Acts 16:10

10. We This is the first of what have been called “the we passages;” that is, passages where the use of the first person plural seems to indicate that the writer was present and engaged in the transactions. The passages are Acts 16:10-17; Acts 20:5-15; Acts 21:1-18; Acts 27:1 to Acts 28:16. These passages indicate that Paul found Luke here at Troas, and retaining him as far as Philippi, there leaves him; and that six years afterward Luke again joins him at Philippi, passes with him to Jerusalem, and thence to Rome. The “we” is not in all this route uniformly used, for he still speaks of Paul in the third person in those transactions in which the writer himself is less or not at all included.

Called us for to preach This us indicates that Luke was not only “the beloved physician,” and Paul’s “fellow-labourer,” and the most eminent historian of Christ and the Church, but that he was “ called for to preach,” and so was a minister of the word. When he was left, therefore, by Paul at Philippi, there is no fair room to doubt that he was left as minister to the Churches in Macedonia. (See note on Acts 16:40, and Acts 20:1.)