Somewhere in the first years of the church, a group of apostles looked at a Levite from Cyprus named Joses and decided his own name did not describe him well enough. So they gave him another one. Luke records both, and then he stops to translate the second one for readers who would not have caught it.
“Joses, who by the apostles was also called Barnabas (which is, being interpreted, Son of Encouragement), a Levite, a man of Cyprus by race,” — Acts 4:36 (WEBU)
That is the only place in the Bible where encouragement is handed to somebody as a name. Not a feeling he had. Not a verse he read. A description of what he was reliably observed to do, applied to him by people who had watched him do it.
Most collections of bible verses for hope and encouragement treat encouragement as something that arrives through a screen — a sentence you read, agree with, and feel briefly better about. Luke treats it as something that arrives through a door. Across five chapters of Acts, one letter of Paul’s, and one small aside near the end of his life, we can watch what the name actually cost the man who carried it. It cost him money, then reputation, then his closest working friendship. He paid all three, and he was right about the last one, though nobody said so for years.
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The Nickname Came With a Receipt
Luke does not leave the name hanging as a compliment. The very next verse tells you what earned it.
“having a field, sold it and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” — Acts 4:37 (WEBU)
A Levite was not supposed to hold land in the first place. Whatever the story behind that field, it was the most solid thing he owned, and the first recorded act of the Son of Encouragement was to convert it into cash and set it down where somebody else could decide how to spend it.
Notice the order Luke uses. The name comes first, then the receipt. He is not saying the man bought the nickname with a donation. He is saying that if you want to know what encouragement means in this book, here is the first thing it looked like, and it had a price attached.
The Second Thing It Cost Him Was His Reputation
Five chapters later, the church in Jerusalem has a problem walking toward it. The man who had been supervising their executions has turned up in the city saying he is one of them now.
Nobody believed him. Luke does not soften this at all.
“When Saul had come to Jerusalem, he tried to join himself to the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple.” — Acts 9:26 (WEBU)
Read that as the room it describes. Not some of them. All of them. And their fear was completely reasonable — this was a man with a documented record of hunting them, and the obvious explanation for his sudden conversion was that it was a trap. The safe move, the wise move, the move nobody would ever have criticised, was to keep the door shut and wait for more evidence.
The next verse opens with a conjunction that carries the whole weight of the story.
“But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles, and declared to them how he had seen the Lord on the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus.” — Acts 9:27 (WEBU)
Look at the verbs. He took him. He brought him. He declared. Encouragement here is not a kind word offered from a safe distance — it is physically walking a suspected infiltrator into a room full of people who are afraid of him and putting your own credibility on the line for his story. If Saul had been lying, Barnabas would have been finished. Every person in that room would have remembered who vouched for him.
The whole of the next thirty years of church history runs through that single decision. Thirteen letters in your Bible exist downstream of one man being willing to be wrong in public.
Nobody Asked Him to Make the Journey
Years pass. Saul goes home to Tarsus and disappears from the record. The church at Antioch starts growing fast and Jerusalem sends Barnabas up to look at it. He arrives, sees what is happening, and then does something nobody assigned him.
“Barnabas went out to Tarsus to look for Saul.” — Acts 11:25 (WEBU)
Eight words. It is roughly a hundred and thirty miles each way, on foot or by coastal boat, to find one man in a city, with no address, no letter, and no guarantee he had not given up. Luke gives it a single sentence and moves on, which is exactly how the people who do this sort of thing tend to describe it afterwards.
Nothing in the text says Barnabas needed Saul. Antioch was already working. He went because he had seen what the man could do and could not stand the thought of it going unused in a workshop in Cilicia.
What He Actually Said When He Got There
If you want a definition of encouragement drawn from the man who was named after it, Acts 11:23 is the closest thing to one in the New Testament.
“who, when he had come, and had seen the grace of God, was glad. He exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they should remain near to the Lord.” — Acts 11:23 (WEBU)
Three movements, in order. He looked. He was glad. He said something.
The first is the one people skip. Barnabas walked into a mixed, messy, brand-new congregation of Greeks and Jews that Jerusalem was not entirely sure about, and the thing he noticed was the grace of God in it. He was inspecting them, and he came away happy. That is a decision about where to point your attention before it is a decision about what to say.
Then the content of what he said: stay near. Not achieve more, not fix yourselves first, not meet a standard. Remain close to the Lord on purpose. Encouragement in Scripture is nearly always directional rather than evaluative — it tells you where to stand, not how you are scoring.
Luke adds a line about him that he does not add about many people.
