Something New Between Us

“He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.”
Acts 18:26

When you are used to being the person people ask for advice, it can catch you off guard when someone you did not expect to learn from sees something you missed. Their idea may be good, but accepting it can still feel awkward. For a moment, receiving help can seem like admitting that what you know matters less. Yet both things can be true. You can have years of experience and still need to hear what another person sees. Maybe receiving new insight does not have to reduce either person’s value or contribution.

Apollos was a Jewish teacher from Alexandria who knew the Scriptures well and spoke about Jesus with energy and confidence. Luke tells us all of that before mentioning one important limit in what Apollos understood. When Priscilla and Aquila, a married couple among the early believers, heard him speak, they did not dismiss what he already knew. Instead, “they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately” (Acts 18:26). They could see both the truth Apollos already knew and faithfully taught, and the understanding he was ready and able to receive.

There is something easy to miss in that invitation. Priscilla and Aquila receive Apollos before Apollos receives anything from them. They do not begin by pointing out what he has wrong or proving that they know more. They make room for him first. What they taught him did not reduce his value, ability, or dignity. Luke has already called him “a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures,” and says he “spoke with great fervor” and taught accurately about Jesus (Acts 18:24–25). He was able to remain the same capable teacher while allowing another’s understanding to help shape his own. Apollos could receive what he did not yet understand without reducing the value of what he already knew and taught.

The story continues after that conversation. When Apollos later wants to travel to Achaia, the believers encourage him and send a letter asking the believers there to welcome him. There, Luke says, Apollos “was a great help to those who by grace had believed” (Acts 18:27). What Priscilla and Aquila shared with him did not replace the understanding and ability he already had. Their understanding became part of Apollos’s understanding, and something new became possible that had not existed in any one of them alone. What began between them was now helping people in another place.

Maybe another biblical picture carries the thought farther. Believers are described as a body that “grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work” (Ephesians 4:16). What if receiving from another person, the very thing we fear might reduce our value, is one way God brings something new into being between us, something that could not have existed through either person alone?

Prayer

Jesus, teach me to receive what You may give through another person without fearing that I lose value. Help me offer what You have given me with humility, so something new can grow between us. Amen.