it was not all that God designed by his journey, whose providence carried him much farther than he intended. And see how they do - How their souls prosper: how they grow in faith, hope love: what else ought to be the grand and constant inquiry in every ecclesiastical visitation? Reader, how dost thou do?

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

Ac 15:36-46. Dissension between Paul and Barnabas-They Part Company to Prosecute Separate Missionary Tours.

36. And some days after-How long is a matter of conjecture.

Paul said to Barnabas, Let us go again and visit our brethren-the true reading is, "the brethren."

in every city where we have preached . and see how they do-whether they were advancing or declining, &c.: a pattern for churches and successful missionaries in every age. ("Reader, how stands it with thee?") [Bengel]. "Paul felt that he was not called to spend a peaceful, though laborious life at Antioch, but that his true work was far off among the Gentiles." We notice here, for the first time, a trace of that tender solicitude for his converts, that earnest longing to see their faces, which appears in the letters which he wrote afterwards, as one of the most remarkable and attractive features of his character. He thought, doubtless, of the Pisidians and Lycaonians, as he thought afterwards at Athens and Corinth of the Thessalonians, from whom he had been lately "taken in presence, not in heart, night and day praying exceedingly that he might see their face and perfect that which was lacking in their faith" [Howson].

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

15:36-41 Here we have a private quarrel between two ministers, no less than Paul and Barnabas, yet made to end well. Barnabas wished his nephew John Mark to go with them. We should suspect ourselves of being partial, and guard against this in putting our relations forward. Paul did not think him worthy of the honour, nor fit for the service, who had departed from them without their knowledge, or without their consent: see ch.