“For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith, and many people were added to the Lord.” — Acts 11:24 (WEBU)
The Third Thing It Cost Him Was Paul
Here is where the story stops being comfortable. Barnabas and Paul have worked together for years. A second journey is being planned, and Barnabas wants to bring his young cousin.
“Barnabas planned to take John, who was called Mark, with them also.” — Acts 15:36 (WEBU)
Mark had come on the first journey and left partway through. Acts 13:13 records it with no explanation offered: “John departed from them and returned to Jerusalem.” Paul had not forgotten.
“But Paul didn’t think that it was a good idea to take with them someone who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia, and didn’t go with them to do the work.” — Acts 15:37 (WEBU)
Paul’s position is defensible. Mission work in the first century was dangerous and expensive, and a man who had already quit once was a real risk. If you were staffing that trip you might well have made the same call.
What happens next is the verse most collections of hope scriptures leave out.
“Then the contention grew so sharp that they separated from each other. Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus,” — Acts 15:38 (WEBU)
Luke does not tell us who was right. He does not resolve it, apologise for it, or explain it away as a misunderstanding. Two good men who had built something together had a fight bad enough to end the partnership, and the Bible reports it and keeps going.
Read what Barnabas chose. He chose the quitter over the apostle. He gave up the most significant working relationship of his life to take one unproven young man back to his own home island and try again with him. That is the same instinct that walked Saul into a hostile room in Jerusalem, aimed this time at somebody with a far weaker case.
The Verdict Came Back Years Later
Barnabas never appears in Acts again. Luke follows Paul, and the Son of Encouragement sails to Cyprus with his cousin and vanishes from the narrative.
The vindication turns up somewhere else entirely, near the end of Paul’s life, in a letter written from a cell to a younger man, listing who is still with him and who has gone.
“Only Luke is with me. Take Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for service.” — 2 Timothy 4:11 (WEBU)
The same Mark. The one who withdrew in Pamphylia. The one Paul refused to take and broke a friendship over. At the end, with almost everybody else gone, the man Paul asks for by name is the one Barnabas would not give up on.
Nowhere does Paul write that Barnabas was right. He does not have to. The request is the admission. Somebody spent years quietly rebuilding a man Paul had written off, and Paul lived long enough to want the result.
That is worth sitting with if you are the one currently being patient with somebody nobody else believes in. The scoreboard on that kind of work runs slow. Barnabas did not get to read 2 Timothy.
He Was Not Flawless About It
Scripture does not build him into a plaster saint, and the article that hides the next verse is not being honest with you. In Antioch, when a delegation arrived from Jerusalem and Peter pulled back from eating with Gentile believers, Paul names who followed him.
“And the rest of the Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy.” — Galatians 2:13 (WEBU)
Even Barnabas. Paul writes it as the sharpest thing he can say about how bad the moment was — if the Son of Encouragement got swept along, the pressure in that room was enormous.
This matters for anybody trying to be the encouraging one. The man who was named after it still had days when he stood in the wrong place. Encouragement is not a personality you either have or lack. It is a series of decisions, and the record of the person who made more of them than anyone still contains one he got wrong.
Where Paul Says Hope Actually Comes From
Paul, of all people, wrote the sentence that ties encouragement and hope together, and he built it as a chain rather than a promise.
“For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that through perseverance and through encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” — Romans 15:4 (WEBU)
Trace the order. Written things, then perseverance and encouragement, then hope. Hope is the output, not the input. It is what you have after the old texts have kept you going through something long, which means a season with no hope in it is not evidence of failure — it may simply be evidence that you are still partway along the chain.
The very next line turns both words into names for God.
“Now the God of perseverance and of encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus,” — Romans 15:5 (WEBU)
Not the God who sends encouragement. The God of encouragement, in the same construction Paul uses eight verses later when he calls him the God of hope. These are not services God provides. They are descriptions of what he is like, which is why Barnabas being renamed after one of them is a larger compliment than it first appears.
The Bible Verses for Hope You Already Know
Most lists of bible verses about hope are built from a handful of famous lines, and they are famous because they are true. They are worth having in front of you, and each one is opened up properly elsewhere on this site rather than repeated here.
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,” says the LORD, “thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope and a future.” — Jeremiah 29:11 (WEBU)
God said this to exiles in Babylon who were not going home for seventy years, which makes it a stronger promise than the poster version, not a weaker one. Most readers carry a different wording in their heads, the one where God says he does know the plans he has for you, plans to give you a future, and the line closes with declares the LORD. The sense is identical; only the English is younger. The full setting is in Bible Verses About Hope for the Future.
“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope in the power of the Holy Spirit.” — Romans 15:13 (WEBU)
This is Paul’s benediction, and it asks that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit rather than by effort. It is handled at length in the same article.
“but those who wait for the LORD will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run, and not be weary. They will walk, and not faint.” — Isaiah 40:31 (WEBU)
Waiting on the Lord here is active rather than passive, and the promise runs in two speeds: you will run and not be weary, and you will walk and not faint. The second half is the one that matters on a long year. Bible Verses for Strength and Hope works through what renewed strength looks like when the waiting stretches out.
“This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and entering into that which is within the veil,” — Hebrews 6:19 (WEBU)
An anchor holds because of where it is fixed, not because of how tightly you grip the rope.
“It is because of the LORD’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his mercies don’t fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.” — Lamentations 3:22-23 (WEBU)
Jeremiah wrote that in the middle of a book of poems about a burned city.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” — 1 Peter 1:3 (WEBU)
A living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, tied to an inheritance Peter goes on to describe as kept in heaven.
“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.” — Romans 8:28 (WEBU)
Called according to his purpose is the clause that carries the sentence. Bible Verses About Identity and Your Purpose takes it apart properly.
“through whom we also have our access by faith into this grace in which we stand. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” — Romans 5:2 (WEBU)
Access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and then rejoicing in hope of the glory of God. The standing comes first. Paul then turns straight into the chain.
“Not only this, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope doesn’t disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” — Romans 5:3-5 (WEBU)
Another chain, in the same shape as Romans 15:4. Suffering produces perseverance, and hope arrives at the far end of it. The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit — that is the reason the chain holds, not our stamina.
“let’s hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering; for he who promised is faithful.” — Hebrews 10:23 (WEBU)
The reason given for holding on is not your grip. It is that the one who promised is faithful. Both hope articles linked above take this verse further.
“to an incorruptible and undefiled inheritance that doesn’t fade away, reserved in Heaven for you,” — 1 Peter 1:4 (WEBU)
Peter’s inheritance is kept in heaven rather than held here, which is what makes it safe from anything happening to you this year.
“who by the power of God are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” — 1 Peter 1:5 (WEBU)
A salvation ready to be revealed. It already exists; the waiting is for the unveiling of it, not the making of it.
“But may the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.” — 1 Peter 5:10 (WEBU)
The God of all grace called you to his eternal glory, and Peter puts the suffering inside the sentence rather than outside it. After you have suffered a little while is not a detour from the calling. It is part of the route.
“to whom God was pleased to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” — Colossians 1:27 (WEBU)
What God was pleased to make known is not a plan for your circumstances but a person located somewhere unexpected: Christ in you, the hope of glory.
“having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,” — Ephesians 1:18 (WEBU)
Paul prays for eyesight rather than for circumstances. The riches are already there; the request is that you may be able to see them.
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more. The first things have passed away.”” — Revelation 21:4 (WEBU)
Every tear from their eyes, one at a time, by hand. It is a strangely small gesture to end a book with.
“He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I will not be shaken.” — Psalm 62:6 (WEBU)
David stacks three words for the same idea — “my rock and my salvation, my fortress” — because no single one of them could hold what he was reaching for.
“Haven’t I commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”” — Joshua 1:9 (WEBU)
Be strong and courageous is an order, and the reason attached to it is not your capability but a location: the LORD your God is with you wherever you go. Do Not Fear: Bible Verses for Courage opens this one up.
“Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who hope in the LORD.” — Psalm 31:24 (WEBU)
All you who hope in the LORD. The psalm ends by addressing a group, which is the second time in this article that a hope instruction has turned out to be plural.
“I wait for the LORD. My soul waits. I hope in his word.” — Psalm 130:5 (WEBU)
Three short sentences and no explanation of what he is waiting for. Sometimes that is the honest report.
Every Instruction About Encouragement Is Plural
Once you have watched Barnabas, the commands in the letters read differently. Not one of them tells you to encourage yourself.
“but exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called “today”, lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” — Hebrews 3:13 (WEBU)
Day by day. The writer treats going without it as a hardening process rather than a mood, and the frequency he names is daily, which is more often than most of us hear from anyone at all.
“Let’s consider how to provoke one another to love and good works,” — Hebrews 10:24 (WEBU)
Consider how. It is planned work. The verse assumes you will have to think about what would actually move a particular person, because the thing that lifts one friend does nothing for another.
“Therefore exhort one another, and build each other up, even as you also do.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:11 (WEBU)
The last clause is the encouraging part of the sentence about encouraging. Paul tells them to do it, then tells them they are already doing it. He is naming something true about them, which is the same move the apostles made when they renamed a Levite from Cyprus.
And when Paul himself was at his lowest, the comfort did not arrive as a feeling.
“Nevertheless, he who comforts the lowly, God, comforted us by the coming of Titus,” — 2 Corinthians 7:6 (WEBU)
God comforted him, and the delivery mechanism was a friend walking through the door. Solomon had already said the same thing in plainer language: “woe to him who is alone when he falls, and doesn’t have another to lift him up” (Ecclesiastes 4:10, WEBU).
When You Are the One Who Needs Encouraging
None of the above helps much on the days when you are not the Barnabas in the story. You are the one in Tarsus that nobody has come for, or the one who quit in Pamphylia and assumes the door is shut. Plenty of people reading bible verses for hope and encouragement are in exactly that position, and pretending otherwise makes the whole page useless.
A few things are worth saying plainly.
God’s love does not move with your week. Faith is not a mood, and a season of feeling nothing is not proof that something has gone wrong between you and God. The psalmist asks his own soul why it is in despair and then tells it to hope in God, which is a man arguing with himself in Scripture because the feeling had not arrived yet.
The comfort in the Bible is nearly always described as something you receive rather than something you generate. Trust in the Lord is an act, not a temperature. Every morning the mercies are new whether you can feel them or not, and great is your faithfulness is a line written by somebody who could see almost nothing to be glad about. The source of hope in these passages is consistently outside the person holding it — the love of God, the promise of eternal life, the knowledge of the truth about who God is — which is precisely why it survives a week in which you feel nothing.
Ask for it out loud. Encouragement in Scripture is a shared thing, so tell one person the true version of how you are rather than the polite one. If nobody is available today, the Scriptures themselves are the standing supply — that is the whole point of Romans 15:4.
Read rather than wait to feel. The psalm carries you before it moves you.
“This is my comfort in my affliction, for your word has revived me.” — Psalm 119:50 (WEBU)
And if what you are carrying is heavy enough that it is affecting your health or your safety, put yourself in the hands of a professional. That is not a failure of faith and it has never been incompatible with it.
Being Somebody’s Barnabas This Week
The pattern is small and repeatable, and every part of it appears in Acts.
- Look for the grace of God first. Barnabas inspected Antioch and came away glad. Decide what you are going to notice before you decide what to say.
- Say where to stand, not how they are scoring. Remain near to the Lord, with purpose of heart. That is the content, and it is directional.
- Be willing to be wrong in public. Vouching for somebody costs something or it is not vouching.
- Go and find them. A hundred and thirty miles to Tarsus, or one message today to the person who has gone quiet.
- Expect the verdict to be slow. Paul asked for Mark decades after the argument, and Barnabas was not there to hear it.
For more scriptures in this vein, read Bible Verses About Hope for the Future or browse the full Hope Archive.
Questions About Bible Verses for Hope and Encouragement
What is the difference between hope and encouragement in the Bible?
Hope is the settled expectation that God will do what he has said; encouragement is what gets you to the point of holding it. Romans 15:4 puts them in sequence — the Scriptures give perseverance and encouragement, and hope is what we have at the end of that. One is the destination, the other is the road.
Who was Barnabas in the Bible?
A Levite from Cyprus, originally named Joses, whom the apostles renamed Barnabas, meaning Son of Encouragement (Acts 4:36). He sold a field for the church, vouched for Saul of Tarsus when the Jerusalem church was afraid of him, travelled to Tarsus to bring him back into the work, and later split with Paul over whether to give John Mark a second chance.
What are the best bible verses for hope and encouragement?
Romans 15:13, Jeremiah 29:11, Isaiah 40:31, Hebrews 6:19, Lamentations 3:22-23, Romans 8:28 and 1 Peter 1:3 are the ones most people reach for, and all seven are quoted above. If you want the verses about giving encouragement rather than receiving it, add Hebrews 3:13, Hebrews 10:24 and 1 Thessalonians 5:11.
Does the Bible say to encourage yourself?
The instructions in the letters are consistently plural — exhort one another, build each other up, provoke one another to love and good works. Psalm 42:11 does show the psalmist speaking to his own soul, so self-talk has a place, but the New Testament pattern puts encouragement between people rather than inside one person.
Why did Paul and Barnabas separate?
Over John Mark. Barnabas wanted to take him on the second journey; Paul refused because Mark had abandoned the first one in Pamphylia. Acts 15:38 says the contention grew sharp enough that they separated. Years later Paul asked for Mark by name (2 Timothy 4:11), which suggests Barnabas had been right.
What does it mean that God is the God of hope?
In Romans 15:5 and 15:13 Paul attaches perseverance, encouragement and hope to God as descriptions of his character rather than as gifts he distributes. Hope is not a resource God has on hand — it is a thing he is. That is why Paul can pray that you may abound in hope in the power of the Holy Spirit rather than telling you to work it up.
